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.

Then the reporter discussed what the global warming industry plans to do about this, and includes the following predictable punch telegraphed.

…Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), co-author of several unsuccessful climate bills over the last decade, said he agrees with the need to make more local connections for the public. Hitting home for him are studies showing lobster and winter flounder moving north out of Long Island Sound.

“It’s not the end of the world, and yet it suggests the world is changing,” Lieberman said. “It’s one small example. The world is full of them.”

Lieberman said he thinks there’s a need for more TV and radio commercials that capture the most eye-catching images. “Just show people what’s happening,” he said. “Show them satellite pictures of the ice caps.”

Yes, the world changes and, of course, if something happens then you did it and their agenda would change it. Even if after billions of dollars and several decades they cannot make their case and are reduced to doing what they started with. Primitively pointing to the world around them and shrieking that the witch — now, the SUV – did it.

Expect the media to run with this. And in response I will show you pictures of, say, the World Trade Center collapsing. Why? Because that is their logic: show you something and say it is evidence that you did it. Example, invoked by a mindless fellow panelist on a tv show last week:

Man-made global warming is causing Mt. Kilimanjaro’s glacier to recede.

How do you know?

Mt. Kilimanjaro’s glacier is receding.

Oh. OK.

The CIA brought the World Trade Center down.

How do you know?

The World Trade Center came down.

Your ‘conclusion’ is actually an assumption. And that’s too stupid even for Washington to re-engineer the economy around. Here’s to an invigorating 2011.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skepticsmay not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Read the whole piece of performance art here. No doubt Al Gore believes that the really important thing here is that the ‘global consensus’ remains unchanged. For him and other climate-profiteers, science has been flipped; it is the conclusion, not the premises, which is set in stone. If some facts fall apart, they’ll just find some new ones to prop up their proposals.

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:

Based on respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological and environmental changes have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of “greenhouse gases,” a group of private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin regulating the emissions of four such gases, including carbon dioxide, under §202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA “shall by regulation prescribe…

The EPA, in concert with with Obama administration, is attempting to force through a modified version of cap-and-trade through regulation, a signal that Obama realizes cap and trade is dead in the Senate–especially after this death blow to the global warming/climate change movement:

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon. And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

It will be interesting to watch the Obama administration attempt to circumvent and spin lead scientist Professor Jones’ statements. Will the EPA revise its final report based on this new information?

Global warming, climate change, and cap and trade will be that much harder for the Left to sell. Americans weren’t buying them in the first place. Cap and trade was recognized for what is was and is–the legislation that provided the trigger for the transfer of wealth to poor nations–wealth redistribution on a global scale.

What, now, is the fate of the “Copenhagen Accord” non-binding agreement where:

The Copenhagen Accord is a 12 paragraph document that sets a 2 degree Celsius limit on future warming. Its provisions address emissions cuts, verification and deforestation. It would also commit 100 billion dollars from wealthy countries and global institutions over the next 10 years to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

Based on all of the new information on climate change and the manipulation of the “science” for some 15 years, it will be revealing if the United States adheres to this agreement. If Obama continues with this nonsense of climate change and insists on transferring United States’ wealth to third world countries, my assertions have been correct all along–that the core intentions of the Obama agenda are to place severe hardship on the American people by destroying the nation’s wealth. After all, Obama is intentionally proposing, supporting, and forcing policies through–by any means–that bankrupt the United States and weaken our economy, discourage businesses from investing and hiring workers, deepening unemployment and stifling innovation, and squeezing the American people into desperation for federal aid (there is a record number of food stamp recipients now, for example) and health care benefits.

It seems the end goal of the Obama Administration is to make people dependent upon the federal government. How’s that for some hope and change.

The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information..

Climate Email -

Currently the law prevents the authorities from taking any action against CRU, and the ICO office will recommend changes to the law to close the loophole.

On Nov 19^th after I alerted the internet to the Climategate files, I contacted Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. The message: follow the FOIA. He didn’t; Leake did. Score one for the London Times. As the story unfolded Tom Fuller and I grumbled about with the coverage of the FOIA story. A book fell out of that. Climategate:the Crutape letters, now available on Kindle and as a Lulu Ebook.

The story behind Holland’s FOIA request (here and here) requires close reading of blogs, scientific papers, leaked mails, FOIA requests, IPCC drafts, and expert reviewer comments. There is no simple take away. Except this: the Climate scientists corrupted the IPCC process, the science journal process, the statistical process, and the FOIA process to silence one man– Stephan McIntyre –and to waterboard the climate data till it delivered the message they wanted delivered, an icon more compelling than the “Hockey Stick.”

No one who can put two brain cells together can argue that these processes and the people who abused them are untainted. Instead, they will argue that nothing changes in the science. But without a trusted process there is no science. Surely, the specter of global warming does not earn a last place in the concerns of Americans. But it’s been driven there by the public’s lack of trust in the process. In their rush to judgment, the climate scientists, convinced of the nobility of their cause, have engaged noble cause corruption. Lucky for them a loophole in the law may save them from prosecution, but should not save them from disbarment.

The case is clear. In an effort to shoe horn a paper into the IPCC report, the scientists working together with Stephen Schneider of Climate Change journal, destroyed the credibility of chapter 6 of the 4^th Assessment of the IPCC. And they knew as they hijacked the process that Stephen McIntyre was watching. Yet they persisted and were caught. One scientist, Phil Jones, even suggested changing the dates on papers to hide the misdeed. But there was no hiding of the misdeed as they left a paper trail of violations.

The critical violation revolves around the submission of comments outside the IPCC process. All comments must pass through official channels. Overpeck, the task master for chapter 6 makes this clear in the mails. But the “Jesus Paper”, the paper that will save the Hockey stick is different. In defiance of process the lead author, Keith Briffa, contacts and is contacted by the authors of the “Jesus Paper,” Casper Ammann and Eugene Wahl.  That correspondence, evident to McIntyre, a reviewer of chapter 6, was one target of Holland’s FOIA.

The details of Holland’s requests are covered at Climate Audit. On May 6^th 2008 CRU acknowledged his request. On the 3^rd of June they denied his request. On the 4^th he appealed and they rejected his appeal on June 20^th.

At 6:30 on May 27^th 2008 , the scientists in CRU  were directed by FOIA officer Palmer to contact Ammann and find out if he considered his mails confidential. That was the predetermined excuse Palmer had suggested for rejecting Holland’s request. Palmer, fearing an appeal wanted to do things “by the book.” Which in this case meant suggesting to Ammann that his mails were confidential. Ammann appears to think otherwise. His response, however, was not taken into account and the refusal was issued.

Between the time when Palmer suggested that confidentially would be the excuse (May 27^th) and the denial (June 3^rd), Phil Jones would close the door on any potential appeal. He would request that everyone involved delete their mails.

The deletion of the mails might have worked. But buried in a mail from Wahl to Briffa, we have Briffa’s original mail, detailing the circumvention of the IPCC process. Worried that he cannot be objective in evaluating McIntyre, Briffa shipped a confidential file to Wahl in direct violation of the policy that Overpeck had explained to Roberts, in essence asking Wahl to evaluate his “Jesus Paper.”

In the end, of course, the full extent of the misdeeds will be detailed by the ICO, this is my take on the matter given the evidence in the climategate files. And while they have escaped prosecution, it’s clear that CRU and CRU employees cannot be trusted with the public interest. Beyond that we can wonder if action will be taken against them under the laws of misconduct in a public office, or under conspiracy laws in the UK. The legal status of destroying email in the US bears investigation.

The latest example of this is a $500,000 grant to Michael Mann, Professor at Penn State University and unintended c0-star of the ClimateGate e-mail scandal. The leaked e-mails revealed collaboration among scientists to stifle dissenting views on the extent of man-made global warming.

Mann is also the creator of the “Hockey Stick” graph, which purported to show a sharp increase in recent temperatures. That work has been thoroughly discredited by researcher Stephen McIntyre. Yet, in June 2009, the National Science Foundation awarded Mann a three-year $500,000 to further study the climate’s response to human activity. According to the grant award:

The broader impacts involve supporting postdoctoral scholars and graduate students and contributing to the understanding of abrupt climate change.

So, the research is supposed to give us a better ‘understanding of abrupt climate change.’ Mind you, the research isn’t to determine whether there is abrupt climate change occurring. Given that Mann is known for using “tricks” to finesse his data, the National Science Foundation will not be pleased with the results.

Actually, this particular grant is special, even by the low-bar set by other spending. Most of the Stimulus funds are simply wasted with no real impact on the overall economy. However, Mann’s “research” will presumably be used to further justify cap-and-trade legislation or other draconian regulatory actions. Either of these will have a very negative impact on the economy, retarding growth for years to come.

We may be paying for this $500,000 for a very long time.

Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama’s popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency.

The pointed attacks reflect a hardening conventional wisdom among prominent liberal bloggers and many Democrats that Rasmussen Reports polls are, at best, the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.

On progressive-oriented websites, anti-Rasmussen sentiment is an article of faith. “Rasmussen Caught With Their Thumb on the Scale,” blared the Daily Kos this summer. “Rasmussen Reports, You Decide,” the blog Swing State Project recently headlined in a play on the Fox News motto.

“I don’t think there are Republican polling firms that get as good a result as Rasmussen does,” said Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow with Media Matters, a progressive research center. “His data looks like it all comes out of the RNC (Republican National Committee).”

“Whether intended or not, Rasmussen polls have been used by conservative voices as talking points, and when that happens on one side it inevitably produces a reaction from the other,” explained Mark Blumenthal, a polling analyst and the editor and publisher of Pollster.com. “Rasmussen produces a lot of data that appear to produce narratives conservatives are promoting, and that causes a reaction.”

While Scott Rasmussen, the firm’s president, contends that he has no ax to grind — his bio notes that he has been “an independent pollster for more than a decade” and “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant for candidates seeking office” — his opponents on the left insist he is the hand that feeds conservative talkers a daily trove of negative numbers that provides grist for attacks on Obama and the Democratic Party.

Nothing, however, sets off liberal teeth gnashing more than Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking polls, which throughout the year have consistently placed Obama’s approval numbers around 5 percentage points lower than other polling outfits.

“He polls less favorably for Democrats, and that’s why he’s become a lightning rod,” said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who studies polling. “It’s clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person’s results.”

On Saturday, Dec. 26, for example, Rasmussen’s daily tracking had Obama’s approval at 44 percent, with a disapproval figure of 56 percent. A Real Clear Politics compilation of other pollsters, meanwhile, showed Obama with an average approval figure of 49.5 percent and disapproval of 45.1 percent.

Read the whole article here. The level of partisan hackery achieved by Media Matters is truly noteworthy. As we’ll explain to their funders this year, the organization is no longer credible; even in the hot crucible of DC’s partisan machine, MM is a joke. If you give money to them, the joke is on you.

Mr. Mosher was instrumental in promulgating the now infamous “hacked” emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  These e-mails have called into question the methods, the calculations, the peer review process, even the overall SCIENCE involved in the Global Warming arguments that drove the Cap and Trade Legislation as well as the UN Climate Conference and Kyoto Protocols.  Mr. Mosher obtained these emails on a CD from an unidentified colleague.  After days of review, Mr. Mosher realized the importance of the information he was sitting on, and he began the process of posting the information on various “Climate Change” websites and blogs.  Because the postings came from Mr. Mosher, the community immediately took them seriously.  The rest is “Under Media” history.

At the end of the ten minute interview, in-studio guest Adam Baldwin asked Mr. Mosher the final question:

“I think one of the big, missing stories here is how the scientific publishing mechanism is corrupted.  I mean, I think of “Global Warming” as kind of a religion, and what you see in the mails is how they construct the canon, of how they corrupt the journal publishing, to get the papers published what they WANT published, with the reviewers that they want reviewing it and the papers they don’t want published, they keep out.”

What is the last, remaining argument the Global Warming cultists have?  “There are no peer reviewed studies!”  In this one, succinct statement, Mr. Mosher connects the Climate-gate e-mails with a silver bullet to the heart of this argument.  Why are there no peer reviewed studies?  Because the “Peers” are silencing dissent through intimidation and bullying.  It is the way the left has been trying to move their agenda forward for years.

Against ebryonic stem cell research?  “You are anti-science!”

Against Same-sex Marriage?  “You hate gay people!”

Against partial-birth abortion?  “You hate women!”

In favor of keeping terrorists in Gitmo?  “You are a torturer!”

And, in the words of Congressmen, Senators and even a former President:

Against Obamacare?  “Racist!”