Wind farms can cause climate change, finds new study

Telegraph "Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures." --------------------------------------------------- Supreme irony: wind farms can cause atmospheric warming, finds a new study (WUWT)

Wind farms make climate change WORSE: Turbines actually heat up local areas

Daily Mail "Wind turbines could warm local climates up to ten times faster than the natural rate, a study has shown. Air temperatures around four of the world’s largest wind farms have increased by up to 0.72C in a decade, researchers have found. In contrast, Earth’s average temperature has warmed by only 0.8C since 1900."

The green mystery we must ask our MPs to explain

Telegraph "Hence the mystery: how can we meet that obligation to cut our emissions of CO2 by 80 per cent in just 40 years? After six hours debating this in 2008, 463 MPs of all parties voted for it, only three against. But of the 50 MPs who spoke, not one showed the slightest interest in how the target might be met. ......The MPs might also be reminded that Britain accounts for 1.6 per cent of the world’s man-made CO2 emissions. China’s emissions increase by that much each year, and now amount to 25 per cent of the global total. So, finally, can our MPs explain why we should close down most of our economy when this will have so little effect on the supposed global problem?"

Sea level surprise in New Zealand

WUWT "A new book on the history of New Zealand has inadvertently stirred the climate change debate by revealing a near zero sea level increase over the past century. The book, The Great Divide, includes a 100 year old map of Cloudy Bay lagoons in New Zealand, drafted back in 1912 to show the location of 20 kilometres of canals dug with wooden spades by ancient Maori."

Russian Lake Vostok Scientists Say “New Ice Age Is Unavoidable”

NoTricksZone "A new ice age is unavoidable, but will occur in 10,000 years at the earliest. This is what Vladimir Lipenkov, member of the Russian expedition said concerning the millions of years old Vostok Antarctic lake on Friday during a meeting with Minister President Vladimir Putin and the research team.”

The Royal Society's Appallingly Bad Report On Population And Consumption

GWPF "The Royal Society has released a report on what they call the joint problems of consumption and population. It has one excellent bit, some good bits – but unfortunately, given that the people writing one half of the report seem to have failed to read the other half, as a whole it's a dismal failure. The Royal Society should withdraw this report and work on fixing both the factual and logical errors before trying to tell the rest of us how to live our lives."

Is global warming just hot air? World temperatures have risen by just 0.29C in the last two decades

Daily Mail "World temperatures have remained almost stagnant in the last two decades, new figures have revealed. Temperatures across the globe rose by around a third of a degree last year from the average of 14 degrees Celsius recorded between 1961 and 1990. ....The findings come as consumers feel the full force of a raft of environment policies introduced by the coalition and the previous Labour government in the name of climate change. By 2030, ‘green’ policy burdens could cost families an extra £267 a year and have already raised current energy bills by £78 annually. The figures on global temperatures were published by Environment Minister Gregory Barker in a parliamentary answer to Tory MP Anne Main. Mrs Main said it raised questions about whether vulnerable people should be made to make the choice between heating and eating. ....The figures were unveiled as an environmental guru and maverick scientist admitted that he may have been ‘alarmist’ about climate change. James Lovelock, who warned that billions would die before the end of this century and only the Arctic would be fit for human habitation, said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.’

The Highest Authority in Science is the Data

JoNova(Australia) "The way the climate scam works is for the like-minded western bureaucracies to be the only employers or funders of climate scientists—which eliminates most of the competition that would otherwise keep them scrupulously honest. While peer review (like the IPCC process) is treated as equivalent to the bible, it’s more like a report of a committee meeting (one that dissenters were not invited to). The government climate scientists use the peer review process to block criticism or alternative theories from being officially heard—as they were caught doing in the Climategate scandal. The mainstream media go to the climate scientists as their ultimate source of authority, and propagate their opinions to the public. Very neat. It is a loophole in the modern world. The process is called “science”, but works like a religion. The media repeat what the experts say, but are silent about much of the data, how it is collected, and what it means. The public wrongly assumes the conclusions were audited or checked by competing scientists and that journalists asked the scientists hard penetrating questions. It all gains the veneer of rigorous analysis. The public don’t complain when they are asked to pay for it all. An excellent con."

'Global warming? What global warming?' says High Priest of Gaia Religion

Telegraph "Presumably, Professor Lovelock will now be donating all his royalties from his earlier alarmist bestsellers to help fund those proper, principled, decent scientists around the world – Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Ian Plimer, Tim Ball et al – whose careers have been blighted and whose lives have been made misery for having said precisely what Lovelock is now admitting, only much, much earlier. And then, perhaps, using his cachet among his greenie co-religionists to make amends for his sins by calling for the abolition of the IPCC."

Germany Building 17 New Coal, 29 New Gas-Fired Power Stations

GWPF "German utilities and private investors have plans to construct or modernise some 84 power stations, energy and water industry association BDEW said on Monday. Of the total number counted 29 units were gas-fired and 17 coal-fired generation plants, it said."

On extracting gas from rock, or putting it in there, the greens are equally confused

Telegraph "How strange, though, that the same greenies who are dead set against fracking are so obsessed with “carbon capture”, which relies on a very similar principle in reverse – collecting gas from the surface and injecting it at very high pressure into the rocks below. Scientific studies have shown that, on the scale needed to bury the hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 given off by Britain’s power stations, injecting it like this would fracture the rock so badly that it would soon make further injection impossible."

Royal family accused of hypocrisy over wind farm plans

Telegraph "Up to 45 turbines are planned for construction on Crown Estate land, which could reap £1 million in subsidies for the royal family. The Prince has previously reportedly described wind farms as a “horrendous blot on the landscape” while the Duke has referred to them as “useless” and “a disgrace”. Residents living next to the proposed wind farms in Wales and Lincolnshire last night accused the royal family of hypocrisy. The Crown Estate, a £7 billion land and property portfolio, is run by independent trustees, but from next year the Royal Family will live off its profits as a result of reforms to their finances. The estate has agreed to lease land to the energy firm RES for 15 turbines at Bryn Llywelyn in Carmarthenshire and to the German firm RWE for another four at Neuadd Goch in Powys. Both projects are awaiting planning approval."

EU Parliament Shoots Down Commission’s Green Energy Tax Plan

GWPF "Conservatives in the European Parliament delivered a setback for European Commission plans to erase tax benefits for diesel fuel, saying that a period of austerity and high fuel costs is not the time for such moves. The vote also calls for changes to the Commission's proposed minimum carbon tax on emissions from households, farms and the transport industry not already covered under the EU’s Emissions Trading System"

Europe’s Cold War Over Shale

Climate Change Dispatch "The British government will allow shale-gas exploration to resume in northern England. This could be the harbinger of some very good news for consumers in the U.K. and throughout Europe. Britain and Europe could be on the brink of a shale revolution—or at least an end to chronic undersupply—if its governments don't stand in the way. On that point, the U.K. isn't the only good-news story. Poland, which is keen to throw off the yoke of dependence on Russian fuel, continues to press forward with shale-gas exploration. Efforts from Greens in the European Parliament to ban or restrict fracking throughout the European Union have gone nowhere. --Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 19 April 2012"

Washington Takes Note: The UK And Europe’s Fracking Fissures

GWPF "And that’s where the shale-gas revolution comes in. According to the geologists (as reported by Reuters), U.K. offshore reserves of shale gas could be as big as one thousand trillion cubic feet (tcf) compared to the country’s annual consumption of 3.5 tcf. Such figures are hard to grasp, but they apparently mean that Britain would regain its earlier North Sea oil status of being one of the main energy producers in the world. It would liberate Britain almost uniquely in Europe — almost because Poland too seemingly has vast shale reserves — from dependence on Middle East oil. Other things being equal — and assuming, as I do, that the shale gas revolution has not been overblown — Britain can look forward to a future of cheap and secure energy supplies for the foreseeable future."

The failure of the warmists

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"For example, many people now understand that there is no direct evidence that 20th-century warming was caused mostly by carbon dioxide increase; that the late 20th-century warming has been followed by a 15-year temperature standstill in the face of continuing increases in carbon dioxide; and that the models that project alarming future warming are inadequate."

Labor tries to bind the Liberals to years of waste

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"More evidence of wasted investments in green energy:

A recent lengthy report by Reuters confirms what many conservatives have long known: President Obama’s promise to create millions of so-called “green jobs” has been a colossal and expensive failure… Since 2009, the wind industry has lost 10,000 jobs, even as the energy capacity of wind farms has almost doubled. By contrast, the oil and gas industry have created 75,000 jobs since Mr. Obama took office."

Mr. David Archibald on four great global challenges

IWP
"Mr. Archibald - who has been recognized as "the first to realize that the length of the previous sunspot cycle (PSCL) has a predictive power for the temperature in the next sunspot cycle" - also argued that the warming of the last 150 years will be reversed as the Earth's temperature begins to cool sharply due to lower solar activity. Contrary to the Jeremiads of the global warming alarmists, the sea levels are also falling. Global cooling may well jeopardize grain production and threaten potential famines, which will certainly impact significantly the international situation."

Global Cooling: be very afraid

Telegraph
"It will mean longer, colder winters and cooler summers. But far worse than the discomfort will be the effect it has on grain production. The shift in latitudes at which corn and wheat can be grown will be the equivalent of losing a belt 300 kilometres wide all around the world, leading to the loss perhaps 400 million tonnes per annum of grain. The result will be rising food prices, grain shortages – and a 50 per cent likelihood of the kind of volcanic-influenced disaster that led to the horrors of the 1816 Year Without A Summer, precipitating crop failures, weird Turner sunsets, and 200,000 deaths in Europe alone."

Himalayan glaciers are not melting, study

AGI
"rench researchers claim that glaciers in the Himalayan mountains are not being affected by global warming.
Unlike glaciers in the Alps, Himalayan glaciers are not melting, despite the effects of global warming. A team of French researchers came to this surprising conclusion after studying 3-D satellite pictures of the Himalayan mountains between 2000 and 2008. According to the study, whose results were published on Nature Geoscience, glaciers there are actually growing by 0.11mm a year." (H/T Climate Depot)

In the eyes of Nature, warming can't be natural

Christopher Booker, Telegraph
"Since the fading belief that the world is in the grip of runaway man-made global warming still threatens us with the biggest bill in history, it is rather important to know how far we can trust the science which is said to support that belief. One of the most vociferous cheerleaders in the cause has been the Nature, which calls itself “the world’s most prestigious weekly journal of science”. .......As the respected US scientist Judith Curry put it last week, talking about another seemingly flawed paper published by the same journal: “Nature seems to be looking for headlines rather than promoting good science.” It could serve as an epitaph for the way that journal has been promoting this cause for 20 years. Whether, on the basis of so many curious manipulations of data, we should be happy to pay the biggest bill in history is another matter."

Twice as Many Emperor Penguins as Thought in Antarctica, First-Ever Penguin Count from Space Shows

Science Daily
"Lead author and geographer Peter Fretwell at British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which is funded by the U.K.'s Natural Environment Research Council, explains, "We are delighted to be able to locate and identify such a large number of emperor penguins. We counted 595,000 birds, which is almost double the previous estimates of 270,000-350,000 birds. This is the first comprehensive census of a species taken from space." (h/t Climate Depot)

Earth Hour: 0.08 per cent of bugger all

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"Alan Moran on the most pointless stunt in aid of the most pointless cause:

All those darkened buildings, all that hype about switching off to save the planet! How successful is the tidal wave of support demonstrating our commitment to showing an example to the world?

The numbers are in. According to the electricity market operator, the reduction in usage for Earth Hour across the eastern and southern states was two per cent in 2012. That’s down from the dizzy heights of 3.6 per cent in 2008. The reduction over the course of the day itself was 0.08 per cent.

Seems like the lights are going out on Earth Hour itself."

Bering Sea Ice Breaks All-Time Record

GWPF
"The amount of floating ice in the Arctic's Bering Sea - which had long been expected to retreat disastrously by climate-Cassandra organisations such as Greenpeace - reached all-time record high levels last month, according to US researchers monitoring the area using satellites."

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Why I'd rather be a tree hugger than a hedge funder

Telegraph
"The harmless trace gas carbon dioxide, as any halfway literate scientist knows, is plant food – not a pollutant. That's why in agricultural greenhouses commercial growers often raise CO2 levels to between 700 ppm (parts per million) and 1,000 ppm – which is more than twice current atmospheric CO2 levels of (approx) 392 ppm. They do this because they know CO2 increases plants' growth rate while simultaneously reducing the amount of water they require. ....."

The WWF’s Vast Pool of Oil Money

Donna Laframboise,(Canada)
"Well if oil money is corrupt and evil – and if green activists really believe that those who take it are nefarious and untrustworthy – why are there no websites analogous to Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets about the very long, very close relationship that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has enjoyed with Shell (aka Royal Dutch Shell)? ....The truth of the matter is this: The environmental movement has been generously funded by oil companies for the past 50 years. Let it cast no stones at anyone else."

Heartland Institute Calls on Oxford to Cancel Speech by Admitted Thief Peter Gleick

WUWT
"The Heartland Institute today called on Oxford University to cancel the April 24 “Oxford Amnesty Lectures” event featuring disgraced climate scientist Dr. Peter H. Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, who committed theft, fraud, and defamation in the “Fakegate” scandal – all potential crimes and an affront to scientists everywhere."

Shady solar dealings

The Daily
"The Commerce Department has decided to impose tariffs ranging from 2.9 percent to 4.73 percent on subsidized Chinese solar panels that are imported into the U.S. It takes remarkable cheek for Obama to insist that, while American “public investment” in green energy is virtuous, Chinese “public investment” in green energy is vile. ...None of these public figures bothered to mention that an Obama donor was also a huge investor in Solyndra — and made several visits to the White House in the run-up to the approval of Solyndra’s loan deal. The administration’s attempt now to prevent Americans from buying low-priced Chinese solar panels smacks of the same sort of cronyism that characterized the Solyndra debacle.

Chinese panels obviously compete against panels produced in America. This, like all competition, forces prices downward. But the administration isn’t interested in making green energy affordable; it’s interested in protecting politically influential American producers from foreign competition." (H/T Climate Depot)

Beddington whips science five-nil.

Bishop Hill
"Sir John Beddington, the government's chief scientific adviser, writes in Farmers Weekly. There is much of to prompt comment. For example, you might have hoped that a credible chief scientific adviser would not make statements like ......"

What's wrong with the science?

Quadrant Online
"Our analysis finds no evidence that dangerous global warming is occurring; nor that human carbon dioxide emissions will cause such warming in future; nor that recent Australian climate-related events lay outside normal climate variability; nor that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have any discernible impact on future climate."

Climate study: er, what man-made warming?

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"A study by Horst-Joachim Ludecke, Rainer Link, and Friedrich-Karl Ewert of the European Institute for Climate and Energy cannot find a definite human influence on the temperature over the past century. It concludes that, at most, any human-caused warming is “marginal”.

Thank You, British Taxpayers

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"The Guardian newspaper has released a list some 25 pages long of climate change projects in other countries that were funded by you, the British taxpayer. Since 2009 you ladies and you gentlemen have sent us, here in Canada, £165,937. This translates to roughly $260,000 in Canadian funds. A cool quarter-million.

For example, you wrote a cheque for £20,000 to our David Suzuki Foundation. But I must confess to some bemusement.

If the British government really believes the danger from CO2-induced climate change is dire why hasn’t it banned the use of private jets, forbidden government employees from traveling, and fast-tracked new nuclear power plants? If the Titanic really is headed for the iceberg, surely one takes stern and immediate action."

Climate scientists are losing the public debate on global warming

Telegraph
"Dr Benny Peiser, director of sceptical think tank The Global Warming Policy Foundation, said governments and the public had "more urgent problems to deal with" than tackling climate change.

He said: "People have become bored by some of the rhetoric from the green movement as they have other things to worry about.

"In reality the backlash against climate change has very little to do with the sceptics. We will take credit for instilling some debate but it is mainly an economic issue. Climate change is not seen as being urgent any more.

"James Hensen has been making predictions about climate change since the 1980s. When people are comparing what is happening now to those predictions, they can see they fail to match up."

'Fakegate': Climate Change Fanatics Wage War on Dissenters

Climate Change Dispatch
"As Alan Caruba related in the opening paragraph of his article published on Tuesday, April 3rd, titled "Fatetgate: The War on Science," "[g]enerations of Americans have been raised to venerate science and those who have enhanced and extended our lives through its application. The rise of environmentalism, however, has generated a war on science, first by distorting it, and then by propagandizing the 'findings', studies' and resulting claims based on them."

James Hansen – off the rails

WUWT
"There’s not a whole lot I can say about this, except that I’m looking forward to his retirement soon. Then, he can speak as a “private citizen” as much as he wants."

France Calls For Retreat On EU Carbon (Dioxide) Tax

GWPF
"EUROPE's attempt to cut aviation [emissions] was faltering yesterday as France called on Brussels to surrender in the face of protests around the world. In a sign that Paris has little stomach for a fight over global warming, Francois Fillon, the Prime Minister, urged the European Union to retreat over plans to tax airlines for emitting greenhouse gases."

Climategate Heads to Court

Climate Change Dispatch
"In his book, Mann distorts the e-mail record from the "Climategate" leak; those e-mails have not been altered or edited in any way. They document a conspiracy among a clique of British and U.S. climate scientists to control what goes into IPCC reports, and to keep contrary views by skeptics from being published in recognized science journals by manipulating the peer-review process."

Rio+20

Catallaxy Files
"The Rio+20 sustainable development summit will be held from 20 – 22 June 2012. There will be around 60 000 delegates......Using the typical seat configuration for a Qantas 747, if all 60 000 delegates travelled economy class, they would require 191 Qantas 747s to fly them to Rio. If they all travelled business class: 1200 Qantas 747s."

Why mitigating CO2 emissions is cost-ineffective

WUWT
"So, even if the cap-and-trade scheme is every bit as successful as its promoters would wish, only 0.34% of global emissions – one-third of one per cent – will be abated. There is nothing in the least controversial about this figure, except that no one seems to have pointed it out before. The legislators’ faces were a picture when I told them. .....To put all of this in context, the cost of abating the one-third of a Fahrenheit degree of warming that the IPCC imagines will happen over the decade of the scheme, if everyone worldwide were crazy enough to adopt measures as laughably cost-ineffective as these, would be $25,000 per head of the world population, or one-third of global GDP over a decade. This would be 26 times the cost enduring the welfare loss that might arise from the global warming we fail to prevent if we do nothing. .....So far, there has been no global warming at all since 2001. In fact, on the latest data from the Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, there has been no statistically-significant warming for fully 15 years."

Near-Bankrupt Italy Faces $60 Billion Solar Bill

GWPF
"Italy will move to reduce taxpayer subsidies to its renewable energy sector after last year's boom in solar power, Industry Minister Corrado Passera says. Some estimates contend the feed-in tariffs paid to photovoltaic user/generators will amount to $59 billion over the next 20 years."

The graphs that Fairfax will not run

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"When will The Age and Sydney Morning Herald admit that Earth Hour, which their company part-owns (as Boy on a Bike revealed, but Fairfax journalists don’t disclose), is a total futile gesture that makes almost zero practical difference? Or is their corporate involvement compromising its coverage? Is that why graphics such as these are not run in Fairfax newspapers?"

No Global Warming For 15 Years

GWPF
"Analysis by the GWPF of the newly released HadCRUT4 global temperature database shows that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years - a timescale that challenges current models of global warming."