Category Archives: Global Warming

A report released Monday says that California's new global warming law will increase unemployment in the Golden State.

The announcement was in stark contrast to continual claims by the Left and their media minions that proposed cap and trade legislation at the federal level will result in an explosion in green jobs.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times Wednesday, the nation's most populated state, which is the first to impose laws concerning carbon dioxide emissions, might see a net reduction in employment as a result:

The state's nonpartisan legislative analyst's office examined 2008 economic modeling by the California Air Resources Board and concluded that it "may overstate the number of jobs" attributable to future implementation of the 2006 climate law.

While acknowledging the uncertainty of such projections, the report said, "On balance, however, we believe that the aggregate net jobs impact in the near term is likely to be negative, even after recognizing that many of the . . . programs phase in over time."

The report comes at a politically charged moment, when polls show employment to be Americans' top concern. Signature gathering began last week on a November ballot initiative that would delay the law, known as AB 32, until unemployment drops to 5.5% for at least a year. California joblessness is over 12% today.

With U.S. unemployment near ten percent, and the economy consistently viewed as the nation's top priority in poll after poll, one would think this report would be quite newsworthy.

After all, with belief in Nobel Laureate Al Gore's favorite money-making myth plummeting, and Congress beginning to work on compromise cap and trade packages, the public should be informed that California's Legislative Analyst's Office believes its state's climate change legislation will result in job cuts.

Unfortunately, Google news and LexisNexis searches found that outside of California, American media have not shown much interest Monday's announcement.

The Associated Press ran a story about this Tuesday, but only on its State and Local Wire. 

Reuters also did a piece on the matter Tuesday which ran in the U.K.

From what I can tell, outside of California, the only major media outlet to find this issue newsworthy was Investor's Business Daily.

I wonder why.

Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.   ---Derek Zoolander

I don't know which is funnier; a global warming themed fashion show or the fact that the Associated Press reports on it with a completely straight face. They assume the polar ice caps are melting so what to do? Waste carbon shipping giant icebergs from Sweden just to adorn a Paris fashion show runway. Jenny Barchfield delivers the report on "Chanel does climate change, with real icebergs" which sounds like a story pitch for a Zoolander sequel:

PARIS — Models in head-to-toe yeti suits picked their way around towering but quickly melting icebergs, sloshing through a deep puddle of Arctic melt in their shaggy fake fur.

Call it climate change chic, Chanel style.

Designer Karl Lagerfeld looked Tuesday to global warming, turning the melting of the polar ice caps into fodder for Chanel's fall-winter 2010-11 ready-to-wear look. Because, after all, what use is the threat of a catastrophe of global proportions if not to fuel fashion trends and inspire clever variations on Chanel's iconic styles?

Models in classic Chanel suits with fur trim or tweed jackets paired with pants that looked like they were made out of Chewbacca, the "Star Wars" Wookiee, struck poses in front of the giant icebergs, which had apparently been special-delivered from Sweden.

Could Al Gore do an audit on how much carbon was wasted putting on this Global Warming fashion show complete with special delivery icebergs? Oh, there was also a sort of serious note in the report:

Fur panels dressed up the hemlines of the classic Chanel skirtsuits and the label's blockbuster chain-strapped handbags, and the Chewbacca trousers were paired with little tweed jackets.

Animal lovers can breathe easy. Lagerfeld assured journalists that the fur was fake.

"One of the most beautiful furs in the world is Chanel's fake fur," he told The Associated Press Television News in a post-show interview. "This fake fur gives a very beautiful new volume. It's a pleasure to touch and to wear it. It's light and warm."

Still, Lagerfeld, a born provocateur, couldn't resist taking just one little jab at anti-fur activists.

"It is easy to be against fur, but people in the North have to make their living, they are living with nothing else ... (and) have no other jobs," he said in his rat-a-tat diction.

 Fake fur. About as real as the Global Warming threat...and both used as fashion show props. There has to be real justice in that.

This week, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s tourism minister, was nominated to head the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC). Van Schalkwyk is a former apartheid operative who bartered his way into the black majority government by helping it smear its democratic opposition. He is a statist bureaucrat who is one of the most unpopular political figures in the new South Africa. He is just right for the job.

There is no one better to put in charge of the entire political enterprise of climate change as it is collapsing amidst failed negotiations and accusations of fraud. Van Schalkwyk will be sure to hasten the end. He did the same when he took over the rump of South Africa’s National Party, the party of apartheid, and led it to crushing defeat. He gave up and joined the African National Congress (ANC) government in return for his ministry.

That was bad news for South Africans, as Van Schalkwyk encouraged other politicians to defect from the country’s leading opposition parties to join the corrupt and hegemonic  ANC. (An angry public began referring to those who crossed the floor for political favors as “crosstitutes.”) But it is good news for critics of the UN climate change bureaucracy, who now have a target who personifies everything there is to dislike about the system.

The worldwide “consensus” on climate change is unraveling amidst mounting evidence that the UN and senior scientists manipulated the data to suit their predictions of rapid warming and their prescriptions for drastic intervention in the global economy. It is, of course, true that carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” that helps warm the earth; it is true that we have pumped more of it into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.

It is also true that there is evidence of increasing average global surface temperatures over the same time period, and reason to believe that trend could continue over the next century. But it is also true that there are other factors affecting global climate, including some that reduce temperatures. And it is also true that our most sophisticated computer models cannot predict how warmer temperatures will affect our climate in the future.

That wasn’t good enough for those eager to create a sense of alarm. They projected worst-case scenarios and tried to convince the world that the potential costs of future warming far outweighed the costs of shutting down whole industries. They never explained whether climate change could actually be reversed; they did not need to, as long as they could scare people enough to avoid having to answer tough questions.

Now, after more than a decade of temperature stagnation that the models failed to predict, and the publication of e-mails suggesting that leading scientists conspired to silence skeptical colleagues, the questions are impossible to avoid. Government-led efforts to control emissions, such as cap-and-trade, “green jobs,” and “weatherizing” homes have also been exposed as rent-seeking cronyism rather than sound policy.

Enter Van Schalkwyk. He was given the ministry of environmental affairs and tourism in 2004 despite having no prior background or interest in environmental science. He has retained his cabinet position and made a name for himself in the international climate change community through his talent as a deal-broker and his shrewd sense of political opportunity. The occult world of climate change negotiations will suit his skills perfectly.

Though ridiculed as a political leader, Van Schalkwyk is among his country’s most competent bureaucrats. Yet even he cannot save the UN’s climate change framework–and he may not care. He may simply follow the example of fellow South African Richard Goldstone, who was appointed to the apartheid bench and later re-cast himself as a human rights icon, leapfrogging up the UN bureaucracy from one failure to the next.

Those who still place great store in the UN’s climate change efforts are deeply worried about Van Schalkwyk’s appointment. “The UNFCC post must be headed by someone of integrity, and that’s not a characteristic associated with Van Schalkwyk, thanks to his chequered career as an apartheid student spy and a man who sold out his political party for a junior cabinet seat,” said Patrick Bond of South Africa’s Centre for Civil Society.

The truth is that no scientist or policymaker of integrity would want the job. The science is a mess, and the policy disagreements between developing and developed countries are intractable. President Barack Obama could not solve the UN’s climate change troubles, and neither will Marthunus van Schalkwyk. But Van Schalkwyk will be content to sit atop the rubble as the edifice crumbles. He has done it before–and done it well.

This week (March 3, 2010) was the deadline Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) set for Mark Crisson, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association (APPA), to explain why APPA is urging Senators to support Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Congressional Review Act resolution to veto the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The Senate may vote on the Murkowski resolution as soon as next week.

Now, aside from the merits of the issue, which I’ll get into in a moment, Waxman and Markey’s behavior is out of line. Waxman and Markey (W/M) are Members of the House of Representatives. What business is it of theirs if the APPA lobbies Senators about a bill pending in the Senate? Senators can conduct their own inquiries without any assistance from W/M. And why didn’t W/M copy Sen. Murkowski or at least Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) on their Feb. 25 letter to Mr. Crisson? Failure to “cc” any of the principals in the Senate flouts one of the most basic rules of legislative courtesy.

Besides being busybodies, Waxman and Markey are bullies.

In their letter to Crisson, Waxman and Markey demand that he “clarify exactly APPA’s position on EPA’s scientific finding,” and either “provide the scientific basis” for disputing it, or explain why APPA is urging Senators to disapprove the finding if it has no scientific “bases” for disputing it.

There is in fact a strong scientific basis for disputing EPA’s endangerment finding. Peabody Energy presents the evidence in exquisite detail in their petition for a reconsideration of the endangerment finding. The basis that eludes Waxman and Markey may be summarized in one word: Climategate.

EPA’s endangerment finding relies heavily on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Scientists at the heart of the Climategate scandal include several lead authors and contributors to the IPCC reports. They massaged data to produce pre-determined conclusions, ignored data that did not fit into a “nice tidy story line,” conspired to bias the peer-reviewed literature by preventing “skeptics” from publishing, and violated freedom of information laws to prevent critics from checking their data and methods.

These behaviors produced a secretive, agenda-driven process that flouts EPA’s own standards of “transparency and openness,” making the IPCC reports unsuitable as a basis for EPA policy decisions.

However, although the scientific shortcomings of EPA’s endangerment finding are serious, Mr. Crisson need not engage in this debate, because the Murkowski resolution does not take a stand on EPA’s “science” one way or the other.

W/M would like nothing better than to spin the Murkowski resolution as a benighted attempt to determine scientific truth by voting. Ironically, W/M do much the same by continually invoking the alleged “consensus of scientists,” as if a head count could settle scientific controversies. But that’s a topic for another day.

My free (and unsolicited) advice to Mr. Crisson – and anyone else debating opponents of the Murkowski resolution – is to clarify what the resolution is and isn’t. It is not a referendum on EPA’s “science.” Rather, it is a referendum on whether bureaucrats with a vested interest in expanding their power, aided and abetted by trial lawyers and eco-pressure groups with no political accountability to the American people, should make climate and energy policy for the nation. It is a referendum on the constitutional propriety of EPA dealing itself into a position to implement regulatory policies Congress never approved when it enacted and amended the Clean Air Act.

A bit of background is in order here. If allowed to stand, the endangerment finding will compel EPA to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. That, in turn, will automatically make carbon dioxide (CO2) “subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act’s pre-construction and operating permit programs. As even EPA acknowledges, stretching those programs to include CO2 would lead to “absurd results” manifestly contrary to congressional intent.

For example, EPA would have to apply pre-construction permitting requirements to tens of thousands of previously non-regulated small business, and operating permit requirements to millions. The permitting programs would crash under the own weight, freezing construction activity and thrusting countless businesses into legal limbo during the worst recession in 50 years.

The endangerment finding is also precedent for economy-wide regulation of greenhouse gases under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program. Logically, EPA would have to set the NAAQS for CO2 below current atmospheric levels. Even a global depression lasting several decades would not be enough to bring America (and the world) into attainment with such a standard, yet the Clean Air Act obligates states to attain “primary” (health-based) NAAQS within five or at most 10 years.

To have its cake and eat it (regulate CO2 without hammering small business and igniting a political backlash), EPA proposes in its Tailoring Rule to exempt small sources of CO2 from the permitting programs. This breach of the separation of powers may or may not survive judicial scrutiny. But even if it does, EPA’s proposed small business protections would terminate in six years. Moreover, the Tailoring Rule in no way reduces the threat of NAAQS regulation. The Murkowski resolution, on the other hand, would nip all this mischief in the bud.

How? The Murkowski resolution would veto the endangerment finding’s “legal force and effect.” And that is all it would do. It takes absolutely no position on the scientific validity of EPA’s reasoning or conclusions, as anyone can see who actually takes the trouble to read the text, which is only one sentence long.

And, just in case you’re wondering, Sen. Murkowski is not a global warming skeptic, nor is she opposed in principle to greenhouse gas regulation. She simply believes that climate policy is too important to be made by anyone except the people’s elected representatives.

It is thus a complete misunderstanding to claim, as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and others do, that the Murkowski amendment is equivalent to Congress voting to overturn the Surgeon General’s report in 1964 finding that cigarette smoking causes cancer. The Surgeon General’s report was simply that – an assessment of the scientific literature. It had zero legal force or effect. In fact, the Surgeon General proposed no remedies at all. It was Congress, not the Surgeon General or any executive agency that, in 1965, required cigarette packages to carry a health warning, and that later prohibited cigarette advertising on television and radio.

If the endangerment finding were simply an assessment of the scientific literature, the Senate would have no business voting on it. But it is much more than that. It is the setup for EPA to take control of vast portions of the economy. It is the trigger for a cascade of regulations potentially more costly than any climate bill or treaty Congress has considered and either rejected or declined to enact or ratify.

W/M need to chill. Whether anyone – the APPA, other trade associations, or Members of Congress – agrees or disagrees with EPA’s “science” is irrelevant. Do W/M support politically accountable policymaking or bureaucratic end runs around the democratic process? Do they think EPA should be allowed to amend the Clean Air Act and violate the separation of powers to avoid the political fallout from regulatory excesses (“absurd results”) that the agency’s “science” would unleash on the American economy?

Finally, do W/M favor establishing NAAQS for CO2?  If not, just how do they propose to avoid this “absurd result” if the endangerment finding is allowed to stand?

Too bad W/M get to ask all the questions and don’t have to answer any. Their questions are designed to bully and intimidate – and distract public attention from serious threats to our economy and our democracy, threats the Murkowski resolution would remove.

In the category of least surprising, and therefore most anti-climatic, decisions of all time, Jerry Brown announced that he is running for Governor of California. He did so through an Internet video. Certainly I realize how fashionable the Internet is for candidates – but Brown’s choice of venue to announce his campaign was probably less hip than hiding – much like his virtual absence from the campaign trail the last few months.

Quite frankly, the former media-hound Brown has been hiding because he has nothing relevant to say. Indeed, the most important issues of the day all run counter to Jerry Brown’s current policies. Let me count the ways . . .

1. The Budget/Taxes.  In this perennial saga, California has yet another $20 billion+ budget deficit. The Democrats and their Union patrons want more spending and higher tax rates. The Republicans, including their statewide candidates and Brown’s Republican opponents, want less spending and lower tax rates. The California voters, according to the Field Poll (never known to lean to the Right), want lower spending not higher taxes. What’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Other than saying he will leave it up to the voters to raise taxes (the so-called leader is asking to be led), he has remarkably little to say – and that is one reason he avoids the press and limelight so assiduously – including campaign announcements devoid of those annoying press questions like – would you veto a Democrat sponsored tax increase bill?

2. Jobs. Nevada is the Nation’s #1 business development State. California is either last or second to last when it comes to being employer friendly because of high tax rates and the nation’s most onerous regulatory burden. See the correlation anyone? California, like the nation, faces a simple choice: government jobs or private sector jobs. Government jobs cost money California does not have. Private sector jobs require tax relief and lower regulations. Brown can’t advocate more spending very well and he can’t seriously claim he will go against the unions and the Democrats in the legislature when it comes to taxes and regulations. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

3. Central Valley Water Crisis. We all know that the Obama administration does not want to use the word “terrorist” lest they offend someone. Instead they use the ludicrous euphemism: “man caused disasters.” Well, if ever there was a man caused disaster, the government imposed disaster on the Central Valley qualifies for that. Politicians and a Judge have sided with an imported bait fish, i.e. whose job it was to be eaten, over people and farms causing depression level unemployment and business losses. The solution is simple and rational: elevate human dignity over a bait fish and turn the water back on. Brown can’t advocate that because he and the Left (if they are not one in the same) don’t believe in supporting people over planned-obsolescent fish. The problem is, as Paul Rodriguez has pointed out at length, fish don’t vote. That’s a problem this time for the Democrats and Jerry Brown. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

4. Global Warming. Jerry Brown is a big fan of AB32 – California’s job stifling version of a global warming bill. Trouble is – voters are cooling to that bill even faster than the drop in world-wide temperatures – except on the far Left. Unfortunately for Jerry, he can’t go against the Left. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

5. Voter ID. There is likely to be a Voter ID initiative on the ballot this fall. Over 70% of the voters want Voter ID in California – just not Jerry. He has done all he can to keep it off the ballot. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

6. Universal Healthcare. The great debate of the day finds California with its own Universal Health Care bill that is projected to cost way over $200 billion dollars per year. That stunning figure is almost 250% of existing revenues. The far Left wants it – as did Jerry Brown during his failed 1992 presidential campaign – but the voters clearly do not. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

It should be pretty obvious by now that Jerry Brown’s policies are on the wrong side of every major issue of the day facing California – according to the voters – not just Republicans. Rather than buck his patrons on the Left, Jerry Brown has ducked the voters and press. He is proving once and for all that he is not capable of being a leader in difficult times – and there can be no more relevant issue than that.

Liberal weatherman Sam Champion appeared on Friday's Nightline to attack the idea that global warming could be dismissed because of the snowy winter suffered by much of the country. He complained, "There's really no way you can connect it to climate change or global warming. This is a seasonal pattern that we're in." [Audio available here.]

And yet, on the June 9, 2008 edition of Good Morning America, Champion reported on the late spring heat wave much America was enduring. He alerted, "Dr. Stephen Schneider of Stanford University believes climate change is also playing a role."

Schneider proclaimed, "While this heat wave, like all other heat waves, is made by Mother Nature, we've been fooling around by turning the knob and making it a little bit hotter."

The professor added, "We've already increased by 35 percent the amount of carbon dioxide, which traps heat. We've added 150 percent more methane, which also traps heat."

So, it's okay to suggest that a warm snap proves global warming, but there's "no way" to disprove climate change with an unusually snowy winter? Apparently, anecdotal evidence is only acceptable some of the time.

A transcript of the relevant section from the June 9, 2008 Good Morning America can be found below:

7:02am

SAM CHAMPION: It has been an unbelievable run and an uncomfortable run of heat in a good part of the nation. It started last week and it continues over the next day or two before it breaks, and, remember, folks, it's not anywhere near summer just yet. The heat's on across the North and the Southeast with soaring early June temperatures into the upper 90s. In some areas, oppressive humidity making it feel like 110.

...

CHAMPION: And residents in many parts of the country are suffering. In Raleigh, North Carolina, so much heat, the outdoor Special Olympics were canceled.

STEPHEN SCHNEIDER (Sanford University): While this heat wave, like all other heat waves, is made by Mother Nature, we've been fooling around by turning the knob and making it a little bit hotter.

CHAMPION: Dr. Stephen Schneider of Stanford University believes climate change is also playing a role.

SCHNEIDER: We've already increased by 35 percent the amount of carbon dioxide, which traps heat. We've added 150 percent more methane, which also traps heat.

A transcript of the relevant section of the February 26, 2010 edition of Nightline can be found below:

11:38pm

DAVID WRIGHT: Doubters of climate change point to all that white stuff as proof global warming must be a lie.

STUART VARNEY: We're in the middle of a huge snowstorm up and down the eastern seaboard and you are going to create a government agency to stubble - study global warming. It's a losing issue.

WRIGHT: Of course, others say weather should not be confused with climate change.

CHAMPION: There's really no way you can connect it to climate change or global warming. This is a seasonal pattern that we're in.

WRIGHT: So, what does account for all this accumulation?

CHAMPION: We're in an El Nino pattern really. It's that warm pool of water in the Pacific. And the storms that have been building there become these big west coast storms. This is a brand new one that's along the coastline in the past 48 hours. And then they all move directly across the country, low in the country, creating southern snowstorms and then wrap up tightly like the one that's just exiting the east coast now. They've all done that.

A new study predicts that global warming, contrary to claims made by Nobel Laureate Al Gore and the his fellow climate alarmists, will actually reduce the number of hurricanes by as much as 34 percent by the year 2100.

The report just published in the journal Nature Geoscience also found that the increase in tropical storm activity the planet has seen since 1995 is part of a natural cycle completely unrelated to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

These revelations represent another serious crack in the claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and therefore seem quite unlikely to be reported by American media that have been largely ignoring all the errors that have been found recently in key IPCC documents.

As is typical, this bombshell was uncovered by a British publication, the Sunday Times (h/t Ed Morrissey):

Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms.

The benchmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that a worldwide increase in hurricane-force storms since 1970 was probably linked to global warming.

It followed some of the most damaging storms in history such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans and Hurricane Dennis which hit Cuba, both in 2005.

The IPCC added that humanity could expect a big increase in such storms over the 21st century unless greenhouse gas emissions were controlled.

The warning helped turn hurricanes into one of the most iconic threats of global warming, with politicians including Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, and Al Gore citing them as a growing threat to humanity. 

After supplying readers with the important background concerning this matter, the Times presented the facts:

However, the latest research, just published in Nature Geoscience, paints a very different picture.

It suggests that the rise in hurricane frequency since 1995 was just part of a natural cycle, and that several similar previous increases have been recorded, each followed by a decline.

Looking to the future, it also draws on computer modelling to predict that the most likely impact of global warming will be to decrease the frequency of tropical storms, by up to 34% by 2100.

It does, however, suggest that when tropical storms do occur they could get slightly stronger, with average windspeeds rising by 2-11% by 2100. A storm is termed a hurricane when wind speeds exceed 74mph, but most are much stronger. A category 4 or 5 hurricane such as Katrina generates speeds in excess of 150mph.

“We have come to substantially different conclusions from the IPCC,” said Chris Landsea, a lead scientist at the American government’s National Hurricane Center, who co-authored the report.

He added: ”There are a lot of legitimate concerns about climate change but, in my opinion, hurricanes are not among them. We are looking at a decrease in frequency and a small increase in severity.” Landsea said he regarded the use of hurricane icons on the cover of Gore's book as "misleading".

Fascinating.

As I have suggested in the past, it was indeed Hurricane Katrina and the insistence by Gore and his sycophant devotees that it was caused by global warming that helped to generate a nationwide hysteria concerning this issue.

As Ed Morrissey noted Monday:

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) activists insisted that the stronger storm systems resulted from the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, making hurricanes increasingly more severe.  These claims made their way into the UN’s IPCC report and have been a staple of AGW arguments for immediate and drastic action to limit energy production as part of the “settled science” attempt to shut down debate. 

This is why Gore prominently placed a picture of Katrina in posters advertising his schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

Now, less than five years after Katrina, some of the world's top hurricane experts say Gore and the IPCC's assertion was false.

What makes this study even more fascinating is that the scientists involved were not just global warming skeptics. As the Times reported: 

Led by Thomas Knutson, a renowned hurricane researcher at Princeton University, the group also included Landsea and Kerry Emanuel, professor of meteorology at MIT. Kerry was a leading proponent of the idea that global warming meant more severe hurricanes.

Julian Heming, an expert in tropical storms at the Met Office, said: “Several of the authors have clashed in the past so the fact that they have co-authored this paper shows they have been prepared to adjust their stance on the basis of the recent research. ”

The only question remaining is whether the IPCC will adjust its stance.

Maybe just as important, will American media report this stunning finding, or will they continue to hide from the public revelations that go counter to their agenda?

Stay tuned. 

Readers are advised that skeptics don't deny the planet's average temperature has increased since 1850, and therefore shouldn't view this study as supporting the theory of manmade global warming. At issue is not whether the globe has warmed but instead what the causes for that warming are as well as the consequences. This distinction also seems lost on agenda-driven media members.

Al Gore and Harrison Ford love to lecture us about how destructive we are to the planet. But at least -- as far as I know -- Big Al never had his chest waxed to make the point.

I somehow missed it in 2008 when Ford went "green"on Access Hollywood.

And just how did Harrison, who is the vice chair of the global environment group Conservation International, want to get his message across?

By waxing his chest, of course.

In an effort to showcase the pain involved in deforestation, Harrison willingly subject himself to the painful process of stripping his chest of all its follicles.

Big Hollywood points out that Ford should heed his own lectures.

Ford’s just another elitist Hollywood hypocrite whose concern over “the tons of carbon” the rest of us emit into the atmosphere doesn’t apply to him.

Mr. Chest Wax likes to jump into one of his many aircraft and fly up the coast …. for a cheeseburger.

The Seattle PI discovered that:

(Ford) recently revealed in an interview the extent of his love for piloting, telling Britain’s Live magazine, “Learning to fly was a work of art. I’m so passionate about flying I often fly up the coast for a cheeseburger."

Nothing like leading by example.

Demonstrating how Hollywood writers aren't reticent about inserting gratuitous political points into prime time dramas, on last Sunday night's (February 21) episode of ABC's Brothers and Sisters, “Nora Walker,” played by liberal actress Sally Field, walked into her kitchen during a kick-off party for her daughter's Republican senatorial campaign, and complained to another daughter, a son and his husband:

I can't believe the three of you are in here drinking while the GOP is out there denying global warming.

The far-fetched current storyline has “Kitty Walker,” played by Calista Flockhart, weeks after a battle with cancer and adopting a baby, running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican from California to replace her husband, “Senator Robert McCallister,” played by Rob Lowe, who is stepping down after a heart attack.

Another episode will air tonight on ABC at 10 PM EST/PST, 9 PM CST.

In the early days of the program produced by ABC Studios, “Kitty” was a DC-based conservative host of a TV debate show who was frequently at odds with her liberal and vocally so mother, “Nora.” As recounted in a November of 2006 NB post, “ABC's Conservative Character: 'Acknowledge the War Was a Mistake,'” it “took ABC until just the ninth episode...to have its sole conservative character 'grow' -- as they say of conservatives who move to the left -- from a pro-war right-winger to a critic of the Iraq war who declared it 'a mistake.'” Specifically:

On Sunday's episode [November 19, 2006], Nora was very upset by the Army's decision to recall her son, “Justin,” who had served in Afghanistan, to go to Iraq. Feeling guilty about her pro-war sentiments which may have influenced Justin to enlist in the first place, before an interview with “Senator Robert McCallister,” a California Republican played by Rob Lowe, Kitty plead with him to get the order rescinded. He refused, but she did him the favor during the interview of not asking about his divorce and rumors he had sex his family's nanny. Before the taped interview aired, she introduced it with an apology as she asserted:

I made a mistake in compromising the interview that you're about to see, and I made a mistake in continuing to defend a war that is in a desperate need of re-examination, re-examination which cannot come until we acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake.

Flashback to 2007 Emmy Awards: “Field: 'If Mothers Ruled World, There Would Be No Goddamned Wars.'”

Al Gore emerged from his undisclosed location and took to the op-ed page of the New York Times:

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.

Al Gore emerged from his undisclosed location and took to the op-ed page of the New York Times:

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.

For those who have neither the time nor the Red Bull required to wade through Al Gore's windy "We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change" in the New York Times, permit me to summarize:

• Record winter storms and revelations of warmist fraud notwithstanding, we "face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it."

• Unfortunately, "television" has replaced newspapers as the dominant medium.  And "television" serves as the tool of powerful forces favoring "unrestrained markets" and opposing regulatory "reform."  Though Gore stops short of naming television names, you don't have to read too hard between the lines to see that he's pointing the finger at Fox News in general and Glenn Beck in particular.

Key excerpts [emphasis added]:

• "It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it. . . But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at leas t two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

• "[C]hanges in America’s political system — including the replacement of newspapers and magazines by television as the dominant medium of communication — conferred powerful advantages on wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets and weakened advocates of legal and regulatory reforms. Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment. And as in times past, that has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic. Their most consistent theme is to label as “socialist” any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace."

Gore scores bonus scare-mongering points by his mention of how the same supposed hate-filled tactics of which he accuses his opponents "in times past . . . has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic." Wonder which times, which bodies politic Al has in mind?

Nobel Laureate Al Gore was mocked Thursday at the Apple shareholders meeting in Cupertino, California.

As the subject of whether or not he should be reelected to the tech giant's board of directors surfaced, one longtime shareholder stood up saying, "[Gore] has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted."

According to CNET, the gentleman then wisely said, "If his advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected" (h/t Gateway Pundit via Glenn Reynolds):

Gore was seated in the first row, along with his six fellow board members, in Apple's Town Hall auditorium as several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising his high-profile views on climate change.

At the first opportunity for audience participation just several minutes into the proceeding, a longtime and well-known Apple shareholder--some would say gadfly--who introduced himself as Shelton Ehrlich, stood at the microphone and urged against Gore's re-election to the board. Gore "has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted," Ehrlich said, referring to Gore's views on global warming. "If his advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected."

Of course, if Gore would have lost his reelection bid, I'm sure he would have asked for a recount! 

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was chewing the scenery in a Wednesday discussion of global warming on CNN’s Amanpour show. He trashed Sen. James Inhofe for demanding an investigation into U.N. climate science, suggesting Inhofe needs to be investigated: "I'd love to see all the e-mails between his office and various coal and oil companies over the last 20 years....we'll let citizens and voters decide where the real science is."

Friedman also invoked Dick Cheney, oddly comparing Iraqi WMD to climate change: "I mean, I'm a Dick Cheney guy on this. I'm with Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney said, if there's a 1 percent chance that Iraq has a nuclear weapon, we need to take that on. Well, if there's a 1 percent chance on climate change, just like Cheney said -- I'm with Cheney -- we need to prepare for it."

Friedman appeared on CNN alongside leftist NASA scientist James Hansen -- who insisted that cap-and-trade was for wimps, when we needed a massive carbon tax -- and in a surprising nod to balance, Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Amanpour began by asking about Inhofe’s call for an investigation:

JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, well, I'd love to have an investigation, which should include Senator Inhofe, who's one of the most well-oiled, coal-fired politicians in Washington. He's very well funded to protect the fossil fuel industry, but he was elected to support the people.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask -- I see Thomas Friedman, who's done a lot of work and writing, as everybody knows, on this climate debate. You just laughed when Jim Hansen described the U.S. senator in that way. What is going on here? Is there really a question about whether scientists have been illegally cooking the books?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, just to pick up where Jim Hansen left off, Christiane, Senator Inhofe wants an investigation. I'm for an investigation. I'd love to see all the e-mails between his office and various coal and oil companies over the last 20 years. So I bet Jim Hansen would be very happy to lay all his -- I won't speak for him -- but lay his documentation and research on the table, and we'll let Senator Inhofe lay all his e-mails on the table going back and forth between oil and coal companies, and we'll let citizens and voters decide where the real science is.

Friedman insisted that the errors and scientific manipulations exposed in the last few months are minor, and he energetically denied they matter:

AMANPOUR: Is the problem that the climate change camp never acknowledges any mistakes? Is that a problem?

FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, what you talked about the IPCC report, as Jim did, Christiane, you're talking about a report that includes, you know, thousands of pages and input from several thousand scientists. That there's one or two mistakes in there, I'm shocked. I'm devastated. And what the critics have done is seize on a small mistake and say, because that is wrong, everything's wrong.

After lecturing about the basics of how climate change is happening, Friedman concluded:

FRIEDMAN: But what we do know is this, Christiane, and this is really important. We know the gases we put up there stay there for like 3,000 years. In other words, they're irreversible. And we know that the chances of them producing possibly catastrophic climate change, some may say, is 90 percent, 80 percent, but it's not 0 percent.

AMANPOUR: OK.

FRIEDMAN: Whenever I see something -- whenever I see something that is irreversible and potentially catastrophic, I buy insurance. That's what this is all about.

After a break, Amanpour played a clip of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders comparing climate-change deniers to the people who found no threat in Hitler:

SANDERS: The reason that this debate is so important is that it reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s. And during that period, with Nazism and fascism growing, a real danger to the United States and democratic countries all over the world, there were people in this Congress, in the British parliament, saying, "Don't worry. Hitler is not real. It'll disappear. We don't have to be prepared to take it on."

Amanpour simply called that "pretty stark," not a smear. Friedman didn’t denounce Sanders in any way, and Amanpour never called for him to repudiate it.

AMANPOUR: That was a pretty stark statement from the lawmaker there, Sanders, in Congress, Tom. That was a pretty stark statement. What has to happen to give an irrefutable look to everybody around the world of the actual science of what's going on? Why isn't it -- why isn't there some compendium of scientific fact out there?

FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, all of these climate studies are based on models. And they look at the past, how things developed, and they project into the future. And so no one can say exactly where it's going to go, but we are on one of those paths, Christiane; we just don't know which one.

Now, what I would simply say is this. If we listen to the climate change scientists, like Dr. Hansen, and we prepare for climate change, but climate change doesn't happen, what happens? Well, let's see. We have a cleaner air, cleaner environment. We have a more energy-independent economy, new industries, and global respect.

Let's see now. If we listen to Jim Inhofe, the climate deniers, and we don't get ready for climate change and climate change comes, we're a bad biological experiment. So, like, which part of the sentence don't you understand?

I mean, I'm a Dick Cheney guy on this. I'm with Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney said, if there's a 1 percent chance that Iraq has a nuclear weapon, we need to take that on. Well, if there's a 1 percent chance on climate change, just like Cheney said -- I'm with Cheney -- we need to prepare for it.

Friedman also aggressively called Inhofe "flat-out stupid" for mocking greenhouse alarmists with an igloo during the recent D.C. blizzard:

AMANPOUR: All right. Let me put up this video, then, of what everybody probably has seen already, and that is the igloo that was created by Senator Inhofe and his family, basically saying that the snow in Washington, D.C., negates the idea of global warming. So, Bjorn Lomborg...

FRIEDMAN: Christiane, can I say one thing about the igloo? That is flat-out stupid. In the same week that that igloo was being built, it was raining in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, on the -- on the downhill ski rack. In Jerusalem, I believe it was 96 degrees one day. And my friend and stock broker in Maine was playing golf that day, OK? So the fact that it snowed in Washington tells you nothing.

AMANPOUR: But what it does tell you is that there are very clever ways of that camp using the media...

FRIEDMAN: There are clever ways of making people stupid, yes.

It also wouldn’t be a Friedman appearance without gratuitous praise for communist China’s environmental policies. "China this year, I believe, will become the world's leading manufacturer of solar panels, and the reason that solar panel prices have fallen dramatically in China is not just because of research -- Bjorn's absolutely right about that, research is necessary -- but what brings the price of your iPod down from $500 to $100 is mass manufacturing based on deployment here and now."

Hansen agreed that China had a better energy policy, and then he insisted the alarmists at the UN’s Intergovermental Panel of Climate Change are actually "very conservative" in their forecasts:

AMANPOUR: And you, the climate scientist, do you have to change what you do? Because the "scare the pants off" brigade has resulted in a lot of skeptics around.

HANSEN: Let me -- let me correct that. The scientists have been conservative. IPCC was very conservative. All the new data comes in shows that we were too conservative. Greenland and West Antarctica are beginning to shed ice twice as fast as they were five years go. So, no, we have not been exaggerating the story at all.

But even Hansen admitted the estimates of the speed of melting in the Himalayas were exaggerated.

Even when Chris Matthews attempts to side with the conservative/Republican position on an issue, he ends up either bashing them or praising Democrats, something he did three times on Wednesday's Hardball.

First up Matthews raised a GOP concern that Barack Obama should not speak in an "elevated" position, by using a podium, at the health care summit because it would present Obama as "standing up there like God" over them.

Later on Matthews appeared to defend tea partiers when he scolded Salon's Joan Walsh for using the term "teabag" which has a "sexual connotation" but just moments earlier accused conservatives of "leaping up and down orgasmically" over Scott Brown's win.

Finally, he bashed Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders for comparing climate change skeptics to those who downplayed the Nazi threat in the thirties, as the MSNBC host explained: "One of the smart rules of politics is never...compare anything to Hitler." However Matthews couldn't help but take up Sanders' cause, as he accused those "who oppose climate change now do so, out of two motives...business and...anti-intellectualism, neither are defensible, when the victim of their position is the only planet we have."

The following exchanges were aired on the February 24 Hardball (aired at midnight due to Olympics):

Matthews deifies Obama:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Congressman Shadegg are you with the other Republicans who are putting out the word, in negotiations with the White House, that the President of the United States should not have a lectern tomorrow? Are you with that effort? Yeah he should sit at the table as the same level as you guys. Is that important to you?...Here's what I think Republicans are afraid of and then I'll let Congressman [Chris] Van Hollen speak. This is a, this was about optics I think, the question of whether the President should look elevated or not on television tomorrow. Here's a scene from the White House summit held one year ago, in an exchange between President Obama and the man he beat for President, Senator McCain. I think if you watch it you'll understand why the Republicans are sensitive about this kind of higher plane for the President.

(Clip of John McCain asking Obama a question during February 23, 2009 meeting)

MATTHEWS: You know that format Congressman Van Hollen makes the President of the United States look like the principal of the school and John McCain -- who lost a pretty good election to him – like a third grader. Do you think it's a fair format, to have the President standing up there like God and the, or principal at least and the Republicans sitting there like pupils?

Matthews hypocritically makes fun of Walsh for using sexual terms to describe conservatives:

MATTHEWS: Just two weeks ago you guys were leaping up and down orgasmically over, what's his name, Scott Brown winning and now he's being pushed out of the party. Three or four weeks ago, or a little longer ago you were jumping up and down about Chris Christie in New Jersey winning the governorship and Bob McDonnell winning the governorship, now these guys are being treated as like, "Oh they're not really one of us now."

PAT BUCHANAN: Oh no look the guys are not purists. They're basically they're regular Republicans. You got a conservative Republican in Virginia. But look at Sarah Palin. She endorses McCain in Arizona. She goes to Texas and endorses the governor because that's a buddy of hers. She endorses Rand Paul who is a non-establishment candidate in an open thing in Kentucky. Chris you've had these battles in your party, you guys tried to dump your vice presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman.

MATTHEWS: Why, why do you see Rush Limbaugh lambasting Mitt Romney, who's probably gonna be your party nominee, I think if you look down the road, probably, it looks like it, for backing John McCain, your previous party nominee? I mean how can you be more regular than that? I like, well here he is. Here's Rush Limbaugh, going after. One thing about Rush he's always on tape.

(Begin clip)

RUSH LIMBAUGH: I like Mitt Romney but I think he's risking his career over, over a guy endorsing McCain, who is so out of step with what's going on right now. It's, it's I mean well, McCain's, he's always conservative when he's running for re-election in, in Arizona. Well, you know, the, the tea parties have produced wave of conservatism that has swept Republicans In Name Only, aside.

(End clip)

MATTHEWS: You know this reminds me of the old Democratic left. I know you might disagree with me Joan, because you occasionally do. November Doesn't Count. The NDC. The old New Democratic Coalition. All they cared about was who won the primary. Happily nominating people that couldn't win general elections. It looks to me like the Republican Party is, is really is creating a pup tent.

JOAN WALSH: SALON.COM: Well they are. They're trying to fit the whole party in, into a tea bag, at this point Chris. And you know I want, I want to talk to my friend Pat who is sounding very reasonable a couple weeks ago when we, when we talked. He was defending Scott Brown.

MATTHEWS: You guys will not stop! It's the Tea Party movement! It's not the Teabag movement. I know the sexual connotation that's only weird. But why do you guys keep calling it the Teabag Party?

WALSH: I'm not. No. Hey, first of all, I didn't, I didn't call it the Teabag Party. A teabag is small. I'm just looking for-

MATTHEWS: Okay. Right.

WALSH: -a metaphor for small. Please I'm a Catholic girl. I'm not-

MATTHEWS: Okay.

WALSH: There's no sexual references here. My Lord!

MATTHEWS: Okay alright, alright, alright. My Lord. Okay.

Incidentally on Monday's Hardball Matthews, himself, used the teabag terminology when referring to John McCain's primary challenger J.D. Hayworth: "Finally, revisionism at its finest, today comes courtesy of John McCain who's clearly feeling the heat from primary challenger and party teabagger J.D. Hayworth."

Matthews comes to the defense of climate change skeptics, only to later excoriate them:

MATTHEWS: Back to Hardball. Now for the Sideshow. One of the smart rules of politics is never, never, repeat never compare anything to Hitler and the horror that he wrought on this planet. Well that's what Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has just done. Yesterday he compared climate change skeptics to those who downplayed the threat of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Here he is talking up the need for climate change action at the budget hearings for the EPA.

(Begin clip)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: The reason that this debate is so important is that it reminds me, in some ways, of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s. And during that period, with Nazism and fascism growing, a real danger to the United States and Democratic countries all over the world there were people, in this Congress, in the British Parliament saying, "Don't worry! Hitler is not real! It'll disappear. We don't have to be prepared to take it on."

(End clip)

MATTHEWS: Well the people who do oppose action on climate change right now do so, not out of ignorance but out of two motives. I think one is business and two is their anti-intellectualism, neither are defensible, when the victim of their position is the only planet we have.

Ladies and gentlemen, I call your attention to the key passage in unrepentant Climate Change Republican John McCain’s Senate floor statement yesterday on cap-and-trade. Note well (hat tip: Edward John Craig/Planet Gore):

Let me say to my colleagues, I am proud of my record on climate change. I have been all over the world, and I have seen climate change. I know it is real, and I will be glad to continue this debate with my colleagues and people who do not agree with that. I believe climate change is real.

More than three months after the ClimateGate scandal broke and despite relentless new disclosures every week about the fraud, misconduct, and distortions that have served as the underpinnings of AGW theory, McCain still believes climate change “is real.”

He is “proud,” my friends, of his global warming tour and rigged Senate hearings, his flip-flops on offshore drilling, and his longtime cap-and-tax flirtations.

While even Democrat slow learners are beginning to push back against the EPA war on carbon, McCain is still siding with the cultists.

I repeat:

Attention, GOP: John McCain is the problem.

***

Commenter b-cat: “‘I have been all over the world, and I have seen climate change.‘ How is this possible? It is supposed to happen so slowly no one notices. It is akin to saying I have been all over the world, and I have seen evolution. We’re talking about small percentage points of a single degree over the course of a century.”

***

Update: Via Michael O’Brien of The Hill, here comes the Climate Change Republican Bobsy Twin…

Comprehensive climate change legislation can’t get the votes to pass in the Senate without a cap on carbon emissions, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday.

Graham, one of the three Senate negotiators on a compromise climate bill, said that lawmakers could advance a cap on carbon emissions, but not the cap-and-trade system that’s been proposed in Congress and passed by the House.

“Cap and trade to regulate to regulate carbon is not going to work,” Graham said during an appearance on the Keith Larson radio show. “And at another time, I’ll tell you a way to price carbon that will create energy independence and a green economy: You can cap carbon without doing the cap and trade bill.”

***

Update: Brooke Buchanan from McCain’s office e-mails:

Saw your recent post on your blog and wanted to let you know the floor statement was dated wrong on the website and since been updated (see link below). Senator McCain actually gave the floor speech on March, 19 2009. I would appreciate updating your post to reflect.

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.FloorStatements&ContentRecord_id=fc9fe108-cefb-5625-da0c-ae792f8ee497&Region_id=&Issue_id=

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

The Independence Party in Great Britain wants to ban Nobel Laureate Al Gore's fact-challenged schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" from being shown in schools.

The British Telegraph reported Thursday: 

Following a number of scandals around the science of climate change, UKIP are promising to launch a Royal Commission led by a High Court judge to investigate whether global warming is man-made.

Wait. It gets better:

Pending the results of the commission, the party, that has no MPs at the moment, have promised to build new fossil-fuelled power stations to meet energy demands and scrap subsidies for wind farms. Global warming 'propaganda' like the Al Gore film Inconvenient Truth will be banned in schools and public authorities will not be allowed to spend money on climate change initiatives. 

Yikes. 

Can you imagine an American political Party taking such a position, and how our press would go absolutely apoplectic?

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is calling for a criminal investigation into the actions of scientists associated with the growing scandal known as ClimateGate.

The ranking Republican on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee also wants former Vice President Al Gore to be brought back to Capitol Hill to defend comments he's made in the past to Congress concerning the theory of manmade global warming.

Such was reported by Charlie Martin Tuesday morning:

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Senator Inhofe also called for former Vice President Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify.

“In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,” Inhofe said. He believes Vice President Gore should defend himself and his movie before Congress.

Inhofe gave citizens a "Sneak Peek" into this report at his EPW blog Tuesday:

What emerges from our review of the emails and documents, which span a 13-year period from 1996 through November 2009, is much more than, as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson put it, scientists who "lack interpersonal skills." Rather, the emails show the world's leading climate scientists discussing, among other things:

• Obstructing the release of damaging data and information;
• Manipulating data to reach preconceived conclusions;
• threatening journal editors who published work questioning the climate science "consensus"; and
• Assuming activist roles to influence the political process. 

Inhofe continued:

We knew they were cooking the science to support the flawed UN IPCC agenda. As I said on the Senate floor back in 2005 that "the IPCC has demonstrated an unreasoning resistance to accepting constructive critiques of its scientific and economic methods, even in the report itself...this is a recipe for de-legitimizing the entire endeavor in terms of providing credible information that is useful to policy makers."

And back in 2003 I said blaming global warming on CO2 and other man made gases is the ‘greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." I was right.

Those interested can read excerpts from this report here. The entire 84-page report is now available here.

Ed Morrissey interviewed Inhofe Monday, and posted videos of their discussion here.

It's going to be very interesting watching how this all gets reported in the next 24 hours by the global warming-obsessed media.

Stay tuned. 

A rare thing happened on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor": a climate alarmist and a global warming skeptic debated on American television Nobel Laureate Al Gore's favorite theory.

In the alarmist corner was Bill Nye the Science Guy.

In the skeptical corner was Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi. 

Moderating the event, and doing a fine job of it, was Fox News's Bill O'Reilly (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Factor follow-up segment tonight, another global warming study debunked in the journal Nature Geoscience. The study was printed that showed the ocean is rising because of global warming. Well, now the magazine says sorry, the study was flawed. Just another in a long line of global warming problems including the resignation last week of the U.N. global warming guy. Joining us from Los Angeles Bill Nye the science guy who believes in manmade global warming. And from State College, Pennsylvania, Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi who is skeptical. So Joe, give me your best shot. Why are you dubious about this global warming business?

JOE BASTARDI: Well first of all, let's take a look at what happened this winter because there are a lot of people trying to now say that all the cold and snow that we had was because of global warming. This was our forecast issued in July and then I reissued it again in October. Notice the cold and snow in the mid-Atlantic states, snow down here in Texas, warm and dry up here. Wet in California. Now, how did I come up with that? Was it global warming? No. We have an El Nino and a state of the ocean in the Pacific similar to the 60s and 70s when Bill O'Reilly was growing up and there was all that snow. The solar cycles are doing something that is reminiscent to colder times. And amazingly, amazingly, the very thing that John Holdren opined on last year, blasting soot into the high altitudes over top of the Artic actually happened naturally with volcanic activity last year led to a lot of blocking over the polls this year.

O'REILLY: So, once again, you have a meteorological explanation for what happened.

BASTARDI: Oh yes.

O'REILLY: Bill, why do you believe, and Joe doesn't believe in manmade global warming. Why do you believe in it?

BILL NYE: Well, the evidence is overwhelming. Do you agree, Joe, that in 1750 the world's carbon dioxide was about 280 parts per million? Do you agree with that?

BASTARDI: Bill, you don't want to go here, do you know why? Because I'm going to show the CO2 correlation.

NYE: Do you agree?

BASTARDI: Yes. I also agree.

O'REILLY: Wait, Joe. Wait. Let him make his point and you can reply. Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: Do you agree that the planet Venus is warm because it has a lot of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere? When I say warm, enough to melt lead on its surface? Do you agree with that?

BASTARDI: I don't believe we have the proper measurements of Venus from over 10 billion years ago. So I can't tell the relationship with the Earth.

O'REILLY: Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: I think you are throwing a red herring in there.

BASTARDI: Oh I am? I wasn't around the time of Creation.

NYE: This is the carbon dioxide in 1750 in parts per million as represented by fountain pen ink. This is it today. Even though it's a very, very small fraction, four hundreds of a percent, it's still quite noticeable and it affects the world's climate. About your explanation with volcanoes, you know, this is a study done by the IPCC, and this is a timeline and it depicts volcanic activity. And one of the greatest revelations behind casting where they showed that there was a correlation between volcanic eruptions and the Earth's cooling because particulate matter gets high in the atmosphere. Well, it's only true of volcanoes near the equator. Mt. St. Helens had hardly any effect at all. And you can see when you extract the data from this trend, you extract trend from this data, the world is getting warmer. It's continually getting warmer. And these data are so compelling that they overwhelm any effect that has, that might have come from this winter.

O'Reilly: Alright, Joe. You reply.

NYE: Sort of nothing to do with it.

BASTARDI: That's simply not true, Bill. When you blast SO2 into the atmosphere over top of the Arctic, what happens is it absorbs sunlight warms the stratosphere which depresses the troposphere underneath and cools the troposphere. That can be documented from what happened back in 1912 if you went back and looked at the following winters. But look at this.

O'REILLY: Wait, wait, wait, Bill. Let Joe go.

BASTARDI: You want to bring up the CO2 argument. Why don't we just look at the sun spots back here, back in 1750 and notice that they have been coming up and along with it the temperatures. Basically it comes down to this. If you you look at the strength of correlation to warming, and this is courtesy of meteorologist Joe D'Aleo. CO2 since 1895, you can see the .43, the sun .57, the oceans .85. But since 1998, CO2 is going next to nothing because the Earth's temperature is flat lining and CO2 is coming up. So what you have to believe, folks, is this that the sun, plus the oceans, plus the volcanic activity plus natural reversal has less effect than the yearly human contribution equal to the width of a hair on a one kilometer bridge of a trace gas needed for life. So, if you want to believe that you can go ahead and believe that. Seems kind of hard to.

O'REILLY: All right, Bill.

NYE: Actually Joe, Mr. Bastardi, the last 10 years are the warmest decade on record.

BASTARDI: Sure, measuring with satellites.

NYE: 1998 was an especially warm year. 1998 was an especially warm year as was 2006. Now, what's happened is you showed back in September on this program this graph. And it starts around here 2001 and the idea is that it shows the world cooling off. Well, actually, it's weighted because of the especially warm 1998. When you extract the data as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change...

BASTARDI: Exactly right.

NYE: ...has, you see it go up and down but the trend is up. Now, what, here is the question for you, Mr. O'Reilly for Mr. Bastardi: in whose best interest is this? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does these studies, they argue about it, that's what ClimateGate was about. The one guy called the other guy an idiot. One guy calls his method no good. The other guy says his method is really good. But the world is getting warmer. Carbon dioxide is a very strong greenhouse gas. It has a very long residence time in the atmosphere. It is making the world warmer. Along with methane and other human activities. In whose best interest is it to deny this stuff?

O'REILLY: Let me give Joe the last word.

BASTARDI: Alright, Bill. How are you measuring, when measuring temperatures since the satellite era began in the late 70s at the end of the last what we call the cold PDO. And what I want to show you here real quick, folks.

NYE: Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

O'REILLY: Let him finish.

BASTARDI: The Pacific Decadal Oscillation. If we take a look at this right back here, we see that during the 70s here, and you can see the Time magazine from late 70s we were in a cold PDO. We have been warming it up. We are now turning colder. And the fact of the matter is that if I am right, and this is the greatest debate ever, Bill Nye, the greatest lab experiment ever. If I'm right, the reversals will lead to a degree to a degree and a half cooling. If you are right, they are not. But what are we worried about right now? What we have to look at is the next 20 or 30 years.

Kudos to all involved for a lively but respectful debate on this controversial issue.

Maybe more television news outlets should take a cue from this segment and present more such discussions so the public can actually get both sides of this debate rather than just what Gore and his sycophant devotees have been presenting the past several years.

On Monday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC's Bill O'Reilly hosted a debate between global warming skeptic Joe Bastardi of Accuweather, and Bill Nye of PBS's Bill Nye the Science Guy, known for recently declaring that it was "unpatriotic" to dispute global warming. Bastardi argued that recent winter weather patterns are connected to El Nino, not global warming. He also linked sunspot activity to warming and cooling trends. Bastardi:

You want to bring up the CO2 argument. Why don’t we just look at the sunspots back here – back in 1750 – and notice that they’ve been coming up – and along with it the temperatures. Basically, it comes down to this: If you look at the strength of correlation to warming, and this is courtesy of meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, CO2 since 1895, you can see the .43, the sun .57, the oceans .85, but since 1998 CO2 has gone next to nothing because the Earth’s temperature is flatlining and CO2 is coming up.

He went to sum what he believed to be the implausiblity of the argument made by those who believe in global warming theory:

So what you have to believe, folks, is this: That the sun plus the oceans plus the volcanic activity plus natural reversal has less effect than the yearly human contribution equal to the width of a hair on a one-kilometer bridge of a trace gas needed for life. So if you want to believe that, you can go ahead and believe that. Seems kind of hard to.

Below is a transcript of the segment from the Monday, February 22, The O'Reilly Factor on FNC:

BILL O’REILLY: "Factor Follow-up" segment tonight, another global warming study debunked in the journal Nature Geoscience. A study was printed that showed the ocean’s rising because of global warming. Well, now the magazine says, "Sorry, the study was flawed." Just another in a long line of global warming problems, including the resignation last week of the U.N. warming guy. Joining us now from Los Angeles, Bill Nye the Science Guy, who believes in manmade global warming, and from State College, Pennsylvania, Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi, who is skeptical. So, Joe, give me your best shot. Why are you dubious about this global warming business?

JOE BASTARDI Well, first of all, let’s take a look at what happened this winter because there are a lot of people trying to now say that all the cold and snow that we had was because of global warming. This was our forecast issued in July, and then I reissued it again in October. Notice the cold and snow in the mid-Atlantic states, snow down here in Texas, warm and dry up here, wet in California. Now, how did I come up with that? Was it global warming? No. We have an El Nino and a state of the ocean in the Pacific similar to the 60s and 70s when Bill O’Reilly was growing up and there was all that snow. The solar cycles are doing something that is reminiscent to colder times, and, amazingly, amazingly, the very thing that John Holdren opined on last year, blasting soot into the high altitudes over top of the Arctic, actually happened naturally with volcanic activity last year, led to a lot of blocking over the poles this year.

O’REILLY: All right, so, once again, you have a meteorological explanation for what happened.

BASTARDI: Oh, yes.

O’REILLY: Now, Bill, why do you believe – and Joe doesn’t believe in manmade global warming – why do you believe in it?

BILL NYE: Well, the evidence is overwhelming. Do you agree, Joe, that in 1750, the world’s carbon dioxide was about 280 parts per million? Do you agree with that?

BASTARDI: No, you don’t want to go here. You know why? Because I’m going to show the CO2 correlation.

NYE: Wait a second, do you agree?

BASTARDI: Yes, I agree.

NYE: Well, see, so you agree-

BASTARDI: I also agree-

O’REILLY: Wait, wait, Joe, wait. Let him make his point and you can reply. Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: Do you agree that the planet Venus is warm because it has a lot of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere? And when I say warm, warm enough to melt lead on its surface. Do you agree?

BASTARDI: I don’t believe we have the proper measurements of Venus from over 10 billion years ago, so I can’t tell the relationship with the Earth, but maybe you can.

O’REILLY: Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: I think you’re throwing a red herring in there.

BASTARDI: Oh, I am? I wasn’t around at the time of creation.

NYE: So, if you look at these two, this is the carbon dioxide, this is the carbon dioxide in 1750 in parts per million, as represented by fountain pen ink. This is it today, even though it’s a very, very small fraction, 4/100 of a percent, it’s still quite noticeable, and it effects the world’s climate. About your explanation with volcanoes, you know, this is a study done by the IPCC, and this is a timeline and it depicts volcanic activity. And one of the great revelations ... where they showed that there was a correlation between volcanic eruptions and the Earth’s cooling because particulate matter gets high in the atmosphere. Well, it’s only true of volcanoes near the Equator. Mt. St. Helens hardly had any effect at all. And you can see ... when you extract the trend from this data, the world it getting warmer. It’s continually getting warmer. And these data are so compelling that they overwhelm any effect that might have come from this winter.

O’REILLY: All right, Joe, your reply.

NYE: That has sort of nothing to do with it.

BASTARDI: That’s simply not true, Bill. When you blast SO2 into the atmosphere over top of the Arctic, what happens is, it absorbs sunlight, warms the stratosphere, which depresses the troposphere underneath, and cools the troposphere. That can be documented from what happened back in 1912 if you went back and looked at the following winters. But look at this-

NYE: That’s exactly what happened, Joe.

O’REILLY: Wait, wait, wait, Bill, let Joe go.

BASTARDI: You want to bring up the CO2 argument. Why don’t we just look at the sunspots back here – back in 1750 – and notice that they’ve been coming up – and along with it the temperatures. Basically, it comes down to this: If you look at the strength of correlation to warming, and this is courtesy of meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, CO2 since 1895, you can see the .43, the sun .57, the oceans .85, but since 1998 CO2 has gone next to nothing because the Earth’s temperature is flatlining and CO2 is coming up, so what you have to believe, folks, is this: That the sun plus the oceans plus the volcanic activity plus natural reversal has less effect than the yearly human contribution equal to the width of a hair on a one-kilometer bridge of a trace gas needed for life. So if you want to believe that, you can go ahead and believe that. Seems kind of hard to.

O’REILLY: Let Bill reply. Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: Actually, Joe, Mr. Bastardi, the last 10 years are the warmest on record.

BASTARDI: Since we started measuring with satellites.

The top three things the editors of TIME magazine should have caught, but didn't, in the February 22 edition:

3) From "Colin Firth" by Richard Corliss and Mary Pols:

Ah, Mr. Darcy, the 'man without fault' who courted Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice. The role marked Firth as a gently seductive actor but one who often loses the leading lady to a name higher on the marquee.

Realizing the book came out too recently for the Cliff Notes version to be available and the authors may not have had time to see one of the several movie versions (has the 1940 version made it to video yet?), an editor should have been kind enough to pencil in that Mr. Darcy did indeed win the hand of the estimable Elizabeth Bennet.

2) From Verbatim:

'People said I should go kill myself.'

PHIL JONES, British scientist at the center of the Climategate scandal, saying he contemplated suicide after the leaked e-mails prompted threats from global-warming skeptics

Phil Jones did indeed make this claim -- see London Sunday Times, 2/7/10 -- but TIME added the bit about the communications coming from "global-warming skeptics."

Here's how the Times reported it:

He remains at risk, still receiving death threats from around the world including two in the past week: "I was shocked. People said I should go and kill myself. They said that they knew where I lived. They were coming from all over the world."

As a) the exposure of conduct for which Jones is being investigated has been a great boon to skepticism, as b) global warming-related policies have cost taxpayers and private citizens a great deal of money and the CRU e-mails hint it may have been for naught, as c) environmentalists have been known to issue death threats (take my word for it, or ask another skeptic), as d) the term "ecoterrorism" has been coined but "skeptiterrorism" or something similar has not, and as e) people have been known to issue death threats for psychological reasons, TIME is not justified in assuming, and publishing as fact, that the alleged threats came "from global-warming skeptics."

TIME also dropped a word from the quote, making it less than "verbatim."

1) From "The Moment" by Michael Grunwald, about New Orleans:

But the Lombardi Gras felt like a new beginning for a who-dat city of underdogs -- especially coming just days after its black and white residents came together to install new adult [emphasis added] leadership in the form of Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu.

TIME says Mayor-elect Landrieu, born 1960 and white, is "adult," presumably in comparison to his predecessor, Ray Nagin, born 1956 and black.

Is TIME calling Nagin a "boy"?

Imagine if a conservative publication had published that.

I don’t usually post the MRC’s bi-weekly Notable Quotables here on NewsBusters, but there seemed to be more than the usual number of obnoxious liberal quotes over the past two weeks — disparaging the Tea Party as “harsh” or racist; denigrating Sarah Palin as “preposterous” and “anti-intellectual,” and insisting that the voter revolt against Democrats’ big government policies is fiction: “a tempest in a teapot.”

Here are some of the choicer quotes from this issue; the entire package (with five audio/video clips) is posted at www.MRC.org. You can also sign up to get each issue sent to you via e-mail (next issue will be March 8).

Scolding “Harsh Rhetoric” of Tea Party “On the Fringe”

ABC’s John Berman: “The business of this first ever national Tea Party convention is the nuts and bolts of politics, like voter registration....But barely scratch the surface, and there’s a tone of anger and confrontation....When we asked delegates what they thought, their feelings about the President were almost universal.”
Unidentified Man: “I believe he is a socialist ideologue.”
Unidentified Woman: “You just read his history, he’s a Marxist.”...
Berman: “One of the goals of this convention is to turn this movement into a political force. The question is, does the harsh rhetoric keep them on the fringe?” — ABC’s World News, February 5.

Nothing but a Bunch of Racist McCarthyites

“What does Margaret Chase Smith have to do with the next two segments on Countdown — one of them about the Tea Klux Klan?...It was Maine’s Republican Senator who said, and I’m quoting here: ‘I don’t want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny — fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.’...[In 1950, Smith was] pushing back against the fear and bigotry and smears and ignorance being practiced by her own party by, in particular, the Wisconsin Republican witch hunter, Senator Joseph McCarthy....Today, the GOP has plenty of McCarthys, an entire wing of them in the Tea Party.” — Keith Olbermann on Countdown, February 9.

“Times are tough, the future is confusing, the threat from those who would dismantle our way of life is real, as if we weren’t to some extent doing it for them now. And the President’s black....I know phrases like ‘Tea Klux Klan’ are incendiary, and I know I use them in part because I am angry that at so late a date, we still have to bat back that racial uneasiness which has to envelop us all.” — Olbermann in a “Special Comment” on Countdown, February 15.

Trashing “Simple-Minded” Sarah Palin

“I watched her speak at the Tea Party convention, then I listened to the interview that followed with the Tea Party chairman and it was embarrassing at points, to the point where you just want to avert your gaze when she starts to talk. Simple, simple thoughts, very simple-mindedly expressed....Just as the Supreme Court nominee who was defeated said, you know, ‘Everybody needs to have a little mediocre representation and that’s what I am.’ That’s what she is.” — Washington Post columnist Colbert King on Inside Washington, February 12.

“We see a lot of preposterous things in American politics....Sarah Palin’s entire career would be eliminated, would pass out of history if preposterousness were somehow disqualifying, but it’s not.” — The New Yorker’s David Remnick, formerly a Washington Post reporter, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 9.

“What she said was drivel. No, let me amend that: it was anti-intellectual drivel....Those who celebrate Sarah Palin’s lack of knowledge as a form of ‘authenticity’ superior to Barack Obama’s gloriously American mongrel ethnicity and self-made intellectuality are representatives of a long-standing American theme — the celebration of sameness, and mediocrity, in a country that has succeeded brilliantly because of its diversity and restlessly eccentric genius.” — Political columnist Joe Klein on Time’s “Swampland” blog about Palin’s Tea Party speech, February 7.

George’s Prescription for Democratic Revival: Pass a Big Health Care Bill

Anchor Diane Sawyer: “Which leaves about ten months to turn it around before the mid-term elections. What are they going to do in the White House?”
George Stephanopoulos: “Well, it’s not going to turn around completely. Democrats and Republicans agree that Republicans are picking up seats in the mid-term elections. What the White House can do — what they’re trying to do — is to achieve a health care bill. People still want that.” — ABC’s World News, February 10, discussing ABC’s poll showing Democrats trailing in congressional races.

Don’t Worry: Anti-Democratic Backlash Just a “Tempest in a Teapot”

“While analysts expect Democrats to lose some seats in 2010, more Republicans [than Democrats] are retiring.... The sense of dramatic change is more about who is leaving — high profile Democrats like Patrick Kennedy and Chris Dodd — than how many....In politics, the nine months between now and November can amount to a lifetime. But, for now, despite all the passionate, anti-incumbent tea parties, the math suggests limited changes on Capitol Hill — a tempest in a teapot.” — ABC’s John Hendren on Good Morning America, February 14. [Watch the video]

Dick Cheney: Giving Aid and Comfort to al Qaeda?

“Don’t you think when the former Vice President says America is weaker than it has been that you are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, that you are encouraging another attack?” — FNC’s Geraldo Rivera to conservative author Ann Coulter on the February 14 Geraldo At Large. [Watch the video]

Blizzard or No Blizzard, Don’t Mock Global Warming!

“The anti-science crowd in the Republican Party is saying that the snow storms we’re having are evidence against global warming. These guys, these clowns — go to high school!...It isn’t something to laugh about, gentlemen, unless you don’t care about what happens to this planet down the road. And I suspect that some of you folks, sadly, don’t.” — Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, February 10.

Yvo de Boer resigned yesterday as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Here are three key passages from the official announcement at the UN's web site:

The top United Nations climate change official said today that he has made the “difficult decision” to step down from his position, citing his desire to pursue new opportunities to advance progress on the issue in both the private sector and academia.

.... Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that he was informed by Mr. de Boer of his decision two days ago and respected his decision, but “with regret.”

“Developing countries need to move as quickly as possible toward a future of low-emissions growth and prosperity,” he stressed, noting that millions of people in Africa and around the world are suffering from climate change’s effects.

These people are still living in the fantasy world they have constructed over the past two decades.

Sadly, so is the Associated Press.

Friday, the AP's Arthur Max composed a pathetic pity piece for de Boer while avoiding any mention of ClimateGate or the shocking admissions of Phil Jones, the true root causes of de Boer's demise. As you'll see, Max even took the opportunity in his third paragraph to put in a plug for human-caused global warming as a cause of bad weather in general:

A weary U.N. aide quits climate post

The sharp-tongued U.N. official who shepherded troubled climate talks for nearly four years announced his resignation yesterday, leaving an uncertain path to a new treaty on global warming.

Exhausted and frustrated by unrelenting bickering between rich and poor countries, Yvo de Boer said he would step down July 1 to work in business and academia. With no obvious successor in sight, fears were voiced that whoever follows will be far less forceful than the skilled former civil servant from the Netherlands.

His departure takes effect five months before 193 nations reconvene in Cancun, Mexico, for another attempt to reach a worldwide legal agreement on controlling greenhouse-gas emissions, blamed for the gradual heating of Earth that scientists predict will worsen weather-related disasters.

The resignation "comes at the worst time in the climate-change negotiations," said Agus Purnomo, Indonesia's presidential assistant on climate change. "His decision will ultimately add to the difficulties we already have in reaching a successful outcome in Mexico."

But others said the talks would move ahead unhindered and could even be a window for shifting course. "There's certainly no reason his resignation should slow progress," said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. "The key to progress remains with the major countries."

De Boer made the announcement two months after a disappointing summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, that ended with a nonbinding accord brokered by President Obama promising emissions cuts and immediate financing for poor countries - but even that failed to win consensus agreement.

Todd Stern, Obama's climate envoy, praised de Boer as "an enormously dedicated leader" who made a major contribution to fighting climate change.

Readers need to recall what de Boer really wanted to resolve in Copenhagen, as originally reported at the conference's web site (link is to Google-cached copy, as the original link no longer works):

1. How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?
2. How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?
3. How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?
4. How is that money going to be managed?

“If Copenhagen can deliver on those four points I’d be happy,” says Yvo de Boer.

As Lord Christopher Monckton pointed out ahead of the conference last year, Copenhagen was about creating the shell of a worldwide government with genuine authority to unilaterally enforce its will, and about the transfer of vast sums of money from rich nations to poor nations in the name of repaying so-called "climate debt."

Yesterday, shortly after de Boer's announced resignation, Claudia Rosett at Pajamas Media told us why that effort really failed, and why his usefulness had ended (internal links were in original):

Polar bears may be doing fine, but the climate commissars of the United Nations are feeling the heat, as their claims of scientific “consensus” melt under them.

... De Boer’s departure can’t come soon enough. For almost four years, this ramped-up Dutch bureaucrat has been one of the chief purveyors of climate alarmism, carbon-emitting his way around the globe from Bonn to Bali to Copenhagen, pushing UN plans for a global “climate change regime.”

... No one elected de Boer to his high-level perch. He was appointed in August, 2006 as one of the parting gifts to the world of the same former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who presided as the UN’s chief administrator of the giant scam known as Oil-for-Food. De Boer is neither a scientist nor an economist.

... Not that de Boer is recanting any of his own cant. In announcing his resignation, he tried to slide around the mush of the UN’s Copenhagen climate summit last December. He made no mention of such climategate revelations as the leaked East Anglia emails or the recent BBC interview in which one of the pillars of UN climate “science,” Phil Jones, admitted that for the past 15 years he has found no statistically signficant evidence of global warming (not that Jones seems able to keep track of his own data).

Instead, de Boer told the press: “I have always maintained that while governments provide the necessary policy framework, the real solutions must come from business.” And so, never a man to abandon his beliefs, he now believes “The time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia.” Apparently, his concern for the planet now impels him to move on to a consultancy with the well-heeled accounting firm of KPMG.

The only things worse than having an apparatchik like de Boer taunt the world over its refusal to totally restructure itself in the name of the now unproven and unsupported nonsense I often refer to as "globaloney" are first, knowing that a Big Four accounting firm is willing to provide him a rich refuge, and second, realizing that the establishment media in the U.S. is so invested in globaloney that it won't acknowledge reality when it delivers multiple smacks to the face.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

The war between Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow continued Tuesday night when the MSNBCer told the Fox Newser to back off.

Maddow was responding to Beck's accusation on his radio show the previous day that she had intentionally omitted a key sentence of his during her attack on him last week.

During a nine minute segment designed to try to redeem herself in front of her tiny audience, Maddow refused to explain why she and her staff cut off an audio of Beck on Friday just as he was about to say something that would make her point totally absurd.

Instead, she filibustered ad nauseum with videos of previous programs without ever owning up to her shameful omission, after which she ridiculously concluded, "I didn't lie. Back off" (partial video and transcript below the fold):

RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: As little as I care about how other people who work in cable TV do their shows and make their arguments, Mr. Beck is supposedly the best they`ve got.

Mr. Beck is this phenomenon, right, who they`re keeping on the air for his ratings even as he lost so many sponsors. He`s supposedly the leader of a political movement, not just a TV host.

I get hate mail from all sorts of conservatives all the time. I always have. But it is the hate mail of self proclaimed fans of Mr. Beck that is most likely to contain death threats and threats of violence against me expressed as extension of the frenzied devotion his fans feel for him.

They think he is the second coming. And because of that, I just want to point something out here. What Mr. Beck is accusing me of - and he went on in his radio show to call me a liar and propagandist and all this other stuff because of it.

What he`s accusing me of is cutting out part of his quote. But did you notice what he just did? Just very short. Just watch his clip again. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: who`s claimed that? Dude, you have. It is one thing to be totally outrageously wrong about facts and science -

(END VIDEO CLIP)

What was that little the flip clip in the middle there? What happened there? Was there something that you cut out? To accuse me of making it up when I said Glenn Beck is among those who have claimed snow disproves global warming, he just edited out the part where I gave the evidence of him doing that, the part where I showed him and a bunch of other people on Fox saying that snow disproved global warming.

You showed no evidence because I`ve edited out the part where you did show the evidence. It`s incredible. Here`s what he edited out.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BECK: First of all, who has claimed that this snowstorm is proof that global warming doesn`t exist?

MADDOW: Who`s claimed that? Dude, you have. A lot.

BECK: Well, the snow is hammering Washington, D.C. again. I believe god is just saying, "I got your global warming here, eh? You want a piece of global warming?"

MADDOW: Same radio show, same guy. And it`s not like that was a one- off occurrence.

BECK: I don`t think it takes a genius to see through the "more snow is proof of global warming" claim.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Glenn Beck is telling his viewers that I`m a liar and a propagandist for pointing out his cockamamie claim that snowfall disproves global warming. He has in fact made that cockamamie claim a lot, no matter how much he denies it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: It doesn`t snow very much in Virginia. And it looks like it`s going to be the worst snowfall in the state in about 20 years. And the reason I bring this up is because -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, global warming first of all.

BECK: First of all, Al Gore is full of crap. I promise now I`m going to idle my SUV 24 hours a day, seven days a week to make sure it doesn`t snow again in May in Virginia.

If we don`t find Al Gore by 5:00, I`m starting an AMBER alert. I don`t want to panic anyone, but it is strange that he has just disappeared in the largest snowfall in Washington, D.C., history.

But you`d have to think, "Wow, I really wasted my life, haven`t I? Wow, everything that I worked on seems to be a miserable failure."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: "Because my global warming contention is disproven by this giant snowfall." I commend Mr. Beck for his success. I wish his giant audience all the best. He has made a lot of people very afraid about a lot of things. And that tried-and-true strategy has reaped big financial reward for him and for Fox News.

I think it`s between you and your God or you and your conscience as to how much you`re willing to stir up Americans` fear and prejudice for profit. But it`s between you and me when you accuse me of lying. I didn`t lie. Back off.

Interesting defense, wouldn't you agree?

After all, Beck's point Monday was that Maddow and Company stopped the audio from his radio program last week just as he was going to demolish their entire premise by saying, "How many times have I said both for hurricanes and no hurricane, this doesn't, one storm, one storm does not prove anything?"

Beck's challenge to Maddow therefore was to explain WHY this audio was cut off at PRECISELY the moment her point about him would be discredited.

Instead of doing so, she defended HER omission by saying that HE didn't play the entire tape from her Friday show.

How preposterous.

This battle began when Maddow accused Beck of telling his audience that last week's snowstorms disproved anthropogenic global warming. Beck responded by demonstrating that in the very program Maddow was citing, he said he didn't believe that was the case.

As a result, he called her a dishonest purveyor of propaganda.

As such, the onus was on Maddow to explain why she and her crew cut off the audio just as Beck was going to discredit her entire point.

Alas, Beck, her tiny audience, and we are still waiting for an answer.

Readers are advised not to hold their breath.

Post facto aside: The reason the entire video and transcript of this segment were not reproduced here was due to the first five minutes largely being clips from Maddow and Beck's previous shows on this subject. I chose not to repeat what has already been covered. Then I'd be participating in Maddow's silly filibuster, which is really ironic because she lately has been complaining about this senatorial practice.

Someone cue Alanis Morissette.

Poor Barack Obama.  Hasn't put a foot wrong.  Policies just fine.  It's just that he's been dealt the cruel fate of . . . being President of the United States.

That was the essence of what Jonathan Capehart, WaPo editorialist, whistled past the liberal graveyard on Morning Joe today.  Confronted with the prez's crumbling poll numbers [by 52-44 margin people don't think PBO deserves to be re-elected], Capehart blamed anti-incumbent fever.  It's not that Americans are opposed to the Dems' policies, suggested Capehart: they're just frustrated by how little has been accomplished.

Why don't we play a little game of political prognostication?   Imagine that, far from being ineffective, Obama/Pelosi/Reid had managed to push through their entire agenda in the last year.  Let's focus on three matters:

1. Health care "reform" that would have compelled every American to join a government-approved system and fined those who didn't.
2. Cap-and-trade, imposing a huge tax on energy.
3. Closing of Gitmo.

The absolutely stunning global warming revelations this weekend by the man in the middle of the ClimateGate scandal have gone almost completely ignored by America's press.

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Phil Jones, the head of the British Climatic Research Unit at the heart of ClimateGate, told the BBC: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

Jones also admitted that he and his fellow scientists manipulated figures to hide a decline in crucial tree-ring data thereby questioning the validity of the entire global warming theory.

Despite the seriousness of these revelations, much as what happened when the ClimateGate scandal first broke, with the exception of Fox News, America's media have almost totally boycotted this amazing story:

• No mention by the New York Times
• No mention by the Washington Post
• No mention by USA Today
• No mention by ANY major U.S. newspaper EXCEPT the Washington Times
• No mention by the Associated Press
• No mention by Reuters
• No mention by UPI
• No mention by ABC News
• No mention by CBS News
• No mention by NBC News
• No mention by MSNBC 

For its part, CNN FINALLY got around to covering this story with a very brief mention Tuesday:

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: There's also something else that's out there. Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia, the climate research unit, the guy that was at the center of this recent e-mail controversy late last year, has said in an interview with the BBC that he has not seen any, quote, "statistically significant warming since 1995," though he says he still believes that the earth's temperature has warmed. And he also said that he might be missing some of the data that is responsible for his climate models.

Of course, skeptics are jumping all over this, saying the whole thing is a farce. Global warming doesn't exist.

What do you think of the Professor Jones situation, the lack of statistically significant warming, and the fact that he may have misplaced some of the records?

JOHN CHRISTY, PROFESSOR, ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, UNIV. OF ALABAMA- HUNTSVILLE: Well, I think what Phil Jones is saying is that Mother Nature is perfectly capable of making the temperature rise and fall through the past several hundred years. And in terms of the data problems, well, we do have to be careful when we're talking about public policy, that means trillions of dollars, and we haven't had that very hard and critical situation where you take care of data and make it publicly available to everyone. And that needs to be done now.

That's it!

Bear in mind that the Jones BBC interview was published Saturday. NewsBusters reported the revelations at 6PM Eastern Time the same day. And yet CNN first mentioned the story possibly as much as 72 hours AFTER the BBC piece.

I guess that's why CNN is no longer considered the most trusted name in news.

Speaking of which, much as it did when ClimateGate broke, FNC has been all over this story addressing it on "Fox News Sunday," on Monday's "Glenn Beck Show," on Monday's "Special Report," and on Monday's "Hannity."

By contrast, for their part, the rest of the news media have found filmmaker Kevin Smith being thrown off a Southwest plane for being too fat MUCH more important:

• The New York Times reported it
• The Washington Post reported it
• The Associated Press reported it
• UPI reported it
• ABC News reported it
• CBS News reported it
• CNN reported it -- 14 TIMES!

Well, I guess "journalists" have to have their priorities, don't they?

Once again, much as what happened with ClimateGate, America's press are asleep at the wheel concerning a major story involving global warming.

There's no other way of saying it: when it comes to Al Gore's favorite money-making myth, the American media are almost criminal in their behavior.

Shame on them!!!

*****Update: Marc Sheppard has 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:

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.

Back to back Washington, D.C. blizzards prompted conservatives to mock the global warming crowd last week.

Grandchildren of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., built an igloo on the National Mall and christened it "Al Gore's New Home." Fox News anchor Glenn Beck employed his trademark sarcasm to make fun of the "disappearance" of warming priest Al Gore and devotee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. since the snowfall. Beck picked on Kennedy because of a 2008 op-ed lamenting that global warming had changed the D.C. climate leading to "anemic winters."

Left-wingers online at place like Huffington Post and Daily Kos, as well as members of the national news media were furious that the "wingnuts" were using the blizzard to make fun of them. They rushed to defend their theory of man-made global warming (anthropogenic global warming or AGW) by claiming that the snowpocalypse was, in fact, caused by global warming.

"Science Guy" Bill Nye was so upset by it he attacked "unpatriotic" climate skeptics on Feb. 10 during the "Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC.

"To deny what scientists or scientific evidence is showing, is inappropriate. And as I said earlier, to me, when I get wound up, it's unpatriotic," Nye declared. But there are more questions than ever regarding the science. Prof. Phil Jones, formerly of the Climate Research Unit, admitted this week to losing track of climate change data used to support warming theory and that there hasn't been "statistically significant" global warming since 1995.

Some of the critics lied about what most conservatives were arguing, accusing the right of saying the historic snowfall disproved global warming. That wasn't the case, conservatives were merely turning the tables on the left: using mockery to show the absurdity of assigning a cause and effect relationship from weather events to climate change.

The fact is that the weather is not climate. Before the "snomageddon" (as many in D.C. called it), AGW believers constantly connected every weather event from heat waves killing thousands in Europe to Hurricane Katrina with global warming. It wasn't until the weather started acting against them and conservatives suggested it might undermine their theories that they got touchy on the subject.

ABC's Bill Blakemore admitted that weather is not climate on Jan. 8 in a feeble attempt to prevent critics from saying that a "cold snap" across the northern hemisphere disproves global warming. Blakemore has a long history of advocating for global warming alarmism on ABC.

Of course weather isn't climate, but the global warming alarmists like Blakemore want it both ways. They want weather and natural disasters to be proof of warming, but never proof contradicting it.

But it's not just weather. The media and the left have even more ridiculous assertions about climate change. Like the Kevin Bacon game they seem willing to connect everything to AGW.

Actor Danny Glover blamed global warming for the Haitian earthquake in January 2010. Leaving no tragedy unturned, Joseph Romm, a former Clinton official, actually wondered if the Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007 was a result of global warming.

In a blog post, Romm wrote: "some may object to even asking the question, 'Did climate change contribute to the Minneapolis bridge collapse?' My guess is those are the same people who deny that global warming is caused by humans or that it is a serious problem - the same people who inevitably say 'we can adapt to whatever climate change there is.'"

A media outlet called GMANews.TV based in the Philippines was concerned that global warming was forcing poor women into prostitution. The Nov. 19, 2009 story said, "The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade."

Contradictions like growth or shrinking of coral reefs, destruction or growth of bananas, and heavy or reduced snowfall were all on his list. A number of health ailments including allergies, asthma, cardiac arrest, cancer deaths in England, West Nile fever, cholera, malaria and yellow fever have also been linked.

Snowpocalypse Can't Stop Faith in Warming

According to AGW believers in and out of the news media, weather can only ever support global warming theory. Not even back-to-back East Coast blizzards that dumped more than two feet of snow in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area can freeze their faith.

The "snowpocalypse" that shut down the federal government, schools and many businesses for several days became one more "extreme" weather phenomenon in a long list attributed to global warming. It joined heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, tropical storms, cyclones, tornadoes, ice shelf and glacial melt, dying polar bears and even lack of snowfall.

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan told viewers on Feb. 9, "Here's the problem - these ‘snowpocalypses' that have been going through D.C. and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming."

Ratigan and others have been upset by conservative mockery about global warming, given the record snowfall of the 2009-2010 winter. The MSNBC host criticized an ad by the Va. GOP designed to ridicule proposed climate change policies that could hurt the state's job situation.

Talk about polar opposites. In 2010, Ratigan blamed blizzards on global warming. But just one year ago, NBC's (MSNBC's parent company) presidential historian Michael Beschloss claimed global warming could be responsible for the lack of Inauguration Day snow.

As the camera turned to President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and their two children walking to the reviewing box, Beschloss described the scene: "And this wooden path that they're walking down actually dates to many previous inaugurations because a lot of them had snow. It may just be that because of global warming the last few have not."

That was a frigid January day - 28 degrees at noon plus a severe wind chill - and the coldest inauguration since 1985. Still, according to the news media it was a sign of the destruction caused by fossil fuels, SUVs and other human activity. 

But that's just it. Logic doesn't matter, according to alarmists the planet is warming, its mankind's fault and so everything is a result of global warming.

Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Business & Media Institute that "global warming alarmism isn't really a scientific theory as much as it's a political program." That becomes most obvious, Ebell said, when they "explain away the facts" such as more snowfall in the mid-Atlantic despite the IPCC prediction of less snow in the region due to global warming.

Even a tragic Air France plane crash was connected with global warming in Russia Today (RT) on June 4, 2009. Alexei Kokorin, a climatologist for the left-wing World Wildlife Fund's Russia Climate Program, told RT ""A consequence of global warming is that the frequency and severity of such events (severe weather conditions) is higher. Unfortunately, the risk for airplanes, especially in tropical areas above water, will be higher. This could be difficult for pilots to understand."

Another horrible disaster, Hurricane Katrina was also linked to manmade climate change. On May 23, 2006, "Good Morning America" featured two previews: one of the hurricane season and one of Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore has been criticized by some for his "very heavy-handed" use of Katrina footage in the film.

Diane Sawyer linked the two saying, "And of course, there are a lot of people who believe that global warming is in fact to blame, in part, for this surge in hurricanes. One of them, former Vice President Al Gore, who has re-emerged, leading a kind of call to action." She wasn't alone, CBS's Hannah Storm and NBC's Robert Bazell all tied hurricanes to global warming that year.

But there are scientific problems with that assertion that even television meteorologists have criticized. And in May 2008, National Geographic reported that a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study found global warming could actually decrease hurricane activity by about 18 percent.

Newsweek, a newsmagazine that had repeatedly attacked climate skeptics as "deniers," has stated that there is "unequivocal" evidence of global warming and "90 percent certainty" that humans are responsible. In July 2007, the magazine called the 2003 European heat wave that killed thousands "a human fingerprint" of global warming. They didn't consider any other factors such as the lack of air conditioning in much of Europe.

Citing a scorching U.S. heat wave in 2006, CBS's Bob Orr declared: "Gulledge says there's no longer any serious debate" on climate change. When it comes to the media there certainly isn't "serious debate," there isn't a debate at all since skeptics are outnumbered 13-to-1 on the broadcast networks and often excluded or buried in other reports.

According to the media, everything is proof of warming, even if scientists - including CNN meteorologists - contradict them. Ebell offered one reason that for the media's constant defense of AGW.

"I think part of it is that the media which from time to time portray itself as anti-establishment is actually an integral part of the establishment (the liberal establishment). So you can be a bomb-thrower if you're going after Richard Nixon," Ebell said. "but if they went after someone on their side" they would lose support. So whenever challenged on an issue like global warming, the media "circle the wagons and defend their own."

Want to know what else the media have blamed on global warming? Find the rest of the article at Business & Media Institute. 

Billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump wants Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize stripped from the Global Warmingist-in-Chief.

"With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back, " Trump recently told members of his Westchester, New York, country club according to the New York Post.

The Post continued (h/t Polijam):

"Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn't care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America's stupidity."

According to the Post, the crowd of 500 stood and applauded.

I guess there weren't any liberal media members there. 

Read this post »

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank Sunday said the recent snowstorms in the nation's capital were inconvenient for Nobel Laureate Al Gore.

Such a remark seems destined to draw the ire of climate alarmists from coast to coast who have been burning the candle at both ends to not only convince the public that these storms are evidence of global warming, but also to criticize anyone that has jokingly claimed the contrary.

What will also likely anger Gore's sycophants was Milbank's use of facts in his column Sunday:

This latest snowfall, though, is more likely the result of a strong El Niño cycle that has parked the jet stream right over the mid-Atlantic states.

Still, there's some rough justice in the conservatives' cheap shots. In Washington's blizzards, the greens were hoist by their own petard.

For years, climate-change activists have argued by anecdote to make their case. Gore, in his famous slide shows, ties human-caused global warming to increasing hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought and the spread of mosquitoes, pine beetles and disease. It's not that Gore is wrong about these things. The problem is that his storm stories have conditioned people to expect an endless worldwide heat wave, when in fact the changes so far are subtle.

Other environmentalists have undermined the cause with claims bordering on the outlandish; they've blamed global warming for shrinking sheep in Scotland, more shark and cougar attacks, genetic changes in squirrels, an increase in kidney stones and even the crash of Air France Flight 447. When climate activists make the dubious claim, as a Canadian environmental group did, that global warming is to blame for the lack of snow at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, then they invite similarly specious conclusions about Washington's snow -- such as the Virginia GOP ad urging people to call two Democratic congressmen "and tell them how much global warming you get this weekend."

Exactly. 

Since Gore became the front-man for this myth, he and his followers have tied virtually every malady on the planet to global warming while blaming each and every extreme weather event on the new, more adaptable "climate change."

As a result, skeptics now have taken to humorously depict any cold weather event as disproving that which has made Gore a very rich man -- and the alarmists can't stand it.

But Milbank wasn't done:

In a conference call arranged Thursday by the liberal Center for American Progress to refute the snow antics of Inhofe et al., the center's Joe Romm made the well-worn statements that "the overwhelming weight of the scientific literature" points to human-caused warming and that doubters "don't understand the science."

The science is overwhelming -- but not definitive. Romm's claim was inadvertently shot down by his partner on the call, the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters, who confessed that "there's a huge amount of natural variability in the climate system" and not enough years of measurements to know exactly what's going on. "Unfortunately we don't have that data so we are forced to make decisions based on inadequate data."

Inadequate is an understatement, for even ClimateGate's Phil Jones has now admitted the paleoclimatic data from tree-rings is flawed. 

Beyond this, in the grand scheme of man's existence on this planet, the timeframe the alarmists work with is statistically insignificant. 

Take for example a recent report the alarmists jumped on concerning January being the "hottest month on record" according to satellite data taken by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

As satellites have only been measuring global temperatures since 1979, that means this was the warmest January in 32 years.

Is that statistically significant over the millions of years the planet has been in existence? Does this tell us anything about what Januaries were like during the Dust Bowl era or the Medieval Warm Period?

No. 

But alarmists use such data to prove global warming, which makes it that much more enjoyable to poke fun at them when blizzards hit parts of the country that rarely see such things. 

The British scientist in the middle of November's ClimateGate scandal says that contrary to what Al Gore and many in the media claim, the debate concerning manmade global warming is not over.

"There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well," Phil Jones, the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit told the BBC.

In a lengthy Q&A published at BBC.com Saturday, Jones also said: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

Maybe most important, Jones explained what "hide the decline" in ClimateGate e-mail messages meant confirming they manipulated data (questions in bold, h/t Sonic Frog via Glenn Reynolds): 

A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical? [...]

[T]he warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. [...]

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. [...]

G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

Now comes the part of the Q&A many will find most interesting:

K - How much faith do you have - and should we have - in the Yamal tree ring data from Siberia? Should we trust the science behind the palaeoclimate record?

First, we would all accept that palaeoclimatic data are considerably less certain than the instrumental data. However, we must use what data are available in order to look at the last 1,000 years.

I believe that our current interpretation of the Yamal tree-ring data in Siberia is sound. Yamal is just one series that enters some of the millennial long reconstructions that are available.

The current interpretation of the tree-ring data is "sound." Yet, Jones earlier said (emphasis added), "There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well."

Q - Let's talk about the e-mails now: In the e-mails you refer to a "trick" which your critics say suggests you conspired to trick the public? You also mentioned "hiding the decline" (in temperatures). Why did you say these things?

This remark has nothing to do with any "decline" in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years.

The phrase 'hide the decline' was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were.

This "divergence" is well known in the tree-ring literature and "trick" did not refer to any intention to deceive - but rather "a convenient way of achieving something", in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record.

I was justified in curtailing the tree-ring reconstruction in the mid-20th Century because these particular data were not valid after that time - an issue which was later directly discussed in the 2007 IPCC AR4 Report.

This is important, for most people still don't understand what the decline they were trying to hide was.

As Marc Sheppard wrote in December, "[T]he decline Jones so urgently sought to hide was not one of measured temperatures at all, but rather figures infinitely more important to climate alarmists -- those determined by proxy reconstructions." He continued:

Jones was working on a cover chart for a forthcoming World Meteorological Organization report [PDF], "WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1990," when he wrote the e-mail. As the graph would incorporate one reconstruction of his own plus one each from Michael Mann and Keith Briffa, Jones was informing them that he had used the trick on Mann's series at the same 1980 cutoff as MBH98, but found it necessary to use 1960 as the cutoff on the Briffa series.

Now, Jones has admitted this to the BBC: "[It] was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were."

In simple terms, Briffa's tree-ring data showed a decline in temperatures between 1960 and 1999 that weather stations around the world disagreed with. So, Jones spliced into Briffa's data set the real "instrumental" numbers for that period thereby hiding the decline.

This should raise eyebrows for a number of reasons. First, Jones and Company gave no notification to folks receiving this data -- including the Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change -- that Briffa's numbers included instrumental data.

But more importantly, as the tree-ring numbers deviated so demonstrably from the observed temperature data between 1960 and 1999, why should anyone believe they're accurate for any periods in the past that can't be confirmed with instrumentation?

The entire global warming myth depends on tree-ring data that was grossly errant for forty years in the last century. This makes the decline ClimateGate scientists were trying to hide FAR MORE serious than most people believe.

Moving backward in the Q&A, there was another issue addressed by the BBC readers will find interesting:

N - When scientists say "the debate on climate change is over", what exactly do they mean - and what don't they mean?

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

So, the scientist at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal doesn't think the debate is over.

Given what he's now confirmed about significant flaws in the tree-ring data, the only thing surprising is that he'd admit it.

Are you listening Mr. Gore? 

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Friday cherry-picked statements from Glenn Beck's radio show to accuse him of lying about global warming.

In a brief segment on the MSNBC program bearing her name, Maddow said the Fox News star claimed the snowstorm that hit the East Coast this week disproves Al Gore's favorite myth.

Unfortunately, Maddow conveniently left out the part when Beck said "one storm does not prove anything."

But that didn't stop the MSNBC host from making the accusation (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: And next up, a correction, not for something I said or something a guest said on this show said, but for something someone said about something a guest on this show said.

On his increasingly - radio show today, Glenn Beck played a clip of our show from Wednesday in which I spoke with Bill Nye, the science guy, about people saying that climate change - global warming - couldn`t possibly be real because it was snowing on the east coast in February. Mr. Beck played the clip and then mocked Mr. The Science Guy.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GLENN BECK, HOST, "THE GLENN BECK PROGRAM": All right. Go ahead, Bill.

BILL NYE, "THE SCIENCE GUY": There`s more energy in the atmosphere and this is stirring things up.

BECK: Oh, boy -

NYE: If you want to get serious about it -

BECK: Seriously.

NYE: These guys claiming that the snow in Washington disproves climate change -

BECK: Nobody`s saying that. Stop! Stop! Stop!

NYE: Are almost unpatriotic.

BECK: Oh, boy! Hit the Tim Robbins - I`m sorry the Mr. Sarandon bite again.

TIM ROBBINS, ACTOR: A chill wind is blowing in this nation.

BECK: Oh, it`s un-American. Unpatriotic. Unpatriotic to claim - first of all, who has claimed that this snow storm is proof that global warming doesn`t exist?

(END AUDIO CLIP)

Stop the tape!

Want to know what the VERY NEXT THING was that Beck said? Here it is:

How many times have I said both for hurricanes and no hurricane, this doesn't one storm, one storm does not prove anything. 

That's right from the transcript posted at Beck's website. For some reason Maddow and her crew decided not to share that sentence, and instead continued under the pretense that Beck was using this snowstorm as proof that global warming doesn't exist:

MADDOW: Who`s claimed that? Dude, you have. A lot.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BECK: Well, the snow is hammering Washington, D.C. again. I believe God is just saying, "I got your global warming here, eh? You want a piece of global warming?"

(END AUDIO CLIP)

Sounds like a pretty good joke, doesn't it? Obviously missing the humor, Maddow continued:

MADDOW: Same radio show. Same guy and it`s not like that was a one- off occurrence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: I don`t think it takes a genius to see through the "more snow is proof of global warming" claim. Sixty-three percent of the country is now covered in snow. And it`s breaking Al Gore`s heart because the snow is also burying his global warming theory.

Sounds like another good joke, doesn't it? Again missing the humor, Maddow decided to -- for some reason! -- bring Sean Hannity into the picture.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST, "HANNITY": It`s the most severe winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore`s hysterical global warming theories. Rumor has it that another storm could be headed this way next week. Global warming, where are you? We want you back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Who has claimed that the snowstorm is proof that global warming doesn`t exist? Who has claimed that? It is one thing to be totally outrageously wrong about facts in science. But the price of that is getting made fun of for it and getting called out on it by, boom, Bill Nye the Science Guy.

On climate change, new rule - you lie, you must pay the Nye. This message totally not at all authorized by Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Beck lied?

Certainly not. I think what he did was make a couple of great jokes at Gore's expense, and Maddow just can't have that.

In the end, no one is claiming that one or two snowstorms disprove the theory of global warming. Instead, when folks that don't believe Gore's nonsense cite isolated weather events, it's to mock him and his sycophant followers who tie seemingly every heatwave, hurricane, drought, wildfire, tornado, and even SNOWSTORMS to climate change.

Unfortunately, much as Maddow demonstrated Friday evening, these folks just don't get the joke...which makes it even funnier!

Poor Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press.

Since the AP science reporter wrote his December 12, 2009 defense of the alleged scientists who have promoted the alleged perils of human-caused global warming, the scandal known as ClimateGate has inexorably widened. It has deeply tarnished never-deserved reputations; revealed the entire premise to be based on fraudulent, corrupted, manipulated and/or nonexistent data; and taken the entire enterprise to the point where it is utterly without objective credibility.

Thus, it would be understandable if poor Seth might be looking for some way, any way, to inject in his two cents yet again without being forced to defend the indefensible.

He found a bit of an outlet on Friday in his coverage of this year's virtually unprecedented U.S. snowfalls. How unprecedented? This may be the first time 49 out of 50 states have snow on the ground at the same time.

Here are key factual paragraphs relating to the U.S. situation in Borenstein's report, followed by his veer-off into global warming near its end (bolded by me):

49 states dusted with snow; Hawaii's the holdout

Forget red and blue (AP) -- color America white. There was snow on the ground in 49 states Friday. Hawaii was the holdout. It was the United States of Snow, thanks to an unusual combination of weather patterns that dusted the U.S., including the skyscrapers of Dallas, the peach trees of Atlanta and the Florida Panhandle, where hurricanes are more common than snowflakes.

More than two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow on the ground when the day dawned, and then it snowed ever so slightly in Florida to make it 49 states out of 50.

... Snow paralyzed and fascinated the Deep South on Friday. Snowball fights broke out at Southern Mississippi University, snow delayed flights at the busy Atlanta airport, and Louisiana hardware stores ran out of snow supplies. Andalusia, Ala., shut down its streets because of snow. And yet, Portland, Maine, where snow is usually a given, had to cancel its winter festival for lack of the stuff.

Weather geeks turned their eyes to Hawaii. In that tropical paradise, where a ski club strangely exists, observers were looking closely at the islands' mountain peaks to see if they could find a trace of white to make it a rare 50-for-50 states with snow. But there was no snow in sight.

... The idea of 50 states with snow is so strange that the federal office that collects weather statistics doesn't keep track of that number and can't say whether it has ever happened. The office can't even say whether 49 out of 50 has ever taken place before.

... The all-time record (for U.S. snow cover) is February 1978, with 7.31 million square miles. There is a chance this February could break that. There is also a chance that this could go down as the week with the most snow cover on record, (head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University David) Robinson said.

... As long as this pattern persists we have potential for additional storms," said Dan Petersen, lead winter weather forecaster at the National Weather Service prediction center in Camp Springs, Md.

... A snowy winter doesn't disprove - or prove - global warming, Petersen and Robinson said. This is weather, which is variable, not long-term climate, and there is a huge difference.

"This has nothing to do with long-term trends," Petersen said. "This is just a several-week period."

Hey Seth, if you already knew the answer to your question, and you knew that that answer to be "it's irrelevant," why did you even bring it up?

In reaction to his December piece, the folks at the Watt's Up With That? blog took the reporter and his employer to the woodshed for a drop-dead obvious conflict of interest. AP was apparently okay with assigning Borenstein to the ClimateGate story even though he had been a de facto part of that story, as an involved party in several ClimateGate-related e-mails.

Looking at the bright side, at least Borenstein didn't come out and try, as did the News York Times (HT NewsBuster Martin Finkelstein), to tie some kind of generalized increase in weather extremes to global warming.

Have some compassion for Seth (but not too much). It must not be easy having been conned by greens.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

The city of Cambridge in Massachusetts recently created a “Climate Emergency Congress” to make recommendations to the city council. As FOXNews.com’s Joshua Rhett Miller reports:

Going green will not be optional in Cambridge, Mass., if the Cambridge Climate Congress has its way. It will be mandatory.

... There will be a carbon tax "of some kind," not to mention taxes on plastic and paper bags. And the Massachusetts city, home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will advocate vegetarianism and veganism, complete with "Meatless or Vegan Mondays."…

Denise Simmons, the mayor who created the “emergency congress,” explained: “While world leaders delay on taking serious action on climate change, the City of Cambridge, along with other cities world-wide, is weighing in. We know that time is short to deal with the climate crisis.”

Its the tyranny of the silly people. Reminds me of Prince Charles claiming we only have “96 months left to save the planet.” (That was in July, though, so now we only have 89 months left.)

Here are some of the Cambridge recommendations:

Encourage, and perhaps mandate, Cambridge food providers and retailers to offer local/regional food options …

Never mind studies that show local food is often more pollution-intensive than food grown abroad and shipped.

-- Advising higher levels of government to move towards more organic and sustainable agriculture practices….
-- Asking/mandating that local restaurants and schools institute "Meatless or Vegan Mondays" [Vegan means using no animal products at all, including milk and eggs] to increase community awareness and reduce reliance on meat.

You can’t make this stuff up. I love the “asking/mandating construct.” Do the enviro-nannies realize that there is a difference? Do they realize that there is a huge difference? I fear not.

A nice thing about local government is that when idiots take it over, its easier to move.

As my colleague Mark Finkelstein reported Friday, global warming-obsessed media have been hysterically blaming this year's record snowstorms on climate change under the theory that Al Gore's favorite myth will increase moisture in the atmosphere thereby raising the amount of the white stuff falling from the sky.

As Finkelstein pointed out, the problem with this postulate is that this season's storms in our nation's capital all occurred on abnormally cold days.

Another case in point: Dallas, Texas, has just seen the greatest 24-hour snow total in the city's history with temperatures nearly 20 degrees below normal (picture courtesy Story Balloon): 

Large, fluffy snowflakes fell heavily across North Texas for about 24 hours Thursday, bringing record snowfall that sailed past the previous all-time one-day record.

A new record of 12.5 inches of snow in a 24-hour period was set at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (11.2 on Thursday) -- and flakes were still coming down after midnight. The previous daily record was 7.8 inches on Jan. 15, 1964, and Jan. 14, 1917 and the previous 24-hour record was 12.1 inches.

Why did it snow instead of rain? According to the Star-Telegram:

The ingredients for a snowy season are simple: multiple upper-level storm systems supported by temperatures low enough to turn moisture to snow.

Those two elements have collided more than once over North Texas this season.

"It's definitely one of those winters," said Bill Bunting, a meteorologist with the weather service. "You never really know when you’ll get one."

If temperatures in this region had been at their norm for this time of year, all this extra moisture would have fallen as rain. The average temperature in Dallas on February 11 is 50 degrees. The average low is 40. Temperatures in Dallas are forecast to continue to be abnormally low the rest of the week.

As such, Dallas just go pummeled with snow because it was too cold to rain as it normally would have this time of year.

And therein lies one of the lies concerning this issue: if global warming is increasing moisture in the atmosphere AND temperatures, parts of the globe that RARELY see snow shouldn't suddenly be seeing more than they ever have.

Certainly, the coldest parts of the planet that experience greater amounts of moisture will see more snow if the alarmists are correct.

But America's deep south setting snowfall records as the planet is supposedly warming defies anything approaching logic - unless of course you're a journalist tied to Al Gore's hip.  

After taking time out of his last few broadcasts to try to clarify his Feb. 8 remarks that the "snowpocalypse" was because of global warming, one would hope MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan would have learned his lesson.

Ratigan spent a portion of his Feb. 10 and now a portion of his Feb. 11 shows trying to clarify his statement - that "these ‘snowpocalypses' that have been going through D.C. and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming," as he said - but that he didn't necessarily believe that premise.

"Now, in addition to that being completely wrong on so many levels, it's also a total misrepresentation over the climate change theory that I was attempting to explain," Ratigan said. "Let me be very clear - I do not believe that this storm is proof of climate change. And I do not believe that this storm is not proof of climate change. But I do believe that you, Mr. Beck, did a tremendous disservice to your viewers by bastardizing the most basic science behind the theory, period. That's not very good."

Ratigan then revealed his own Glenn Beck-style chalkboard to play amateur climatologist and make the case that this winter precipitation "could" be the result of global warming. He also showed the temperature has increased based on U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models.

"But thankfully, guess who else has a chalkboard," Ratigan said. "Mr. Beck, let me try to explain this to you once again. There is a data set from the U.N. that claims that there has been a global temperature rise over the past 100 years or so of about 1.3 degrees. Come on in here, you can take a look at it. The theory basically states that the warmer climate would cause higher ocean temperatures, which means more ocean water evaporating. Think of this yellow line as the temperature curve. Sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold.  A hundred years ago, think of this line as the new temperature curve. Sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold and the average change between hot and cold running at 1.3 degrees."

What Ratigan didn't explain was why the previous snowfall record occurred back in 1899, more than 100 years ago or question the plausibility IPCC models after the ClimateGate scandal. Instead, he went with carrying the global warming alarmist argument that these storms could have been caused by global warming.

"The idea basically that warmer air, yeah, warm, you can do this, yes, warm air, my handwriting's not so great, but you get the point. As warmer air goes up, it takes H20, water, into the air. More water in the air results in more precipitation on earth. You know what the saying is, after all. What goes up must come down. Now, it might come back as more snow. It also might come back as more rain, depending on the temperature, hot or cold, on the specific place on the earth at the time."

To his credit, for the first time Ratigan not only attacked conservative opponents of the anthropogenic climate change theory, but also those who have used it politically, like former Vice President Al Gore, to promote enacting policy to combat the threat with fear.

"Let's be phenomenally clear, Mr. Beck - I do not believe this storm is proof of climate change, nor have I ever said as much," Ratigan said. "My point very simply was that strong winter storms like the one so many in this country have lived through over the past couple of days do not by any stretch of the imagination rule out climate change as conservatives like Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and yourself have suggested. At the same time, it is equally dumb for anyone to say that these storms do somehow prove that climate change is actually happening. One thing we can probably agree on Glenn is that I think the fear-mongering among the many climate change proponents, like Al Gore for example, is completely out of whack with the current body of scientific evidence."

Ratigan patted himself on the back for "extensively and personally" covering ClimateGate, even though he still gave credence to the IPCC models. And he also challenged Beck to take him on one-on-one and brandished his own version of Beck's famous red phone.

"To that end, I also covered the reports of climate data manipulation extensively and personally felt like it was a disgusting breach of scientific ethics," Ratigan said. "But I also know that you can cover the climate change debate without reducing yourself to this level of stupidity, just to have fodder for your lefty-righty games. So, Glenn, the next time you'd like me to explain something that was said on this show, or otherwise, we have red phones, too. You can call me, invite me on your show if you'd like. You can come on mine unless that sort of in-context direct engagement scares you a little too much."

East Anglia University, which came under fire a few months ago for the now infamous ClimateGate email scandal, announced yesterday that it is launching an independent probe into the work of its Climate Research Unit (CRU).

Wall Street Journal's Guy Chazan reports the story today  -- found on page A15 of the print edition -- noting that the independent review led by Sir Muir Russell will "reappraise the CRU's scientific conclusions."

But Chazan noted that some critics argue that a deeper problem underpinning ClimateGate is not addressed by the probe:

"To do an assessment of the scientific research...is sort of beside the point," said Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "The main issue is to provide open access to the data and the metadata ... and let the broader community assess the data sets."

British wire service Reuters has a full story on the development here, and FoxNews.com also has an article on the story, written by British sister network Sky News.

It remains to be seen how American print and broadcast outlets will cover the story.

By now, we're all familiar with the global warmists' attempt to explain away the record-breaking mid-Atlantic blizzards.  Take this, for example, from the New York Times [emphasis added]:

"government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture."

So more snow fell from Philly to DC because the temperatures were warmer than normal during the blizzards?  That got me wondering: just what were the temperatures in DC on the snow days, and how do they compare to the norm?  And guess what?

DC has been hit by three major snowstorms this winter: 16.4 inches on December 18–19, 18.0 inches on February 5–6, and about 12 inches on February 10.

Let's compare DC's actual temps with normal temps for those days.

Date     Normal Avg. DC Temp.    Actual Average DC Temp

Dec. 18        39                                    30.8
Dec. 19        39                                    26.3
Feb. 5          36                                    34.8
Feb. 6          36                                    27.4
Feb. 10        37                                    25.9

Normal average temp: 37.40
Actual average temp: 29.04

Bottom line: the temperature was colder than average on every one of the snow days.  On average the snow days were about eight degrees colder than average.  

To spin these facts as proof that the blizzards are evidence of global warming because "warm air holds more moisture" is bunk.

Will the MSM note this little analysis?

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.

– The IPCC warned that because of global warming the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s.” They cited one study to support their claim, but when the research was published in 2008, after the IPCC report was released, the study noted: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”

– The IPCC warned that up to 40 percent of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming, but the sole source for that claim was a non-refereed report authored by two people who the Sunday Times of London referred to as “two green activists,” one of them with the World Wildlife Fund.

– The IPCC even got wrong the percentage of the Netherlands that is below sea level. The report claims that the percent is 55 percent, when the right number is 26 percent.

On February 3rd, Mr. Pachauri however defended the UN’s IPCC report by saying that the critics “are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder. I hope that they apply [asbestos] to their faces every day.” While Pachauri admits that the IPCC was inaccurate about the Himalayan glaciers melting, he claimed that the attacks were motivated by “business interests” who “spread a lot of disinformation.”

Finally, it should be noted that Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces that country’s freedom of information act regulations, has come to some conclusions regarding Climategate. The ICO found that the University of East Anglia breached violated British law by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming. The UK Daily Mail reports that “the scientists will escape prosecution because the offences took place more than six months ago.” Out of 105 freedom of information requests, Professor Phil Jones, who headed the university’s Climate Research Unit, only complied with 10 requests.

For too long global warming proponents have claimed that their claims can’t be questioned. Science should be more transparent than this. But relying on misreported news stories and white papers put out by non-scientists from advocacy cases isn’t science.  Why these climate temperature data has been hidden and why researchers won’t answer questions on adjustments that they have made has become quite troubling. In this age of computers and website, there is no excuse for hiding data.

Immediately after taking shots from some conservative voices for his Feb. 8 remarks that heavy snowfall in the Mid-Atlantic is "reportedly" a result of global warming, MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan fired back at his detractors on his Feb. 10 program. 

The once seemingly rational host of CNBC's "Fast Money" voiced his frustration with the entire global warming debate as it stood in the wake of this record-setting winter weather event. Ratigan suggested neither side should use the crippling snowfall as evidence to further their respective arguments. However he did direct the lion's share of his criticism at conservatives.

"The weather we know is frightful, but my goodness me, so is the political back-and-forth over climate change in the context of these storms that are hitting D.C. especially," Ratigan said. "Both sides trying to use hometown ‘snowpocalypse' as free advertising for their chosen position on climate change, baby. Conservatives today, using the blizzard to pull a snow job on Al Gore and his liberal brethren. From South Carolina, Sen. Jim DeMint says quote, ‘It's going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries uncle.' That was a good one. Meanwhile, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asks ‘Where is Al Gore now?'"

Of course Ratigan took the obligatory contemptuous shot at MSNBC punching bag Sarah Palin.

"And not to be outdone, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - I like to call her Professor Palin - calling the idea that the snow can be tied to global warming, ‘a bunch of snake oil science,' as long as we have her professional opinion. And, we're even taking hits here at the D.R. show for a story we ran the other day busting the GOP for an ad along the exact same lines of the rhetoric I just shared with you."

Ratigan appeared be very concerned about being called out by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

"Rush Limbaugh - taking me on by name today, even though I actually don't subscribe to either of the theories - liberals or conservatives," Ratigan said, was wrong because Ratigan contended that he was just the messenger.

"Now, Rush, what you failed to point out or maybe you missed it, I don't know, was that at no time did I ever agree with either side of the debate," Ratigan said. "I was simply reporting a scientific fact that some scientists say that higher air temperatures, when the air mass is warmer it can retain more moisture and as a result these scientists believe that the warmer air mass, which retains more moisture, may subsequently offer more precipitant. That a word? I believe it is - precipitation, something that would fall from the sky. There will be more of it as a result of the retained moisture."

And although he claimed not to have a dog in the fight, his choice of words argued otherwise.

"These exact types of storms may reflect that," Ratigan suggested. "I honestly have no idea. I was simply reporting that that is part of the science. So to the argue the snow is evidence there is not global warming borders on moronic. And yes, it is scientifically possible that overall warmer temperatures can cause more snow in some areas for that reason. I honestly don't know." [emphasis added]

So what does the host of "The Dylan Ratigan Show" actually believe? He's not sure.

"In fact here is my take - I don't necessarily agree with that being the case," Ratigan said. "That's just the theory on that side of the aisle. I believe along with most scientists that while there is strong data suggesting higher temperatures overall, it is far too complex to make any ironclad assumptions about how high they will get and what will happen because of them, good or bad."

And although Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has forced cap-and-trade legislation that would come at an estimated cost of up to $200 billion, or $1,761 per household, according to the Treasury Department through the U.S. House of Representatives that is now pending in the U.S. Senate, Ratigan urged everyone "cool off" and take a harder look when more data is available. He failed to criticize the alarmists the Left who are insisting immediate and urgent action on the climate change issue.

"Look at the weather guy," Ratigan said. "They have a hard time forecasting ten days in front of us because of all the complex variables that go into what happens on this earth. So, how can we make trustworthy predictions about what could happen 20 years from now? Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking at the issue closely. One thing that is clear is that this political debate about climate change needs to cool off a little bit until perhaps we have a touch more data and a little more rational thought, especially when both sides are claiming victory off of one or two random snowstorms."

And the MSNBC host had a parting shot and challenge for Limbaugh.

"As for Mr. Limbaugh, I would be delighted to come on your show and explain this to you directly," Ratigan said. "Or if you prefer, you're more than welcome to come on here anytime you want, phone in or whatever you're into - unless of course you have an issue with direct engagement on these types of issues where you actually deal in fact. Something to think about."

Keith Olbermann Wednesday claimed that conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are trying to kill us all by disinforming the public about the dangers of global warming.

Speaking with Newsweek's Howard Fineman about how conservatives are using the recent snowstorms in the Northeast to refute Al Gore's catastrophic climate claims, the "Countdown" host said, "[L]ife on earth is going to be threatened because the people who recognized and warned about climate change did not just go with that phrase, climate change, and instead chose global warming, opening this opportunity up for Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to kill us all."

Earlier the factually-challenged MSNBCer declared, "And, of course, we have Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street water carriers, the corporate clowns, who get rich by tricking listeners into voting against their own interests, laughing about how silly it is to believe in extreme weather change in the middle of extreme weather" (video embedded below the fold with full transcript and commentary, h/t Story Balloon):

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: Good evening from New York.

A blizzard has buried much of the northeast, much of the nation`s capital, and much of Congress`s sanity. What the record snowfall has exposed, however, is just how ignorant leading deniers are about what even the Bush Pentagon recognized as a threat: climate change. They think it`s disproved by snow.

And Democrats are responding to a snowstorm that, in fact, may exemplify climate change by naturally backing down on legislation to combat climate change -- legislation Republicans opposed because even though it would have cut taxes for the middle-class, too, you know, you, it also would have cut the profits of big polluters.

While the snowfall shut down much of the capital`s day-to-day business, including progress on the jobs bill, key Democrats now say it now might also spell the end, for now, of the climate change bill. Why? Because people are idiots!

Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman remarking about this storm, quote, "It makes it more challenging for folks not taking time to review the scientific arguments. People see the world around them and they extrapolate." And no one is extrapolating stupider than the people in the pockets of the energy industry. Quote, "It`s going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries `uncle.`" Get it? Al Gore. Quote, "Where`s Al Gore now?" See, Al Gore.
And, of course, we have Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street water carriers, the corporate clowns, who get rich by tricking listeners into voting against their own interests, laughing about how silly it is to believe in extreme weather change in the middle of extreme weather!

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS HOST: The snow is hammering Washington, D.C., again. I believe God is just saying, "I got your global warming here, eh? You want a piece of global warming?"

(END AUDIO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIMBAUGH: It`s just another nail in the coffin of the whole global warming thing. And each -- you know, every day like this, where is Al Gore? Where is the media asking Al Gore what`s going on with this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: It`s snowing, moron! No one is asking about Al Gore,
of course, because the former vice president did not personally invent climate change. Scientists have predicted for decades that climate change will bring with it extreme weather. And, yes, last month was the hottest January on record since satellites were first used to track global temperatures.

What happens when the earth warms up? More water evaporates from the oceans, like steam -- meaning for those places where it`s still below freezing, there will be more snow. The National Weather Service today confirmed this -- surprise -- the snowiest winter on record for Washington, so far.

Let`s bring in, fresh from the Iditarod dogsled race, relocated this year from Nome to D.C., MSNBC political analyst, Howard Fineman, also a senior Washington correspondent and political columnist of "Newsweek" and the author of the "The Thirteen American Arguments."

Much thanks for your time and your travel efforts tonight, Howard.

HOWARD FINEMAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: No problem. No problem, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Virginia Republicans posted and then quickly pulled today this Web ad mocking the Democrats for supporting climate change legislation. Is there no sense that Virginia, the state they are from and represent, happens to be suffering right now acutely due to this storm, precisely because of the kind of climate change they are defending?

FINEMAN: No, I don`t think there is any sense of that. I think that -- number one, Republicans have had their eyes on this cap-and-trade bill, the climate change bill, from the very beginning. They`ve been out to kill it from the very beginning. That`s number one.

Number two, a lot of the attacks on climate change data and theory have had an effect, especially on Republicans. There was a poll recently, Keith, that said, now, about only half of people who call themselves Republicans believe that the climate change thing is for real. And that has resulted in a change in the overall numbers, but these are the Republicans speaking to their own base.

OLBERMANN: But in 2000, during the Bush administration, the National Intelligence Council concluded that more than 30 U.S. military installations face heightened risk because of rising sea levels, which is a direct consequence of climate change. Why don`t McConnell and DeMint care about the troops?

FINEMAN: Well, as it happens, I was talking to Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, earlier today. And I`ve covered Mitch forever, going back to --

OLBERMANN: Yes. Yes.

FINEMAN: -- when he was county judge in Kentucky. And Mitch sees the world through the eyes of the Kentucky coal operators. This is a coal opportunity, in his view, and that`s how he sees things. He sees the energy problems as having coal as one of the main answers, if not the main answer. And as far as changing river levels and coastlines and so on, that`s what the Corps of Engineers in the Navy are for. Come on.

OLBERMANN: All right. And there`s not much of a danger in the sea rising to cover Kentucky -- is that the idea? So he doesn`t care.

FINEMAN: Yes. You know, we`ve -- they`ve already rearranged all the rivers and lakes there anyway. That`s why I say, the Corps of Engineers, you bring them in and they rearrange them some more. No problem.

OLBERMANN: Cut off the tops of the mountains.

FINEMAN: Sure. Sure.

OLBERMANN: This is what this boils down to, though: life on earth is going to be threatened because the people who recognized and warned about climate change did not just go with that phrase, climate change, and instead chose global warming, opening this opportunity up for Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to kill us all.

FINEMAN: Well, I do think that labels matter. And in retrospect, simply focusing on warming was a mistake, just in terms of the politics and the salesmanship of what is undoubtedly a really, really big problem. But it`s also now gotten all wrapped up in Obama, in Gore, in the whole big government idea.

You know, conservatives and Republicans, they worry about big government. Unless it`s the national security state, then they want a lot of big government. But in this case, they`d rather let the coal operators and the nuclear plant operators and so on, you know, have their -- have their way.

OLBERMANN: Three of my four questions to you tonight have been about Republican idiocy on this subject. Now, let me turn to Democratic idiocy on this subject.

FINEMAN: Right.

OLBERMANN: How is the majority party`s takeaway from the display of extreme weather turning out to be surrender on a bill that fights manmade or man-influenced extreme weather?

FINEMAN: Well, I think -- I think, I`m sure from the White House`s point of view, I think, what Jeff Bingaman said -- which is basically giving up in a sense -- is not what they wanted to hear.

On the other hand, I`m not sure how committed the White House is to the cap-and-trade bill that they put forward and jammed through the House at the beginning of the session. You know, at the beginning of last year, they were all proud of themselves for that, but the thing is complete languished. This is a case where presidential leadership and explanation is required.

You know, we keep saying that Barack Obama gives such a good speech and he`s a good explainer. I don`t really know how good an explainer he is. He didn`t end up explaining the health care reform bill all that well. It was very complex.

Same here -- it`s a big, complex bill. But you can`t assume everybody understands the science behind it. And that`s what the president has to do. He`s got to get out there and explain it if he expects to have political activity on this.

OLBERMANN: Maybe he can just get up and say, "You know what? If it weren`t snowing already and we`d eliminated snow, it would be too late to do anything and doesn`t make a difference how much of a deficit we have. So, let`s spend $800 trillion a day, because we`re all going to die in nine years, anyway."

FINEMAN: He should try that. Yes.

OLBERMANN: I`ve written a speech for him.

MSNBC political analyst, Howard Fineman, also of "Newsweek," also author of "The Thirteen Arguments," now --

FINEMAN: You didn`t have to say all of that, but thank you.

OLBERMANN: Now out in paperback and available without a prescription -- thank you, Howard.

FINEMAN: You`re welcome, Keith.

So, in the course of seven minutes, Olbermann accused Limbaugh and Palin of trying to kill people with global warming skepticism while claiming that Limbaugh and Beck are getting rich by tricking the public into voting against their best interests.

During the same segment, Fineman accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of ignoring the dangers of climate change because he's more concerned with coal producers in his state, and isn't worried about the supposed threat to rivers and the coastline since the Corps of Engineers has already rearranged Kentucky's waterways.

It really is disgusting, isn't it?

Challenging someone's patriotism is a pretty hefty charge to level in the political arena, based on the response when Barack Obama's patriotism was challenged during the 2008 election cycle.

However, there seems to be a different set of rules when it comes to questioning the authenticity of the manmade global warming argument in the wake of record-setting snowfall in the Mid-Atlantic. And this different standard applied to Bill Nye "The Science Guy," who appeared on MSNBC's Feb. 10 "Rachel Maddow Show" and aired his disapproval of manmade climate change skeptics and labeled them "unpatriotic."

"[T]here's more energy in the atmosphere and this is stirring things up," Nye said. "If you want to get serious about it, these guys claiming that the snow in Washington disproves climate change are almost unpatriotic. It's really, they're denying science. So they're very happy to have the weather forecast be accurate within a few hours, but they're displeased or un-enchanted by predictions of the world getting warmer. It's really, it shakes me up."

According to Nye, it's easier to sell the theory of anthropogenic global warming to younger generations since "older people" have a harder time with the concept. He agreed with the show's host Rachel Maddow, who likened the snowfall in Washington, D.C. to a full-court one-handed buzzer-beating basketball shot earlier in her program.

"Well, my thinking is, I thought about this a lot as an educator, spent a lot of time with a lot of people," Nye said. "It's mostly generational, it seems to be. This is anecdotal for me. Older people just have a much harder time grasping the idea that you have many billions of people on the planet with a very, very thin atmosphere - you're able to affect its climate. Younger people are able to sort of embrace it, understand the evidence and move forward. Just as you say, making a full-court one-armed shot happens now and then. There are snowstorms in Washington, D.C., now and then."

Nye explained that he subscribed to the idea that it was warmer ocean temperatures causing this weather by "putting more energy in the atmosphere."

"Well, the world, overall -- the world's getting warmer," Nye said. "If you like - these phenomenon, by the way, this week, are just generally a result of El Niño, where the Pacific Ocean surface gets a little warmer and this affects the weather in North America like crazy and this is very well-documented, and you can go to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web sites and you can look at this data. The sea surface is warmer, putting more energy in the atmosphere, and making things more turbulent."

But Nye, without a single mention of the ClimateGate scandal, which showed that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists manipulated data and conspired to destroy information to further the cause of global warming alarmism, cited the IPCC's Nobel Prize as a reason to believe that theory.

"The main thing is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got a Nobel Prize," Nye said. "They got a scientific prize for making a discovery. They didn't get a minor award. This is a big deal. They discovered climate change, through all kinds of evidence, and it's something we should all be very, very concerned about."

And Nye then returned to his earlier point, questioning the patriotism of global warming skeptics, calling their questioning of the theory inappropriate and suggested it was bad for what made the United States "a technological leader."

"This thing, of denying science - you know, science has done so much to make this country what it is, a technological leader," Nye said. "It's improved the quality of life for so many people, here and around the world. To deny what scientists or scientific evidence is showing, is inappropriate. And as I said earlier, to me, when I get wound up, it's unpatriotic."

UP TO $10,000 WILL BE GIVEN AWAY—

Get Your Global Warming Sign in the News and Win Some Cold Hard Cash!

After Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate and the cold hard facts on the ground it’s become obvious that manmade global warming is a scam.

Big government politicians and scientists were hoping they could convince people that their junk science was real. Then they could further control the energy industry through taxation and regulation. Unfortunately, for them the scam is falling apart right in front of their eyes.

So what better time for a contest?

If you would like to have some fun and make a little cash while you’re snowed in then this is just the contest you’ve been waiting for. Here are the rules:

1.) Create a sign.

2.) You must then get your sign in a position so that it can be seen on TV.

For each local TV spot you will receive $100.00.

If a sign is placed on a national TV network the prize will jump to $300.00.

If two or three signs are on one TV spot then the prize would be divided by the participants.

The most original sign would receive and additional $500.00.

The funniest sign will receive an additional $500.00.

Get the details at Gateway Pundit Blog.

The contest runs until Sunday February 14, 2010.

Hardball host Chris Matthews on Wednesday ranted that "clowns" and "hyenas" like Sean Hannity "don't care" about the awful things global warming will do to the planet. The Fox News host on Monday highlighted the winter storms that the D.C. area has been suffering and then mocked Al Gore.

After quoting similar remarks by Republicans Jim DeMint and Mitch McConnell, Matthews frothed, "It isn't something to laugh about, gentlemen, unless you don't care about what happens to this planet down the road. And I suspect that some of you folks, sadly, don't."

Previewing the segment a few minutes earlier, Matthews lashed out at Hannity and the Republican Senators: "Up next, the anti-science crowd in the Republican Party is saying that that the snow storms we're having are evidence against global warming." Continuing the name-calling, the MSNBC anchor slammed, "These guys, these clowns- go to high school!"

A transcript of the segment, which aired at 5:30pm EST on Febuary 10, follows:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Up next, the anti-science crowd in the Republican Party is saying that that the snow storms we're having are evidence against global warming. These guys, these clowns- go to high school!

5:30

CHRIS MATTHEWS:  Next, hyena time. Here’s Sean Hannity on Fox, Monday. Quote.  Here’s Sean talking, "It's the most severe winter weather in- winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore's hysterical global warming theories." Here's Senator Jim DeMint twittering yesterday. Quote, "It's going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries uncle." And here's Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell when asked about passing climate change legislation, just yesterday. Quote, "Where’s Al Gore now?" Well, here are the facts, gentlemen. The average global temperature last year was the second highest on record. The past decade was the warmest ever.  Cold weather in one area over several days doesn't change the reality of what’s happening to this planet, the only one we've got, by the way. It isn't something to laugh about, gentlemen, unless you don't care about what happens to this planet down the road. And I suspect that some of you folks, sadly, don't.

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer on Wednesday took issue with a meteorologist who wouldn't refute Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) joke about snow continuing until Al Gore cries uncle.

After Raphael Miranda told viewers about the blizzard pummeling the East Coast, Brewer for some strange reason brought up DeMint's Twitter comment: "He's basically making this argument against global warming because they've had so much snow in Washington, D.C. Is this, does this have anything to do with global warming?"

When Miranda didn't give the answer Brewer was looking for, she amazingly responded, "You're playing it right down the middle. But I was taught that we're talking about climate change here and more severe weather."

The nerve of this meteorologist to not only play it "right down the middle," but also not give her the answer she wanted (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Ed Morrissey):

CONTESSA BREWER: Hey, I've got to ask you. South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint was on Twitter, and using this D.C. snowstorm to make a political jab saying that it provides, well here, here it is. He says, "The snow will continue until Al Gore cries uncle." He's basically making this argument against global warming because they've had so much snow in Washington, D.C. Is this, does this have anything to do with global warming?

RAPHAEL MIRANDA, METEOROLOGIST: Well, it's an interesting point. Global warming skeptics love to say, "Oh, it's snowing. What happened to global warming?" But there is a school of thought that says global warming will provide more moisture to the atmosphere which will allow for bigger snowstorms like this one. So, really it depends on which school of thought you attest to, but it could go either way.

BREWER: You're playing it right down the middle. But I was taught that we're talking about climate change here and more severe weather. So, I'm not sure that a lot of snow refutes all the evidence to the contrary. Raphael, thanks.

Imagine that. SHE was taught!

Doesn't matter that HE'S the meteorologist. She holds a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism.

And therein lies the problem with the media and this issue.

Folks like Brewer have their opinions concerning manmade global warming, and nobody is going to change them...not even a meteorologist on staff.

But it's even worse than that, for we don't know what Miranda's opinion is on climate change. All we know is that he wanted to present both sides.

Shocking that a woman with a degree in journalism would be offended by that.

Or maybe not.

Our good friends at Minnesotans for Global Warming have done it again.

This time, they've taken The Who's rock anthem Baba O'Riley (aka Teenage Wasteland) and converted it into the Al Gore-bashing "Frozen Wasteland."

As always, they're asking for some global warming, 'cause it's gosh darned cold where they live (video embedded below the fold with lyrics):

FROZEN WASTELAND

Up here on the farm
We chop wood To stay Warm
We all could use some Global Warming

We all need to fight
To preserve our rights
I don't want to be taxed a just for breathing

Open your eyes
Don't believe their lies
It's just a Frozen Wasteland

Al Gore is a liar
His pants are on fire
Plus he's getting rich from carbon offsets

He's loose with the facts
All he wants is a tax
Lets get together
Before it gets much colder

Frozen Wasteland
Its just a Frozen Wasteland
Frozen Wasteland
Frozen Wasteland

WE'RE ALL FROZEN!!

Absolutely delicious. Thanks, Elmer!

Time after time, the Obama White House has demonstrated a desire to control the message and flow of information, whether it's issues on health care, the economy, bailouts and the latest - climate science. 

With cap-and-trade legislation waiting in the wings that would come at an estimated cost of up to $200 billion, or $1,761 per household, according to the Treasury Department, the federal government recently announced a new service to "help businesses adapt to the impact of climate change."

But AccuWeather.com's chief long-range and hurricane forecaster Joe Bastardi, who appeared on the Fox Business Network's Feb. 9 "Cavuto," warned there are other implications with the government having an expanded role in climate forecasting. According to Bastardi, it could lead to an effort to shut out other opinions.

"What I'm trying to say is there are a lot of other non-governmental opinions in this debate that have been shut down," Bastardi said. "So I'm asking myself, well, is it going to be like NOAA? They get to say whatever they want and influence things? And then folks that have other opinions aren't allowed to say anything about it or are pushed off to the side?"

Bastardi showed where long-range climate models diverge and explained three factors that are causing the earth to cool.

"Science and Public Policy Institute - take a look at this graph here - since the satellite era, you can see temperatures have been going up," Bastardi continued. "The computer models are up even higher, but we've leveled off in the past 10 or 15 years. The question is, with the natural reversal, the solar activity, the volcanic activity, what I have labeled the ‘Triple Crown of Cooling,' are we simply, in 20 or 30 years, going to be back to where we were 20 or 30 years ago.

And as Dr. William Gray, a hurricane forecaster at Colorado State University, has predicted, Bastardi said changes in the ocean are going to play a significant role in the cooling trend, as he had forecasted.

"Yes, I think that is the answer," Bastardi said. "Part of the reason we got this winter forecast right -- and again I'll show you this winter forecast - is I knew that with the Pacific cooling, we are getting back toward those times in the '60s and '70s. That's where winters are going to go. When the Pacific cools, the Atlantic cools, guess what happens? You cool those big bodies of water, you are going to cool the atmosphere around it. The models aren't capable of handling this. Look at the forecast or the guidance that came out of NOAA for the month of February. At this time, when this came out, we were forecasting brutal cold in February and a top 10 cold February for the United States to my clientele."

Bastardi explained the importance of having accurate weather and climate data and not have a monopoly on a government that could favor a certain policy measure. For example, he explained how this data is used in the private sector.

"I'll give you example what that means," Bastardi said. "You get this kind of guidance, someone that's a retailer, well we don't need any snow shovels; no big deal. Another company, say one of my companies, actually purchased more snow shovels this year because they felt it was - they trusted the forecast. So they made money."

However, with the federal government's entrance into the climate forecasting business, Bastardi said he fears the government would push out competitors and regulate thought.

"But when you get situations like this - and I'm not saying that this isn't guidance that people can use. I'm not saying that. When you start having it so a government agency is literally in some way, indirect way, regulating what people are thinking, then you push other people out that may be people of goodwill and want to compete."

No matter what former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin does, she's not going to win any friends in the mainstream modern feminism activist movement in the United States. But that might not be a bad thing.

On HLN's Feb. 8 "The Joy Behar Show," Eve Ensler, the writer of the infamous "The Vagina Monologues" appeared on the broadcast to promote her new book "I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World." During the interview, she was asked by the show's host Joy Behar what she thought about Sarah Palin, her political prospects and her belief system.

"Back with me is a woman who has done more for the vagina than the Brazilian wax - the talented Eve Ensler," Behar said. "You know, I must talk about Sarah Palin quickly with you because you do mention her in one monologue in the book. And you say a woman running for U.S. vice president believes in creationism but not global warming. What were you driving at there? May I ask?"

Ensler took the global warming opening and ran with it, but probably should have exercised better judgment. She took a shot at Palin's anthropogenic skepticism, either by mistake or by exhibiting a total ignorance of natural disasters, by suggesting Palin look at "earthquakes and tsunamis" if she needed to evidence (emphasis added):

ENSLER: Well, I just think the idea that she doesn't believe in global warming is bizarre.
BEHAR: Every scientist at every note believes in it but Sarah Palin doesn't believe in it.
ENSLER: And I think we just kind of have to walk around the world at this point and look at what is happening to nature and earthquakes and tsunamis.
BEHAR: Right.
ENSLER: And weather changes to just feel it. But I think that idea that she doesn't believe in global warming and she could actually run for vice president, and we have a country where that is possible, it seems insane.
BEHAR: It's unbelievable. It does seem insane and the fact that she has not negated the possibility of running in 2012.
ENSLER: But we have. We have negated the possibility of her winning.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), earthquakes are a phenomenon of "sudden rolling or shaking events caused by movement under the Earth's surface," not the earth's atmosphere which concerns the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Ensler also took issue with the Tea Parties, particularly last week's Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tenn., where Palin spoke and insisted that the media should give her V-Day events (an inspiration of The Vagina Monologues) more coverage:

ENSLER: But I think part of it is like why are we giving her so much attention. You know I was looking at that Tea Party thing last night. How many people were there? 600? Why is the entire media covering an event with 600 people.
BEHAR: I don't know.
ENSLER: V-day has 5,000 events this year. At one event there's 600 people, why are they covering that? What do we choose to cover in the media? Why is anyone giving attention to people who have really have a level of intelligence that hasn't really evolved yet?
BEHAR: I agree with you.
ENSLER: You know, you know, it's problematic. It's problematic.

But the shots kept coming at Palin from both Behar and Ensler - why she is so popular, why she didn't criticize Bush more and her ideologically conservative stances on certain social and economic issues:

ENSLER: Well I'm not talk you can about the people who necessarily are following Sarah Palin. Because I think people have the right to be afraid right now. I identify with working people. I feel for people are out of jobs and they don't have money. What` I'm talking about is people who are creating Sarah Palin and Sarah Palin herself putting out information that is manipulated, that's distorted, and illusory. That's the people I have problems with.
BEHAR: Well she plays fast and loose with facts.
ENSLER: Oh, does she ever.
BEHAR: And the other thing I wanted to bring up about her with you is that I saw her being interviewed by Chris Wallace on FOX yesterday. Or was it Saturday, I think it was yesterday. And he says -- she says that, you know, Obama is losing some sting right now. People have short memories. They forget what happened eight years ago.
ENSLER: Hmm.
BEHAR: When Bush was here. But she says, I'm saying she'd like to change his image around. How would she do it? She's saying, I'm saying if he did things would dramatically change, if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can do to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a bit and decide, well, maybe he's tougher than we think that he is today. In other words, I think that she's talking about going in and starting more wars. I mean, I can't believe that she gets away with statements like that.
ENSLER: Well, I think it's the whole mentality of being in the NRA, of believing in drilling. Of shooting all those animals from the plane, of drilling, this constant -- she wouldn't drill.

As for the "drilling" metaphor, Behar couldn't let the opportunity to take a cheap shot at Palin at her daughter's expense and mock the concept of abstinence:

BEHAR: Isn't that how her daughter got in trouble in the first place?
ENSLER: I thought it was abstinence myself.
BEHAR: Oh yes, abstinence, that really works.
ENSLER: Really successful technique.

Congress is out of control.  The public overwhelming opposes a government takedover of our health care. But Congressional leaders are telling us they don’t care – that they know best, and they’re going to pass it anyway.

We are getting the same attitude on other issues, from global warming regulation, to taxes, government spending, deficits, federal debt, energy policy, welfare, corporate bailouts, and beyond.  Too many of our elected Members of Congress are making behind-closed-door deals and ignoring their constituents, calling them “yahoos,” “Nazis”,“and “tea-baggers.”

This isn’t American democracy — this is a shop-worn, elitist, authoritarianism closer to abuses we see in countries like Venezuela.

So, what would happen if the people could change this rotten situation?

Actually, there may just well be a mechanism within our political system to do so — the Right of Recall.  Nine states already have laws on the books providing for Recall of members of Congress: Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin.  These 9 states suffer 12 incumbent Senators who are members of the runaway Congressional majority, who are not already standing for reelection in 2010, but potentially could be.

For example, the New Jersey state constitution provides, “The people reserve unto themselves the power to recall, after at least one year of service, any elected official in this State or representing this State in the United States Congress.”

Tea party activists in New Jersey have already filed to circulate recall petitions regarding Sen. Robert Menendez.  Their recent Secretary of State took the position that such recall of members of Congress is not authorized under the U.S. Constitution.

Grassroots activists in Louisiana have similarly already filed for recall of Senator Mary Landrieu, and the circulation of recall petitions there has been authorized.

Exercising this existing statutory right of recall in these 9 states could potentially reverse the control in the Senate this year by placing 12 Senators not currently up for re-eectionion this year on their state ballots.  (For more information on this Right of Recall, see www.RecallCongressNow.org).

We have seen the recall process work in California in 2003 when citizens in that state, disgusted with recently reelected Democrat Governor, Gray Davis, voted overwhelmingly to remove him from office in a recall election.

Another nine states provide language in their constitutions to recall only state officials. The other states without recall provisions for members of Congress can change their laws to adopt it.  In states with the right to initiative, this can be done by a vote of the people after circulating petitions to put the change on the ballot.

Too many in Congress today are showing us that our representatives can no longer be trusted with 2-6 years in office without ongoing popular accountability.  Today’s Congressional majority is threatening to dump a load of bad legislation on the country despite the public’s opposition, daring us to try to “clean it up” later.  Only a Right of Recall can prevent such abuses in the future.

The Right of Recall would also help counter the growing problem of voter fraud.  If voters felt that an election were subject to too many irregularities in its conduct or in how the votes were counted, they could circulate Recall petitions for a new election.

Every state should adopt the Right of Recall to protect its voters.  The constitutionality of recalling members of Congress adopted under state law would ultimately have to be decided in the courts.  Or the people could definitively decide the issue themselves through voting to adopt a constitutional amendment, or by electing a Congress that would adopt a federal statute authorizing each state to adopt such a Right of Recall.

With Washington, D.C. buried beneath at least 20 inches of snow, and with more in the forecast, common sense would suggest global warming alarmists look elsewhere to make the argument to raise awareness for their concerns.

But no, Dylan Ratigan thinks it's ridiculous to suggest all the snowfall totals could cast doubt on the theory of anthropogenic global warming. On MSNBC's Feb. 8 "The Dylan Ratigan Show," Ratigan criticized those who would dare express misgivings about climate change based on the so-called "snowpocalypse."

"Here's the problem - these ‘snowpocalypses' that have been going through D.C. and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming," Ratigan said.

In fact, Ratigan told viewers during the "Busted" segment of his program, that the heavy snowfall totals were evidence of global warming.

"Why is that? The thinking that warmer air temperatures on the earth, a higher air temperature, has a greater capacity to hold moisture at any temperature," Ratigan said. "And then as winter comes in, that warm air cools full of water, and you get heavier precipitation on a more regular basis. In fact, you could argue these storms are not evidence of a lack of global warming, but are evidence of global warming - thus the 26 inches of snowfall in the DC area and the second giant storm this year." [Emphasis added]

Ratigan criticized a TV spot by Virginia Republicans designed to ridicule proposed climate change policies that could hurt the state's job situation. He suggested there was some sort of schism in that state's GOP because the Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell has said global warming is potentially an issue.

"On a side note, Virginia's newly elected Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell says he accepts the science that is out there and warned that planet warming is quote, ‘a real concern.' So I don't know where the Virginia GOP is at, maybe they don't know the science, or maybe they want to win at any cost. I don't know, maybe they just wanted to make a commercial."

Yesterday, President Obama announced his plan to create a new federal agency tasked with climate change. Later that day, the National Weather Service announced that DC was due to receive another 10-20 inches of snow today. (On top of the 2 1/2 feet of snow over the weekend.) Now THAT is some climate change.

From ABC News:

The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

“Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat,” Locke said Monday at a news conference.

Lubchenco added, “Climate change is real, it’s happening now.” She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.

NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

Read the whole article here.

The 13th Annual Energy & Environment Conference, held in Phoenix Feb. 1-3, isn’t the sort of place where global warming “deniers” are exactly welcome. In fact, by my observations, the skeptical caucus at the event consisted entirely of: James M. Taylor, a senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute; Keith Lockitch, a fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights; and me. All the other attendees spent their time discussing how the U.S. government — or, even better, a “global government” — needs to compel us all to live “greener” lives through schemes like cap-and-trade. Environmentalists are a bossy and power-hungry lot.

Lockitch gave a presentation arguing free-market economies are better positioned than socialist societies to deal with any severe weather events caused by climate change — and was called a “denier” and compared to a shill for “Big Tobacco” for his trouble. Taylor got off a little easier, receiving only scoffs and curious-to-annoyed glances for asking inconvenient questions.

But that’s not to say we were the only people to question the assumptions of the attendees who believe the “science is settled” on global warming. Perhaps the greatest challenge came from one of their own — renowned climate scientist William Sprigg — who urged his colleagues to stop treating the ClimateGate scandal as irrelevant noise promoted by “deniers.” In an amazingly telling moment, green energy consultant Andy Van Horn, who introduced Sprigg, admitted he’d never heard of ClimateGate until Sprigg suggested it a few weeks ago as a topic worthy of discussion. (Who are the real “deniers” again?)

Sprigg, adjunct research professor in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, believes the planet is on a potentially dangerous warming path and atmospheric carbon dioxide is to blame. He also led the technical review of the first global warming report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990. Clealry, Sprigg is no “outlier” or “rebel,” but one of the most respected and “mainstream” scientists in the field of climatology. So it came to a bit of shock to the audience when Sprigg expressed concerns about how contrarian scientists are treated with contempt by many of his colleagues.

It’s not right, he said, that the game is rigged to keep skeptics out of peer-reviewed journals. It violates the scientific method to refuse to release raw data so others can test your theories. And it’s a big mistake to keep defending the likes of infamous “Hide the Decline” emailers Phil Jones and Michael Mann. The very credibility of the entire discipline of climate science is at stake, Sprigg said, and it’s time to stop ignoring this fact. As one might imagine, this all did not go over very well in the audience — who were undoubtedly expecting to hear a lecture ratifying their view that ClimateGate was no big deal when they saw Sprigg’s topic on the agenda.

I recorded Sprigg’s remarks on video for Heartland, and (from what I could tell) mine was the only camera in the room. The footage below features Taylor — who is also managing editor of Environment & Climate News — asking Sprigg what he thinks the future holds for the wholly corrupted IPCC. Sprigg nodded as Taylor referred to “mounting scandals” at the IPCC and then responded:

“There will be some reform. I think there are going to be big changes in the peer review process for the IPCC. There will be — there are — calls for the head of [IPCC Chairman Raj] Pachauri. Some of my colleagues have written letters saying that he needs to be taken off the job.”

In his 24-minute lecture, Sprigg also:

• warned of a growing perception that “the IPCC is biased, conflicted, [and] pushing political agendas.”;

• called for a new climate research agency supported not entirely by the government, but in conjunction with the private sector;

• and declared: “We need to stick to our scientific principles,” and “improve our peer preview process, and expand the stakeholders’ role to keep us all honest.”

It was a remarkable presentation, one that The Heartland Institute has summarized with commentary in the video below. One gets the feeling Sprigg has put himself on the path to pariah status among the true-believers of global warming, But this honest scientist deserves praise from all sides of the debate for demanding politics, group-think and a desire to control our lives through government mandates not replace scientific rigor.

On Thursday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric lamented the impact ClimateGate and other recent scandals involving fraudulent global warming data have had on the climate change debate: “Experts insist the overall conclusion remains the same, that climate change is real, but...such errors provide ammunition to skeptics.”

In a report that followed, correspondent Mark Phillips cited accusations of data tampering against Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, but explained: “An academic board today cleared Mann, saying his science holds up, but the damage may have already been done.” Phillips went on to detail other data errors, including a false United Nations climate panel report on melting Himalayan glaciers and the ClimateGate scandal at Britain’s East Anglia University.

Phillips observed how the “series of gaffes by climate change scientists,” has created “a frustrating time for those who believe the basic science in global warming remains true.” A clip was then played of Imperial College London climatologist Brian Hoskins fretting: “it appears the whole edifice has been undermined by these couple of bricks that are flaking a bit.”

Phillips concluded his report by explaining the real problem facing global warming advocates: “The scientists may still believe they’re winning the scientific argument, but they’re in danger of losing the public relations war.”    

Here is a full transcript of the segment:

6:47PM TEASE:

KATIE COURIC: When we come back, new doubts about climate change thanks to some sloppy work by scientists.

6:50PM SEGMENT:

KATIE COURIC: The U.N.’s climate chief admitted today scientists made mistakes in a major study of melting glaciers in the Himalayas. Experts insist the overall conclusion remains the same, that climate change is real, but as Mark Phillips tells us, such errors provide ammunition to skeptics.

MARK PHILLIPS: You know you’re in trouble when you’re being spoofed on YouTube.

PARODY SONG: Making up data the old hard way, fudging the numbers day by day.

PHILLIPS: The subject of the spoof is Michael Mann of Penn State University, who is accused of tampering with climate data to produce his famous hockey stick graph, which shows that the rise in manmade greenhouse gases corresponds to a rise in world temperatures. An academic board today cleared Mann, saying his science holds up, but the damage may have already been done.

SONG: Hide the decline.

PHILLIPS: The biggest splash these days in the global warming argument may not be caused by the world’s melting glaciers. It may be caused by a series of gaffes by climate change scientists. The latest one involves temperature data from weather stations in China used in global warming calculations. The problem is that where weather stations are matters. One located in the city will give a consistently higher temperature reading than one out in the country. The allegation is that the researchers used Chinese data when they didn’t really know where their weather stations were. It’s just a small part, they say, of a worldwide database, but it’s the little mistakes that matter. Mistakes like the line in the last report by the U.N. panel on climate change, which claimed glaciers in the Himalayas might disappear by the year 2035. The panel had to admit the claim was wrong and the climate change skeptics jumped in.

PATRICK MICHAELS [SENIOR FELLOW, CATO INSTITUTE]: Any scientist that read that 2035 figure just laughed because they knew it couldn’t be true. There’s no doubt the trust in the U.N. panel has been undermined.

PHILLIPS: Trust was already undermined by the series of leaked e-mails at Britain’s University of East Anglia, one of the world’s big climate science centers, would seem to show that inconvenient facts were being hidden. It’s a frustrating time for those who believe the basic science in global warming remains true.

BRIAN HOSKINS [PROFESSOR, IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON]: I am concerned that it appears the whole edifice has been undermined by these couple of bricks that are flaking a bit.

PHILLIPS: And that’s a danger, in your view?

HOSKINS: It is a danger. Oh, I totally agree.

PHILLIPS: The scientists may still believe they’re winning the scientific argument, but they’re in danger of losing the public relations war. Mark Phillips, CBS News, London.

In looking at four “possible allegations” of research misconduct against meteorology professor Michael Mann, a Penn State University panel has determined that further investigation is warranted for one of them.

The allegations — or “possible allegations” as they put it — stem from Mann’s alleged involvement in the “ClimateGate” e-mails scandal that surfaced in early December and seemed to show evidence of fraud and conspiracy among the research scientists and others whose work formed much of the basis of calls for extreme climate change regulation.

At the center of the scandal was Mann, the inventor of the famous “hockey stick” graph which claimed to show that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures had shot up to their highest level in recorded history. It was made famous in Al Gore’s Academy Award®-winning documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

While this is good news, I suspect panel members are secretly hoping someone else will shoulder responsibility for determining Mann’s guilt or innocence before they’re forced to reach any conclusion(s).

Below is the text of the release about the inquiry issued by members of the panel a short while ago:

University Park, Pa. — An internal inquiry by Penn State into the research and scholarly activities of a well-known climate scientist will move into the investigatory stage, which is the next step in the University’s process for reviewing research conduct.

A University committee has concluded its inquiry into allegations of research impropriety that were leveled in November against Professor Michael Mann, after information contained in a collection of stolen e-mails was revealed. More than a thousand e-mails are reported to have been “hacked” from computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England, one of the main repositories of information about climate change.

During the inquiry, all relevant e-mails pertaining to Mann or his work were reviewed, as well as related journal articles, reports and additional information. The committee followed a well-established University policy during the inquiry (http://guru.psu.edu/policies/ra10.html ).

In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct, the committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations. The recommended investigation will focus on determining if Mann “engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities.” A full report (http://www.research.psu.edu/orp) concerning the allegations and the findings of the inquiry committee has been submitted.

In the investigatory phase, as in the inquiry phase, the committee will not address the science of global climate change, a matter more appropriately left to the profession. The committee is charged with looking at the ethical behavior of the scientist and determining whether he violated professional standards in the course of his work.

The investigatory committee will consist of five tenured full professor faculty members who will assess the evidence in the case and make a determination on Mann’s conduct.

Worth noting is the time frame set forth by university policy:

If an investigation is undertaken pursuant to this policy, the investigation should normally be concluded, and a decision made by the Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School, within 120 days from the initiation of the investigation.

Stay tuned!

Last month, I compiled a link round-up for you on ClimateGate con artist Michael Mann of Penn State University. [...] Read the rest »

The left is up in arms over the Supreme Court's recent decision in "Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission". But few voices have been louder than those emanating from the echo chamber at MSNBC. It seems that the cable network's talking heads feel that their parent company, General Electric, deserves a special exemption to what should be a blanket ban on unrestricted corporate speech.

First a bit of background for those unfamiliar with the Supreme Court decision. The court struck down in a 5-4 ruling a ban on corporate (or union) spending on political speech specifically endorsing or attacking a candidate for office within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. It ruled that the ban violated the First Amendment.

Few liberals seemed to notice that in attacking corporate speech they were also effectively undermining their own employers, media corporations who employs them for the express purpose of engaging in political speech. Surely Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow would defend MSNBC's right to speak (and spend) freely without interference from the federal government--especially in the run-up to an election when free speech is most important and must be protected.

In his opinion for the majority, Justice Kennedy wrote that the restrictions the court repealed could lead to constraints on the speech of media companies, so as to comply with restrictions on corporate expenditures. The law the court overturned, he wrote,

 ...would produce the dangerous, and unacceptable, consequence that Congress could ban political speech of media corporations… [M]edia corporations accumulate wealth with the help of the corporate form, the largest media corporations have “immense aggregations of wealth,” and the views expressed by media corporations often “have little or no correlation to the public’s support” for those views… Thus, under the [FEC's] reasoning, wealthy media corporations could have their voices diminished to put them on par with other media entities. There is no precedent for permitting this under the First Amendment.

Despite the court's attempt to safeguard the First Amendment rights of, among others, MSNBC, the channel's talking heads took to the air the night of the ruling to blast the Supreme Court for allowing corporate money to influence politics. Rachel Maddow whined, with a sign reading "Goliath wins" behind her,

Today, in one of the most radical supreme court actions in years, Justice Roberts, and Alito, and their five-member conservative majority overthrew at least a decade of settled law and congressional action and multiple Supreme Court precedents to wipe those laws away.

Corporations are free to inject unregulated billions--absolutely unlimited money--into the political system now.

Keith Olbermann, in true hyperbolic fashion, said the decision could be worse than the infamous "Dred Scott" case of 1857, and stated "It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal."

While they were bashing corporate political speech, however, they forgot to save some disdain for GE. The company has, after all, used MSNBC as a mouthpiece for policies that benefit the parent corporation. MSNBC has been the most outspoken supporter of President Obama of any of the cable networks, which would be of little import had GE's CEO Jeff Immelt not said this to his shareholders mere days after Obama's inauguration:

...I believe we are going through more than a cycle. The global economy, and capitalism, will be “reset” in several important ways.

The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.

According to a new book from Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney (whose research has led him to dub GE the "for-profit arm of the Obama administration"), GE gave more in donations to then-candidate Obama in 2008 than it has to any other candidate for any office, and more than it gave to its top 28 Republican recipients combined during the 2008 cycle.

It is no surprise that GE was so generous to Obama; the company stands to gain from some of the president's biggest legislative initiatives, especially in the realm of energy policy. Indeed, GE's colossal team of lobbyists--it has spent $184 million on them since 1998, more than any other company by far--played a key role in crafting the House of Representatives's Cap and Trade bill.

GE exec John Rice wrote to employees, "we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses." The company is quite invested in the bill's passage.

In pushing global warming alarmism, MSNBC and its television news affiliates have supported policies and policymakers that would benefit--in the form of potential billions in additional revenues--their parent company (see here, here, here, here, and here).

Some MSNBC talking heads have even admitted their de facto alliance with the president on various issues or in general. Chris Matthews, for instance, insisted that it was his duty to do "everything I can to make this thing work--this new [Obama] presidency work." Nancy Snyderman claimed on her show that "the White House, their health care agenda continues to be our agenda."

So when Olbermann and Maddow takes to the airwaves to complain about undue corporate influence on the political process, what they are really seem to be saying is the undue corporate influence of companies other than General Electric.

Well, the problem that we’re having up in the north, mainly with the polar bears. There’s not enough ice forming up there, so the time for them to hunt for their food is being diminished.... If the polar bears can’t hunt and bring food out in the winter time for the arctic fox, we’re going to see them probably –  either their numbers decreasing also or possibly moving south and interfering with other species that would rely on the foods that they would be using.

8:30AM TEASE:

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: Ahead in this half hour, we have some visitors to the studio of the animal variety. Some of them are cute and cuddly. Maybe not that one. But they’re all in trouble due to climate change and you’re going to see these animals from the San Diego Zoo and hear about their precarious situation ahead this morning.

8:33AM SEGMENT:

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: The world famous San Diego Zoo has a new exhibit showing us how climate change is affecting some of the world’s most beautiful animals. Senior keeper Rick Schwartz has brought some of the cute critters this morning with us. Hi Rick, good morning.

RICK SCHWARTZ: Good morning. Thanks for having us.

RODRIGUEZ Good morning, Mr. Fox or Miss Fox.

SCHWARTZ: This is Miss Fox.

RODRIGUEZ: Miss Fox.

SCHWARTZ: This is Tundra.

RODRIGUEZ: She’s an arctic fox, right?

SCHWARTZ: Yeah, she’s a 5-year-old arctic fox. And-

RODRIGUEZ: She’s shivering.

SCHWARTZ: Yeah, she’s a little nervous with all the lights and everything, but she’s also comfortable in the arms like this. This is not, absolutely, you know, something that would be a pet by any means, but something that is an animal that’s been hand raised and worked with by professionals.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Critters & Climate Change; How Global Warming Is Affecting Animals]

RODRIGUEZ: This is an animal that thrives in frigid temperatures, hence the name.

SCHWARTZ: Yes.

RODRIGUEZ: How is this animal in danger now?

SCHWARTZ: Well, the problem that we’re having up in the north, mainly with the polar bears. There’s not enough ice forming up there, so the time for them to hunt for their food is being diminished. The arctic fox can rely on other food sources during the summer months, but during the winter months, they follow polar bears around. Anybody who’s seen any footage of polar bears in the wild, we always see arctic foxes chasing after them to get all the scraps, basically the leftover food. So there’s a very important relationship there with that. If the polar bears can’t hunt and bring food out in the winter time for the arctic fox, we’re going to see them probably –  either their numbers decreasing also or possibly moving south and interfering with other species that would rely on the foods that they would be using.

RODRIGUEZ: Right, right.

SCHWARTZ: So everything is connected. And it’s kind of an interesting effect that’s occurring up there.

RODRIGUEZ: Important education. Alright. Thank you so much.

Well, the problem that we’re having up in the north, mainly with the polar bears. There’s not enough ice forming up there, so the time for them to hunt for their food is being diminished.... If the polar bears can’t hunt and bring food out in the winter time for the arctic fox, we’re going to see them probably –  either their numbers decreasing also or possibly moving south and interfering with other species that would rely on the foods that they would be using.

8:30AM TEASE:

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: Ahead in this half hour, we have some visitors to the studio of the animal variety. Some of them are cute and cuddly. Maybe not that one. But they’re all in trouble due to climate change and you’re going to see these animals from the San Diego Zoo and hear about their precarious situation ahead this morning.

8:33AM SEGMENT:

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: The world famous San Diego Zoo has a new exhibit showing us how climate change is affecting some of the world’s most beautiful animals. Senior keeper Rick Schwartz has brought some of the cute critters this morning with us. Hi Rick, good morning.

RICK SCHWARTZ: Good morning. Thanks for having us.

RODRIGUEZ Good morning, Mr. Fox or Miss Fox.

SCHWARTZ: This is Miss Fox.

RODRIGUEZ: Miss Fox.

SCHWARTZ: This is Tundra.

RODRIGUEZ: She’s an arctic fox, right?

SCHWARTZ: Yeah, she’s a 5-year-old arctic fox. And-

RODRIGUEZ: She’s shivering.

SCHWARTZ: Yeah, she’s a little nervous with all the lights and everything, but she’s also comfortable in the arms like this. This is not, absolutely, you know, something that would be a pet by any means, but something that is an animal that’s been hand raised and worked with by professionals.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Critters & Climate Change; How Global Warming Is Affecting Animals]

RODRIGUEZ: This is an animal that thrives in frigid temperatures, hence the name.

SCHWARTZ: Yes.

RODRIGUEZ: How is this animal in danger now?

SCHWARTZ: Well, the problem that we’re having up in the north, mainly with the polar bears. There’s not enough ice forming up there, so the time for them to hunt for their food is being diminished. The arctic fox can rely on other food sources during the summer months, but during the winter months, they follow polar bears around. Anybody who’s seen any footage of polar bears in the wild, we always see arctic foxes chasing after them to get all the scraps, basically the leftover food. So there’s a very important relationship there with that. If the polar bears can’t hunt and bring food out in the winter time for the arctic fox, we’re going to see them probably –  either their numbers decreasing also or possibly moving south and interfering with other species that would rely on the foods that they would be using.

RODRIGUEZ: Right, right.

SCHWARTZ: So everything is connected. And it’s kind of an interesting effect that’s occurring up there.

RODRIGUEZ: Important education. Alright. Thank you so much.

So, do you think Punxsutawney Phil reads IPCC Global Warming reports? Actually, Phil is probably verifiably more reliable.

The hot air emitted from almost a century of White House Correspondents' Association Dinners has surely done its fair share to warm the Earth. So this year, Washington's journalistic community is going green. Cue the self-congratulatory pomposity.

Of course taking dramatic measures to reduce the carbon footprint of the nation's journalistic establishment is not without cost; "the most eco-friendly dinner ever hosted by the association" will cost $225 a head, up from $200 last year. Calls for attendees to offset carbon they emit on the way to the gala fit nicely with the Association's, er, shall we say affiliation with the liberal agenda.

Yes, it's all well and good that these folks want to help out the environment. But do they really need another reason to pat themselves on the backs while the President lavishes praise upon the Association and its members satisfy what the Weekly Standard describes as a "shameless and apparently indestructible need to give awards to one another, in a kind of daisy chain without end"?

In all, prices will be raised, the Association will be using paper products for the dinner, and attendees will be encouraged to carpool or buy carbon offsets.

The WHCA released this announcement on its website late last month:

...for the first time in its 96-year history, the association is taking action to reduce the carbon impact of its annual black-tie gala; these actions include using as much as possible renewable energy for the event, paper products, supplies and services that reduce the threat of global warming, deforestation, toxic wastes, hazardous chemicals and species extinction.

="This will be the most eco-friendly dinner ever hosted by the association,'' said Edwin Chen, the group's president and a Bloomberg News White House correspondent.

"And we encourage our members and guests to join in that effort, such as by car-pooling, using hybrid vehicles and, for long-distance travelers to Washington, buying carbon-offsets,'' Chen said.

So the Washington Post reports that bin Laden is still furious about the U.S. causing global warming.

Al Jazeera, which originally broke the communiqué story, did so with a headline drawn from the Tiger Beat school of style: “Obama deplores climate change”.  AJ writes, “In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera, bin Laden criticised George Bush, the former US president, for rejecting the Kyoto pact and condemned global corporations.”

Oh, dear. We’re still on that kick again, one I think even the Post has dropped.

In 2002 Obama similarly parroted the Western media rant fashionable at the time that we “refuse[d] to sign the Kyoto agreement “, four years after Clinton signed it. Even the New York Times issued a correction, in November 2006.

Indeed the Post notes that “Bin Laden has mentioned climate change and global warning in past messages, but the latest tape was his first dedicated to the topic.” OK. So he’s losing it. At least he didn’t invoke Haiti.

But then the Post loses me, with “The speech, which included almost no religious rhetoric, could be an attempt by the terror leader to give his message an appeal beyond Islamic militants.” I can think of at least two things wrong with this analysis, and will just address the second one, that bin Laden apparently hasn’t seen the latest polls indicating there may be better wagon to which one ought hitch his star.

So, in sum, bin Laden has found common ground with Obama’s State of the Union speech, in part, accepting what Obama claimed is “the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change” — a material slip-up betraying ignorance, incidentally; the artful advocate sticks with “consensus, which is about prophesying, not “evidence” which is about observations and which is easily checked.

Bin Laden is just not so sold on the “green jobs” rhetoric. As the Post writes, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring the wheels of the American economy’ to a halt.”

Hey, even busted clocks get the odd point right. The big problem I return to is that bin Laden and the fundamentalists among the green movement share more than just global warming fervor and rhetoric. They seem to share an objective.

Leonardo DiCaprio and a list of Hollywood's finest have just released a public service announcement encouraging people to petition Congress to pass the Clean Energy & American Power Act aka cap and trade.

The ad was paid for by the left-leaning NRDC Action Fund, a group whose board of directors includes Ari Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former Chief of Staff.

The PSA encourages viewers to click on an embedded link which sends them to a petition saying the following (video embedded below the fold, h/t Story Balloon):

Dear Senator,

President Obama's call for comprehensive climate and energy legislation during the State of the Union speech has the support of the American people, and I urge you to support it as well. Among the reasons to support clean energy and climate legislation:

-- Less dependence on fossil fuels and enhanced national security: A climate bill will cut our oil imports by 5 million barrels a day and reduce our one billion dollar-a-day imported oil habit.

-- More innovation in our economy: A strong climate bill will help America's large and small businesses to grow again - that's why it has the support of 80 major companies and thousands of small businesses.

-- More jobs, and more sustainable jobs: A strong climate bill would create 1.9 million new clean energy jobs through investments clean and safe energy sources.

-- A healthier, safer environment for future generations.

I am counting on my senators to vocally and visibly express your support for the comprehensive climate and energy legislation that will achieve these goals and to reject proposals, like the "Dirty Air Act" proposed by Senator Murkowski (S.J. Res 26) which would undermine healthy air, clean energy and our national security.

Please let me know whether you will support comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

Just what America needs: more brainwashing from America's movie stars.

As if we don't get enough of that from their films. 

Two weeks after calling Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a horrible woman, CNN's Jack Cafferty said the House Speaker's arrogance was breathtaking.

During Tuesday's "Situation Room," Cafferty addressed the report the CBS "Evening News" did the previous day on the out of control spending by members of Congress at last month's United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen.

"Her arrogance on this subject: breathtaking," said Cafferty of the Speaker's failure to "explain why it was necessary for her and her colleagues to make the trip to Copenhagen in the first place."

He marvelously continued, "I'd be curious to know where Nancy Pelosi gets her sense of entitlement to simply blow hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money at Christmas time so she and her pals can take a little trip to Copenhagen" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's how much it cost for a delegation of 59 people led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi along with members of Congress, staff, and in some cases, spouses and kids to go to Copenhagen, site of the climate summit just before Christmas.

CBS News reports that for 21 congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,400, and the total hotel bill including meeting rooms came to more than $400,000. Pelosi used to military jets for herself and her party at a cost of more than $100,000 in flight time alone. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money -- has nothing to do with the Obama administration officials, who went to Denmark to actually attend and work at the summit.

Pelosi filed the required expense reports, but so far she has failed to explain why it was necessary for her and her colleagues to make the trip to Copenhagen in the first place. Her arrogance on this subject: breathtaking. As for the high hotel charges Pelosi's office says those who stayed two nights were charged a six-night minimum at the five-star Marriott, information that likely was available before Pelosi and her freeloaders made their vacation plans.

Note to the House Speaker: we have skyrocketing deficits, a trillion plus dollars a year, a national debt north of $12 trillion in this country. The president is talking about reining in discretionary spending. I wonder if that would have included this junket by Pelosi and her colleagues. I'd be curious to know where Nancy Pelosi gets her sense of entitlement to simply blow hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money at Christmas time so she and her pals can take a little trip to Copenhagen.

Here's the question. Should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi be required to explain her trip to Copenhagen? Go to CNN.com/CaffertyFile and post a comment on my blog. Here's a hint -- yes.

All those in favor say "Aye."

Yesterday, Media Research Center (MRC) President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell sat down in the MRC studio for a Skype interview with Breitbart.tv's "B-cast." [see video embed below the page break]

The topic: the latest MRC special report, "Omitting for Obama," which is a study of four stories --- Van Jones, Anita Dunn, ACORN, and ClimateGate -- "highlighted by the New Media in 2009 that were damaging to the Obama 'brand'" but were avoided like the plague by the old guard mainstream media.

MARCIANO: All right, one of many things we’re talking about out here later today [at the 21st annual Weather Summit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado]- we’re going to talk about climate, some of the- some top climate scientists are out here, and I got to talk to one of them yesterday, Jim White, and asked him about the IPCC report- you know, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There was a bit of snafu the past week or so, where they said that the glaciers in Himalayas we’re going to be gone by 2035. Well, that ended up being bad science, and this is what Jim had to say about that.

JIM WHITE, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO: Too much is riding on the fact that we get it right as scientists. I know that they got it right in their scientific literature, all right? It was just put down wrong in the IPCC report. But that itself is inexcusable.

MARCIANO: It is inexcusable, and it’s hurting the credibility somewhat of that Nobel Prize-winning organization, and it’s frustrating climate scientists here certainly in the U.S.

SANCHEZ: And here we go- time now for the ‘List You Don’t Want to Be On.’ It’s a tricky name to pronounce, but it’s an important story. He is Rajendra Pachauri. He is not just a global warming expert. He is in charge of the United Nations panel on climate change. He signed off on a memo that said the Himalayan glaciers will melt by the year 2035. Really? That soon? Just 25 years from now, you say?

If the global warming opponents needed more ammunition, he just gave it to them, by overreaching. Pachauri’s group has since apologized. Oops.

MARCIANO: All right, one of many things we’re talking about out here later today [at the 21st annual Weather Summit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado]- we’re going to talk about climate, some of the- some top climate scientists are out here, and I got to talk to one of them yesterday, Jim White, and asked him about the IPCC report- you know, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There was a bit of snafu the past week or so, where they said that the glaciers in Himalayas we’re going to be gone by 2035. Well, that ended up being bad science, and this is what Jim had to say about that.

JIM WHITE, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO: Too much is riding on the fact that we get it right as scientists. I know that they got it right in their scientific literature, all right? It was just put down wrong in the IPCC report. But that itself is inexcusable.

MARCIANO: It is inexcusable, and it’s hurting the credibility somewhat of that Nobel Prize-winning organization, and it’s frustrating climate scientists here certainly in the U.S.

SANCHEZ: And here we go- time now for the ‘List You Don’t Want to Be On.’ It’s a tricky name to pronounce, but it’s an important story. He is Rajendra Pachauri. He is not just a global warming expert. He is in charge of the United Nations panel on climate change. He signed off on a memo that said the Himalayan glaciers will melt by the year 2035. Really? That soon? Just 25 years from now, you say?

If the global warming opponents needed more ammunition, he just gave it to them, by overreaching. Pachauri’s group has since apologized. Oops.

"For 15 Democratic and six Republican congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,400 tax dollars each. That`s $2,200 a day, more than most Americans spend on their monthly mortgage payment."

So said CBS's Sharyl Attkisson Monday in a remarkable follow-up to her January 11 "Evening News" piece concerning the out of control spending by members of Congress at December's United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. 

Anchor Katie Couric teased viewers as the program opened, "CBS News exposed it: a congressional junket to the climate summit in Copenhagen. Now we can tell you how much it cost taxpayers as we followed the money."

Minutes later, Attkisson sliced and diced well-known members of Congress for their irresponsible spending of other people's money (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t NB John D. Seymour):

COURIC: Earlier this month, Sharyl Attkisson exposed a congressional junket to the climate conference in Copenhagen, a delegation of more than 100 traveling on your dime. Tonight we have a better idea of just how many dimes it cost you. Once again, Sharyl follows the money.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHARYL ATTKISSON, CBS CORRESPONDENT: There`s new light shed on the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Denmark and how much it cost you thanks to recently filed Congressional expense reports, official filings and our own investigation show at least 106 people from the House and Senate attended. Spouses, a doctor, a protocol expert and even a photographer. For 15 Democratic and six Republican congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,400 tax dollars each. That`s $2,200 a day, more than most Americans spend on their monthly mortgage payment.

We asked Congress and staff about whether they`re mindful it`s public tax dollars they`re spending. Many told us they never even see the bills or expense reports.

Congressman Henry Waxman is a key climate change player, shown here in Copenhagen. Last week we asked him about the $2,200 a day bill for room and food.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN, (D), CALIFORNIA: I can`t -- I can`t believe that. I can`t believe it but I don`t know.

ATTKISSON: But there it is right next to his name in black and white. The group expense report was filed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She wouldn`t talk about it when our producer tried to ask.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Regarding the Copenhagen expense account, madam speaker ...

ATTKISSON: Pelosi`s office did offer an explanation for the high room charges. Those who stayed just two nights were charged a six-night minimum at the five star Marriott. One staffer says they strongly objected to no avail. You may ask how they`ll negotiate a climate treaty if they can`t get a better deal on hotel rooms. Total hotel, meeting rooms and a couple of thousand dollar a night hospitality suites topped $400,000. Flights weren`t cheap, either. 59 House and Senate staff flew commercial during the Copenhagen rush. They paid government rates. $5,000 to $10,000 each. Add three military jets and the bill tops $1.1 million, not including all the Obama administration officials who attended, well over 60. In fairness, many attendees told us they did a lot of hard work and laid the ground work for a future global treaty.

WAXMAN: It was awfully cold and I was there because I thought it was important for me to be there. I didn`t look at it as a pleasure trip.

ATTKISSON: But considering the size of the deficit and the fact that no global agreement on climate change was reached, critics question the super-sized U.S. delegation. More than 165, leaving the impression there`s dollars to burn. In this case, more than a million. Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News, Washington.

Brava, Sharyl! Brava!

At NewsBusters last night, Noel Sheppard posted about a UK Daily Mail report that "A scientist responsible for a key 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warning Himalayan glaciers would be completely melted by 2035 has admitted that the claim was made to put political pressure on world leaders." Noel also noted that U.S. media coverage of this damning admission has been sparse.

The basis for the now-discredited claim was "a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF (World Wildlife Fund)." Further, the WWF report contained a basic math error causing it to assert that "one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres."

The Daily Mail reported that "Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’."

The statement must be humiliating, because if its text is anywhere on a WWF web site, it seems to be well-hidden, and perhaps deliberately so (see Update at the end of this post).

The most recent entry at WWF-US's Climate Blog is an announcement that "Earth Hour" is returning this year in March (oh boy) dated January 21 at 6:55 a.m.

As you'll see from the left side of the graphic that follows, the list of Recent Blog Posts shows that four other posts have been created since the Earth Hour post. The right portion of the graphic shows what happens when you click on the "After Slipping on Himalayan Glaciers, IPCC Reaffirms Commitment to High Standards and Thorough Review" in the Recent Blog Posts list:

I even became and then logged in as a registered user in an attempt to work around the access denial. Nothing changed.

Now it's true that two of the other three more recent posts are also inaccessible. But the "National Scientist Telepresser Audio MP3" link works fine, as does the audio when you go there. I did not get access denials on several older posts I clicked on at the WWF's Climate blog.

Multiple attempts to search the WWF's UK site for anything relevant to the statement of regret using various word strings came up empty. (See Update below)

A Google search on ["regrets any confusion caused" glaciers] (input as indicated between brackets) came up with no WWF links, nor did a similar search using "glacier" in singular form or replacing "glacier" with "WWF."

It seems more than a little convenient that WWF's "humiliating" statement of regret is inaccessible. I wonder if and when it will ever reappear? Further, I wonder how the establishment press would handle a conservative organization that had a humiliating statement acknowledging its mistakes hidden from view?

Maybe they should rename it the Worldwide Weasels Fund.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

UPDATE: NB commenter Locutus has located WWF-UK's statement. I was unable to locate it earlier today because my searches at the UK site used the word "regrets" instead of "regret" based on the Daily Mail's reported quote. 

WWF's U.S.-based Climate Blog still denies access to its related Himalayan glacier post, supporting the notion that it would prefer that as few people as possible in the U.S. learn of their grievous error. With the help of the U.S. establishment press, they will probably largely get their way.

A scientist responsible for a key 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warning Himalayan glaciers would be completely melted by 2035 has admitted that the claim was made to put political pressure on world leaders.

Such was revealed by the British Daily Mail Sunday in an article destined to further reduce the credibility of the world's so-called leading authority on manmade global warming.

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, the IPCC acknowledged earlier this week that its claim concerning these glaciers was based on junk science.

According to the Mail, those involved were quite aware of the faulty nature of this assertion, and did so for reasons consistent with what skeptics have been saying for years is at the very heart of the global warming myth (h/t Marc Morano):

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Unlike the glaciers, the plot thickens:

The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.

It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.

The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.

Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

As shocking as this seems, it is not at all surprising that it was uncovered by a British newspaper. NewsBusters has been reporting for years that the foreign press, in particular outlets in Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, do a far better job of reporting on matters relating to global warming than those based in America.

This has certainly been true the past couple of months as stateside media outlets withheld reports about the ClimateGate scandal, and largely ignored this Himalayan glacier issue.

As the global warming myth unravels before our very eyes, are Americans going to continue to have to rely on British journalists for the truth?

Or will news outlets on this side of the Atlantic ever abandon their devotion to this clearly dying cause and start doing their jobs?

Stay tuned. 

Just days after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted it used junk science to predict Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, its claim that global warming is linked to increased natural disasters has also been found to be wrongly concluded.

The British Times Online reported moments ago:

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The article continued:

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s".

It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: "One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

With Wednesday's announcement by the IPCC "that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers," the credibility of this organization at the heart of global warming hysteria is brought into further question.

But will American media report this new revelation?

After all, as NewsBusters reported Saturday, television news outlets other than Fox competely ignored Wednesday's announcement by the IPCC, as did many print publications.

Will this new revelation of IPCC incompetence garner more attention?

Stay tuned.

Last Sunday, NewsBusters reported that the United Nations might be about to retract a claim its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made back in 2007 concerning Himalayan glaciers being completely gone by 2035 as a result of global warming.

On Wednesday, the IPCC issued a statement concerning the matter:

It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.

Despite the seriousness of this apology and its implications for the veracity of the entire manmade global warming myth, the announcement was completely ignored by America's major television news outlets EXCEPT Fox News (partial transcript of January 20's "Special Report" below the fold):

BRET BAIER, HOST: United Nations climate scientist today admitted a warning including in the 2007 report that global warming will melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was not actually based on science.

A statement by the panel read, quote, "In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the intergovernmental panel on climate change, procedures were not applied properly."

That 2007 Nobel winning report claimed to include the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming and is supposed to be the basis for government policy. Some are seeing the revelation a little differently. A headline linked on the "Huffington Post" Web site read, "Himalayan glacier goof-up more fake ammo for the climate denial industry."

According to LexisNexis, not one other national television news outlet covered this announcement.

Not one.

Of course, this isn't at all surprising.

After all, it took these same folks many days to report on November's ClimateGate scandal. 

Why should they feel the need to tell Americans that one of the key tenets of global warming hysteria has now been tossed out by the group at the heart of spreading the hysteria?

They certainly don't want to do anything that would discredit their beloved IPCC OR Nobel Laureate Al Gore who referred to Himalayan glacier melts in his schlockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

But the television newsers aren't the only ones complicit in hiding this information from the public.

The New York Times on Thursday gave this story four sentences on page A8 of its New York edition.

That's better than the Washington Post and USA Today, for according to LexisNexis, they didn't report it at all.

Amazing. 

...at least for one person.  Who?  Penn State University's Michael Mann, a climate scientist whose credibility has come into question.  He's the guy behind Al Gore's famous "hockey stick" graph, which has been discredited.

Mann was also a central figure in the Climate-Gate email scandal, which showed prominent global warming alarmists to be fudging the data and squelching dissent.

According to today's Wall Street Journal, more than $2.4 million is "stimulating" the career of Michael Mann:

Mr. Mann came by his grants via the National Science Foundation, which received $3 billion in stimulus money. Last June, the foundation approved a $541,184 grant to fund [Mann's] work [...] He received another grant worth nearly $1.9 million [...] Both grants say they were "funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

I assumed the deceit revealed by the emails and hockey stick error would mean my tax dollars will stop going to someone like Mann.  I assume wrong:

The NSF made these awards prior to last year's climate email scandal, but a member of its Office of Legislative and Public Affairs told us she was "unaware of any discussion regarding suspending or changing the awards made to Michael Mann."

Give me a break.

...at least for one person.  Who?  Penn State University's Michael Mann, a climate scientist whose credibility has come into question.  He's the guy behind Al Gore's famous "hockey stick" graph, which has been discredited.

Mann was also a central figure in the Climate-Gate email scandal, which showed prominent global warming alarmists to be fudging the data and squelching dissent.

According to today's Wall Street Journal, more than $2.4 million is "stimulating" the career of Michael Mann:

Mr. Mann came by his grants via the National Science Foundation, which received $3 billion in stimulus money. Last June, the foundation approved a $541,184 grant to fund [Mann's] work [...] He received another grant worth nearly $1.9 million [...] Both grants say they were "funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

I assumed the deceit reveled by the emails and hockey stick error would mean my tax dollars will stop going to someone like Mann.  I assume wrong:

The NSF made these awards prior to last year's climate email scandal, but a member of its Office of Legislative and Public Affairs told us she was "unaware of any discussion regarding suspending or changing the awards made to Michael Mann."

Give me a break.

Today's New York Times holds a mirror up to much of its readership: the sanctimonious liberals who know what’s best for us and insist we live as they dictate. And since we’re talking liberals, we’re talking environment.

Hummer

As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the extent to which they should change their lives to save the planet.

In households across the country, green lines are being drawn between those who insist on wild salmon and those who buy farmed, those who calculate their carbon footprint and those who remain indifferent to greenhouse gases.

Any issue that causes liberals discomfort merits calling in the therapists.

(T)herapists agree that the green issue can quickly become poisonous because it is so morally charged. Friends or family members who are not devoted to the environmental cause can become irritated by life choices they view as ostentatiously self-denying or politically correct. Those with a heightened focus on environmental issues, on the other hand, can find it hard to refrain from commenting on things that they view as harmful to Earth — driving an oversize S.U.V., for example.

The green bullies have hectored us since the ‘60s. Now that their insane demands are damaging their families and relationships, maybe they’ll wise up and realize there’s room on their planet for lifestyles beyond their own. Maybe. I won’t hold my breath.

On Friday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC’s Bill O’Reilly responded to left-wing actor Danny Glover’s recent comments blaming Haiti’s problems on the U.S., invoking America’s failure to reach an agreement at the Copenhagen summit on climate change. In his show’s "Talking Points Memo," O’Reilly recounted the relatively small amount of aid pledged so far by a number of nations, in comparison to the $100 million America has already pledged to Haiti.

Later, during a segment with Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill, after Hill had made his best guess at interpreting what Glover meant in his remarks, O’Reilly took particular exception with the liberal actor praising Venezuela in the same statement in which he condemned America, reminding viewers that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had only pledged one plane full of aid to Haiti. O’Reilly: "I got a kick out of Glover, who's a big friend of Hugo Chavez, saying that Venezuela is one of the countries on the point of attack. As you may have heard in the ‘Talking Points Memo,’ Venezuela has sent exactly one plane full of stuff – one – one plane to Haiti."

During the show’s "Talking Points Memo," after relaying that President Obama had so far pledged $100 million in aid, O’Reilly informed viewers of aid pledges at that point made by several other nations:

China has pledged little more than $5 million in cash and aid. I mean, how generous is that? Russia pledging one mobile hospital and 20 doctors. Putin's another Mother Teresa, isn't he? That great humanitarian Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, sending one plane full of relief supplies. You know what, Hugo? Keep your stupid plane. Iran sending 30 tons of food and medicine, a pittance. So far, Saudi Arabia, a very wealthy nation, has pledged nothing. So you can see who the good guy in the world really is. Without America, this planet would really be in a shambles.

Below is a complete transcript of the "Talking Points Memo" and the interview with Professor Marc Lamont Hill, from the Friday, January 15, The O’Reilly Factor, on FNC:

BILL O'REILLY: Once again, the Great Satan comes to the rescue. That is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo." As you may know, anti-American people overseas call the USA the "Great Satan," even though America's record would shame the devil. We have done more good on this Earth than any other nation in history. And once again, the USA has responded big to a disaster taking charge in Haiti, as the American military tries to save as many lives as possible. President Obama has pledged $100 million to help the Haitian people. That's in addition to the almost $3 billion we've already given that nation since 1992. The Heritage Foundation estimates that before it's all over, the USA will pour another billion dollars into Haiti. That counts military expenditures and infrastructure rebuilding.

By comparison, the benevolent nation of China has pledged little more than $5 million in cash and aid. I mean, how generous is that? Russia pledging one mobile hospital and 20 doctors. Putin's another Mother Teresa, isn't he? That great humanitarian Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, sending one plane full of relief supplies. You know what, Hugo? Keep your stupid plane. Iran sending 30 tons of food and medicine, a pittance. So far, Saudi Arabia, a very wealthy nation, has pledged nothing. So you can see who the good guy in the world really is. Without America, this planet would really be in a shambles. But don't tell that to the far left. In just a few moments, you'll hear Danny Glover, who could be a nut, accuse the USA of actually harming Haiti. Unbelievable.

And on the right, there are still people pounding President Obama for reacting quickly to the Haiti earthquake. That's dumb as well. There is no question that we Americans are the most generous people on Earth. "Talking Points" will predict that private donations from us will top $100 million. That's in addition to our tax money that's being sent. Also, American corporations like Google and Microsoft have already contributed almost $45 million. And that will go up.

Now if you want to give money to the Haitian people, I suggest the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, or the Haitian Health Foundation. That's the charity the Factor has contributed to for years. Information about the Haitian Health Foundation is on billoreilly.com. So, all in all, the great Satan has come through again. I remain very proud of my country. And I will challenge anyone who doesn't feel the same way. We're coming for you, Danny Glover, in a few moments. And that's the Memo.

...

O'REILLY: "Personal Story" segment tonight, Danny Glover is one of the most extreme far left actors in America. He made his name in the Lethal Weapon movies starring along with Mel Gibson. And Mr. Glover has had a very successful acting career, even though he despises his country. Here's his take on Haiti:

DANNY GLOVER AUDIO: I believe this is going to be a defining moment for this administration. What we lay forth in a new relationship, in a partnership with Haiti, not one of dominance, not one in which it tries to extract even more from the pain of the Haitian people, but a new relationship, and I think that other countries in the region, I think Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and other countries have already stepped to the point of that. There's all this hell because of global warming - all this hell because of climate change and all this. ... When we did what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response. This is what happens, you know what I'm saying?

O'REILLY: I have no idea what you're saying. Joining us now from Detroit to translate, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, who teaches at Columbia University. I have no idea. Let's start with Copenhagen. How does Copenhagen, in your opinion in Mr. Glover's mind, equate to Haiti?

MARC LAMONT HILL: Well, you know, I listened to the tape, the audio at least ten times to make sure I understood exactly what he was saying. And I think what he was trying to express is a failure of leadership in the global community towards the Third World and particularly the Caribbean. So what he was saying is the leadership dropped the ball in Copenhagen. And this is an example of what happens when leadership drops the ball. I don't think he was saying that Copenhagen caused this. If he was, it's completely crazy.

O'REILLY: Okay, but would you concede that the point was a bit murky?

HILL: Yeah, absolutely.

O'REILLY: Okay, because I have no idea. You had to listen to it 10 times and you came up with something-

HILL: Right.

O'REILLY: -and you're a brilliant PH.D., a man of letters and extreme knowledge. I, just a regular pedestrian person, have no idea what he's saying. But okay.

HILL: You get no argument from me.

O'REILLY: The failure of leadership in Copenhagen on warming equates somehow to Haiti and a failure of leadership. All right, now I got a kick out of Glover, who's a big friend of Hugo Chavez, saying that Venezuela is one of the countries on the point of attack. As you may have heard in the "Talking Points Memo," Venezuela has sent exactly one plane full of stuff – one – one plane to Haiti.

HILL: I think it was potato chips.

O'REILLY: Yeah, I don't know if they're really in the forefront, you know what I'm talking about, doctor?

HILL: Yeah. The Venezuela Cuba comparison is a bit curious. Again, if he's suggesting that we should follow Venezuela's and Cuba's lead in terms of philanthropy and humanitarian aid.

O'REILLY: Yeah, then there’d be three planes.

HILL: Right, there’d be three planes.

O'REILLY: If we follow their lead, there'd be one from Venezuela, one from Cuba, and one from the USA. That would be swell. Okay, then he says-

HILL: That would be trouble.

O'REILLY: -then he says that he doesn't want a relationship of dominance between the United States and Haiti. I guess we should be equals. And we're not going to extract anything from the Haitian people. Now I have studied Haiti. I've been there a couple of times. We've given Haiti $3 billion since 1992. I'm not sure what we've extracted from them. Do you know what we've extracted from them?

HILL: Well, Bill, quite honestly, that's where Danny Glover, I think, makes the most sense. I think what he's saying is that over the last 15 years, there's been a set of arrangements and circumstances that have driven the Haitian people further into poverty. Now, of course, there's internal corruption. There's absolutely no doubt about that. In fact, much of the money that they got from the IMF and the World Bank went to the pockets and the coffers of Pappa Doc and Baby Doc. So we know that there's corruption. But there's also this issue of an embargo. You know, there was an embargo in the '90s that really drove more people into poverty. You know, when they opened up Haiti to U.S. resources and U.S. agriculture, many Haitian, you know, farmers and such were driven into deeper and deeper poverty. And that's an issue. And so while we're giving them money and America's done a great job of supporting them, Danny Glover is saying that we can no longer have sweat shops in Haiti. And we can no longer continue to take things out. We need to have a more mutual relationship.

O'REILLY: Okay, but if he doesn't want the United States to dominate the nation, we can't then tell them whether they can have sweat shops, whether they can grow this or that, because he doesn't want dominance. Look, the bottom line on Haiti is this. We've tried. Bill Clinton, you know, America's first black President, President Obama's the second one?

HILL: He had a Negro dialect, but he wasn't black.

O'REILLY: Bill Clinton devoted time and time and money and effort for eight years, couldn't get through. Couldn't do it. Couldn't improve.

HILL: But Bill, many people on the left, particularly Danny Glover, would argue that Bill Clinton is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

O'REILLY: Okay.

HILL: If you were to ask Danny Glover, he would say Bill Clinton is engineering a whole range of processes.

O'REILLY: That's why I think that Danny is crazy. See, in Danny's mind, Hugo, he's part of the solution, but Bill Clinton, who tried his hardest and gave them hundreds of millions of dollars over there, part of the problem. But doctor. you know what? I appreciate you translating because-

HILL: That's what I'm here for.

O'REILLY: -I had no idea what Danny Glover was talking about. And now I have a little bit of an idea.

A 2007 warning from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers would be completely gone by 2035 due to global warming may be retracted in the coming days.

New revelations concerning this claim indicate that it actually came from a 1999 article in a scientific journal that was in no way verified by any members of the IPCC.

As Britain's Sunday Times reported Sunday, in the wake of ClimateGate e-mail messages showing IPCC scientists manipulating climate data, a retraction of this Himalayan glacier warning would further undermine claims by these people that the science is settled concerning man's role in global warming (h/t Ed Morrissey):

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: "If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments." 

This is what the New Scientist reported on June 5, 1999:

MELTING Himalayan glaciers are threatening to unleash a torrent of floods into mountain valleys, and ultimately dry up rivers across South Asia. A new study, due to be presented in July to the International Commission on Snow and Ice (ICSI), predicts that most of the glaciers in the region will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.

"All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating," says Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, the chief author of the ICSI report. A typical example is the Gangorti glacier at the head of the River Ganges, which is retreating at a rate of 30 metres per year. Hasnain's four-year study indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035 at their present rate of decline.

Glaciers cover around 17 per cent of the Himalayas and contain thousands of cubic kilometres of water. Taken together with those on the neighbouring Tibetan plateau, they represent the largest body of ice on the planet outside the polar regions. Furthermore, their meltwater makes up two-thirds of the flow of great South Asian rivers such as the Ganges, on which hundreds of millions of people depend.

But Hasnain's working group on Himalayan glaciology, set up by the ICSI, has found that glaciers are receding faster in the Himalayas than anywhere else on Earth. Hasnain warns that as the glaciers disappear, the flow of these rivers will become less reliable and eventually diminish, resulting in widespread water shortages.

According to the Times, Hasnain's report didn't say anything about the glaciers being gone by 2035:

The IPCC's reliance on Hasnain's 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: "Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.

"Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers. not the whole massif.

The revelation is a major blow to the credibility of the IPCC which was set up to provide political leaders with clear, independent advice on climate change.

It follows the 'Climategate' email row in which scientists at the University of East Anglia appeared to have manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made climate change.

Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'The IPCC review process has been shown on numerous occasions to lack transparency and due diligence.

'Its work is controlled by a tightly knit group of individuals who are completely convinced that they are right. As a result, conflicting data and evidence, even if published in peer reviewed journals, are regularly ignored, while exaggerated claims, even if contentious or not peer-reviewed, are often highlighted in IPCC reports.

'Not surprisingly, the IPCC has lost a lot of credibility in recent years. It is also losing the trust of more and more governments who are no longer following their advice - as the Copenhagen summit showed.'

The flawed claim appeared in chapter 10 of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which stated: 'Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.'

New Scientist filed its own report on this growing controversy last Monday:

Glaciologists are this week arguing over how a highly contentious claim about the speed at which glaciers are melting came to be included in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [...]

Vijay Raina, a leading Indian glaciologist, wrote in a discussion paper published by the Indian government in November that there is no sign of "abnormal" retreat in Himalayan glaciers. India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, accused the IPCC of being "alarmist". [...]

Graham Cogley, a geographer from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, says the 2035 date is extremely unlikely. "At current melting rates it might take up to 10 times longer," he says.

Not surprisingly, the growing controversy is causing a lot of fingerpointing according to New Scientist:

However, the lead author of the IPCC chapter, Indian glaciologist Murari Lal, told New Scientist he "outright rejected" the notion that the IPCC was off the mark on Himalayan glaciers. "The IPCC authors did exactly what was expected from them," he says.

"We relied rather heavily on grey [not peer-reviewed] literature, including the WWF report," Lal says. "The error, if any, lies with Dr Hasnain's assertion and not with the IPCC authors."

But Hasnain rejects that. He blames the IPCC for misusing a remark he made to a journalist. "The magic number of 2035 has not [been] mentioned in any research papers written by me, as no peer-reviewed journal will accept speculative figures," he told New Scientist.

"It is not proper for IPCC to include references from popular magazines or newspapers," Hasnain adds.

Indeed it is not. As Ed Morrissey noted Sunday:

So the IPCC read the interview in which Hasnain speculated — with no scientific evidence whatsoever — that a portion of the Himalayan glaciers would melt at some indeterminate time, and concluded that the entirety of the massif would evaporate by 2035.  They never even bothered to wait for Hasnain’s report to see exactly what he claimed, and why.  Instead, they just inflated the unsubstantiated speculation with a zeppelin of greenhouse-gas hyperbole and stated categorically that the entire glacial structure in the Himalayas would be gone in a quarter-century.

This is what passes for science at the UN.  This is what passes for science at the IPCC.  It’s also what passed for science at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

And AGW hysterics like to call skeptics deniers, in what is clearly the most obvious case of projection on the global stage.

The only questions remaining are will the IPCC retract this warning, and how will American media report the retraction if it occurs.

After all, this glacial melt claim is pivotal to climate alarmism. If it is retracted, and the IPCC admits that it unscientifically based its conclusion on one article in one journal, not only would this undermine its own credibility as a scientific organization, but it would remove one of the great threats alarmists like Nobel Laureate Al Gore use to scare people into believing this myth.

No matter how you slice it, coming only two months after ClimateGate first unfolded, it is quite clear the wheels are falling off the manmade global warming bus. 

Ain't it grand?

Far-left actor Danny Glover, during an online interview this week, proposed global warming caused the devastating earthquake in Haiti. FNC caught up with the silliness Friday night, as Jim Angle led the “Grapevine” segment:

Actor Danny Glover says the earthquake in Haiti is a result of global warming. Glover told GRITtv that it could have happened to any of the Caribbean island nations, quote: “They are all in peril because of global warming.” Then, he lamented the failure of the climate summit in Copenhagen. As a result of that failure, he says, “this is what happens.”

The ludicrous Glover quote in full, from the interview with the leftist GRITtv (conducted by phone from Seattle with Laura Flanders), which was posted on YouTube on Wednesday, the 13th:

I hope we seize this particular moment because the threat of what happened to Haiti is the threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know. They're all in peril because of global warming, they're all in peril because of climate change and all of this....

When we look back at what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I'm saying? But we have to act now.

Audio: MP3 clip (30 seconds) Listen and see if you can figure out his point.

This story in E&EM News PM (subscription required), “Murkowski floats plan to force Senate vote on cap and trade next week”, is spectacular.

Here are the money lines, all noting Sen. Murkowski’s clever plan to simply call the Left on their rhetoric and posing about the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill S. 1733, a bill that was marked up in the Environment and Public Works Committee in a somber yet urgent November affair, reporting it to the Senate floor and, oh yes, the Copenhagen conference:

“‘Boxer-Kerry is a non-starter, and the amendment — if that’s what it said — it would expose that,’ said Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon. ‘We obviously don’t want to pass the bill; we’re confident that it would fail.’ Holding a vote on the Kerry-Boxer bill would ’show the sense of the Senate, where it is,’ Dillon said….

‘What she’s trying to do is force Democrats to vote against a bill that is clearly one that is not ripe to be brought to the Senate floor,’ said Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, noting that the bill was intended to be combined with an energy bill aimed at lowering energy costs and spurring investments in technology.

‘This is Lisa Murkowski giving the finger to those who believe we need to reduce global warming pollution because this is not a serious proposal,’ Weiss said.”

Well, that’s not quite what it is, but it does reveal that someone was giving the rest of us the finger all along. And I am more than a little amused to note how the “us” includes not a few fellow travelers in Copenhagen.

Team Soros’s Dan Weiss calls the marked-up, EPW-approved Kerry-Boxer bill, rushed through to impress the Europeans with the Dems’ seriousness of purpose and courageous stance on the precipice of bicameral enactment, ”not a serious proposal.”

Gosh that’s great stuff. And quite a turnaround for our eager green beaver who, when peddling the pose, touted the bill as “another signal to the international community that the U.S. is serious about achievement of real reductions in its global warming pollution.” But, hey, being a green means never having to say you’re sorry. Just ask all of those Third World children who’ve paid the price for the agenda.

Still, no kidding. Nice you finally admit that when it looks like this bill — “marked up” in, and voted out of committee to the floor for quick packaging overseas — looks like it might be something your pals can have held against them in a meaningful way. Something about the prospect of a hanging and how it aids one’s thinking, etc. Or, maybe, it’s just that it’s rather easier to strike a silly pose for some Euro-love (still an epic fail, incidentally) than it is to confront your voters.

What poseurs! he is effectively admitting about a bill reported to the floor as well as publicly and we now know dishonestly hailed, if adding his own touch of absurdity: nothing added by other committees would unring the bell of cap-and-trade — the objective of which our president has admitted is to cause your energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket” and “bankrupt” coal and dependent industries. So they’re reduced to some strange line of saying it’s painful but, you see, we were planning on adding some windmill and pixie dust “green jobs” nonsense to it and suddenly take away the pain (or, well , at least distract from what we’re really doing).

Second, recall and prepare to catalogue the promiscuous use of the line, in promotion of “must act now!” legislative pain, that “hey now…we don’t want EPA to do this!”. It does provide them a nice hard place against which to be pressed: possibly they might be forced to say “but I don’t want Congress to either!” (or they do want that but just not via the bill marked up in and voted out of committee and sold to the Europeans et al. as being really great shakes and almost there…)?

Great stuff. Really. And yet another wonderful exhibit about how seriously to take these people.

Yet another leftist has attacked the Senate filibuster.  The chorus from the left is growing and one can only assume that this coordinated attack is evidence that liberal Senators are readying a challenge to the Senate’s filibuster.  The left absolutely hates the fact that they have to deal with that pesky Constitution that protects and promotes transparency, debate and dissent.  They are intent on tossing aside the idea in the Constitution that we are a democratic republic with States being represented by two Senators with the right to extended debate and unlimited amendment.

This conspiracy by left wingers has a specific goal — to abolish dissent in the Senate, exterminate Republican participation in the democratic process, and marginalize moderate Democrats.  It seems the left is willing to stomp all over the Senate’s rules to get a public option, regulate Wall Street into the Stone Age and pass global warming legislation before the end of one of the coldest winters on record in American history.

Harold Meyerson groused in the L.A. Times that the Senate has yet to follow the House in establishing government run health care through the establishment of a Public Option for ObamaCare:

The House delivered: It passed healthcare reform with a “public option”; it passed financial reform legislation; it passed cap-and-trade legislation that would slow global warming. But then it sent those bills to the Senate, where American progress grinds to a halt. The Senate’s filibuster rule enables the minority party to hold up any legislation that doesn’t have a 60-vote supermajority.

The Constitution explicitly states in Article I, Section 5 that “each house may determine the rule of its proceedings.”  It seems that the left has a very short term goal of getting the government to become the de facto CEO of private health insurers, the financial sector and the energy producers of the U.S. economy by ignoring the Constitution and tossing aside the Senate’s filibuster rule.

In addition to Meyerson’s hatred of free market capitalism, he voices a hostility to the idea, as embodied by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution,  that each state has equal representation in one of the two chambers of Congress.

Worse yet, the Senate’s rules make even more of a mockery of the principle of majority rule. With Republicans determined to keep Congress from doing its job, 60 votes are required to pass any significant legislation. As a consequence, Obama’s legislative agenda has been hostage to the demands and obsessions of the Senate’s most conservative Democrats, a number of whom — Nebraska’s Ben Nelson and North Dakota’s Kent Conrad, for instance — come from states with more ghost towns than cities.

This liberal hates Red State America and the idea that the Senate is a body consisting of 100 members from 50 states, because some conservative leaning states with smaller populations have the same influence as those from bigger left leaning states.  It seems that every day another left winger mounts a case against the filibuster and we should expect more in the next few days and weeks.

Meyerson is the self proclaimed “most liberal voice on the (Washington) Post op-ed page.”    Those that hate big government need to keep a close eye on the Senate to make sure that this left wing war against the filibuster does not get momentum.   Remember that the filibuster is constitutional and essential for freedom.

Three items for you about Michael Mann, ClimateGate bully/eco-con artist… [...] Read the rest »

After a series of successful and unsuccessful jihad attacks across this great nation, on Christmas day the crotch bomber struck, attempting to explode a bomb hidden in his underwear while landing in Detroit on Northwest Flight 253. And so after months of ignoring the jihad against America and pretending that nothing was happening, Barack Obama sprang into action — with useless, toothless reform.

In the wake of the Christmas Day bomber’s attempted attack, the US Visas Viper terrorist reporting program criteria have been broadened.

The Visas Viper program is used by the Department of State and other national agencies to place on “watch lists” known or suspected international terrorists in unclassified and classified government look out systems such as CLASS (Consular Lookout and Support Systems).

So it’s a good thing that Obama is broadening the criteria for reporting terrorists in this program, isn’t it? Actually, no. Make no mistake: it is not going to help whatsoever. Obama’s “tough” new criteria don’t let us filter out potential terrorists using minimal profiling criteria.

The vast number of bureaucracies involved already render the “watch list” process a tangled up inter-agency web. And it is simply ridiculous how the Visas Viper system, which is the main system that we use to try to prevent terrorists from obtaining visas, uses such vague and toothless criteria – even after Obama’s “reform.” How vague and toothless? Under the present system, people who express anti-American sentiments can fly. People who contribute money to identified terror organizations can fly – no problem. People who associate with known terrorists, but have done nothing further to support terrorism, can also fly. Even people who claim to be members of a terrorist organization, but have done nothing to further support terrorism can fly.

This is insane. Isn’t membership in a terror organization support of terror?

All this is consistent for Barack Obama. He has blamed Gitmo for Islamic expansionism, appearing to believe that if we bow and kowtow to our mortal enemy he will become a friend. Don’t upset the Nazis, and they will love us!

Obama has long ignored the onslaught of jihad attacks in America. Close to 40% of the planned and actual Islamic attacks on America post-9/11 took place in Obama’s first year.

Back in September, in a breathtaking act of audacity, Obama stood at the podium of the UN in New York City talking about what he thought was the greatest threat to Americans and to future generations: global warming. As he spoke, bomb-sniffing dogs were out in force in New York City. Ray Kelly, the New York City police commissioner, was giving a press conference on the situation. A cell of Islamic jihadis targeting New York City was planning to blow up the transit system, as well as sports stadiums and the sites used for Fashion Week. Self-storage lockers in Queens were being searched for bomb-making materials.

The president spoke of the global warming hoax like a snake oil salesman. He said that “we understand the gravity” of the threat. “We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations.” He said that a failure to address the threat could lead to an “irreversible catastrophe.” Time, he said, is “running out,” but “we can reverse” the problem. “If things go business-as-usual, we will not live, we will die,” he said. “Our country will not exist.” He told us that it wouldn’t be easy, but “I am here today to say that difficulty is no excuse for complacency. Unease is no excuse for inaction.” Imagine, he said this while the city was in the throes of jihad terror – what would have been the worst attack on New York since 9/11.

Yet when Senator Jack Reed said on FOX News Sunday that the Obama administration was better on terrorism than the Bush administration, he wasn’t joking.

Only the left can massacre language, render words meaningless and have their egregious actions left unchallenged.

But they will not forever go unchallenged. The jihad will only get worse. And I predict when a Muslim gets one off in a mall or an airport, and limbs are flying and babies are dying, that Tea Partiers and Town Hallers will be joined by counter jihad protests. They will be protesting the Obama administration’s hopeless inaction and impotence in the face of the jihad against our nation.