Sunday, November 07, 2010

This must be the best laugh of the week for climate skeptics

The results of a survey carried out among readers of the frantically Warmist "Scientific American" are now available.

It must have nearly choked them to publish the results. It's a wonder they didn't "fudge" the results, in fact. Fudging results is standard operating procedure for Warmists. See HERE or HERE for instance

Go Here to see all.

Talk about a propaganda fail! And this was among a readership that would have been highly literate scientifically.





Impotent rage at the dying of the light from the zombies of the Left

They've looked at what the new GOP congressmen think about global warming and see their vision -- CONTROL -- slipping away from them. All they can do is project and call skeptics "zombies". Zombies just march along as their authorities tell them. Only skeptics stop and challenge the direction of travel. So who are the real zombies?

Following the Tea Party wave of the midterm elections, half of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Congress now questions the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is a civilizational threat. Analysis by the Wonk Room, with research by Daily Kos's RL Miller, finds that 45 of 97 Republican freshmen and 85 of 166 reelected Republicans are confirmed climate zombies. There are no Republican freshmen, in the House or Senate, who admit the science is real. New members include William Marcy (MS-2) - who warns of "Global Warming Environmental Terrorists" - and Kristi Noem (SD-AL) - who voted for a resolution that "astrological" and "thermological" dynamics "effect" the weather.

The U.S. Senate, as the Wonk Room has previously described, has a monolithic Republican bloc against climate action, with incoming Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repudiating their past support for cap-and-trade legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives now only has four Republicans who publicly admit that global warming pollution is real:

- Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18): "Global warming is real and man-made."

- Rep. Judy Biggert (IL-13): "The science behind climate change is sound."

- Rep. Jim Gerlach (PA-06): "Congressman Gerlach believes we have a responsibility as legislators and citizens to reduce our imprint on the Earth and reverse the effects of science-based climate change for both current and future generations."

- Rep. Frank Wolf (VA-01): "I believe that global warming is real. The National Academy of Sciences has presented evidence that the Earth's surface is warming because of human activities, including increased worldwide industrial development, over the past several decades."

However, none of these four voted in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act to combat climate pollution and support a clean energy economy. All five Republicans who did support the legislation and ran for re-election won: Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Chris Smith (NJ-4), and Leonard Lance (NJ-7). None of them have spoken publicly about the science of climate change.

It remains to be seen whether these nine Republican climate realists will do anything to stop the impending witch hunt against climate scientists by their conspiracy-minded caucus.

SOURCE




They Can’t Model Clouds, They Can’t Model Feedback, But They Can Forecast The Temperature In 90 Years Within A Tenth Of A Degree





http://www.coloradoan.com/



http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/

SOURCE







If Al Gore's Chicago Climate Exchange Suffers Total Failure, Does the MSM Make a Sound?

The CCX was the topic of thousands of MSM articles over the years, but not a single article reported their recent demise. Hmmm.

by Steve Milloy

Global warming-inspired cap and trade has been one of the most stridently debated public policy controversies of the past 15 years. But it is dying a quiet death. In a little reported move, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on Oct. 21 that it will be ending carbon trading - the only purpose for which it was founded - this year.

Although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law, like the Waxman-Markey scheme passed by the House in June 2009.

At its founding in November 2000, it was estimated that the size of CCX's carbon trading market could reach $500 billion. That estimate ballooned over the years to $10 trillion.

Al Capone tried to use Prohibition to muscle in on a piece of all the action in Chicago. The CCX's backers wanted to use a new prohibition on carbon emissions to muscle in on a piece of, quite literally, all the action in the world.

The CCX was the brainchild of Northwestern University business professor Richard Sandor, who used $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation to launch the CCX. For his efforts, Time named Sandor as one of its Heroes of the Planet in 2002 and one of its Heroes of the Environment in 2007.

The CCX seemed to have a lock on success. Not only was a young Barack Obama a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX, but over the years it attracted such big name climate investors as Goldman Sachs and Al Gore's Generation Investment Management.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the CCX's highly anticipated looting of taxpayers and consumers - cap-and-trade imploded following its high water mark of the House passage of the Waxman-Markey bill. With ongoing economic recession, Climategate, and the tea party movement, what once seemed like a certainty became anything but.

CCX's panicked original investors bailed out this spring, unloading the dog and its across-the-pond cousin, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), for $600 million to the New York Stock Exchange-traded Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) - an electronic futures and derivatives platform based in Atlanta and London. (Luckier than the CCX, the ECX continues to exist thanks to the mandatory carbon caps of the Kyoto Protocol.)

The ECX may soon follow the CCX into oblivion, however - the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. No new international treaty is anywhere in sight.

While we don't know how well Al Gore and Goldman Sachs fared on their investments in the CCX, we do know that there's no reason to cry for Sandor. He received $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake in CCX when it was sold. Not bad for a failure that somebody else financed.

Incredibly (but not surprisingly), although thousands of news articles have been published about CCX by the lamestream media over the years, a Nexis search conducted a week after CCX's announcement revealed no news articles published about its demise.

Outside of a report in Crain's Chicago Business and a soft-pedaled article in a small trade publication, the media has entirely ignored the demise of the only U.S. effort at carbon trading. Even Glenn Beck, who has dedicated quite a bit of Fox News airtime to exposing the CCX, has yet to mention the news.

Despite ending carbon trading, the CCX isn't vanishing altogether. It intends to transition into the murky world of dealing in carbon offsets. Once again, however, with the tide leaving on carbon regulation and increased concerns about fraudulent carbon offsets, the future of that market is quite uncertain.

With the demise of CCX carbon trading, only the still-pending Waxman-Markey bill is keeping cap and trade alive - technically, at least - in the U.S. According to JunkScience.com's Cap-and-Trade Death Clock, however, Waxman-Markey only has about 60 days of life left before it, too, turns into a pumpkin.

Despite this good news, opponents of carbon regulation will need to remain vigilant. While radical greens and the rent-seeking "clean energy" industry are down, they are not out.

Though they will never again dare utter the term "cap and trade," they will reformulate and rebrand carbon regulation in the form of a national "renewable electricity standard" (RES), a "carbon tax," or perhaps something even more innocent and cuddly - like "free cotton candy for everyone (FCCE)."

The global warming mob will be back, with their old agenda and new deceit, in 2011. Given that Republican politicians have a long history of squishiness on environmental issues, the rest of us will need to be prepared to continue the battle against Marxist/socialist and economy-killing energy rationing and taxes.

SOURCE






California's global warming law given 'full speed ahead' on Nov. 2 -- but still faces long road

California is pushing ahead with efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions after voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposition to suspend the state's global warming law. The 61 percent-to-39 percent vote Tuesday against Proposition 23 re-energized the California Air Resources Board and other agencies charged with implementing the state's climate change agenda.

"It's full speed ahead," Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.

Requirements to cut pollution apply mainly to companies that use lots of energy - oil refineries, cement manufacturers and utilities, for instance. But consumers could feel the impact of the climate-change law in coming years through higher gasoline costs and utility bills.

California needs to put about 70 different global warming measures into place before 2020. Nearly half of them will be implemented in the next two years.

Three of those programs, which account for about 45 percent of the greenhouse gas reductions envisioned under the law, are monumental undertakings. They include:

A cap-and-trade system that would place a ceiling on the amount of carbon that oil refiners and utilities can emit each year.

The low-carbon fuel standard, which requires a 10 percent reduction in the carbon content of gasoline and other transportation fuels.

The Pavley Vehicle Standards, which set new emission standards for cars and light trucks built after 2009.

Signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the climate change law, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 or AB 32, seeks to reduce the amount of carbon emissions in California to 1990 levels by 2020.

That represents a decline of about 174 million metric tons of carbon a year - or about 15 percent - from today's levels.

Proposition 23, which was backed financially by out-of-state oil companies, would have suspended AB 32 until the state's unemployment rate dropped to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters, from the current 12.4 percent.

Jon Costantino, a former ARB official and a senior adviser with the law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, said the state faces a tremendous task in setting up the programs now that the ballot-initiative challenge is over.

In the short term, he said, the agency will focus much of its energy on cap-and-trade, the biggest program. The cap-and-trade system, set to begin operating in January 2012, will limit the amount of carbon the state's 500 largest polluters can send into the air. Each company will receive an allowance for the amount it is allowed to emit.

Companies that pollute less then their limit can sell their unused allowances to companies that pollute heavily, creating market incentives for everyone to reduce emissions voluntarily. By gradually lowering the total emissions cap over time, the state hopes to achieve overall reductions in carbon.

Late last month, the air board issued more than 3,000 pages of proposed rules outlining how the cap-and-trade system would work. The board is scheduled to vote on them in December. "It's going to be critical for them to get it right because there's going to be political pressure the whole way," Costantino said.

Proposition 23's supporters say they will continue trying to exert influence on the rule-writing process. They predict the climate change law will kill jobs, increase consumers' energy bills and raise the cost of doing business in the state.

"As the actual regulations under the global warming law begin to take effect, it will become obvious that the costs far outweigh the benefits," Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and co-chairman of the California Jobs Initiative committee, said in a news release. "Families and taxpayers will learn too late that the bill for California's multibillion dollar hidden energy tax will fall squarely on their shoulders."

SOURCE






Australia: Green party gain from Labor party pain

Australia has a Green party that gets a significant share of the vote. They are far-Leftists so are siphoning off votes from the major Leftist party -- The Labor party

Arbib, together with Karl Bitar, is held responsible for urging Rudd to make the fatal mistake of his prime ministership. This was Rudd's decision to abandon the fight for an emissions trading system.

That one decision fractured Rudd's personal approval ratings, savaged Labor's share of the vote, demolished Rudd's credibility, and sent half a million disenchanted voters into the waiting arms of Bob Brown and his Greens party. This decision destroyed Rudd.

Arbib stands accused of urging Rudd to abandon his election promise to take the counsel of pragmatic politics, to walk away from "the great moral and economic challenge of our times" because focus groups showed that it would be too hard to fight an election against Tony Abbott's attack that an emissions trading scheme would be "a great big new tax."

A section of the Left sees him as having handed Labor's idealism, its soul, and its progressive voting base, to the Greens.

Gillard has moved back to the Left to embrace climate change, but Brown doesn't think it will work politically for Labor: "They will try to take some of the steam out of the Greens cooker, but they can't do what we can do because they're too tied to vested interests."

Even after moving to act on climate change, even after announcing a more humane approach to refugees, Gillard's government has not won any credit in the polls. But the Greens' share of the vote has continued to gain. Now the Greens are enthused about their prospects at the Victorian and NSW state elections. They hope to win lower house seats in both states.

If Labor continues to stagnate and the Greens continue to build, Labor ultimately will lose its ability to run as a stand-alone party able to govern in its own right.

"We have shown we're not the Democrats," says Brown. "We have broken into the House of Representatives. We have the highest share of the vote for any minor party since World War II. We aren't there to keep the bastards honest" [the famous slogan of the now-defunct Democrats]. "We're there to replace the bastards."

More HERE

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