The Great global warming update:

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved
Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

By Christopher Booker Last Updated: 7:40AM GMT 29 Dec 2008

Polar bears will be fine after all Photo: AP
The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".
Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.
First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.
Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.
Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.
Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

The Great global warming update:

clipped from www.theonion.com

Young Gore sets out for his new home, where the sky is clear, the water is clean, and there are no Republicans.

EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.

"I tried to warn them, but the Elders of this planet would not listen," said Gore, who in 2000 was nearly banished to a featureless realm of nonexistence for promoting his unpopular message. "They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn't they heed me before it was too late?"

The Great global warming update:

clipped from www.theonion.com

Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness

NEW YORK—Millions of eyewitnesses watched in stunned horror Tuesday as light emptied from the sky, plunging the U.S. and neighboring countries into darkness. As the hours progressed, conditions only worsened.

Satellite view at 4:50 p.m. EST shows the sun disappearing from the sky.

At approximately 4:20 p.m. EST, the sun began to lower from its position in the sky in a westward trajectory, eventually disappearing below the horizon. Reports of this global emergency continued to file in from across the continent until 5:46 p.m. PST, when the entire North American mainland was officially declared dark.

As the phenomenon hit New York, millions of motorists were forced to use their headlights to navigate through the blackness. Highways flooded with commuters who had left work to hurry home to their families. Traffic was bottlenecked for more than two hours in many major metropolitan areas.

Across the country, buses and trains are operating on limited schedules and will cease operation shortly after 12 a.m. EST, leaving hundreds of thousands of commuters in outlying areas effectively stranded in their homes.

Despite the high potential for danger and decreased visibility, scientists say they are unable to do anything to restore light to the continent at this time.

"Vast gravitational forces have rotated the planet Earth on an axis drawn through its north and south poles," said Dr. Elena Bilkins of the National Weather Service. "The Earth is in actuality spinning uncontrollably through space."

Bilkins urged citizens to remain calm, explaining that the Earth's rotation is "utterly beyond human control."

"The only thing a sensible person can do is wait it out," she said.

Commerce has been brought to a virtual standstill, with citizens electing either to remain home with loved ones or gather in dimly lit restaurants and bars.

"I looked out the window and saw it getting dark when I was still at the office working," said Albert Serpa, 27, a lawyer from Tulsa, OK, who had taken shelter with others at Red's Bar and Grill. "That's when I knew I had to leave right away."

Ronald Jarrett, a professor of economics at George Washington University who left his office after darkness blanketed the D.C. metro area, summed up the fears of an entire nation, saying, "Look, it's dark outside. I want to go home," and ended the phone interview abruptly.

Businesses have shut their doors, banks are closed across the nation, all major stock exchanges have suspended trading, and manufacturing in many sectors has ceased.

Some television stations have halted broadcasting altogether, for reasons not immediately understood.

Law-enforcement agencies nationwide were quick to address the crisis.

Enlarge Image

Houston-area victims flee their workplaces ahead of the growing wave of darkness.

Said NYPD spokesman Jake Moretti: "Low-light conditions create an environment that's almost tailor-made for crime. It's probably safe to say we'll make more arrests in the next few hours than we have all day."

Darkness victims describe hunger pangs, lassitude, and a slow but steady loss of energy, forcing many to lie down. As many as two-thirds of those believed afflicted have fallen into a state of total unconsciousness.

Many parents report that their younger children have been troubled, even terrified, by the deep darkness. To help allay such fears, some parents are using an artificial light source in the hallway or bedroom.

As of 2 a.m. EST, the continent was still dark, the streets empty and silent. However, some Americans remained hopeful, vowing to soldier on despite the crisis.

"I don't plan on doing anything any different," said Chicago-area hospice worker Janet Cosgrove, 51. "I'm going to get up in the morning and go to work."

delusions

The Great global warming update:

clipped from www.news.com.au

Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change

Andrew Bolt

July 09, 2008 12:00am

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".

"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)

"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."

The Great global warming update:

clipped from www.kusi.com

John Coleman's Comments Before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman

by John Coleman

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

The future of our civilization lies in the balance.

Read Mr. Coleman's rebuttel here

The Great global warming update:

clipped from www.americanthinker.com

Gore Celebrates Israel's 60th With Whoppers

After delivering a scientifically inept global warming lecture in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, greenhouse gasbag Al Gore presented Israel with a 60^th birthday gift of custom tailored, regionally-targeted Globaloney.

As adaptable to his surroundings as any desert snake, the shameless Nobel laureate told conference attendees that plunging water levels in their lakes and rivers were the result of -- guess what? Quothe the Goracle:

"In this region of the world, the water crisis is one of the most important manifestations of the global climate change crisis."

In reporting the story, the Associated Press offered this explanation for his reasoning:

"Water levels in Israel's major bodies of water are dropping quickly. The level of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, has receded about 3 feet (1 meter) each year for the past 25 years. The Jordan River, the biblical location of Jesus' baptism, is only a few feet (centimeters) [sic] deep in some places."

The Great global warming update:

clipped from michellemalkin.com

31,072 scientists John McCain needs to talk to

By Michelle Malkin • May 19, 2008 07:14 AM

This morning at the National Press Club, The Petition Project will release the names of more than 31,000 scientists who reject the Gore Theory of Manmade Global Warming. Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine spearheaded the project:

clipped from michellemalkin.com

Where: Holeman Lounge at the National Press Club, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC

Why: the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM’s Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

It is evident that 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science - including 9,021 PhDs, are not “a few.” Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,072 American scientists are not “skeptics.”

Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM)

The Great global warming update:

clipped from www.ncdc.noaa.gov

Climate Summary

April 2008

The average temperature in April
2008 was 51.0
F. This was -1.0
F cooler
than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the
29th coolest
April in 114
years.
The temperature trend for
the period of record (1895 to present) is
0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

The Great global warming update:

clipped from www.americanthinker.com

Gore's Myanmar Words as Inopportune as they were Repulsive

Marc Sheppard

Thirty days after Steve McIntyre caught NASA cooking climate history again - this time in a feeble attempt to somehow conceal the alarmist-embarrassing downward trend since 1998 -- Al Gore shamelessly portrayed Saturday's Myanmar cyclone catastrophe as a ‘consequence' of global warming.

A mere 16 days after NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation's cool phase shift would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, Gore told NPR that the "trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures." This just 6 days after a German study also predicted cooler ocean temperatures due to the Meridional Overturning Circulation entering a weak cycle, and in spite of there being absolutely no empirical evidence of a global warming / storm strength link.

American Thinker: Are Global Warmists Pulling a Cool Fast One?

American Thinker:
By Marc Sheppard

Mounting evidence of lower temperature trends despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels is becoming a real problem for the greenhouse gas crowd. And reports that the cooling appears to follow a period of dormant solar activity aren't likely to ease their anxieties.

Indeed, without an immediate alarmist course correction, years of 'the science is settled' campaigning could prove for naught, as prolonged temperature dips decimate the primary anthropogenic argument. After all, Lord Gore has shouted the IPCC's proclamation of a 0.3°C warming over the next decade from virtually every rooftop. Given new data projecting the contrary, he and his green hordes will need to find a way to not only explain the error, but keep the AGW dream alive.

And perhaps they have.

On April 21st, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that an impending phase shift in a natural climate event would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years, noting that:

'The shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with its widespread Pacific Ocean temperature changes, will have significant implications for global climate. It can affect Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, marine eco"

Bush Raises Temp On Global Warming -

"Bush Raises Temp On Global Warming
By Tony Blankley
April 16, 2008

The last months of a presidential administration are often dangerous. Presidents -- looking to their legacies -- go to desperate lengths to try to enhance their reputations for posterity. A pungent example of such practices by the Bush administration was reported above the fold on the front page of The Washington Times Monday: 'Bush prepares global warming initiative.'

Oh, dear. Just as an increasing number of scientists are finding their courage to speak out against the global warming alarmists and just as a building body of evidence and theories challenge the key elements of the human-centric carbon-based global warming theories, George W. Bush takes this moment to say, in effect: 'We are all global alarmists now.'

It reminds me of the moment back in 1971 when Richard Nixon proclaimed, 'We are all Keynesians now' -- eight years after Milton Friedman had published his book 'A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960' and about an hour and a half before a consensus built that Friedman's work consigned Keynes to the dustbin of economic history.

Now it is Bush's turn to be the last :man to join a losing proposition. In how many ways is this proposal not useful?

read on her
Tony Blankley -- GOPUSA


.

Americans for Prosperity - Americans for Prosperity Foundation :: AFP Presents the Hot Air Tour

Free trip to Washington to fight ignorance and stupidity.

What: Rally against unaffordable climate change schemes

Where: Upper Senate Park/Union Station Plaza (map here)

When: 11:30 AM; Monday, April 21

Popcorn. T-shirts. Lunch. Ice Cream. It's all on us! Don't miss out on this important event!

Americans for Prosperity - Americans for Prosperity Foundation :: AFP Presents the Hot Air Tour

Global temperatures 'to decrease'

"Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

But experts have also forecast a record high temperature within five years.

'Variability'

La Nina and El Nino are two great natural Pacific currents whose effects are so huge they resonate round the world.

El Nino warms the planet when it happens, La Nina cools it. This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Nina.

It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.


LA NINA KEY FACTS
La Nina 2008 Forecast (Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre)
La Nina translates from the Spanish as 'The Child Girl'
Refers to the extensive cooling of the central and eastern Pacific
Increased sea temperatures on the western side of the Pacific means the atmosphere has more energy and frequency of heavy rain and thunderstorms is increased
Typically lasts for up to 12 months and generally l"

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature :

The Epicycles of Global Warming

When True Believers begin to harbor doubts, they don't immediately give up the faith. It's too scary; too much pride and money has been invested; too many jobs and reputations are on the line; and they need to find a new reason to live. So they always try to add on new wrinkles and qualifications to their crumbling story.

Today that's happening with the global warming cult.

"Human-caused global warming" has now officially been re-named "climate change" to explain the inconvenient truth that the winter of 2007-8 was the coldest in a century, in spite of all those tons of "greenhouse gas" being spewed into the air from all the new factories in China and India. Worldwide temps dropped 0.6 of a degree C in one year. That may not sound like a lot, but it's more than all the ballyhooed warming in the preceding century.

American Thinker: The Epicycles of Global Warming

The Great global warming update:

Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back

Are the world's ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory?

Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al Gore during his "Inconvenient Truth" lectures about mankind’s alleged impact on the global climate.

Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has soared in recent years.

As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems to have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the one exception — Western Europe, which had, until the weekend when temperatures plunged to as low as -10 C in some places, been basking in unseasonably warm weather.

via newsmax

The Great global warming update:

The Great global warming update:

'The fact is that the global temperature of 2007
is statistically the same as 2006 and every year since 2001'

From the new statesman

Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?

Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.

With only few days remaining in 2007, the indications are the global temperature for this year is the same as that for 2006 – there has been no warming over the 12 months.

But is this just a blip in the ever upward trend you may ask? No.

The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.

In principle the greenhouse effect is simple. Gases like carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere absorb outgoing infrared radiation from the earth’s surface causing some heat to be retained.

Consequently an increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases from human activities such as burning fossil fuels leads to an enhanced greenhouse effect. Thus the world warms, the climate changes and we are in trouble.

The evidence for this hypothesis is the well established physics of the greenhouse effect itself and the correlation of increasing global carbon dioxide concentration with rising global temperature. Carbon dioxide is clearly increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s a straight line upward. It is currently about 390 parts per million. Pre-industrial levels were about 285 ppm. Since 1960 when accurate annual measurements became more reliable it has increased steadily from about 315 ppm. If the greenhouse effect is working as we think then the Earth’s temperature will rise as the carbon dioxide levels increase.

But here it starts getting messy and, perhaps, a little inconvenient for some. Looking at the global temperatures as used by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK’s Met Office and the IPCC (and indeed Al Gore) it’s apparent that there has been a sharp rise since about 1980.

The period 1980-98 was one of rapid warming – a temperature increase of about 0.5 degrees C (CO2 rose from 340ppm to 370ppm). But since then the global temperature has been flat (whilst the CO2 has relentlessly risen from 370ppm to 380ppm). This means that the global temperature today is about 0.3 deg less than it would have been had the rapid increase continued.

For the past decade the world has not warmed. Global warming has stopped. It’s not a viewpoint or a sceptic’s inaccuracy. It’s an observational fact. Clearly the world of the past 30 years is warmer than the previous decades and there is abundant evidence (in the northern hemisphere at least) that the world is responding to those elevated temperatures. But the evidence shows that global warming as such has ceased.

The explanation for the standstill has been attributed to aerosols in the atmosphere produced as a by-product of greenhouse gas emission and volcanic activity. They would have the effect of reflecting some of the incidental sunlight into space thereby reducing the greenhouse effect. Such an explanation was proposed to account for the global cooling observed between 1940 and 1978.

But things cannot be that simple. The fact that the global temperature has remained unchanged for a decade requires that the quantity of reflecting aerosols dumped put in our atmosphere must be increasing year on year at precisely the exact rate needed to offset the accumulating carbon dioxide that wants to drive the temperature higher. This precise balance seems highly unlikely. Other explanations have been proposed such as the ocean cooling effect of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation or the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

But they are also difficult to adjust so that they exactly compensate for the increasing upward temperature drag of rising CO2. So we are led to the conclusion that either the hypothesis of carbon dioxide induced global warming holds but its effects are being modified in what seems to be an improbable though not impossible way, or, and this really is heresy according to some, the working hypothesis does not stand the test of data.

It was a pity that the delegates at Bali didn’t discuss this or that the recent IPCC Synthesis report did not look in more detail at this recent warming standstill. Had it not occurred, or if the flatlining of temperature had occurred just five years earlier we would have no talk of global warming and perhaps, as happened in the 1970’s, we would fear a new Ice Age! Scientists and politicians talk of future projected temperature increases. But if the world has stopped warming what use these projections then?

Some media commentators say that the science of global warming is now beyond doubt and those who advocate alternative approaches or indeed modifications to the carbon dioxide greenhouse warming effect had lost the scientific argument. Not so.

Certainly the working hypothesis of CO2 induced global warming is a good one that stands on good physical principles but let us not pretend our understanding extends too far or that the working hypothesis is a sufficient explanation for what is going on.

I have heard it said, by scientists, journalists and politicians, that the time for argument is over and that further scientific debate only causes delay in action. But the wish to know exactly what is going on is independent of politics and scientists must never bend their desire for knowledge to any political cause, however noble.

The science is fascinating, the ramifications profound, but we are fools if we think we have a sufficient understanding of such a complicated system as the Earth’s atmosphere’s interaction with sunlight to decide. We know far less than many think we do or would like you to think we do. We must explain why global warming has stopped.

David Whitehosue was BBC Science Correspondent 1988–1998, Science Editor BBC News Online 1998–2006 and the 2004 European Internet Journalist of the Year. He has a doctorate in astrophysics and is the author of The Sun: A Biography (John Wiley, 2005).] His website is www.davidwhitehouse.com