Evidence? Who needs evidence?

Warmists certainly don't. Prophecy is their stock in trade. They're not even good at theory, let alone evidence. One of their more absurd prophecies is that global warming will lead to greater ocean acidity which will dissolve the shells of various marine animals. This is based on the fact that CO2 in water forms carbonic acid. What they fail to mention, however, is that warming REDUCES the ability of water to absorb CO2 -- so warming should in fact make the ocean more alkaline.

Theory is all very well, however. What actually happens in the ocean? Is greater acidity IN FACT fatal for animals living in shells?

Some Russian researchers found out. They were obviously oblivious to global warming. They were in fact looking at concentations of various elements in marine organisms located in proximity to undersea thermal vents (hydrothermal fields). Along the way, however, they did give brief descriptions of the animals they were studying. Below are two such:

The shells of the vesicomyid clam Archivesica gigas are an important target for Ba, Mn, and to a lesser extent of Fe (Figure 3a), however for other metals, they play only a small role. Taking into account the large mass of the shell relative to the soft tissue of clams (in which the former may reach one order of magnitude higher that the latter), we can suggest that shells, which have accumulated trace metals during biomineralization and adsorption, might serve as a great reservoir for many metals. The second abundant bivalve mollusk Leda (Nuculana grasslei) lives on substratum saturated with hydrocarbons (Allen, 1993). Unlike similar species, this animal has an extremely thick periostratum (an exterior part of the shell) that is considered to be an adaptation to functioning in an acidic environment enriched in sulfides. Its nutritional source has not yet been studied completely, but some researchers regard Leda as a symbiotrophic organism containing bacteria in its gills that can combine symbiotrophy with filter-feeding.

So a clam in a very acidic environment was unusually large and had a very THICK shell. The stupid thing obviously can't read what learned Warmists say! Instead of dying, it prospered!

And another mollusk (Leda) also had a very thick shell. Doesn't it know that its shell is supposed to have dissolved away?

What the Warmists overlook is that shell formation is a active process. The shell is not something that just sits there waiting to be eaten away. So even high levels of acidity don't faze the marine animal at all.




Lord Lawson & Lord Turnbull Respond To Britain's climate boss

In a letter sent to Chris Huhne today, Lord Lawson and Lord Turnbull respond to the Secretary of State's letter of 18 November

Dear Secretary of State

We are pleased that you have decided that a public response to growing criticism of your climate policies is now required. We regret, however, that you do not address our main arguments and key concerns. Neither are we impressed by evidently ill-advised assertions.

For a start, you make the mistake of connecting the reality of 20th century global warming, which no one doubts, with the various causes for it. You claim that the evidence for man's influence is getting stronger every year, yet you fail to provide any empirical evidence for this statement.

In reality, over the past few years there has been a growing realisation among scientists that other influences (such as solar, stratospheric water vapour, oceanic cycles, to name but the most dominant) are likely to be more significant than previously thought. These factors have seriously impinged on estimates of the magnitude of mankind's influence.

Your faith in the conclusion of Australia's Garnaut Review - that there has been no change in the rate of global warming in recent years – is wholly at odds with the latest scientific work and even the Government's own Met Office: Most research papers published in the last 12 months confirm that there has been no warming trend in the last 10 years.

It is true that the fundamental greenhouse effect yields only a 1.2°C increase for a doubling of CO2 (so-called climate sensitivity) and that larger increases depend upon various feedback mechanisms. There is no convincing evidence, however, to support your assertion that the increase of the level of water vapour in the atmosphere (as a result of doubling of CO2) would (other things being equal) raise global average temperature by around 3°C.

In reality, the magnitude of water vapor feedbacks, positive as well as negative (such as increased cloud cover and precipitation) remains a poorly understood subject. Do you seriously belief that only 'one or two people' (sic) have published research that shows moderate rather than catastrophic warming in the next 100 years?

You do not seem to appreciate the incomplete state of scientific knowledge regarding these extremely complex feedbacks. In reality, most scientists will tell you that we do not know all of them; and that most of those we do know, we understand only rudimentary.

What is more, estimates for climate sensitivity in the peer reviewed literature have been going down. You and your advisers will no doubt take a look at the latest research findings on this very subject by Schmittner et al. published this week in the journal Science. This is yet another study that corroborates a low estimate of climate sensitivity and concludes that "these results imply a lower probability of imminent extreme climate change than previously thought."

Your faith in the integrity of the IPCC process is no less ill-advised. There have been three reports on the IPCC - by the InterAcademy Council in 2010; the recent book by Donna Laframboise; and the report by Professor Ross McKitrick published recently by the GWPF (a copy of which is attached). You and your advisers need to study all three as they all identify a common set shortcomings in the IPCC's scientific approach and its working methods.

The IPCC seeks to present itself as embodying the independent, impartial advice of the world's best scientists in the field. All three reports reveal serious flaws in this claim - its lack of transparency in how the so-called experts are chosen, its resistance to views challenging its orthodoxy, its lack of proper governance to deal with conflicts of interest, its excessive use of non-peer reviewed (grey literature), and its infiltration by activists from environmental pressure groups.

We are surprised that you have been so slow to recognise that the IPCC, which has influenced a great deal of UK policy, no longer carries the credibility necessary to persuade society of the massive changes it is advocating. It should be drastically reformed or wound up and replaced.

We note that you appear to be denying the charge on unilateralism in UK policy. This is curious as you and your predecessors were keen to boast that the Climate Change Act made Britain a world leader in decarbonisation. And you personally have been urging the EU to adopt even more ambitious targets, fortunately unsuccessfully.

Admittedly, you limit your claim that Britain has not adopted unilateral policies to "until 2020," but even this ceiling is at odds with the introduction of the carbon floor price which you wish to introduce in the next couple of years. This scheme most certainly is a unilateral folly which is already having a devastating effect on manufacturing and energy-intensive industries - which, of course, are also concerned about what is planned for after 2020.

In reality, the UK stands alone as the only country in the world to impose long-term legally binding CO2 emissions targets. No other country in the world is willing to inflict such unilateral burden on its business sector and economy.

Even within the EU Commission major concerns about its unilateral targets have begun to surface. The EU is now seriously considering to discontinue its unilateral decarbonisation in the absence of a global agreement.

Whether you like it or not, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has pledged that the government will no longer be bound by unilateral decarbonisation targets that cut CO2 emissions in Britain faster and deeper than other countries in Europe. We trust that his promise to abandon the path of green unilateralism will be followed, sooner rather than later, by a less extreme and more pragmatic policy.

Received via email





According to a report in The Economist, the Isle of Wight has been designated as Britain’s first ‘eco’ island

The plan is to make the island self-sufficient in energy by smothering it with wind farms and solar panels. It’s the brainchild of an outfit called Ecoisland (geddit?), which is described as ‘so green that the invitations it sent to an event at Britain’s House of Commons were printed on recycled paper embedded with meadow-flower seeds (just plant, water and watch them grow)’.

The report continues: ‘Ecoisland plans to . . . insulate houses better, make greater use of geothermal, wind and tidal energy, and generate power from waste. There are also plans for electric vehicles that residents and visitors alike can hire.

‘Locally grown food would be delivered through island-wide supply hubs. A concerted effort is under way to reduce water use and capture more rainwater (about one-third of the island’s fresh water at present is pumped from the mainland).’

All very commendable, you might think. But they’re not doing this simply for the sake of saving the polar bears.

Someone has worked out there’s a nice drink in it for them — which is why the project is being sponsored by multi-national companies such as IBM and Toshiba. While the idea of generating all our energy supplies from natural, sustainable sources is hugely attractive in theory — and would certainly have found favour with the 1970 Isle of Wight pop festival crowd — the problem is that it doesn’t work in practice and is hideously expensive.

Already, every household in Britain is set to pay £280 a year over the odds for gas and electricity to fund the Government’s ‘green’ agenda, which amounts to little more than bunging foreign firms billions of pounds to clutter up our beautiful, world-heritage site countryside and our outstanding natural coastline with utterly useless War of the Worlds windmills.

I wonder if anyone has bothered to ask the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight if they want to be forced to drive rented electric cars, knit their own toilet paper and have their scenery desecrated by hopelessly inefficient solar panels and wind turbines sprouting like triffids. And having to pay through the nose for the privilege.

What have they done to deserve being singled out for a expensive eco-experiment?

In future, the only tourists prepared to travel to the island will be woolly-headed Guardian readers posing for pictures in front of an artificial forest of aluminium windmills before retreating to their over-priced, wood-fired Stoke Newington slums, where they can revel in the snapshots of their eco-friendly vacation on their nuclear-powered iPads over bowls of meadow-flower muesli.

SOURCE




New Revelations Cast Doubt On Climategate Inquiries

The head of a key British climate lab, a central figure in the 2009 "Climategate" scandal, thought requests made under Great Britain's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) were a nuisance that should be stonewalled while crucial correspondence is deleted -- unless someone pays up first, that is.

"I wasted a part of a day deleting numerous emails and exchanges with almost all the skeptics. So I have virtually nothing. I even deleted the email that I inadvertently sent," wrote Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, according to a December 2008 email leaked to a Russian website Tuesday.

"There might be some bits of pieces of paper, but I'm not wasting my time going through these," the email reads.

The correspondence was one of 5,000 emails stolen from the servers at the University of East Anglia's climate research facility in England and posted online Tuesday. Along with the day-to-day work of science, the emails reveal internal debates, anger at skeptics and even deception from scientists investigation whether man's actions are warming the planet.

The newly leaked emails span from 2000 to 2009 and fill in correspondence first seen in December 2009, when a batch of emails from the data breach dubbed "Climategate" turned the world's attention to East Anglia. University spokesman Simon Dunford told the Associated Press that a small sample examined by the university "appears to be genuine."

According to the December 2008 email exchange, Jones wrote to David Palmer, the information policy and compliance manager for East Anglia's research unit at the time, arguing that unless a fee accompanied a FOIA request for information, he didn't need to bother going to the trouble of replying.

"Dave, do I understand it correctly -- if he doesn't pay the £10 we don't have to respond?" Jones asked. The sum he requested, £10, is worth about $16 U.S. dollars.

"No, we don't have to respond unless we get the £10," Palmer told Jones -- before reading him the riot act over deleting emails, a direct violation of Britain's Data Protection Act of 1998, he said.

Neither Jones nor Palmer responded to FoxNews.com requests to confirm the validity of the email correspondence, although Jones said Wednesday morning in a press conference that the emails were being "cherry-picked" and explained away many of the messages.

The email echoes other correspondence from Jones discovered in 2009. Jones admitted to the House of Commons in 2010 that he had "written some very awful emails," including one in which he rejected a request for information on the ground that the person receiving it might criticize his work.

Lisa Horton, a spokeswoman with the university, pointed to a website statement attacking the timing of the release.

"This appears to be a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy over the science behind climate change when that science has been vindicated by three separate independent inquiries and [a] number of studies – including, most recently, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group."

Steven McIntyre, a noted climate skeptic and author of the blog Climate Audit, disputed those vindications vehemently.

"Unfortunately none of the 'inquiries' did even a reasonable job," he told FoxNews.com. "None of them interviewed any of the critics … there were no transcripts. The inquiries made erroneous findings on facts known to thousands." "In my opinion, the 'inquiries' have actually made matters worse," McIntyre told FoxNews.com.

The newly released emails come less than a week before the Nov. 28 opening of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 17) in Durban, South Africa, which is intended to control carbon emissions and monitor the world's climate -- a fact underscored in a document that accompanied the leaked emails.

SOURCE






At least some members of "The Team" conceded that the MWP was real and not merely local

Email 466:

[Ed Cook] So, at this stage I would argue that the Medieval Warm Period was probably a global extra-tropical event, at the very least, with warmth that was persistent and probably comparable to much of what we have experienced in the 20th century.

However, I would not claim (and nor would Jan) that it exceeded the warmth of the late 20th century. We simply do not have the precision or the proxy replication to say that yet.

This being said, I do find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event to be grossly premature and probably wrong. Kind of like Mark Twain's commment that accounts of his death were greatly exaggerated.

If, as some people believe, a degree of symmetry in climate exists between the hemispheres, which would appear to arise from the tropics, then the existence of a Medieval Warm Period in the extra-tropics of the NH and SH argues for its existence in the tropics as well. Only time and an enlarged suite of proxies that extend into the tropics will tell if this is true.

SOURCE





EU carbon emissions trading scheme is a waste - UBS Report

The Australian reported that Swiss banking giant UBS said that the European Union's emissions trading scheme has cost the continent's consumers USD 287 billion for almost zero impact on cutting carbon emissions, and has warned that the EU's carbon pricing market is on the verge of a crash in 2012.


In a damning report to clients, UBS Investment Research said that had the EUR 210 billion the European ETS had cost consumers been used in a targeted approach to replace the EU's dirtiest power plants, emissions could have been reduced by 43% instead of almost zero impact on the back of emissions trading.


Describing the EU's ETS as having limited benefits and embarrassing consequences, the report said there was fading political support for the scheme, the price was too low to have any significant environmental impact and it had provided windfall profits to market participants, paid for by electricity customers.


The report's criticism of the EU's ETS follows Mr Barack Obama's confirmation last week that the US would not have a cap and trade scheme and Canada's refusal to implement an ETS.

In the November 17th 2011 report, UBS forecast the EU carbon price would average EUR 5 a tonne for 2012-13 with a floor of EUR 3, attributing the slump to a large surplus of permits. The report added that "We see few buyers of the surplus until after a crash."

It argued the surplus could continue until 2025 when the ETS would work as it was supposed to.

European carbon prices have already been under pressure as part of the market turbulence triggered by the European debt crisis. Analysts are predicting EU carbon permits may fall to a record low EUR 8.60 this week on a future supply glut.

UBS said sources of the oversupply of permits include the European Investment Bank, EU governments, Russia and Ukraine.

SOURCE







Win for the Greens, but a loss for Australia

Huge fishery locked away

The Government’s decision to release the proposed maps of the million square kilometre Coral Sea Marine Reserve was a great victory for the American environmental group, PEW foundation, and their public relations tactics. But it has been a huge loss to the Australian fishing charter boat industry and will have an effect on recreational fishing, Queensland Senator Ron Boswell said today. “Charter boats, trawlers, fishermen, are going to bear a very heavy cost for the government and the 'green movements' decision.

And the processors, slip ways, refrigeration operations industry and all other supporting industries, are going to take a huge hit." “There is a thirty boat, charter industry that operates out of Cairns. It pumps about sixty million dollars into the local economy every year. It brings wealthy international travellers in to enjoy the North Queensland Marlin fishery. It is tag and release fishing, and is one of the most sustainable in the world," Senator Boswell said. “The charter boats, and the small number of fisherman, will be excluded from the massive green zone."

Both the Greens and the Minister recognise that the Coral Sea is in a pristine condition. This is due to the charter boats and fishermen who fish in the green zone and monitor any illegal fishing methods, such as drift nets, super seiners, and long liners mass destructive methods, and report any illegal fishing in the area. They also monitor catches and pass that information on to government.

Senator Boswell also said that, “this decision will leave the Coral Sea with no monitoring, there will be no observation of illegal fishing, and if the Coral Sea is in pristine condition, the Greens can thank the charter boat and fishermen who work the area for keeping it so."

“There will be no activity out there in the Coral Sea to observe, it will be an open invite to illegal fishing in the Coral Sea."

“Trawlers will also be completely excluded from the marine park. Forty deep sea trawlers that work in the southern end of the marine park, and a hundred other east coast licences that work on an irregular basis will be excluded."

Press release dated 25 Nov. from Queensland Senator Boswell above





Australia: New twist on a stupid Greenie scheme

These "public bicycle" schemes usually suffer from a low uptake and theft of the bicycles. Brisbane's council has increased the uptake only at the expense of another loss

THE CityCycle trial of free helmets and more flexible subscription packages has been a success with a 72 per cent increase in the number of weekly trips since the changes were made by Lord Mayor Graham Quirk three months ago.

But council audits have found about 250 of the initial 400 courtesy helmets had been "misplaced" during the trial.

The loss of 250 helmets is the latest issue to plague CityCycle, which has faced a host of problems since its conception. Originally planned to be launched in 2009, the initiative was delayed a year when the operator couldn’t find enough free space around town to install the cycle stations.

Within three months of its launch in 2010, the amount of annual subscribers plummeted dramatically from 1251 when it started in October to just 131 in January 2011.

With less and less people subscribing, the Council dropped the daily charges from $11 to just $2 in August and offered free helmets as an incentive. The helmets cost around $10 each for the Council to replace.

The CityScycle scheme has cost ratepayers around $300,000 as of August.

Public and Active Transport Chairman Julian Simmonds said the weekly average of the scheme during its first 10 months was 1,470 trips. During the past three months the average had jumped to 2,530 trips per week.

CityCycle last week celebrated its 100,000th trip since its launch in October last year and often reaches 500 trips a day.

“Every CityCycle trip is potentially one less vehicle on the road and it is part of Brisbane’s overall public transport infrastructure and offering residents and visitors an alternative, sustainable mode of travel in the inner-city," Cr Simmonds said.

“Courtesy helmets and cheaper subscriptions have clearly made it easier for people to hop on a bike so we’re going to distribute an extra 500 free helmets at no additional cost to ratepayers and also introduce a more affordable package for students.”

Cr Simmonds said the 500 new helmets would be jointly provided with operator JC Decaux. Council’s $2,500 share of the cost would come from the existing CityCycle marketing budget.

Construction has commenced on stage two of CityCycle which will see a further 46 stations rolled out across Milton, Auchenflower, Toowong, St Lucia and Dutton Park.

Six new stations have already opened, including new stations at South Bank’s Maritime Museum, at the popular café precinct in Park Road at Milton, as well as a new station on the Bicentennial Bikeway.

SOURCE

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Looks like the sky is falling in Canada

According to a Canadian Leftist site we've only got weeks to go:

Runaway Global Warming promises to literally burn-up agricultural areas into dust worldwide by 2012, causing global famine, anarchy, diseases, and war on a global scale as military powers including the U.S., Russia, and China, fight for control of the Earth's remaining resources.

Over 4.5 billion people could die from Global Warming related causes by 2012, as planet Earth accelarates into a greed-driven horrific catastrophe.

It doesn't seem to occur to them that even if their warming prophecies come true it would open up great swathes of productive agricultural land in Canada, Northern Russia, Siberia and Alaska. It would INCREASE the availability of food and other resources. And Hokkaido is a rather large but very Northerly Japanese island that would serve Japan well too. It is roughly the same size as Ireland and already has a railway connection to the mainland (Honshu)





Climate forecasts 'exaggerated': Science journal

"Science" has been solidly Warmist so far -- so cracks are appearing in the dam that is holding real science back

DRAMATIC forecasts of global warming resulting from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been exaggerated, according to a peer-reviewed study by a team of international researchers.

In the study, published today in the leading journal Science, the researchers found that while rising levels of CO2 would cause climate change, the most severe predictions - some of which were adopted by the UN's peak climate body in its seminal 2007 report - had been significantly overstated.

The authors used a novel approach based on modelling the effects of reduced CO2 levels on climate, which they compared with proxy-records of conditions during the last glaciation, to infer the effects of doubling CO2 levels.

They concluded that current worst-case scenarios for global warming were exaggerated. "Now these very large changes (predicted for the coming decades) can be ruled out, and we have some room to breathe and time to figure out solutions to the problem," the study's lead author, Andreas Schmittner, an associate professor at Oregon State University, said.

Scientists have struggled for many years to understand how to quantify "climate sensitivity" - how Earth will respond to projected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

In 2007, the UN's peak climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels would warm the Earth's surface by an average of 2C to 4.5C, although some studies have claimed the impact could be 10C or higher.

Professor Schmittner said it had been very difficult to rule out these extreme "high-sensitivity" scenarios, which were very important for understanding risks associated with climate change.

The study found high-sensitivity models led to a "runaway effect" under which the Earth would have been covered in ice during the last glacial maximum, about 20,000 years ago, when CO2 levels were much lower. "Clearly that didn't happen, and that's why we are pretty confident that these high climate sensitivities can be ruled out," he said.

Professor Schmittner said taking his results literally, the IPCC's average or "expected" value of a 3C average temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 ought to be regarded as an upper limit.

"Many previous climate-sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through to today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate data, especially on a global scale," he said. "If these paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought."

However, he cautioned that extreme climate change could still occur in some areas.

Dave Griggs, a professor of sustainability at Monash University, said that while models such as the one used by Professor Schmittner and his team were "the only tool we have" to assess long-term climate variability, they were also inherently imperfect.

"We are already heading towards a doubling of CO2 concentrations, so if we're going to get an equilibrium change of 3C that's actually pretty serious," Professor Griggs said.

SOURCE





Britain's Green 'tax' to rise every year... but don't worry, ministers claim overall bills will be lower - because their policies will make you use less energy

Families will pay £280 a year in ‘green taxes’ by 2020 to fund the shift to wind, solar and nuclear power, ministers admitted yesterday. The huge cost faced by ordinary people will pay for the Government’s pledge to cut carbon emissions and be ‘the greenest ever’.

Households currently pay £89 a year on their bills for the green energy drive, but this will increase every year to reach £280 by 2020, according to the Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The ‘taxes’ will provide almost £8billion a year towards the £200billion cost of vast wind farms, nuclear power stations, a new pylon network, and to put up solar panels.

But in a bizarre statement, energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne told the House of Commons that his policies mean consumers will actually be better off. He said: ‘By 2020, we expect household bills to be 7 per cent – or £94 – lower than they would otherwise be without our policies. ‘Britain’s homes will be cheaper to heat and light than if we did nothing.’

His claim is based on a controversial assumption that families will make vast reductions in their electricity and gas bills by 2020 – wiping out the £280 in green taxes. It also assumes there will be a large uptake of government-backed schemes for insulation projects.

The revelation threatens to spark a revolt from consumers, who are suffering the biggest and longest squeeze on living standards in more than 60 years. In addition, Chancellor George Osborne is under pressure to over-rule Mr Huhne and halt the rush to green energy in a bid to protect British industry.

The fear is that manufacturers and other businesses will be saddled with huge levies on energy bills, pushing up costs and threatening their ability to sell goods around the world.

The details were revealed in the small print in DECC documents.

The current average annual energy bill is around £1,200. DECC said the figure would be £1,379 by 2020 without any government measures to drive a switch to green and nuclear power.

It claimed the figure would be £1,285 based on the impact of its green taxes and associated policies to cut household energy use and curb wholesale prices.

However, a DECC source admitted this lower figure would be possible only if households slashed electricity use by a third (from 4.5 to 3 megawatt hours a year) and gas by 6 per cent.

The Government has a target of providing 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Despite the £280 price tag of government policies, Mr Huhne insisted rising fossil fuel prices rather than green taxes were to blame for higher energy bills.

He said: ‘I want to insulate Britain’s homes not just from the cold weather, but also from the chill winds of global fossil fuel prices. It’s these that are pushing up consumer energy prices.

‘We will secure our energy at the lowest cost: in the short term by promoting competition; in the medium term by insulating our homes and in the long term by steering us away from excessive reliance on fossil fuels and on to clean, green and secure energy.’

But Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Foundation, said Mr Huhne’s reassurances were ‘political spin’. ‘All analysis by City banks and others make clear that current government policy will lead to big increases in energy bills,’ he said. ‘The energy-use reductions being assumed by the Government to justify the claim that bills will fall are not based on any sound economic facts. They are pure guesswork.’

Government policy is based on an assumption that gas prices will continue to rise, but Dr Peiser said the price could fall. He said: ‘Prices are likely to come down very significantly, perhaps by 30 to 40 per cent if the UK Government gives the green light to shale gas exploration. The UK is sitting on a gold mine of shale gas.’

Energy industry expert Joe Malinowski, of TheEnergyShop.com, said he was ‘deeply sceptical’ about Mr Huhne’s claims of lower bills.

The CBI is particularly fearful of the impact of green taxes. Chief policy director Katja Hall said: ‘Energy intensive industries underpin the UK’s manufacturing sector, making products as diverse as the steel and chemicals needed for wind turbines and low-rolling resistance tyres. ‘The Government is in serious danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater if it continues to pile new costs on to industries.’

The Government plans to spend £11billion installing smart meters in every property, saying that once people see how much energy they use, they will make cutbacks.

Ministers say energy use will also be reduced by the so-called Green Deal, which will allow people to install double-glazing and loft insulation at no upfront cost. But a spokesman for consumer group Which? said: ‘If take-up is lower than expected, energy bills will be pushed up even further.’

SOURCE





Google's promise of solar power 'cheaper than coal' turns out to be hot air as search giant shelves Green Energy division

Google's engineers famously spend 20 per cent of their time on what the company calls '20 per cent projects' - off-the-wall ideas that are 'personal' technologies. Some of these are highly surreal, 'blue sky' projects - and not all of them work.

Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.

Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal - a rather vague project aimed at producing good-value renewable energy.

Google said that it believed other institutions were better positioned to take its renewable energy efforts 'to the next level.'

Google began making investments and doing research into technology to drive down the price of renewable energy in 2007, with a particular focus on solar power technology. In 2009, the company's so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, said he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal. 'It is even odds, more or less,' Weihl said at the time. 'In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there.' A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.

Google said today, 'This is our third off-season spring cleaning. We're in the process of shutting a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for.' 'Over all, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive truly beautiful Google user experience.'

The latest round of victims are Google Friend Connect - a social feature allowing webmasters to add Google friend features to their sites, Google Bookmark Lists, which allows home users to share bookmarks, and Google Search Timeline, which graphed search results for a particular query.

Google's version of Wikipedia, the clunky, unpopular Knol, will also be shut off.

SOURCE




'Green' debacle: Tens of thousands of abandoned wind turbines now litter American landscape

Literal beacons of the "green" energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned.

Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the US.

"Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California 'big three' locations which include Altamont Pass, Tehachapin and San Gorgonio, considered among the world's best wind sites," writes Andrew Walden of the American Thinker. "In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills."

Walden speaks, of course, about the birds, bats, and other air creatures that routinely get tangled in and killed by wind turbine propellers. And as far as the "post-industrial junk" language, well, if it costs too much to run the machines in the first place, then it definitely costs too much to uproot and remove them post-construction.

This whole wind energy mess just further illustrates how the American people have been played by their elected officials who bought into the "global warming" hysteria that spawned the push for wind energy in the first place. And now that the renewable energy tax subsidies are gradually coming to an end in some places, the true financial and economic viability, or lack of wind energy, is on display for the world to see.

"It is all about the tax subsidies," writes Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail. "The blades churn until the money runs out. If an honest history is written about the turn of the 21st century, it will include a large, harsh chapter on how fears about global warming were overplayed for profit by corporations."

SOURCE



Some of the Wackier Ideas for Improving the Environment



There is a proposal before the United Nations for environmental justice, in order to save the planet. Said justice calls for legal representation on behalf of the environment – plants, animals, insects – against us pesky humans, with the power to seek financial compensation for damages.

* This one is a bit of a touchy subject. Though the thought is in the right place, the evidence seems to suggest that the concept wasn’t entirely thought through. The push to replace incandescent light bulbs with CFL’s (compact fluorescent lamps) would indeed conserve energy. However, they contain significant levels of mercury which, without any safe means of recycling them, would introduce unsafe levels of mercury back into the environment.

* In an effort to safeguard the sanctuary of indigent marine wildlife, the city of San Diego is set to enact laws that would ban birthday parties at local parks within the vicinity of said wildlife.

* As a means to harness human energy and transform it into useable energy, the concept of the human-powered floating gym came into being. Imagine, if you will, dozens of sweaty fitness-minded bodies, powering their way upstream in a bubble, and you’ve got a vague idea of what this truly wacky project is all about.

* Here’s another idea that someone pulled out of their, um … notebook: The basic premise is that the methane produced through cow flatulence is a major contributor to greenhouse gases (14%) and needs to be stopped. The answer? Kangaroo farts. Apparently their marsupial mates are methane-free down under, and possess a bacterium that it is suggested to be injected into cattle.

* Based on the cooling effect that the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo had on the planet 20 years ago, scientists had the brainstorm idea of triggering other volcanoes in the hopes of having similar results. We can only hope that our tax dollars don’t literally go up in (volcanic) smoke, and ash.

* The Eco-Kettle is supposedly the answer to a question we have no idea why anyone would even ask: namely, sparing our precious globe from the bane of our existence known as (wait for it) boiling too much water (gasp!).

* Asus came up with this gem a while back as a solution to excessive use of plastics in consumer product manufacturing: the bamboo laptop. We would love to have seen this sold as part of an office starter package, with a tiki torch desk lamp and margarita mixer.

* Pig pee for plastics. The idea here is to reduce the use of petroleum in the manufacture of plastic plates. The urea in pig urine would act as a bulking agent in its place. Trouble is (among other things -ugh!) is that when these pig-pee plates are discarded? You guessed it, they will emit methane. Maybe we first need to cross-breed these pigs with kangaroos. Yeah, that’s the ticket: pigaroo plates.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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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

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Ya gotta laugh: Loss of Sea Ice is ‘Unprecedented’, says Study

It's unlikely that this is true since the only accurate history goes back only to 1979 but even if it were true, so what? Melting sea ice has zero effect on ocean levels and since there has been no warming for over a decade any recent ice loss CANNOT be due to warming. These guys really are desperate

The loss of sea ice in the Arctic at the end of the 20th Century is “unprecedented” in the past 1,450 years in its duration and magnitude, an indication of human-influenced climate change, a study said.

So-called greenhouse gases may be contributing to the warming, and trends from the last several decades suggest there may soon be an ice-free Arctic in the summer, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.

The ice, which melts every summer before cold weather makes it expand again, shrank this year to its second-smallest size since 1979, covering 4.33 million square kilometers (1.67 million square miles), according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. Although previous sea ice declines have occurred at a similar pace, they don’t match the extent of the melt, the study authors said.

“This drastic and continuous decrease we’ve been seeing from the satellites does seem to be anomalous,” Christophe Kinnard, a study author and a geographer at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Aridas in La Serena, Chile, said in a telephone interview. “It does point to a continuation of this trend in the future.”

The researchers used ice core records, tree ring data, lake sediment and historical evidence to reconstruct the amount of Arctic cover. The thickness and extent of sea ice have declined dramatically over the last 30 years, the researchers said.

Arctic sea ice influences the global climate, since 80 percent of the sunlight that strikes it is reflected back to space. When the ice melts in the summer, it exposes the ocean surface, which absorbs about 90 percent of the light, heating the water, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. That influences climate patterns.

“You increase the radiation that’s absorbed by the oceans, that’s one of the strongest climate feedback mechanisms,” Kinnard said. “The more sea ice you lose, the more energy you get in the ocean, which warms the atmosphere.”

SOURCE






From the Climategate 2.0 files: CRU scientist admits ‘…”our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.’

(Dr. Douglas Maraun performs time series analysis, extreme value statistics, and analysis of precipitation extremes at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia)

Dr. Douglas Maraun, a scientist at the Climatic Reasearch Unit at the University of East Anglia wrote to his colleages in an e-mail on October 24, 2007.

Dr. Maraun, who seems to have more of a conscience than many of his colleagues, had some concerns which he wished to address in a “discussion seminar” to be held in the coffee room that afternoon. Among Dr. Maraun’s points he wished to discuss were:

"How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest."

He also actually pondered, “how do we avoid sounding religious or arrogant?”

SOURCE





The idiot bozo

ClimateGate 2: Email 202:

[2003] from: Stephen H Schneider
subject: Re: Fw: New Study Questions Kyoto Global Warming Data
to: apetsonk@environmentaldefense.org

Hello all. Ah ha--the latest idiot--McKitrick--reenters the scene. He and another incompetent had a book signing party at the US Capitol

...It was a scream. He argued there is no such thing as global temperature change, just local--all natural variablity mostly. ...THe freshman was smarter than this bozo. It is improtant to get that op-ed to simply tell all reporters how unbelievably incompetent he is, and should not even be given the time of day over climate issues, for which his one "contribution" is laughably incompetent.

SOURCE

McKitrick replies:

Yes, I saw that one. Schneider was referring to this op-ed here

Have a look at it. In addition to debunking an episode of West Wing, I was responding to a claim David Suzuki had made a few days earlier on TV. He said that when he grew up in London Ontario, winter always set in by the end of October, but now it comes much later, i.e. November or December. The host had lapped it up without question. So I looked up the weather records for London Ontario and Erie Pennsylvania, which together provided complete records from the 40s to the present for that region, and showed that autumn temperatures had actually trended down since Suzuki was a child.

In other words, I did not claim that late fall temperature records in the western Lake Erie area were an indicator of global climate, but were an indicator of late fall temperatures in the western Lake Erie region. To Stephen Schneider this made me an unbelievably incompetent idiot bozo. What does that make him?

McKitrick reply received via email





EPA determined to wreak havoc

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson recently announced that her agency would proceed with twice-delayed regulations targeting power plants that emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Mrs. Jackson’s decision ignores three vital pieces of information that should make it easy for Congress to prevent unelected bureaucrats from regulating CO2:

* The EPA inspector general’s finding that EPA did not follow federal data quality standards in preparing its “endangerment finding” regarding greenhouse gases.

* The profusion of scientific dissent.

* The massive economic costs and minimal environmental benefits.

In April 2009, the EPA issued an endangerment finding stating that the gases pose a serious threat to human health and public safety. It provided a lengthy technical support document to justify this position.

But this September, the EPA's Office of Inspector General released its own report concluding that the agency’s document failed to follow federal guidelines for a “highly influential scientific assessment.” Specifically, the EPA had failed to publicly report its review results. Moreover, one of the federal climate-change scientists reviewing the document was an EPA employee.

The EPA responded by arguing that the document did not qualify as “highly influential,” yet the agency offered it to justify one of the most expansive - and expensive - regulations in history. If that’s not highly influential, what is?

The inspector general’s report does not question the scientific validity of the endangerment finding. But disagreement among the scientific community regarding the magnitude of anthropogenic global warming should have been sufficient reason for the EPA not to issue the endangerment finding in the first place.

In 2001, Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, participated in a 12-member panel of the National Academy of Sciences and produced a report essentially saying that the Earth is warming, and rising CO2 levels are playing a role in that warming, but we don’t know how much.

A decade later, little has changed. On Nov. 14, Reps. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, and Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, architects of cap-and-trade legislation that failed to become law, hosted a briefing called “The End of Climate Change Skepticism.” One of three star witnesses, University of California, Berkeley astrophysicist Richard Muller said, “The amount that’s due to humans is still open, and there are fairly big uncertainties about that.”

Questions about how the sun and ocean currents affect warming remain unanswered, too, he added. Much to the hosts’ dismay, their own briefing revealed that “the science” on this issue is far from settled.

Regardless, the EPA’s CO2 regulations won’t reduce emissions enough to have any meaningful effect, anyway. China emits far more CO2 than we do, and its emissions - along with India’s - are increasing rapidly. Neither nation has any intention of scaling back economic growth to curb emissions. Unilateral U.S. action, therefore, wouldn’t make a dent in global temperatures.

The EPA’s regulations would, however, inflict serious economic harm. Although the agency targets the largest emitters of greenhouse gases first, the financial burden would extend to every American. The agency’s first two targets are fossil-fuel power plants and petroleum refineries. The U.S. gets 85 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. Regulating these entities would significantly increase energy costs - electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil - directly.

It also would raise consumer costs for all other goods. Higher energy costs increase transportation and operating costs for businesses, too. These additional expenses are passed on to consumers. The end result: A dramatically slower economy and many lost jobs.

SOURCE







‘The Green Evolution’ Report Reveals That Fewer Consumers Are Buying Green Products

Extensive Survey Finds That 65 Percent of Consumers Changed Their Green Buying Habits Due to the Recession

Grail Research, Integreon’s strategic research group, today released the results of an extensive survey designed to gauge U.S. consumers’ sentiments and behaviors related to sustainability and “green” products, as well as evaluate how consumers interpret the marketing efforts of the companies that offer them.

The survey, detailed in the report “The Green Evolution,” found that consumers who previously purchased green products have decreased their green purchasing as a result of the recession. Specifically, 43 percent of “light green” consumers – those who buy some green products – reduced their usage of green products or switched to conventional ones. At the same time, the percentage of non-green consumers rose from 15 percent to 22 percent.

“Although it’s clear that the market for green products is here to stay, the number of green consumers declined over the past two years,” said Annica Blake, Global Head, Research Services at Grail Research. “Conversely, the number of ‘dark green’ consumers – those who select earth-friendly products for most of their purchases – increased by one percent, and now make up nine percent of the consumer market.”

“The Green Evolution,” is available now on the Grail Research website, www.grailresearch.com. The research was conducted to explore several core themes:

1. Identify changes that occurred in the green product market segment since Grail Research first identified the different types of green consumers and attributes they associate with green products in the 2009 report, “The Green Revolution”;

2. Uncover insights that corporations and marketers can use to more effectively communicate the value of their green products; and

3. Reveal how consumers in different green categories respond to today’s market conditions.

Key findings and insights from Grail Research’s “The Green Evolution” report include:

* The number of green consumers in the U.S. is decreasing as the recession continues.

The number of light green consumers, those who purchase some green products, decreased from 76 percent to 60 percent of the population.

The percentage of former green consumers rose from only one percent in the previous survey to 10 percent of consumers.

Among green consumers, 43 percent cited the economic recession as the reason for not purchasing green products in specific categories – the top reason given.

As opposed to previous years, growth will increasingly take place when green products can demonstrate equal or better performance and value than conventional products.

* Consumers who have yet to switch to green products are unlikely to do so.

Nine percent of consumers say they never consider buying green products – an increase of four percentage points since the previous report.

Five percent of dark green consumers and 22 percent of light green consumers switched from green to conventional products.

Sixty-five percent of respondents changed their purchasing behavior as a result of the recession, with most turning to less expensive green products.

Green as a whole is no longer a fast-growth market.

* Most consumers do not seek out information on green products.

Only 11 percent of consumers report that they seek information on green companies and their products.

Packaging still remains the most important source of information for green products, with more than half of consumers saying it impacts their purchasing decision.

Word of mouth influence is still strong, with 40 percent of respondents citing it as a source of information about green products.

The volume of green product and brand information is not proportional to its impact on consumer behavior.

* Most consumers don’t understand green certifications.

Dark green consumers most associate the use of natural ingredients with being green, while light green consumers, as well as former green consumers, associate recyclability of packaging with being green.

More than half (51 percent) of all green consumers would like to see a “greenness” rating for products, even if it’s provided by the retailer.

Seventy-four percent of dark green consumers and 48 percent of light green consumers would be very likely to use a rating system to make their green purchase decisions.

Consumers are more likely to find green claims compelling if they provide quantitative information in an easy to visualize description that communicates the impact on the environment.

More HERE






U.S. And Europe threaten their own energy independence

Canada's conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, understands that energy means influence and independence. It would be tough to argue that Canada is on some kind of power trip, and it's not difficult to understand why the country is interested in establishing oil trade deals that would help its closest ideological allies retain their energy independence.

Decisions by Europe and America in the past month have pushed away Canada and its oil overtures under the guise of environmentalism -- which is turning out to be the new protectionism. And for what? So America and Europe can explore more "green-friendly" petroleum deals with unstable Middle Eastern and African regimes? It's not as if curtailing purchasing can stop production. China has expressed an interest in having it shipped in -- so Europe and America are effectively shifting any environmental impact to another part of the globe with even fewer controls.

The latest blow came a few days ago, when the U.S. government delayed the Keystone crude oil pipeline that would deliver Canadian oil to Texas. Officials cited concern over a water supply in Nebraska along the pipeline's proposed route. Who knows now whether the project will ever be completed. In the meantime, Canada is gushing out more oil than it knows what to do with, while the American government ensures that its citizens remain at the mercy of Middle Eastern regional strife and whether or not a petro-sheik wakes up on the right side of the bed.

So if you're an American upset about the price of oil, blame the government. It just had an opportunity to lower the price but gave it away -- likely to the Chinese, who will gladly choke the polar bears that Westerners won't.

Another anti-Canadian oil decision came late last month from the European Union. Canada has been trying to work out a free-trade deal with Europe, but the bloc ruled last month that Canadian crude oil extracted from oil sands is more of a pollutant than other sources of oil, assigning it a bureaucratic rating to reflect this assessment. Canada is arguing that over the course of the entire extraction-to-delivery cycle, oil sand products are no dirtier than other alternatives, and is criticizing the lack of transparency in the decision while threatening to appeal the decision to the World Trade Organization. Europeans, meanwhile, are selling their first-to-sixth-born children to put gas in their Renaults.

It's not that Europeans couldn't use Canadian oil. European countries are currently negotiating for oil with post-Gaddafi Libya, without really yet knowing who they're dealing with. They've been importing it from Russia, contributing to Putin's oil-for-influence program. Not too long ago, Russia shut off Europe's oil tap because it got into a tiff with Belarus, and the pipeline to Europe runs through that country. All these headaches, and yet Europe doesn't currently ship in any oil from Canada, although it quite feasibly could -- if it weren't for blatant protectionism cloaked in environmentalism.

It doesn't help that domestic Canadian lobbying groups are actively working against their own economic interests, claiming oil sand products inherently damage aboriginals and perform unspeakable acts on Mother Nature. Over the past week, I've seen two documentaries on the Kremlin-funded Russian international television network making similar claims about North American natural resource industrialism -- all while Russia opens up its new Nord Stream natural gas line running right under the Baltic Sea from Russia directly into Germany, where it can provide an environmentally friendlier alternative to crude while not ceding an inch of crude-oil imperialism.

No one's telling Russia it has to make cars that plug into walls or put windmills atop the Kremlin. Instead, the West will probably just keep kicking Canada until its own toes bleed.

SOURCE

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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

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THE BIG STORY OF THE DAY

This new email release OUGHT to be the end of the credibility of the Warmist "scientists" but people's ability to believe what they want to believe is phenomenal so true believers are unlikely to be perturbed.

I have put up below two comments on the bombshell plus a link to another but the blogoshere is full of it all today so I am not going to post much today in the belief that readers will want to look around among all the material available. Marc Morano has lots of links if you want to explore -- JR

CLIMATEGATE 2: Sensational new Email Release

John O'Sullivan

The world’s media is recoiling in astonishment at the sudden release of a massive new cache of Climategate emails that are further damning proof of how politics manufactured the man-made global warming agenda.

The emails have been made available once again in a free for all from a Russian server called Sinwt.ru. Mysteriously, the server has since gone offline. However, thousands of bloggers still had time to download and share copies of the new release of a 173MB zip file called "FOIA2011."

Analysts are convinced the release was timed to cause maximum impact on this week's international COP 17 climate summit in Durban. Unless a global greenhouse gas reduction deal is signed at Durban nothing will replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. As such international agreement on greenhouse gas reduction targets will be dead in the water.

The notable difference between the 'Climategate1.0' and the new '2.0 version' is that the whistleblower this time has added his/her own personal message which includes the plea, "Today's decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on hiding the decline" (a cutting reference to doomsayer, Dr. Michael Mann's shabby statistical graph trick).

The Climategate 2.0 data file contains more than 5,000 new emails that make a mockery of five ‘whitewash’ investigations conducted after the first Climategate scandal.

A full taster menu of the sensational revelation can be found at Tallbloke's website and discussion and analysis is already fervently under way on popular skeptic blogs Watts Up With That, Climate Audit, TallBloke and The Air Vent. Also, not to be outdone, Daily Telegraph’s popular skeptic writer, James Delingpole has his own take on the story.

An embarrassed University of East Anglia has issued a swift public announcement refusing to explicitly confirm or deny if the new release is genuine. But a spokesperson conceded, “these emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009.”

Michael Mann Firmly in the Dock for Data Abuse Fraud

Many of the new disclosures will cause considerable distress to Dr. Michael Mann but profound joy to Dr. Tim Ball. Mann is currently suing Ball for libel in the Supreme Court of British Columbia after Ball expressed the opinion that Mann belongs in “the state pen, not Penn State.”

Mann is director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and is currently trying to block a Virginia Court ruling ordering his former employers, the University of Virginia, to release withheld files from their archives to disgruntled taxpayers suspicious of grant fraud.

The following excerpts give just a flavor of the huge headache Mann’s attorney, Roger McConchie, will have in court trying to present his client as a credible and respected researcher.

<4369> Cook:
“I am afraid that Mike [Mann] is defending something that increasingly can not be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.”

<5055> Cook:
“One problem is that he [Mann] will be using the RegEM method, which provides no better diagnostics (e.g. betas) than his original method. So we will still not know where his estimates are coming from.”

Disgraced British climate professor, Phil Jones is mired as much as Mann for his part in the sleazy cover up.

Jones:
[on FOI and temperature data]
”Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

Mann reacted with his usual characteristic petulance at the release describing it as "truly pathetic.” By contrast, Dr. Ball was elated at the news. Commenting by email Dr. Ball said:

“These comments are even more damaging than the last. They show the political bias, the control of publications and the fact they were very aware that what they were doing was wrong. I am taking it to my lawyer this morning.”

More HERE (See the original for links).





Climategate 2.0: ‘Hockey stick’ debunking confirmed

Hockey sticks, hockey sticks, everywhere a hockey stick.

From the Climate 2.0 collection, alarmist Rob Wilson (?) confirms Steve McIntyre’s debunking of Michael Mann’s hockey stick:

"I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures. [...] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about."

McIntyre had reported that Mann’s temperature reconstruction model produced a hockey stick no matter what temperature data was input to it.

SOURCE

Lubos Motl also has some interesting comments and quotes





Germany’s Green Energy Revolution Falters

Germany's abandonment of nuclear power is facing increasing obstacles. The rating agency Moody's has warned Europe's electricity and gas suppliers about downgrading their creditworthiness due to growing political risks. This means that German energy companies which are supposed to make the switch to renewable energies are having increasing difficulties to get raise money on the capital markets. At the same time, the expansion of renewable energies has made only little progress.

After the nuclear disaster in Japan in March, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Party, CDU) had called the switch to alternative energies a "huge opportunity". Eight months later, the issue has slipped far down the political agenda as the political parties are blocking key laws."The many fragments that have been legislated at the federal and state level must now be brought together," demanded Hildegard Müller, chief lobbyist from the industry association BDEW.

Federal and state governments are divided about the question, which should carry the burden of the proposed tax benefits for the people and companies that increase the energy efficiency of their buildings. A first attempt by the Conciliation Committee to resolve the dispute failed. On the crucial issue of energy efficiency, the federal government is divided: The Free Democrats (FDP) reject an ambitious EU proposal, which would provide mandatory targets. At the same, German states develop energy plans – but uncoordinated." Next year, we need a script for the energy transformation," said Mueller.

Fritz Vahrenholt, CEO of RWE's renewable division, warned against the "danger of blackouts" given the rapid shutdown of many German nuclear power plants and pointed to rising energy prices and the growing import of nuclear power. At the same time, the nuclear energy phase-out also removes a source of revenue for investments in green power for energy suppliers. Lack of electricity grids are further slowing down the development of renewables; delays are caused by bureaucratic procedures and citizen protests.

The situation is critical for wind energy, which plays a central role in the energy concept of the government. On Wednesday, the electricity network operator Tennet, which has to wire all offshore installations in the North Sea, warned that to wire dozens of wind farms at a same time, as planned, would fail due to "lack of financial, human and material resources of all involved", as it is written in an urgent letter to the Chancellor's Office, the Economic and Environment Ministries. "The conditions have to be substantially revised and the burden has to spread over more shoulders."

Tennet estimates that investments of 5-6 billion Euros are needed over the next ten years. The company wants, among other things, to extend the target deadlines: currently, it must add a wind farm to the grid within 30 months after approval, which fails regularly. Installation vessels as well as sufficient suppliers of sea cable are lacking. The construction of wind turbines is getting delayed too – banks shy away from financing the 1.5 billion-Euro projects.

The financial strength of the energy industry, meanwhile, is disappearing fast. The valuation of the companies with the lowest A-level "A3" is at risk, according to Moody's. So far, RWE, E.ON and EnBW still have this investment-grade and are considered as prime borrowers. However, the nuclear phase-out and fuel taxes increase the burden on their balance sheets.

What is more, the industries of the future suffer: Almost all solar companies are deep in the red, wind turbine manufacturers complain about lack of demand and are reporting growing losses. The stock index Renixx, which lists 30 international Greentech companies, has lost 56 percent since the year-high in April.

SOURCE






U.S. temperature trend 1900 to 2011 is a rise of a THIRD of one degree Fahrenheit!

In other words, so minuscule as to be effectively static. Swedish blogger Sophia seems to love statistics and making graphs out of them. She is amusing hereself lately with looking at what can be found in the official Warmist figures and finds the stats for the USA rather hilarious. I reproduce just an excerpt from her post below but my headline above is her most amusing finding. It refers to the month of October only but if the October temperature is so unchanging there is not much scope for change elsewhere. She also finds, as expected. that it has been COOLING in this century -- JR

I thought it would be interesting to look at the recent October US temperature from a “historic” perspective. To see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 111 years.

Especially to see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 31 years. The period that according to the Global Warming Hysterics and computer models they worship should show a steady and accelerated increase in temperature.

And as I always point out:

Remember, these are the official figures. With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” to cool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations 1990-1993 – roughly 63 % of all stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations is back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

So here are the trends:

US temperature October 1900-2011

The trend for 1900 to 2011 is 0.03 F / Decade

US temperature October 1980-2011

The trend for 1980 to 2011 is 0.39 F / Decade

US temperature October 1990-2011

The trend for 1990 to 2011 is 0.16 F / Decade

US temperature October 2000-2011

The trend for 2000 to 2011 is - 0.20 F / Decade

And as I said in the beginning – always remember that these figures are based on the official data that has been tweaked, “adjusted” and manipulated to fit their agenda (cool the past, ignore UHI and land use change factors, huge smoothing radius – 1200km etc.)..

So the “warming trend” 2000-2011 for October is exactly - 0.20 F degrees a decade. That is a - 2.0 F COOLER in 100 years. Take cover!

And for this predicted trend the politicians want to take our societies back to the Stone Age. But, as usual, they DO NOTHING about the actual trend.

Even worse, “our” politicians, “scientists”, journalists” and the mainstream medias attitude is: Move on, NOTHING to see here.

As I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism. And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

More HERE (See the original for graphics)

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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

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Trees Before Poverty at Durban

New Report Reveals World Bank Forestry Scheme Ignored Deforestation Emissions Data; Donor Aid Money Being Misused

A new report by World Growth released today in the lead up to the Durban climate talks reveals how the World Bank ignored a report it commissioned that indicated forestry from tropical developing countries could account for as low as 6 percent of all global emissions; yet, the Bank continues using donor aid money amounting to US$4 billion from countries like the United States, Australia and others to pursue a forest and climate policy strategy based on the overstated figure that forestry accounts for 17 percent of global emissions. We call upon World Bank President Robert Zoellick to undertake an urgent blue-ribbon panel review of the Bank’s forestry and climate strategy, and halt all activities while the review is underway.

World Growth Chairman Ambassador Alan Oxley released the following statement:

“The Bank’s strategy to reduce emissions by limiting forestry in developing countries is not working. This strategy is based on overstated data that corroborates with the Bank’s fashionable new agenda to reduce global emissions rather than its original stated mission to reduce poverty.

“The World Bank strategy to spend US$4 billion on claims that forestry in tropical developing countries generates 17 percent of global emissions is based on unproven information. The Bank has therefore wasted taxpayers’ money on a blatantly manipulated environmentalist agenda – this represents a disgraceful outcome for a formerly effective development agency that has now undermined its goal to alleviate poverty.

“This strategy – to co-opt select data in order to push an anti-forestry agenda – is part of a larger campaign by the World Bank. This week in Guatemala at the International Tropical Timber Organization’s (ITTO), the World Bank pushed for its preferred scheme to reduce emissions and restrict forest development – the Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) scheme – a program that only serves to provide aid money to poor countries to restrict their own development.

“At the time of great uncertainty about the direction of the global economy, the World Bank should not be advocating climate change strategies that would retard, not support, expansion of economic growth in developing countries. Negotiators at the upcoming Durban Climate Summit should be cautioned against advancing skewed forestry emissions data to push for a global climate change agenda that’s increasingly not welcome in the developing world.”

World Growth is an international non-governmental organization established to expand the research, information, advocacy, and other resources to improve the economic conditions and living standards in developing and transitional countries. At World Growth, we embrace the age of globalization and the power of free trade to eradicate poverty and create jobs and opportunities. World Growth supports the production of palm oil and the use of forestry as a means to promote economic growth, reduce poverty and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. World Growth believes a robust cultivation of palm oil and forestry provides an effective means of environmental stewardship that can serve as the catalyst for increasing social and economic development.

For more information on World Growth, visit www.worldgrowth.org. To speak with World Growth's experts or find out more about its work, please email media@worldgrowth.org or call +1-866-467-7200.

Press release received via email





British wind turbines turned off when it's windy ... because high winds make them too noisy for nearby residents

You can't make stuff like this up

Wind turbines are being turned off during high winds because they are too noisy. Documents from local authorities show that 269 complaints were received about noise from the rotating blades in the past three years. Some came from residents living up to three miles away.

In nearly half of these cases, operators switched turbines off or reduced their speed. The owner of one wind farm in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, was served with a noise abatement notice.

At Askam wind farm near Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, a control system was installed to turn the seven turbines off at high wind speeds.

Council officers found 12 turbines on a former RAF base in Lissett, near Bridlington in East Yorkshire, had exceeded noise limits after complaints from residents. They arranged with the operators for some to turn more slowly. Similar action was taken following complaints about turbines in Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire and Skelmonae in Aberdeenshire.

A quarter of the complaints were related to small wind turbines which can be fitted on to homes, schools and hospitals. But the rest involved large turbines which can be more than 400ft high.

One in six large wind farms built since 2008 have attracted noise complaints, with residents reporting that humming sounds disrupt their sleep. Locals near a 22-turbine farm in Fullabrook, Devon, said the noise was like a tumble dryer.

A 2009 study of people living close to wind farms in Britain, the U.S., Italy, Ireland and Canada found they caused stress and could increase the risk of heart disease, panic attacks and migraines.

A spokesman for Renewables UK, which represents the industry, said: ‘Wind farm operators strive to be good neighbours and are conscientious in responding to local concerns.’

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The Duke of Edinburgh has said just what we’re all thinking about Britain's disgraceful wind farms

By Clive Aslet (Clive Aslet is Editor at Large of 'Country Life’)

You have to hand it to the Duke of Edinburgh. At 90, he is still as incisive as ever. Once again, the Royal family has articulated what ordinary people, without the ear of the media, have long felt. His son might have called the wind farms that are besmirching our mountains and waving their giant arms inanely out at sea “a monstrous carbuncle”. Prince Philip chose “disgrace”. So they are. The politicians who foisted them upon us should be put in the stocks.

Wind farms are Blairism incarnate. Wanting to look big on the international stage, he committed Britain to some preposterously over-ambitious targets for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. As ever, this was glittering, shop-window stuff, the bill for which would somehow be obfuscated by the dour Scot in accounts. After due nail-biting, Brown came up with a system so convoluted that most people have only just realised that the person who ultimately pays is the consumer.

We are all generously subsidising the wind farms which many of us hate through our electricity bills. Why? Because unlike other forms of renewable energy, which would have required the Treasury to build huge civil engineering projects, the cost could be met through a trade in Renewable Obligations Certificates (ROCs). It works like this. Power companies are required by law to provide a proportion of green energy and if they don’t meet the target, they are fined. But they can avoid the fine if they buy-in green energy credits, which are traded in the shape of ROCs.

The money from selling ROCs is far more attractive to the wind farm speculators than the value of the energy itself. The power companies simply pass on the cost to the poor sap who buys their electricity. It’s Machiavellian. Worse, it’s Brownian — and, as the Duke says, a disgrace. But from the Blairite shallows, it was much better than having to confront a decision that might have incurred short-term unpopularity, but is all but inevitable for our future energy security: the building of more nuclear power stations.

Of course, in the boom times, when the economy was growing, this green indulgence might have been like that extra chocolate you shouldn’t have; nobody would notice it when the suit had been let out. We have now found that the waist band isn’t infinitely elastic. But just as belts are being tightened, green energy has bloated our bills by, as Lord Marland from the Department of Energy and Climate Change revealed in the House of Lords last month, a whopping £7.1 billion. Think how many libraries that would keep open. It is due to get worse. According to the Renewable Energy Foundation, whose sums have so far proved accurate, that figure will have risen to some £40 billion by 2020 — that’s between £6 billion and £8 billion a year; nearly all of it taken by wind.

I’m not the first person to have noticed that wind farms only generate electricity when the wind is blowing. On a freezing day, when the country turns up its electric blanket, the ear hearkens to what Robert Bridges called “the stillness of the solemn air”. No wind. However many turbines bristle on Welsh mountain tops or pylons stride through the Great Glen, we’ll only be tickling the nose of our energy crisis. We’re missing those targets to reduce emissions by a country mile. Yet as the winter progresses, life for some of the poorest members of society will become more difficult because of it. Food and fuel are going up in price, fuel by more than it need do because of those wretched wind farms.

We all know about David Cameron’s green instincts: he paraded them before the election as part of the campaign to convince voters that the Tories weren’t simply driven by the bottom line. He even put a windmill on his London chimney, even though there is not enough wind in cities. Now he should go and see that Meryl Streep film, and remind himself of the great lesson that Mrs Thatcher taught us: subsidies for industry don’t work.

We need more research into renewables, to find technologies that will work. But no form of green energy except nuclear is ready to take over from present sources of production. As fossil fuel prices rise, entrepreneurs will find ways of producing energy more cheaply. Wind farms are the modern British Leyland; the Government tried to pick a winner, but picked wrong.

Throw them out. Throw out the windmonger in chief, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, and leave it to the money men. Green MP Caroline Lucas may instinctively defend the interests of people rich enough to put solar panels on their roofs against those of the lowly consumers who have to pay to subsidise them, but the Treasury is, quite rightly, reducing the feed-in tariff for solar panels.

Less attention has been attracted by the intention to reduce subsidies for wind. Not by very much, mind you, and not by enough; but sufficient to send a signal to would-be investors that this rash, fierce blaze of riot cannot last. We can’t go on wrecking the landscape and spending money we don’t have. As the Admiral would have said in Mary Poppins, heavy weather is brewing for wind farms. It can’t arrive a moment too soon.

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Private property is the solution

What to do about certain environmental problems is the great question of our age. It's obvious that, steering clear of contentious matters like the atmosphere, that we're driving some ecosystems entirely into extinction. How to stop this, how to solve these sorts of problems, is something we really ought to be concentrating on. And as it turns out, private property rights are indeed, for some subset of these problems, that very answer.

Take fishing for example: we're vacuuming everything edible out of the seas at present and we're really not going to be able to do that much longer. The current bureaucratic methods of trying to control this aren't working: we're still vacuuming just about everything edible out of the oceans. Which is what makes this story so interesting.

Chesapeake Bay is that huge squiggle on the map, running some 200 miles south from Washington DC in between Maryland and Virginia. It's also long been the source of bounteous harvests of oysters (my own immediately post-school teenage years were spent opening such delights for restaurant patrons in the area). However, the legal regimes on each side have been completely different. On the Maryland side, only the "hunting" of wild stock was allowed, on the Virginia the leasing of seabed and planting then harvesting.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise to find out that Virginia produces vast numbers of fat oysters and has similarly vast numbers still in the water. Maryland has been pretty much fished out.

We really do need to take note of where fisheries are abundant and where they're not and then copy the management methods of the abundant ones: the Alaskan halibut fishery, the Icelandic and Faroese general fisheries, the New Zealand Orange Roughy. These are the places which have granted private property rights to fishermen and which as a result have waters still teeming with fish.

In effect, we've got to stop fisheries operating on hunter gatherer economics and move them over to working on farming such.

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Secretary Chu’s ‘Clean Energy Race’ Blather

There simply is no green energy race with China. No one needs the product.

The House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee grilled Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu for four hours yesterday about his role in approving and managing a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra. The solar technology company — celebrated by President Obama and other top administration officials as a “green jobs” and Stimulus success story in 2009 and 2010 — closed its doors and filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2011.

Yesterday’s hearing was part of a nine-month investigation. The Committee reviewed 186,000 pages of documents from DOE, 10,000 pages from the White House, and another 1,000 from Treasury. Oversight Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) and other GOP Members charge that Obama officials rushed the Solyndra loan out the door without due diligence, ignored the company’s significant financial problems, and illegally gave investors first dibs over taxpayers in collecting $75 million loaned to the company in early 2011.

The Committee developed this case in several briefing memos (Sep. 12, Sep. 23, Oct. 12, Nov. 17) and published collections of supporting emails and documentation (here, here, here). Allegations — as yet unproven — have also been raised claiming the DOE loan and taxpayer subordination were political payoffs to George Kaiser, a big-time bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign who was also a major investor in Solyndra.

As expected, Chu denied that DOE officials acted incompetently or improperly, or that politics intruded in any of the decisions DOE made in reviewing, approving, and restructuring the Solyndra loan. However, Chu had so little to say about specific emails, most of which he had not seen until published by the Committee, that he came across as a man out of the loop at his own agency.

Chu probably failed to persuade any Republican on the Committee that Solyndra was just a good bet gone sour. On the other hand, GOP Committee members did not produce smoking-gun evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Chu’s written testimony — barely three pages long — recycled his customary spiel about the promise and peril of the global “clean energy race.” The argument has become a staple of green rhetoric: China is spending billions subsidizing its clean tech sector, if we don’t “invest” in “our” clean tech firms America will lose the race and China will “eat our lunch.”

Talk of a clean energy race harkens to the “space race” and “arms race” of the Cold War era. But although those races had economic spinoffs, they were first and foremost geopolitical, not commercial. Renewable energy advocates now try to recreate a Cold War sense of drama about companies like Solyndra. Nukes and missiles had an obvious potential to affect the outcome of a global power struggle. But wind turbines and solar panels?

The global marketplace comprises countless races, because each firm typically faces competition from many others. Dannon, Yoplait, General Mills, Kraft Foods, and Chobani, for example, are engaged in a global yogurt race, and by all accounts “we” (General Mills, Kraft) are losing. Yet you probably won’t read about the yogurt race in the Washington Post.

Chu has probably done more than any other official to popularize the notion of a clean energy race. A testimony he gave in November 2009 offers a more complete explanation than the one he gave yesterday.

Chu argued that the world would need to invest $2.1 trillion in wind turbines and $1.5 trillion in solar panels to meet global emission reduction targets. Thus, to his mind: “The only question is … who will invent, manufacture, and export these clean technologies and which countries will become dependent on foreign products.”

Chu warned that China was investing “about $9 billion a month on clean energy” and lamented that America had “fallen behind” other countries in global market share, but said the Stimulus was helping U.S. firms make a comeback. However, he cautioned the only way to ensure our clean tech companies can compete is to put a steadily tightening “cap” on carbon emissions. “That critical step will drive investment decisions toward clean energy.”

This does not compute.

China does not cap carbon. China is fueling its development chiefly with coal, oil, and hydro-power, not wind and solar. Almost 80% of China’s electricity comes from coal, and China is investing billions in Canadian tar sands oil production. If China is both threat and model, won’t America fall further behind in the “economic growth race” if we wage political warfare on coal and block the Keystone XL Pipeline?

Be that as it may, from day one President Obama’s goal has been to make wind and solar power “the profitable kind of energy” by handicapping economically efficient power generation from coal and natural gas. Banking on this, Solyndra’s business plan assumed that Congress would pass the Waxman-Markey bill, with its carbon caps and renewable electricity mandates.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the clean energy future. One month after Chu’s 2009 testimony, the Copenhagen climate conference fizzled. In 2010, Senate leaders pulled the plug on a Waxman-Markey companion bill, and the November elections nailed the coffin shut on cap-and-trade.

By Chu’s (and Solyndra’s) logic, the clean energy race, predicated as it was on handicapping carbon-based energy, should be over. Nonetheless, we hear the same old, same old. China is pumping billions into wind and solar. If we don’t do the same, we’ll become dependent on Chinese products.

This is bad advice for three reasons.

First, the easiest and cheapest way not to become “dependent” on Chinese wind turbines and solar panels is not to shoot ourselves in the foot in the first place. The Chinese are selling to an artificial market, one created by European and U.S. policies mandating reliance on high-cost, intermittent electricity sources. Get rid of these Soviet-style production quota, and we won’t be tempted to buy Chinese products!

Second, we cannot beat China in catering to this ersatz market, and cannot afford to do so even if we could.

As my colleague Chris Horner points out, America’s strength is innovation but China’s is mass production. Chinese solar panels are not more innovative than Solyndra’s — quite the contrary. But China, with its cheap labor, coal-based power, and a government free to fleece consumers and taxpayers for the benefit of favored producers (they’re communists, after all), will always be able to undersell competitors in a market where what really counts is not satisfying non-coerced customers but simply meeting politically imposed quota.

To suppose that we can subsidize our way to a level playing field is to forget that Beijing is flush with cash and Washington is broke.

Third, even China’s profits may turn into losses, because the renewable energy market looks like a bubble about to burst. As CCNet’s Benny Peiser reports, the recession and sovereign debt crisis are putting pressure on governments to scale back green energy subsidies. Spain’s Industry Ministry announced it intends to cut the feed-in tariff for wind turbines by 40%. Britain too may cut subsidies for wind farms and household solar panels. Japan, worried about the billions it is paying other countries for carbon credits, is reconsidering its commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions 25% by 2020. Even the European Union acknowledges a “trade-off between climate change policies and competitiveness,” and is questioning whether it should press ahead with decarbonization if other countries don’t follow suit.

China is to our times what Japan was to the 1980s — an economic rival that supposedly proves the superiority of politically directed industrial policy to free markets. But Japan, Inc. turned out to be a bubble economy, with the booming 1980s followed by the “lost decade” of the 1990s.

In August, China instituted a feed-in tariff program to offset declining demand as large buyers such as Germany and Italy shrunk their subsidies for solar panels. The feed-in tariff may be enough to keep the bubble inflated, but it too is a subsidy. And subsidies consume wealth, they do not create it.

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Poisoner targets birds in Australian city

The story below is extremely unpleasant but is entirely predictable. Despite nuisance birds like crows and magpies not being remotely "endangered species" they are protected by law. So people cannot shoot ones that are a particular nuisance and the government almost never does anything to remove them. So where the law fails people you have got to expect somebody to become so fed up that they take their own measures. And inevitably those measures will be crude

IT'S a murder of crows . . . and magpies and seabirds. The hunt continues for an elusive bird killer in greater Brisbane's bayside. The killer has been stalking the streets of Cleveland in Redland City, poisoning prey with chemical-laced meat.

The entire local magpie population may now have been successfully wiped out.

The stealthy perpetrator is believed to be responsible for the poisoning death of 68 birds, including 50 magpies and 16 crows, in the central business district.

RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty said he was shocked by the scale of the poisoning campaign, which was the worst he had seen. "I've not seen anything on this scale," Mr Beatty said. "There are lots of cases where a few birds have been poisoned but not an ongoing campaign like this and certainly not on this scale."

Scores of dead or paralysed birds have been found on green spaces within blocks of each other on Bloomfield, Doig and Waterloo streets and Taylor Cres. Another two dead birds turned up last week.

Sample testing has shown the presence of an organophosphate chemical that is particularly toxic to birds.

However, almost five months of investigations and a public information campaign has failed to uncover any tangible leads.

Pelican Seabird Rescue vice-president Natalie Forrest, who is caring for five surviving magpies, said she was sickened by the parade of carcasses that also included a black-faced cuckoo shrike, a flying fox and a mouse.

"It's totally unnecessary and very cruel," Ms Forrest said. "It's an absolutely terrible sort of cruelty and I would like to see the offender found and punished appropriately. I have never seen anything like it. "Yes we have seen poisoning but it's usually a one-off event. This has been very deliberate now for six months."

The first poisoned birds began appearing in June, but the number of cases then dropped off again until last month when more dead birds began turning up.

If found, the killer could face a fine of up to $100,000 or two years in jail, depending on the relevant law.

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