Good old Leftist projection at work among Warmists

After a decade of abusing skeptics with practically every derogatory epithet in the book, they now accuse skeptics of abusing THEM with practically every derogatory epithet in the book.

They politicized the issue and now accuse skeptics of politicizing the issue.

They wanted "denial" treated as a criminal offence and now complain that skeptics want their deceptions treated as a criminal offence.

They should have read and heeded Matthew 7:12

In a letter published in the journal Science, more than 250 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel Prize laureates, condemned the increase in "political assaults" on scientists who argue greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet.

The 'climategate' scandal and mistakes by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have led to a surge in attacks on climate scientists around the world.

In the US politicians have called for a criminal investigation of climate scientists, while in the UK eminent professors have received hate mail and even death threats.

In a strongly worded letter, the group of scientists likened the situation to the 'McCarthy era' in the US where anyone suspected of communist links was threatened with persecution. The period in the 1950s was named after the anti-communist pursuits of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

"We call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them," the letter read.

The defence of climate science comes after a number of scandals cast doubt on the theory of man-made global warming. Emails stolen from the University of East Anglia (UEA) appeared to show scientists were willing to exaggerate temperature change in a scandal known as 'climategate', although two separate inquiries have found no evidence of misconduct.

Meanwhile the United Nations science body, the IPCC, that advises world governments about climate change was forced to retract a statement that claimed the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

The scientists fear the scandals have led to a witch hunt against those involved.

James Inhofe, a US senator and long-standing climate sceptic, has called for a criminal investigation of climate scientists. Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit at the UEA, said he considered suicide after receiving hate mail and death threats.

Worst of all, they fear politicians and interest groups in industry are using doubt over climate science to prevent the world from acting to reduce the threat of global warming.

"Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option."

The letter points out that there is uncertainty attached to theory of evolution and the Big Bang. But like these theories, climate change has been "overwhelmingly" accepted by scientists.

"There is compelling, comprehensive and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend," they said. [For instance...?]

"Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence."

SOURCE





Warmists hate scrutiny and rage against it

by John O'Sullivan

Since the Climategate scandal establishment figures have relentlessly stymied unwelcome scrutiny by legal experts. The latest wagon-circler is Dr. Judith Curry, an esteemed member of NASA's Climate Research Committee for over three years. Now Curry has become a self-appointed apologist for the unethical and some say, fraudulent, conduct of Penn. State University’s climate professor, Michael Mann.

In an interview with Thomas Fuller of the Environmental Policy Examiner (May 4, 2010) this well-heeled establishment scientist criticizes Virginia Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, for doing his job. Somehow Dr. Curry manages to fudge the line between a deliberate pre-meditated criminal fraud and an honest mistake.

Her tirade was prompted by Cuccinelli’s legal demand for access to Mann’s records from his former employers at Virginia State University where the tree-ring researcher benefited by almost $500,000 in taxpayer funding.

The Evidence Shows Probable Cause

If anyone doubts Cuccinelli’s just cause then I suggest they read the Wegman Report, those leaked Climategate emails plus the British investigation known as the Oxburgh Committee Report.

Much more HERE





Droughts and the unpredictable monsoon

Australia is also prone to droughts and has been as far back as we know. Warmists seized on the last one as caused by rising CO2 but ignored history. In 1900, for instance, Australia's largest river (the Murray) was just a chain of waterholes. In the past, Australians dealt with rainfall variability by extensive dam building but Greenies have now effectively stopped that

Large portions of the globe rely on the seasonal monsoon for water. Across much of Asia, agriculture depends on the coming of the monsoon rains. One scare tactic employed by global warming extremists is to claim that human caused climate change will keep the monsoon from coming, causing drought, failed crops and famine. In truth, science does not fully understand the complex interactions of ocean, atmosphere, and land that influence the monsoon, or how it impacts climate in other parts of the world. Now, a new Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA) provides reconstructions of summer moisture for the region going back to 1300 AD. It documents a long sequence of droughts so persistent that scientists call them “megadroughts.” These megadrought events, the worst of which may have toppled ancient kingdoms, show that unreliable monsoon seasons have afflicted mankind throughout history—long before the clamor over climate change arose.

Drought is not an unusual occurrence. For several years, the American South had suffered under a long-lasting severe drought, until this year's wet El Niño driven winter and spring. Half a world away, the southwestern corner of Australia was in the grip of a devastating drought since the 1970s. These events have naturally been blamed on global warming by publicity seeking researchers.

In the April 23, 2010, edition of Science, Edward R. Cook et al. present a large-scale, spatially explicit, long-term data set they are calling the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA). Based on tree rings from more than 300 sites across the forested areas of Asia, the authors claim the long-term perspective it provides is essential for comparisons with other proxy, historical, and archaeological data. It is also needed to help validate those notoriously inaccurate computer models that climate scientists are so fond of. In an accompanying perspective article, “Toward Understanding and Predicting Monsoon Patterns,” Eugene R. Wahl and Carrie Morrill place the complexity of the monsoon this way:

"It results from an interplay between the ocean, atmosphere, and land surface (see the figure). Many factors thus affect its strength, including sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Indian and Pacific Oceans; variations in solar output; land snow cover and soil moisture over the Asian continent; and the position and strength of prevailing winds. The links between these factors and the monsoon appear to wax and wane over time, and the observational record is too short to explain this longer-term variability."

More HERE




Pro-Cap-and-Trade CEOs on Hot Seat

Duke Energy CEO Asked to Disclose Amount of Company Support for Global Warming Activist Groups and Dollar Amount It Expects from Cap-and-Trade. Shareholder Activists Now Set to Attend Goldman Sachs Stockholder Meeting Friday in New York

The National Center for Public Policy Research's Tom Borelli, Ph.D. and Deneen Borelli will continue their barnstorming tour of Fortune 500 shareholder meetings Friday when they attend the annual shareholder meeting of Goldman Sachs in New York to warn the company's CEO of the danger to America posed by the creation of a new "carbon bubble" through cap-and-trade legislation.

On Thursday the Borellis had three lengthy rounds with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers in Charlotte, beginning when Tom Borelli presented a shareholder proposal on behalf of Shelton Ehrlich, an individual shareholder, to require Duke Energy to disclose to shareholders the extent to which it works with, and provides financial support to, non-profit organizations lobbying for restrictive and expensive global warming-related policies.

Duke Energy CEO Rogers appeared in an TV ad produced by the liberal green group "Environmental Defense" calling for global warming regulation.

Both Tom Borelli and Deneen Borelli also pressed Rogers to disclose the amount of money Duke Energy expects to receive if cap-and-trade becomes law.

"Originally Obama was going to auction off carbon credits for cap-and-trade," Deneen Borelli asked Rogers, "and the revenue would have gone to the government, but under the Waxman-Markey legislation, the utilities sector stands to gain 35-40 percent of carbon credits. Can you explain to me what the dollar value means to Duke?"

Tom Borelli further pressed the question, saying, "The Heritage Foundation... says the electric utilities, just in the year 2012, is going to get almost $50 billion dollars. So my question is, out of that fifty billion, how much is Duke Energy going to get?"

The National Center for Public Policy believes the adoption of cap-and-trade would not only push jobs overseas and raise domestic energy prices, but could cause yet another bubble, like the recent housing and tech bubbles, that cause significant economic harm when they burst.
"CEOs haven't learned their lesson [from those bubbles]," Tom Borelli wrote last year. "Instead of returning to selling good products at market prices, they want to go back to the craps table. They're lobbying Congress to create yet another 'bubble' in which government regulatory policy creates artificial value in a ubiquitous gas, carbon dioxide. Call this forthcoming disaster the 'Green Bubble,' for it's based on the notion that fortunes can be made buying and selling something for which there is no real-world market: greenhouse gas emissions credits."

"A business plan built on a carbon dioxide bubble will surely burst," Tom Borelli warned Rogers Thursday, adding, "We're dealing with a high degree of uncertainty, which is frightening, not only from a shareholder perspective, but a political perspective. My God, how can you trust those people in Washington? Look what they're doing to Goldman Sachs. Do you think you're going to be any different? Really, do you think you're going to be any different when energy prices go up?"

Rogers' response to these and the other questions posed by the Borellis can be heard on YouTube at http://tw0.us/CcD, http://tw0.us/CcC and http://tw0.us/CcE.

Throughout April, jointly with FreedomWorks, the National Center for Public Policy Research ran a "Backroom Deal" TV ad campaign in Moline, Illinois and Waterloo, Iowa on Fox, CNN, HLN and the History Channel to warn John Deere employees there that passage of cap-and-trade would likely result in the export of their jobs abroad. John Deere has lobbied heavily for cap-and-trade's passage.

Tom and Deneen Borelli have in recent weeks personally pressed the CEOs of GE (joined by National Center Vice President David A. Ridenour), Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and John Deere over the cap-and-trade issue, in addition to Duke Energy and Goldman Sachs as described above.

SOURCE






Australian conservative leader uses Roman and Medieval warm periods to discredit Warmism

And on the most recent polls, he will be the Prime Minister in less than a year

TONY Abbott has urged primary school students to be sceptical about man-made climate change, saying it was warmer during the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus than it is now.

The Opposition Leader, wrapping up a two-day visit to South Australia yesterday, told Year 5 and 6 students that climate change had always happened and, historically, humans had not been responsible.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said it was "irresponsible and disappointing" for the Liberal leader to encourage climate-change scepticism in the classroom.

Mr Abbott's impromptu history lesson came in a question-and-answer session with students during a visit to the Trinity Gardens Primary School in the marginal federal seat of Sturt, held by Liberal Chris Pyne.

Mr Abbott asked the students if they knew about the Ice Age and if it "was caused by human beings".

"OK, so the climate has changed over the eons and we know from history, at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth the climate was considerably warmer than it is now," Mr Abbott said.

"And then during what they called the Dark Ages it was colder. Then there was the medieval warm period. Climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history. "It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays."

SOURCE




Australian government knew of probable deaths under Greenie scheme but still went ahead

They've got blood on their hands -- but that never seems to bother Greenies -- witness the deaths caused by the ban on DDT

OFFICIALS in Kevin Rudd and Peter Garrett's departments assessed the risk of death or injury under the government's insulation program to be "extreme" three times in the three months before the first of four young workers was killed.

The officials, who were in charge of the rollout of the botched $2.45 billion insulation scheme, believed that, even if steps were taken to address their safety concerns, the risks would still remain "high".

The risk assessments were made on July 31, September 17 and October 1, and concluded that unsafe or incorrectly installed ceiling batts could lead to "fire/damage, injury or death".

The assessments were prepared by the Project Control Group set up to oversee the program, which included officials from the Department of Environment, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and other agencies, including Medicare and the Australian Taxation Office.

The documents were released only after a request from Liberal senator Simon Birmingham during a Senate inquiry into the scheme.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt last night accused the government of deliberately covering up the documents. "This is a smoking gun that shows the Prime Minister and those around him at the highest levels of government were aware of the risks," Mr Hunt said. "It's clear there was no action to deal with the risk of fatalities. "The government has deliberately kept these documents hidden. It is an unforgivable cover-up."

The first installer to die was 25-year-old Matthew Fuller, who was electrocuted on October 14, on his sixth day on the job.

By the time the insulation program was suspended on February 19, four installers had died and up to 1000 roofs had been electrified.

The program has also been linked to 120 house fires and widespread allegations of rorting.

The officials also concluded that the risk of fraud, including the prospect of installers charging for jobs not carried out, was extreme. They warned that even commonwealth public servants could try to rort the scheme by registering and processing fictitious payments.

A later Project Control Group document, prepared in December, assessed the ongoing risk of fraud to be "extreme" and of poor-quality materials and installations to be "high"....

A review by former public servant Allan Hawke, which led to the program being axed last month, said environment officials regularly briefed the minister on the safety risks. The review found the minister responded in a timely way but said this was "largely reactive" and there had been no proper senior oversight.

The release of the documents came after Assistant Energy Efficiency Minister Greg Combet announced details of the government's foil safety program. The program will cost taxpayers $90 million and brings to more than $155m the cost of putting in and cleaning up the foil insulation program.

The collapse has destroyed many legitimate businesses in the foil insulation industry. Mr Combet was yesterday forced to defend a $15m industry rescue package that insulation installers and manufacturers have said is woefully inadequate.

SOURCE

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