Gore spokesperson ducks debate at last minute

A message from Steve Goreham, Executive Director, Climate Science Coalition of America (www.climatescienceamerica.org). The fact that Gore and his aides dodge debate like the plague speaks for itself. They know that their claims will not withstand critical scutiny and that any factual debate will be a disaster for them. Message below -- JR

I had a climate change discussion set up tonight at 10 PM EST on Jim Bohannon radio with Maggie Fox, President of Al Gore’s “Climate Reality” initiative. I was looking forward to great fun in countering Ms. Fox’s alarmist assertions.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, Ms. Fox just called and cancelled with Bohannon’s producer. She wanted a “free shot” and did not want any debate on the issue, and therefore withdrew.





Al Gore's "Climate Reality" vs. Reality

Al Gore is launching a day-long live broadcast called 24 Hours of Reality to promote his global-warming message of manmade climate crisis. It begins Wednesday at 7 p.m. Central Time. His non-profit group, The Climate Reality Project (TCRP), is sponsoring the event. The same hour-long presentation will be repeated 24 times by different hosts in each time zone around the globe.

Each presentation will feature local footage from its respective time zone and will be delivered in one of 13 languages. Participants in each video are touted by TCRP as "more than 3,000 activitists of The Climate Project who have been personally trained by Vice President Gore to deliver his slide show around the world."

Gore took time from personally training those 3,000-plus activists for an interview with the Washington Post about the upcoming broadcast. In it he claims climate scientists are in agreement that human-caused global warming is to blame "whenever a natural disaster happens." But he only cites two scientists without actually quoting either. They are James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, two of the scientists implicated in the Climategate scandal of late 2009.

Yet in making the claim of consensus on the issue, Gore ignores the growing number of scientists who are consistently and publically refuting his assertions of eco-catastrophe. A report compiled by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and presented to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun last December quotes more than 1,000 scientists refuting the idea of anthropogenic (human–caused) global warming (AGW) and specifically contesting what they call Gore's scientifically unsound allegations. "Al Gore has taken a role corresponding to that of St. Paul in proselytizing the new faith," said atmospheric physicist Dr. John Reid. "The quasi-religious nature of AGW is evidenced by the rancor which is generated when people like me express skepticism about the theory."

"The whole idea of anthropogenic global warming is completely unfounded," said astrophysicist Hilton Ratcliffe, a fellow of the British Institute of Physics. "There appears to have been money gained by ... Al Gore ... as a consequence of this deception, so it's fraud."

"Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again," said meteorologist Hajo Smit, who is a former member of the Dutch UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change committee. "I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp."

Another award-winning meteorologist, J.R. Kirtek, ridiculed Gore's 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth. "If the definition for a documentary is 'presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film,' then I am confident that Al Gore's movie was not a documentary," he said. Indeed, in 2007 the High Court in London identified nine errors in the film, and Ratcliffe said he found 35 fundamental errors "without trying too hard."

But Gore assures us 24 Hours of Reality "will focus the world's attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis." His guns are clearly aimed at the oil and coal industries. TCRP blames them for trying "to sow denial and confusion about the science of climate change, ignore its impacts and create apathy among our leaders."

"Fossil fuel companies and their allies will go to great lengths to deny the fact that climate change is happening now," said Maggie L. Fox, TCRP president and CEO. However, none of the 1,000 scientists quoted in the Senate report are affiliated with so-called fossil-fuel interests, nor is the British High Court. Gore apparently chooses to ignore these inconvenient climate-science authorities.

In fact, when the Washington Post asked Gore if he believes scientists "need to get more active in the debate, to stop being so reticent," the former Vice President made this remarkable reply: "That's solely within their discretion." This harbinger of climate woe, who is trying to convince the world the issue is settled and all scientists are in agreement, excused those scientists from speaking out, even though they supposedly have irrefutable proof that AGW means Earth is headed for certain destruction. He said many of them "are constitutionally uncomfortable with such a role" or "it's not what they trained themselves and educated themselves to do." He went on to say, "But it can't just be up to scientists. The rest of us have to pitch in and given (sic) them a hand."

In other words, the science is settled, take Gore's word for it, don't pester any scientists since they might be uncomfortable talking about the topic, and take action now!

SOURCE




Distinguished physicist William Happer: CO2 is a nonproblem

A letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal from distinguished Professor of Physics at Princeton University William Happer is published today in which he states, "Even if we could hold CO2 levels fixed, the climate would continue to change because of other influences. In a time of serious world problems, wasteful expenditures justified by nonproblems like CO2 make no sense." The letter:

Anne Jolis's "The Other Climate Theory" (op-ed, Sept. 7) is a welcome message of realism on climate. Painful changes in the U.S. economy are being justified by the mantra that the earth's climate is dictated by CO2 in the atmosphere; elaborate computer models assert that doubling CO2 concentrations will warm the earth by an intolerable three or four degrees Celsius, or even more. This is contrary to straightforward theoretical estimates and empirical observations, indicating that the direct warming potential of CO2 is only about one degree Celsius, which would most likely be a benefit to world. The recent European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) experiments, discussed by Ms. Jolis, support extensive observational evidence that cosmic rays reaching the earth's surface have a large influence on climate.

Additional important climate drivers include complicated fluctuations of major oceanic currents and volcanic eruptions. Even if we could hold CO2 levels fixed, the climate would continue to change because of other influences. In a time of serious world problems, wasteful expenditures justified by nonproblems like CO2 make no sense.

William Happer
Professor of Physics
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J.

SOURCE





25 Years Have Been Hotter than 2011 In The US

Since 1910


NOAA data

Including 1925 1931 1934 1938 1946 1953 and 1954 – even with USHCN adding 0.6 degrees on to 2011 temperatures.

SOURCE (See the original for links)






Green Smoke and Mirrors? Vatican Weighs in on Climate Change

A scientific branch of the Vatican is touting a climate-change report that fears for the fate of the world's glaciers, appearing to support an erroneous conclusion from the United Nations' climate panel that skeptics have loudly debunked.

But the Vatican's authors are some of the same people responsible for the U.N. error, even including Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the U.N.'s climate group and the man behind the 2007 report that feared "the likelihood of [the Himalayan glaciers] disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner."

The facts behind that assertion quickly melted away, with Pachauri himself admitting that "poorly substantiated estimates" had made it into print. But like his 2007 U.N. study, Pachauri's 2011 Vatican report, titled "Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene," again frets over the fate of the glaciers -- and it cites his U.N. report as evidence.

The new report, commissioned by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, notes that "thousands of small glaciers in the Hindukush-Himalayan-Tibetan region continue to disintegrate," and states that "robust scenario calculations clearly indicate that many mountain ranges worldwide could lose major parts of their glaciers within the coming decades."

Noted climate skeptic Don Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, is one vocal critic of these and other conclusions on the fate of the world's glaciers.

"The [U.N.]-predicted warming of 1 degree between 2000 and the present has not happened -- instead it's gotten cooler!" he told FoxNews.com. "As a result, some glaciers in the Himalayas have begun advancing, and glaciers in Alaska, Norway, and South America have also begun to re-advance."

"Pachauri is very intolerant of any point on climate change that isn't his," Patrick J. Michaels, a contributing author on the U.N. report and a senior fellow with the conservative CATO Institute, told FoxNews.com. "He makes statements that are just wrong, because he's not a climate scientist," he said.

Pachauri did not respond to FoxNews.com requests for more information, sent through his U.N. climate group. Neither did the climate group itself nor the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences return FoxNews.com requests. But a Vatican spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, did tell the Associated Press that the document was "important," although it was not a piece of the church's key teachings.

Other climate scientists agreed with the new report. Graham Cogley, geography professor with Trent University, agreed that the 2007 prediction that Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035 was flat wrong -- but not the current claims.

"It is a dire prediction to say that mountain glaciers are 'lethally vulnerable' to climatic change, but it is literally and unquestionably correct," he told FoxNews.com. Michaels was more skeptical.

"Why resources collected from parishioners were used for this is beyond me," Michaels told FoxNews.com. "There has been an increasing tendency over the years for churches to insert themselves into the global warming thing," he added.

Well-known climate scientist Michael Mann thought the report may indicate shifting beliefs within the church.

I actually attended a meeting of the Pontifical Academy (World Federation of Scientists) in Erice, Sicily, back in late August 2003," Mann told FoxNews.com. "At the time, the president of the organization, Antonio Zichichi, was a climate-change skeptic."

"Zichichi has the ear of the Vatican on all matters of science and science policy. So I interpret this as, perhaps, a change of heart on his part," Mann told FoxNews.com. "In any case, this is indeed a significant (and in my view auspicious) development."

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a Vatican advisory panel, was founded under a different name in Rome in 1603, and claims to be the first exclusively scientific academy in the world. The Pontifical Academicians are eighty women and men from various countries nominated by the Supreme Pontiff. (The exact relation between the World Federation of Scientists and the Pontifical Academy was unclear.)

The Academy hosted the conference last month on the causes and consequences of retreating mountain glaciers. Its final report, dated May 5 and signed by a group of climate scientists, hydrologists, chemists, lawyers and mountaineers, was posted on the Vatican website Tuesday.

The group also noted that another major risk to glaciers is the threat of nuclear war, and advocated a reduction in nuclear arsenals.

SOURCE




Obama's Big Green Boondoggles

With the scandalous bankruptcy of Solyndra (a shady California solar power company that received $535 million in stimulus funds and is now under investigation by the FBI) hanging overhead, President Obama wisely whitewashed any mention of "green jobs" out of his latest address to Congress.
But buried in the details of his latest government jobs bill released this week -- Spawn of the Spendulus, Porky's II, Night of the Keynesian Dead -- are yet more big green boondoggles that will reward cronies, waste taxpayer dollars and make no dent in the jobless rate.

After pouring half a billion bucks into Solyndra, the company filed for Chapter 11 last month and laid off 1,110 employees. Obama administration officials met with Solyndra execs at least 20 times; the green cheerleader-in-chief personally visited and promoted the company in 2009 before his administration fast-tracked approval for the loans.

Solyndra is now the third solar company to go belly-up this year. Yet the Energy Department is doubling down on failure. As the FBI and House GOP investigators launch a probe into Enron-style accounting problems with Solyndra's books, DOE is doling out more than $850 million in new loan guarantees for another California solar firm sponsored by NextEra Energy, along with nearly $200 million more for separate solar manufacturing facilities on the West Coast.

Obama claims new "investments" in environmentally friendly school construction projects will put thousands of Americans back to work immediately. (Never mind that Big Labor-backed rules and executive orders will raise the cost of the projects, slow their implementation and freeze out the vast majority of non-union contractors.) Among the new green pork initiatives: $25 billion for green roofs, green cleaning, installation of renewable energy generation and heating systems, and "modernization, renovation, or repair activities related to energy efficiency and renewable energy."

But how are existing green construction spending programs working in practice?

A brand-new report from Texas Watchdog, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative group, sheds inconvenient light on Obama's $5 billion stimulus-funded Weatherization Assistance Program. In Texas alone, the $327 million program has spent more than $226,000 on each of the 1,041 jobs the program is claimed to have created or saved.

Intended to "green" low-income homes, at least three of the original participating organizations have been shut down due to chronic mismanagement, fraud allegations and shoddy workmanship. Baylor University economist Earl Grinols summed up: "First, it is not an appropriate government function to provide weatherization of private homes. Second, even viewed as a stimulus measure, it is not very effective as a stimulus based on cost-per-job, and third, it appears not to be well-managed."

Nearly 31 months after Porkulus One was signed, the Texas housing agency still hasn't spent $91.6 million in allocated weatherization/green construction funds. Millions cannot be accounted for by auditors and inspectors.

Now, multiply that by 49 other states. A review of the weatherization boondoggle last year revealed state-trained workers were flubbing insulation jobs in Indiana, according to the Associated Press. In "Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program (had) yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs."

The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney, a vigilant chronicler of green subsidies, notes that time and again, it's Obama insiders and Democratic operatives pocketing all the green while the unemployment hovers at double-digits. To wit: "Al Gore acolyte Cathy Zoi was Obama's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy while her husband was an executive at a company that received direct subsidies from the Obama administration and profited from the Cash-for-Caulkers bill Zoi's division implemented." Treasury Department Chief of Staff Mark Patterson lobbied for Goldman Sachs on ethanol subsidies while holding down his job in the administration. And last year, another Obama pet project -- Illinois-based FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant -- received a $1 billion stimulus earmark despite having been previously defunded over doubts about the feasibility and efficiency of the project.

An Obama green job trainee with seven certificates, Carlos Arandia, spoke for all non-crony Americans when he asked last fall: "What is the point of giving somebody the tools to do something but to have nowhere to use them?" Perhaps the White House can find a way to weatherize all the Grand Canyon-sized taxpayer sinkholes that "green job" spending has created.

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

*****************************************