Cooler Heads Digest 20 November 2009

by William Yeatman on November 20, 2009

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Is Old George Still Causing Trouble?
Myron Ebell, Wall Street Journal, 20 November 2009

The Decline of Climate Alarmism
Robert Bradley, MasterResource.org, 20 November 2009

Estimating the Cost of Cap-and-Trade
David Kreutzer, Heritage WebMemo, 19 November 2009

Climate Gasbags Want To Shame You
Greg Gutfeld, FoxNews, 19 November 2009

Revenge of the Climate Layman
Anne Jolis, Wall Street Journal, 18 November 2009

Pawlenty’s Flip-Flop
Paul Chesser, GlobalWarming.org, 17 November 2009

Kyoto II Climate Change Treaty; Implications for American Sovereignty
Steven Groves, Copenhagen Consequences, 17 November 2009

Obama’s Failure
Chris Horner, Planet Gore, 17 November 2009

News You Can Use

NASA: Sun Drives Climate

An major article in this week’s Spiegel Online, “Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out,” cited a recent study by NASA scientists in the journal Geophysical Research Letters showing that reduced solar activity is the most important cause of stagnating global warming.

Cap-and-Trade Poll

The Pew Research Center polled Americans with the question, “What does a cap-and-trade deal with?” Twenty-seven percent of Republicans, but only 15% of Democrats, knew that cap-and-trade is an environmental policy.

Obama’s 70-car Motorcade

President Barack Obama went to China this week to discuss a climate change policies, among other things. According to the Politico, Obama traveled in China with a 70-car motorcade.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

World Leaders Concede Failure in Copenhagen

World leaders and the United Nations’ top global warming officials have given up signing a big new international treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen next month.  Instead, they are now talking about concluding such an agreement some time in 2010 and coming to a less ambitious agreement in Copenhagen.  The latter might be a list of national commitments from all the major developed economies and most of the major developing countries.

For example, the Obama Administration might commit the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 14% or 17% below current levels by 2020.  The Obama Administration may indeed do that, but what’s going on in the Senate makes such a commitment look unconvincing.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has now put off any consideration of the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bills until this spring.  He’s putting a polite gloss on the ugly (for the alarmists) reality: the Kerry-Boxer bill is dead in the Senate.  Whether some other version of cap-and-trade surfaces and gains traction next spring is now the question.

Across the States

California

The California Energy Commission on Wednesday established energy efficiency standards for large screen televisions. To understand why this policy unnecessarily limits consumer choice, read this commentary by CEI’s William Yeatman in the Orange County Register. The Washington Times reports today that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has sent a letter to the Department of Energy demanding similar television standards for the rest of the country.

Alaska

The AP reported this week that Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) is suing the federal government to overturn the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species. The Governor noted that polar bear populations are at historical all-time highs, having increased to 25,000 from 10,000 in 1960.

Oregon

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski (D) has ordered an immediate review of the state’s tax incentives for renewable energy after the Oregonian reported that state officials had deliberately low-balled cost estimates of the program by a factor of forty.

Around the World

Myron Ebell

Australia

Australia’s Labor Government has again passed cap-and-trade legislation through the House and sent it to the Senate.  The Senate is closely divided, and seven votes from the opposition Liberal or National parties or from the small parties or independents are needed.  Liberal Party Leader Malcolm Turnbull, who represents a very wealthy part of Sydney and is a global warming true believer, is pulling out all the stops to force some of his party’s Senators to go along.  He is meeting strong public opposition from the Liberals’ Senate leader, Nick Minchin, and several other Liberal Senators including Cory Bernardi and Tony Abbott.  The Senate will probably vote before the end of the parliamentary session on November 30th.  While the outcome is still in doubt, it is clear that Turnbull is risking splitting his party in order to enact energy-rationing legislation.  News reports and personal communications agree that opposition to the bill is growing stronger and broader among the Liberal Party’s Representatives and Senators and supporters among the electorate.

The Global Warming Establishment Uncovered

Julie Walsh

The electronic files of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK have been hacked and 61 MB worth of emails, approximately a thousand documents, have been posted on the internet on a Russian server. CRU is one of the few institutions in the world that compile and maintain the records of the world’s temperature data. In an interview with “Investigate” magazine, the director of CRU Professor Phil Jones said, “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.” Anthony Watts has the evolving story at WattsUpWithThat.com.

Here are some of the most revealing and shocking email quotes unearthed so far (my emphases):

On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Tom Wigley wrote:

Mike (Mann),

The Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical runs with PCM look as though they match observations — but the match is a fluke. PCM has no indirect aerosol forcing and a low climate sensitivity — compensating errors. In my (perhaps too harsh) view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC. This is why I still use results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and forcing assumptions/uncertainties.

From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxx.xx>

To: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@xxx.xx>

Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

Date: Thu Jul  8 16:30:16 2004

The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it. I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !

From: Kevin Trenberth

To: Michael Mann

Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate

Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

From: Phil Jones

To: “Michael E. Mann”

Subject: IPCC & FOI

Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

From: Ben Santer

To: P.Jones

Subject: Re: CEI formal petition to derail EPA GHG endangerment finding with charge that destruction of CRU raw data undermines integrity of global temperature record

Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:07:56 -0700

I’m really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.

My colleague Chris Horner wrote a book published in 2008 on this exact subject, “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

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