Wind Farms: Turbines break like match-sticks in medium waves, and their capacity is “overestimated”

JoNova (Australia)
"Not a good news week for wind power. First windpower probably doesn’t produce as much electricity as people though it could. If the new estimates are right, humanity would need to cover 3 million square kilometers of the Earth to get just 10% of our electricity from wind. (And how many storms will that prevent do you think?) Could the “cure” be worse than the condition? Second, it appears that wind turbines in the ocean might snap like matchsticks in particular conditions — conditions that are different for each turbine and at the moment, impossible to predict. The authors explain that it doesn’t have to be big waves or big storms — medium sized waves were the worst."

So much for global warming! Four out of the last five winters have been COLDER than average

Daily Mail
"Over the last five years, only last winter saw the mercury rise above the 3.3C (38F) average - taken from 30 years of statistics from 1981."

Blockheaded thinking on well known weather patterns and ‘extreme weather’

WUWT
"I had to laugh at this statement from the press release below: “What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks.” Gosh,”frozen patterns” like Rex blocks have been known for decades.Wikipedia has a good summary: ......"

Green fatigue sets in: the world cools on global warming

Independent
"Worries about climate change first dropped in industrialised nations but they have now also fallen in developing economies including Brazil and China, according to the survey by GlobeScan Radar. The declining interest in climate change comes amid a backlash against costly green energy investments in an age of austerity. .....Campaigners said the “perceived seriousness” of climate change had also fallen sharply since the unsuccessful UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December 2009. The summit ended in what was described as “confusion, disagreement and disarray” as political leaders failed to agree a legally binding deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions. .......The Department of Energy and Climate Change reiterated the view of Ed Davey, Climate Change Secretary, that “the basic physics of climate change is irrefutable”.

ED: No one is disputing 'climate change', a natural occurrence, it is a fact that there has been no 'global warming' for over 16 years now....

Most people no longer consider global warming a serious issue, says international study, as financial crisis changes priorities

Daily Mail
"Fewer people regard environmental problems as 'very serious'- Global warming the second least worrying, survey shows - Survey questioned more than 22,000 people in 22 countries"

Can Lawson get Nurse to admit what Emerson won’t?

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"I really was too gentle on Trade Minister Craig Emerson when he refused to admit he was wrong to deny the world hadn’t warmed for 16 years. Someone who refuses to accept a clear, unambiguous fact, and in return offers only spurious and clearly irrelevant arguments is plainly not interested in the truth. But let’s now see if Lord Lawson, Britain’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has more luck getting the Royal Society’s Sir Paul Nurse to withdraw the same false claim. The question is whether Lawson can be even clearer than I was, or whether Sir Paul can show more intellectual integrity than Emerson."

California Girds for Electricity Woes

The Hockey Schtick
" SAN FRANCISCO—California is weighing how to avoid a looming electricity crisis that could be brought on by its growing reliance on wind and solar power. Regulators and energy companies met Tuesday, hoping to hash out a solution to the peculiar stresses placed on the state's network by sharp increases in wind and solar energy. Power production from renewable sources fluctuates wildly, depending on wind speeds and weather."

Australian floods show how cutting electricity use doesn’t reduce CO2

JoNova (Australia)
"Here Anton wrote to me saying how surprised he was that, in the end, all those people who were cut off from electricity at home or at work during the East Coast flooding in January didn’t help reduce the Australian carbon footprint. This perverse result shows that many “green” energy saving projects are a waste of time. ..."

Lord Deben is worried

Bishop Hill
"Lord Deben is worried. Veolia UK Ltd, the company he chairs, stands ready to connect just as many windfarms to the grid as the country is willing to subsidise. But without clear national carbon reduction targets, the company is unlikely to make its mint."

Von Storch Blasts Climate Scientists: Not The “Keepers Of The Truth” – Says They “Oversold” The Science

NoTricksZone
"He says the climate issue needs to be debated, and warns scientists against acting like they are the “keepers of the truth”.

CIA 1974 National Security Threat : Global Cooling/Excess Arctic Ice Causing Extreme Weather

Real Science
"In 1974, global cooling and excess Arctic ice caused extreme weather and were a national security threat. By contrast, the intelligence and climate science communities are much more intelligent now. They now know that global warming and missing Arctic cause extreme weather and are a national security threat."

The price of life: the IPCC's first and forgotten controversy

Bishop Hill
"Mostly on the blogs we give our attention to the corruption of climate science by the politics of climate change. However, beyond the physics of climate and its physical impact, recently there has been a small revival of interest in the economic damages climate change is expected to cause, and how the costings of these damages is weighed against the costings of various mitigation efforts. ..."

Collapsing Consensus – Another German Meteorology Site Wonders About The Global Temperature Stagnation

NoTricksZone
"And just days ago, yet another German meteorology site questioned global warming in a piece titled: “Global Warming Stagnates – Guessing The Causes“. The report begins:...."

Just a quick reminder of what they said about cold winters . . .

hauntingthelibrary
".. in light of the recent propaganda blitz claiming that cold, snowy winters are all part of global warming, i had to take a few minutes to round up some quotes from the archives. Just to remind us all of what they were saying only a few years ago. As RealScience and others have quoted a few gems (“Snow is now a thing of the past”) I’ll confine myself to a few I haven’t seen widely reported."

Not the droughts the IPCC predicted

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"I’ve asked why Tim Flannery is still our Chief Climate Commissioner after predicting the rains would never again fill our dams and river systems. But he was not alone in being utterly wrong. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001 also predicted more droughts in eastern Australia, not these annual floods: ........"
More of those predictions to snow us .......These predictions are now rightly infamous: ......"

I was wrong about the Climate Change Act

Douglas Carswell MP
"My biggest regret as an MP is that I failed to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act. It was a mistake. I am sorry. .......Too often, public policy in Whitehall is shaped by residual ideas and assumptions – which turn out to be wrong. Nowhere is this more so than when it comes to energy policy. It is time for a fundamental rethink about energy policy – starting with an acknowledgment that 2008 Act has got it wrong."

The Winter Of 1947

WUWT
"Climate disruption” before the current lunacy of “CO2 caused extreme weather” era
The Great Freeze of 1963 was the coldest winter in the UK for over 200 years. However, the winter of 1947, while not as cold, was one of the snowiest. The UK Met Office describe what the conditions were like. Thousands of people were cut off for days by snowdrifts up to seven metres deep during the winter of 1947, which saw exceptional snowfall. Supplies had to be flown in by helicopter to many villages, and the armed forces were called in to help clear roads and railways. ......"

2nd Highest Antarctic Sea Ice Minimum Of All Time!

sunshine hours
"It is very likely 2013 will go down in the history books as having the 2nd highest Antarctic sea ice minimum of all time. In 2013 there was 1.4 million sq km more sea ice than there was in 1997 at minimum."

New paper finds Antarctic meltwater was much higher in the past

The Hockey Schtick
"A new paper published in The Holocene finds the Antarctic interior was warmer than the present over a period lasting about 2000 years, from 4300 to 2250 years ago. The paper surveys 3 lakes within 10° of the South Pole and finds meltwater levels were up to 69.5 meters higher than the present, which the authors "interpreted as being the result of an increased number of meltwater events and/or degree-days above freezing, relative to the present." The paper adds to many other peer-reviewed papers demonstrating that Antarctica has warmed for prolonged periods to temperatures higher than the present, and that there is nothing unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented in regard to present day temperatures."

Eco-tastrophe! How MPs in the pay of subsidised eco-firms set insane new carbon targets that send your bills sky-rocketing... and drag us to a new Dark Age

Daily Mail
"Mr Yeo has moved an extraordinary amendment to the Energy Bill that would set a crippling and binding target for the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by generating power in 2030. It would transform the electricity industry and bring huge benefits to the business sector, which has so generously rewarded Mr Yeo. For the rest of us, however, the effects will be very different. It will cause already high energy bills to soar further and could lead to more power cuts. The effect on business is likely to be even more dramatic. Yet despite the considerable drawbacks, the amendment is likely to be passed into law. Following intense campaigning by an alliance of dozens of green pressure groups and renewable-energy firms, the move has won the support of Labour, many backbench Liberal Democrats and some Tories, which may be enough to push it through Parliament. ‘Even without the amendment, the long-term consequences of the Bill will be horrible,’ said Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University, one of Britain’s leading experts on energy economics. He issued a strong warning the ‘surreal’ amendment could spell the end of British industry. ‘It’s a recipe for deindustrialisation,’ he said. Prof Hughes thinks the choice is stark: ‘Either we get rid of this obsession, or we give away our future to the rest of the world. The question is whether we’re serious about our economic future or not.’
Britain produces only two per cent of the world’s CO2, making any efforts to reduce it a drop in the ocean on the global scale. Is that worth sacrificing our economic base for? Prof Hughes thinks not. ‘All we’d be doing is exporting our emissions anyway,’ he said. ‘Along with our industry.’ ......EXPLODING THE MYTHS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE....ED:read on...

More sleet and snowfall on the way as Arctic conditions expected to freeze Britain until next weekend

Daily Mail
"Winds from Russia are forecast to freeze Britain until next weekend, capping a winter colder than almost every winter since 1995."

Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists

Telegraph
"Thousands of Britain’s wind turbines will create more greenhouse gases than they save, according to potentially devastating scientific research to be published later this year."

Today's carbon tax day - a black one indeed for us all

The Telegraph (Australia)
"As Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said after Gillard broke her word to the people: "Today's announcement is an utter betrayal of the Australian people. If the Australian people could not trust the Prime Minister on this, they can't trust her on anything." As the polls show, they are learning with rapidly accelerating pace. ......The handling of the carbon tax has been a disaster from the initial lie. Even the government's claim it would look to a citizens' assembly for guidance on the issue of climate change was rapidly proven false. .....Since the government passed its legislation, with the support of the grinning Greens and the subservient independents, it has continued to act without apparent regard for honesty or fair practice. The cost to the nation has been enormous. Not only did the government spend at least $70 million promoting the tax it had told voters it would never introduce, but it also created a raft of new bureaucracies to manage all the totally unnecessary programs and it handed out fistfuls of money to special interest groups to help its cause. Unfortunately, the punters won't know how the money was eventually allocated because the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency destroyed its records detailing funding for 28 "Energy Efficiency Information" grants, and the Audit Office couldn't determine whether the most meritorious projects were selected. .....The carbon tax has become a job generator for public servants but at the cost of real jobs. The real jobs in manufacturing have been squeezed out of the nation by the tax, and some other factors, ..."

New paper finds climate models exaggerate warming in Australia by 'almost double'

The Hockey Schtick
"A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds climate models exaggerate predicted warming of SE Australia from 1960 - 2000 by "almost double the observed magnitude." The paper corroborates findings of Dr. John Christy that climate models exaggerate warming on a global scale by 1.5 times, and those of Dr. Roy Spencer that the latest climate models warm the tropics 3 times too fast."

One day, turning off the lights won't be up to you

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"The most interesting passage in Mr Buchanan’s interview was where he began hinting at what has recently been emerging as a terrifying new element in the Government’s energy policy. It well knows that electricity from the tens of thousands more wind turbines it hopes to see built in the coming years will cost between two and four times as much as that from conventional power stations. Its solution to this is to rig the market with new taxes and other devices so that this will make electricity from wind farms somehow seem competitive – not by making wind cheaper but by doubling the cost of electricity from the gas, coal and nuclear power stations that still provide virtually all the electricity we need to keep our lights on.
Around lunchtime last Monday, for instance, National Grid was showing that all our 4,300 wind turbines put together were providing barely a thousandth of the power we were using, 0.1 per cent, or a paltry 31MW (as compared with the 2,200MW we can get from a single gas-fired plant).
The harsh fact is that successive governments in the past 10 years have staked our national future on two utterly suicidal gambles. First, they have fallen for the delusion that we can depend for nearly a third of our future power on those useless and unreliable windmills – which will require a dozen or more new gas-fired power stations just to provide back-up for when the wind is not blowing.
Yet, at the same time, by devices such as the increasingly punitive “carbon tax” due to come into force on April 1, they plan to double the cost of the electricity we get from grown-up power stations, which can only have the effect in the coming years of doubling our electricity bills, driving millions more households into fuel poverty."

Northern Hemisphere Sets New, All-Time Record Cold Temperature: -96.1°F In Oymyakon Siberia !!

NoTricksZone
"That’s -71.2°C. This shatters the previous record of -68°C (-90.4°F) set in 1933! Hat-tip DirkH. There’s been a lot of confusion over the last couple of days concerning a record low temperature allegedly recorded in Siberia. News reports in the mainstream media made it sound like the reading was recorded decades ago, or they just muddled it. For example The Mail had a feature here. No mention that it’s a record set just days ago. But now it appears that the record was actually set on February 19, in Oymyakon, Siberia. The confusion is understandable, as the news just doesn’t square with the global warming narrative."

Coldest village in the world just got even COLDER... weather takes turn for the worse in -71C Russian hamlet where even the planes can't land in winter

Daily Mail
"As we whinge about the wintry weather here in Britain, spare a thought for those living in a Russian hamlet where temperatures can plummet to -71C, so cold even planes cannot land there in winter. The valley of Oymyakon in northeast Russia is known as the 'Pole of Cold' and with an average January temperature of -50C, it is no wonder the village is the coldest permanently inhabited settlement in the world."
ED: Record of -71.2°C was set on February 19,2013 in Oymyakon, Siberia.

Pachauri quietly blows goalposts away, pretends to like skeptics. It’s all PR to keep the gravy train running

JoNova (Australia)
"Pachauri is chief PR officer for the Global-not-so-Warming-Gravy-Train. His job is to say things with a straight face that are the complete opposite to what he’s said before, and to pretend he has never said anything differently. .......In 1990 the IPCC told global policymakers that even if they stabilized emissions, the world would warm by 0.2C per decade for the next few decades. That was their “low estimate”. And it was wrong (despite the best efforts of post hoc cherry picking). Then the global-pause became noticeable. So in 2008 NOAA announced that pauses of less that 15 years or more would fit with climate simulations (which meant pauses of more than that were a problem for the models). James Hansen was caught in ClimateGate saying that ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years “before we get worried.” When the pause got a bit longer still, Ben Santer said in a paper, that really it was 17 years we needed to see. That was 2011. Now in 2013, Pachauri says we’ll need 30 -40 years of the IPCC being wrong before we can say they’re wrong."

IPCC Railroad engineer Pachauri acknowledges ‘No warming for 17 years’

WUWT
"Following my statement at the Doha climate conference last December that there had been no global warming for 16 years, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who for some reason chairs the IPCC’s climate “science” panel, has been compelled to admit there has been no global warming for 17 years. The Hadley Centre/CRU records show no warming for 18 years (v.3) or 19 years (v.4), and the RSS satellite dataset shows no warming for 23 years (h/t to Werner Brozek for determining these values). Engineer Pachauri said warming would have to endure for “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend. However, the world’s leading climate modelers wrote in the NOAA’s State of the Climate report in 2008 that 15 years or more without warming would indicate a discrepancy between the models and measured reality."

The greenhouse with no roof

Quadrant Online
"As an interdisciplinary study, climatology draws upon knowledge and techniques from a diverse range of other relevant disciplines. Almost all of the leading “climatologists” promoting the Global Warming alarm are in fact rebadged biologists, geographers, computer modellers and other specialists. Vanishingly few have any genuine expertise in the fundamental matter of the complex atmospherics physics involved in the so-called greenhouse effect. They have simply accepted it as a proven physical fact that increased CO2 must “trap” more heat in the atmosphere. The very term “greenhouse effect” implies this."

Shameless

Bishop Hill
"It's a bit of an indictment of the education of these kids that they can't work out that if renewables genuinely were cheaper they would not require a subsidies, feed-in-tariffs and renewables obligations. It really isn't rocket science."

Flashback 1956: Climate Change Wreaks Havoc Across The World - Disasters Flourish

Climate Depot
"Must read: 'A list of 1956 severe disasters before 350ppm CO2 levels'

Now will Emerson finally say sorry?

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
" THE UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend… Dr Pachauri, the chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said ... global average temperatures had plateaued at record levels and that the halt did not disprove global warming… He said that it would be 30 to 40 years “at least” before it was possible to say that the long-term upward trend in global temperatures had been broken. Thirty to 40 years of no warming before we can say the alarmists were wrong? What utter nonsense, since so many alarming IPCC projections were for dangerous warming by 2050.

IPCC Head Admits 17 Years Of No Warming

Real Science
"THE UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office"
[ ED: ..but wants another 40 years more before he considers it 'real'....]

Topher’s new video: The Forbidden History of Terrible Taxes

JoNova (Australia)
"A video that ought to be shown to all students in every school. A concept that I don’t remember being mentioned during my education. I like his clean uncluttered style, the snappy irreverent wit."

Scare tactics before the US 'Carbon Dioxide Tax' is installed

Tom Nelson
"John Kerry, in his first major speech as secretary of State, suggests that not fighting CO2-induced bad weather "may be the only thing our generation — generations — are remembered for"

Consumers 'paying twice' as carbon emitters compensated

ABC (Australia)
"The Federal Opposition's environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, agrees with the report's conclusion. "This isn't a tax which robs the rich to give to the poor. This is a tax which robs the poor to give to the rich," he said."

Fuel bills will keep soaring warns energy watchdog: Green targets could trigger 1970s-style power blackouts

Daily Mail
"Fuel bills will soar as green targets leave Britain reliant on expensive imported gas, the energy regulator warned yesterday. Alistair Buchanan, chief executive of Ofgem, also raised the spectre of 1970s-style blackouts because 10 per cent of coal and oil-fired power production is being shut down next month. The chance of large power cuts – those that hit more than a million homes – will be 300 times more likely by 2015, he warned.He claimed ministers were banking on low-carbon energy from nuclear power and wind farms which do not yet provide enough power to keep the lights on."

New paper finds Antarctica has been gaining surface ice mass over past 150 years

The Hockey Schtick
"A paper published today in The Cryosphere finds Antarctica has been gaining surface ice and snow accumulation over the past 150+ years, and finds acceleration in some areas noting, "a clear increase in accumulation of more than 10% has occurred in high Surface Mass Balance coastal regions and over the highest part of the East Antarctic ice divide since the 1960s." Furthermore, the paper notes, "Global climate models suggest that Antarctic snowfall should increase in a warming climate and mitigate rises in the sea level."

European Institute For Climate And Energy Warns Germany’s Feed-In Act “Will Lead Country To Economic Ruin”

NoTricksZone
"Countries considering implementing green energy feed-in schemes may want to look at what is going on in Germany."

New paper finds IPCC models fail to simulate the most important natural weather patterns on the planet

The Hockey Schtick
"A new paper published in Global and Planetary Change finds that IPCC climate models are unable to reproduce either the El Nino Southern Oscillation [ENSO] or the Indian summer monsoon, the two most influential natural weather patterns on Earth, both of which have large effects upon global climate. The authors therefore caution that, given these large uncertainties of natural variation, current models cannot be relied upon to project future global warming from greenhouse gases. According to the authors, "More research in improving the current day simulations, improving model capacity to simulate better by improving the greenhouse gases (GHG) and aerosols in the models are some of the important and immediate steps that are necessary"

If the leader of the free world can lie with such impunity we are doomed

Telegraph
"Earlier this week in his State of the Union address President Obama made some observations on climate change so brimming with falsehoods I'm surprised his nose didn't fall off. It really doesn't matter where he himself was deliberately lying or whether he was merely lending the gravitas of his office to the deliberate lies of others. The point is that the President of the USA has access to any number of fact checkers and advisers and if he stands up and addresses the nation with a farrago of complete untruths then the buck stops with him. This dissembling and mendacity becomes all the more culpable when it forms the basis of major public policy decisions which will have a serious impact on people's lives in the US and beyond. So why this snake-oil salesman being allowed to get away with it?"

BREAKING: ‘Richard Windsor’ EPA scandal spreads, EPA Administrator James Martin resigns over hidden email accounts

WUWT
"Vitter: New Richard Windsor Emails Show EPA’s Transparency Problem More Widespread"

Nursing prejudice: how climate change activists are prisoners of their own politics

Spectator
"Sir Paul Nurse, the Nobel laureate and President of the Royal Society, has been hitting out at global warming sceptics. In a speech to the University of Melbourne recently, he attacked dissenters from the climate change orthodoxy, declaring that their objections were in reality political rather than scientific:
‘A feature of [the global warming] controversy is that those that deny there is a problem often seem to have political or ideological views that lead them to be unhappy with the actions that would be necessary should global warming be due to human activity. I think that’s a crucial point. Because these actions that are likely to include measures which include concerted world action, curtailing the freedom of individuals or companies or nations, and curbing some kinds of industrial activity.’
It may have escaped Nurse’s attention, but the vast majority of scientists calling for concerted action on climate change are vehemently and often outspokenly left-wing – some have even publicly admitted to lying to promote political action. It therefore seems a little odd for Nurse to accuse only those who dispute the official story of having political motivations.
The explanation for this short-sightedness may lie in his own politics: Nurse is a lifelong socialist who used to fill his leisure hours selling Socialist Worker on street corners. But it is also possible to confirm that Nurse’s political prejudices are getting the better of him by analysing the quotation above."

Masters of disasters and Captain Uncertainty

WUWT
"Preparing for climate change-induced weather disasters The news sounds grim: mounting scientific evidence indicates climate change will lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather that affects larger areas and lasts longer. However, we can reduce the risk of weather-related disasters with a variety of measures, according to Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellow Chris Field. ......"
One Response to Masters of disasters and Captain Uncertainty
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 18, 2013 at 11:55 am
Hogwash, there’s been no increase at all in extreme events. Must drive the warmistas mad, but there it is. So when Chris Field goes on about this kind of nonsense …
While climate change’s role in tornadoes and hurricanes remains unknown, Field says, the pattern is increasingly clear when it comes to heat waves, heavy rains and droughts.
… he’s just blowing smoke from his nether regions. Nobody has shown any link between those weather events he lists and slight changes in the global average temperature, that’s pseudo-science at its worst.
w.

350.org fudges the numbers again

WUWT
"“For “the biggest climate rally in history,” attendance was remarkably sparse. Those of us in the Light Brigade guessed 5,000″

Global Warming Consensus Looking More Like A Myth

WUWT
"The global warming alarmists repeat the line endlessly. They claim that there is a consensus among scientists that man is causing climate change. Fact is, they’re not even close. Yes, many climate scientists believe that emissions of greenhouse gases are heating the earth. Of course there are some who don’t. But when confining the question to geoscientists and engineers, it turns out that only 36% believe that human activities are causing Earth’s climate to warm. ........If the alarmists are getting only limited cooperation from man, they are getting even less from nature itself. Arctic sea ice, which sent the green shirts into a lather when it hit a record low in the summer of 2012, has “with a few weeks of growth still to occur … blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter.” “This is only the third winter in history,” when more than 10 million square kilometers of new ice has formed in the Arctic, Real Science reported on Tuesday, using data from Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois."

Meteorologist Dominik Jung Turns Skeptical After Germany Sets Record 5 Consecutive Colder-Than-Normal Winters!

NoTricksZone
"Big, embarrassing news for German climate scientists. With 11 days remaining, Germany this year is set for its 5th colder-than-normal winter (DJF) in a row (a record), this according to high-profile German meteorologist Dominik Jung at www.wetter.net here (photo left). Jung is an often-quoted meteorology expert of the German media."

The Sanders-Boxer carbon tax will be 15 times costlier than letting warming happen

WUWT
"Standard climatological and economic techniques, combined in an investment appraisal of the proposed Sanders/Boxer carbon dioxide tax (U.S. Senate, 2013), show that even at a zero inter-temporal discount rate the cost of the Bill’s proposed CO2 mitigation if applied worldwide over ten years is 15 times greater than the benefit in the cost of warming-related damage avoided by the intended cut in CO2 emissions, which is here assumed to be – but is in reality unlikely to be – achievable at the stated cost."

Mother Nature to Keystone Pipeline Protesters: Chill Out!

Forbes
"Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are taking to the National Mall on Sunday to pressure President Obama into denying (via the State Department) a permit to build it. If completed, it will carry oil from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. The opposition is down to a single issue—climate change. Weatherwise, they should have checked Washington’s climate history before scheduling on February 17. Some of the worst winter weather on record occurs in Mid-February, and right now it looks like Sunday is going to be one of the coldest days of the entire year, with very uncomfortable wind chills. A stray snow squall is not out of the question. ....."

How Germany’s Climate Scientists Suddenly Changed Their Predictions Of Warm Winters…To Cold Snowy Ones

NoTricksZone
"Sebastian Lüning and Klaus-Eckart Puls write the story of how renowned German climate scientists had for years predicted warmer winters with snow becoming increasingly more rare – before they turned on a dime and suddenly claimed global warming would cause colder winters."

Bill McKibben is not what he seems to be – I catch him in a lie

WUWT
"While Bill McKibben tries to portray himself as just a concerned citizen out to change the world due to his fears of global warming, by running a “grassroots organization”, the reality is he’s quite well funded by the rich, as this investigation reveals. ......350.org has the look and feel of an amateur, grassroots operation, but in reality, it is a multi-million dollar campaign run by staff earning six-digit salaries."

EPA is doubling down on flawed science

The Hockey Schtick
"The top Republican on the Senate committee that will consider the EPA nomination, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, expressed his frustration with getting the agency to answer his requests for the scientific basis for its rules. "The administration should be looking for someone who will end the standard of ignoring congressional requests, undermining transparency and relying on flawed science. Instead, it looks like they may double down on that practice," he said."

Why his Cap and Trade threat to Congress is Obama's - and America's - Rubicon

Washington Examiner
"President Obama has been doing some casting of his own of late, as evidenced during the State of the Union address in his threat to Congress regarding global warming. First came the warning: Congress must pass a cap-and-trade bill to combat global warming because, Obama said, "the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, all are now more frequent and more intense." (Set aside that, as the Climate Depot's Marc Morano documents, the facts make it abundantly clear that the president is quite wrong on each point in that sentence.)"

Boxer’s carbon tax proposal would enrichen people already feeding from the public trough… meanwhile Suzanne Goldenberg bags her journalism skills

WUWT
"While the Guardian’s environmental amateur journo Suzanne Goldenberg bloviates about the horrible possibility that some climate skeptic think tanks may have actually gotten a drop in the bucket of funding compared to all the billions of money poured down the climate research hole, we have a money and power grab move front and center by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca) and Bernie Sanders (I- VT). The transparency of this move to funnel money to people within her sphere of influence on climate matters is clear to people in the know. Here’s an article from the SFO chronicle that highlights her grab for cash: "

The Workshop Presentation that Never Was

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"The BBC African temperature exaggeration is worse that we thought. It also has an IPCC connection. The BBC now has egg on its face. As Leo Hickman at the Guardian explains, a television show narrated by David Attenborough recently claimed that: Some parts of the [African] continent have become 3.5C hotter in the past 20 years. Hickman is no climate skeptic, but even his radar went off. After some investigation he discovered that, in 2006, a collection of pressure groups had published a report titled Africa – Up in smoke 2. It relied on another, 48-page document, titled Climate of Poverty produced by the UK charity, Christian Aid. This charity believes that the poor “are already suffering disproportionately from the effects of global warming” and that “No other single issue presents such a clear and present danger to the future welfare of the world’s poor.” (See Ben Pile’s brilliant rebuttal of those sorts of arguments here.)"

Obama sees climate disasters that scientists can’t

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Barack Obama in his State of the Union address today ignored the 16-year warming pause and beat up the global warming scare, using weather to argue the climate had changed for the worse: ....."
ED:Obama is preparing the way for a Carbon Dioxide tax,and he has to fan the scare to make people accept it...

Obama fails climate science in his State of the Union address -- Climate Depot's point-by-point rebuttal to the President's global warming claims

Climate Depot
"The President offered up nothing more than the usual incorrect global warming platitudes during his speech. No wonder the speech brought a "smile" to Al Gore's face. The president could not have been more wrong in claiming “extreme weather” was “now more frequent and intense" and he failed to note that global temperatures have not increased in 16 years. President Obama needs to be remined that acts of Congress, the UN or the EPA cannot alter storms or weather patterns. Climate Depot's Point-by-Point rebuttal: ..."

Sea Ice News: Volume 4 #1 – Arctic Ice gain sets a new record

WUWT
"From the Nature abhors a vacuum department comes this note from RealScience showing that Arctic sea ice has made a stunning rebound since the record low recorded in the late summer of 2012.
With a few weeks of growth still to occur, the Arctic has blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter. This is only the third winter in history when more than 10 million km² of new ice has formed."

More reason for Emerson to apologise for being wrong about global warming

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Attention Craig Emerson, Minister for Trade in the government which gave us the carbon tax. Last week you claimed I was wrong to say the world hadn’t warmed for 16 years. So I showed you even the IPCC couldn’t find any measurement showing any statistically significant warming for around that period. You refused to apologise or retract. So I showed you an easy-to-read graphic showing no statistically significant warming for between nearly 16 years and 23 years, depending on the measurement used. You refused to apologise or retract. Today I will try again. Professor Sinclair Davidson has recalculated the temperature of the past 18 years using HADCRUT3 data and agrees: from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming. Craig, will you now apologise and retract? Minister, when the facts change, do you change your opinion? "

A right royal dogmatist

Bishop Hill
" Ed Davey is to speak to a Royal Society seminar today on the subject of climate change. Apparently he will argue that 'the science of climate change is "irrefutable" and man is making a "significant" contribution to rising global temperatures.' Irrefutable eh? That doesn't sound like science to me. That sounds like religion. Funny old place the Royal Society.

The IPCC's fatal founding flaw

Quadrant Online
"The media at large and the public that the media influences seem to believe that the IPCC is an international authority on all aspects of climate. This is a popular but false notion. The IPCC is, in fact, no more than a craftily assembled government-supported lobby group, doing what lobby groups usually do."

Tricks of the climate trade

Quadrant Online
"Want to play the climate game? Make sure you cover all bases and potential outcomes. Discourage attempts to falsify your claims. Never give your critics criteria against which they could test the veracity of your pseudo-predictions and alleged attributions. Insist you know how to separate the “signal” (AGW “fingerprint”) from the “noise in the system” (random weather)."

BBC backs down on climate change: Forced to delete David Attenborough's 'alarmist' warming claims from final show of Africa series

Daily Mail
"The BBC has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown over climate change claims made in Sir David Attenborough's groundbreaking Africa series. In the last episode of the series, entitled 'Future', Sir David discussed the challenges facing the region. Speaking over footage of Mount Kilimanjaro, Sir David made the assertion that 'some parts of the continent have become 3.5C hotter in the past 20 years'. .....The BBC initially defended the claim, saying it was taken from a report by Oxfam and the New Economics Foundation. However, this report suggested the figure had come from a report by Christian Aid. The 2006 Christian Aid Report, entitled 'the climate of poverty' says the data came from a 'conversation with authors; February 2006.'

No, David Attenborough: Africa hasn't warmed by 3.5 degrees C in two decades

Telegraph
"3.5 degrees C in two decades? That would indeed be a remarkable temperature rise in anybody's money. (Remember, since 1850 global mean temperatures have risen by about 0.8 degrees C – and we're supposed to find that worrying and significant). Which is why, you might have thought, the BBC would have spotted so obvious an error and removed it before the programme went out."

Why we don’t take CNN or Bill Nye seriously anymore: asteroid> meteor> global warming

WUWT
"CNN talking empty head (Feyerick) asks Bill Nye if approaching Meteor was a result of global warming…. but Bill’s response is oddly disquieting."

Don't hold your breath for spring: Cold weather is here for a MONTH say forecasters as they warn of arrival of low pressure system which caused US snowstorms

Daily Mail
"Up to five inches of snow fell over parts of the Britain overnight - Much of London and the south-east woke up to heavy snow flurries - Overnight freezing conditions disrupted many journeys this morning - 10 flights from Geneva to Heathrow Airport cancelled today - AA attended 6,800 breakdowns across the country by midday - Much of UK will remain dry overnight but rain is on the way later this week - Environment Agency has more than 100 flood alerts in place in England"

Global Warming To Bring Colder/Warmer Winters

NALoPKT
"It seems that every time we get some snow, another “scientist” is wheeled out to explain that, no matter how cold it gets, it is all down to global warming. In the last week or so, we have had the International Arctic Research Centre announcing a study by three Chinese scientists, “Weakened cyclones, intensified anticyclones and recent extreme cold winter weather events in Eurasia “, with the headline “Climate change brings colder winters to Europe and Asia”. Then, we had WWF Russia blaming the blizzards in Russia on global warming. But let’s, for one moment, remind ourselves of some of the “scientists” who have said the exact opposite."

Money and energy are thrown to the wind

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
" Talk about bees clustering round a honeypot… When are we going to wake up to the extraordinary goings-on at the heart of Britain’s energy policy?
Last week, it was announced that Charles Hendry — who was, until September, the minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in charge of wind farms — is to become chairman of Forewind, a consortium planning to build the world’s biggest and most lucrative wind farm in the North Sea. His predecessor, Lord Deben (formerly John Gummer), had to step down when he was made chairman of the Climate Change Committee, the hugely influential body set up under the Climate Change Act to advise DECC on Britain’s energy policy. Deben’s appointment was approved by the Commons Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, chaired by his friend Tim Yeo, who makes more than £200,000 a year advising firms in the “low-carbon” energy sector.
........... £100 billion on up to 30,000 wind turbines, so hopelessly inefficient that they have to be given absurdly lavish subsidies. For offshore windfarms like the one planned by Mr Hendry’s firm, the subsidies amount to 200 per cent of the value of the electricity they produce.
Meanwhile, we lose five major coal-fired power stations, 7.5 gigawatts of generating capacity, next month, thanks to an EU directive. This is exactly 25 times as much as the 0.7 per cent of our power being generated yesterday afternoon by all 4,000 of our wind turbines put together. In April, thanks to the drive towards a “low-carbon” economy, we can look forward to the arrival of the carbon tax, which alone will drive up the price of electricity by billions of pounds, pushing millions more households into fuel poverty.
Truly, we are locked into an utterly crazy energy policy, for which no group of people is more responsible than those bees clustering busily round the subsidy-sweetened honeypot. We need to wake up to just how dangerous a game they are playing with our future.

Nemo: Top ten worst blizzards to hit the US

Telegraph
" 10. The Cleveland Superbomb, Jan 25-27, 1978 Also known as the Great Blizzard of 1978, this affected large swathes of the US. One to three feet of snowfall was whipped up into 25 foot drifts by 100 mph winds, killing over 70 people.
9. The Superbowl Blizzard of Jan 9-12, 1975 Warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico mixed with colder air from the Rockies, causing devastating snowfalls and over 45 tornadoes in the south west. 70 people were killed.
8. The Blizzard of Jan 2-4, 1999 One of Chicago's worst ever storms, a record 18.6 inches fell in the first day alone. Temperatures fell as low as -30° Celsius. 73 people were killed, with 32 of the deaths resulting from heart attacks brought on by shovelling snow.
2. The Storm of the Century, Mar 11-15, 1993 Also called the White Hurricane, this was a storm of almost unprecedented magnitude. Bringing with it heavy rains, winds and tornadoes, the storm stretched from Canada to Central America. Although many states were affected, the focus was the East Coast and Cuba, with Tennessee receiving 60 inches of snow. Over 300 people were killed."

Thousands of Britons are stranded in America after flights to Britain are grounded as snow batters the US east coast

Daily Mail
"More than 23 inches of snow has fallen in parts of central Connecticut, and over 21 inches covered Randolph in south-eastern Massachusetts. The US National Weather Service said up to three feet of snow is expected in Boston, threatening the city's 2003 record of 27.6 inches."

Your funding bonanza for greens

Bishop Hill
" European heads of state and government have agreed to commit at least 20 percent of the entire European Union budget over the next seven years to climate-related spending. The seven-year budget was agreed at 960 billion euros. All-night negotiations in Brussels produced agreement among EU leaders on budget proposals for the rest of the decade, from 2014-2020."

New paper finds warming causes less snow

The Hockey Schtick
"A paper published today in the Journal of Climate finds that warmer temperatures cause less snow, and conversely, colder temperatures cause more snow. According to the authors, "Using a simple multivariate model, [increased] temperature is shown to drive these trends by decreasing snowfall almost everywhere." The paper refutes the claims of climate alarmists that global warming causes more snow."

French Ski Resort Shuts Down…Because Of Too Much Snow!

NoTricksZone
"The northern hemisphere is experiencing near record high snow cover, Moscow just got buried by record snow, today Boston faces record snow, and now ski resorts in France are shutting down because of too much snow!"

Bob Tisdale shows how ‘Forecast the Facts” Brad Johnson (and now Dr. Heidi Cullen) are fecklessly factless about ocean warming and the blizzard

WUWT
"It’s difficult to claim the recent increases in manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for the warm sea surface temperatures off the New England coast, when the those values were regularly exceeded 70 to 80 years ago. Alarmists will take any opportunity to claim manmade greenhouse gases are responsible for weather events, such as Hurricane Sandy, and now the upcoming New England Blizzard. It’s often easy to illustrate the errors in their claims. Another example is the Russian heat wave of 2010 which Trenberth and Fasullo tried (and failed) to attribute to the warming of sea surface temperatures. Refer to the post here. Alarmists, of course, will continue to make unfounded claims, and I will be happy to show how ridiculous those claims are. ........[ If you should run into any alarmists over the next couple of days, remind them of the Northeast Blizzard of 1978.]"

US bracing for 'historic' blizzard

Telegraph
"A blizzard of potentially historic proportions threatened to strike the Northeast with a vengeance Friday, with up to two feet of snow forecast along the densely populated corridor from the New York City area to Boston and beyond."

1974 Shock News : Ominous Global Cooling Causing Droughts And Floods

Real Science
"Government scientists are much smarter now and know that global warming causes droughts, floods, and massive tragedies – rather than global cooling. Regardless, John Cook has proven that the global cooling scare never happened. ......" (h/t Climate Depot)

Emergent Climate Phenomena

WUWT
"So when the forcing from CO2 increases a watt or two, in an accurate model the clouds will emerge a few minutes earlier on average across the tropics, and the balance will be restored. This system of control by emergent phenomena has worked very well for billions of years, and it handles large swings in radiation every single day—it won’t be altered by a few watts of extra forcing from CO2."

Moscow's Snowiest Winter in 100 years

NCTCS
“This is the snowiest winter in 100 years,” Biryukov said, adding that 216 centimeters (85 inches) of snow have blanketed Moscow since the beginning of winter, which is 1.5 times above climatic norm. The snowfall, which continued in and around the capital until the early hours of Tuesday, brought Moscow's traffic to a virtual standstill. The total length of traffic jams in the city reached 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles), which is equal to the distance between Moscow and Madrid." (h/t Tom Nelson)

Lewandowsky’s latest smear paper gets pulled from the journal website

WUWT
"Tonight I’m pleased to report, that one skeptic who stood up and complained about Lewandowsky’s libelous claims, has had an effect."

Scientist: the “cure” is worse than any warming

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
" Professor G. Cornelis van Kooten holds a chair in Environmental Studies and Climate at Canada’s University of Victoria:
I was a reluctant contributing author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report – reluctant because, after having been a reviewer of the third report, putting in quite a bit of time and then totally ignored, I viewed the process as nothing more than a sham… ....... [The] climate models have never been validated and are simply unreliable.... To add insult to injury, the climate models were also used to make claims about the increasing intensity of storms, rainfall events, etc., when all the empirical evidence indicates that storm events have been on the decline…
After reading a large literature by astrophysicists, I am more convinced that changes in solar activities (whether sunspots, various types of cycles, etc.) are a better explanation of changing temperatures and possible global warming than CO2. .. "

Four Top Swedish Climate Scientists Publish Critical Letter Slamming Potsdam Institute Climate Alarmism

NoTricksZone
"Two days ago a wrote a post about Swedish scientist Lennart Bengtsson denouncing alarmist climate science. The original source of that story was a letter that Bengtsson and 3 other climate scientists had published at Sweden’s daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter."

New paper finds natural variability controls CO2 levels, not man

The Hockey Schtick
" An important new paper published today in Global Biogeochemical Cycles finds that "In contrast to recent claims, trends in the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon [dioxide] cannot be detected when accounting for the decadal-scale influence of explosive volcanism and related uncertainties." In other words, after accounting for the large effect of volcanic eruptions, ENSO, and other uncertainties upon natural CO2 sinks, trends in the man-made fraction of atmospheric CO2 "cannot be detected." Thus, despite an exponential increase in man-made CO2 emissions, there is no statistically significant trend in the man-made fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere. This further suggests that man is not the primary cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, that temperature is responsible for the increase in CO2 levels due to out-gassing. According to the authors, "Our results highlight the importance of considering the role of natural variability in the carbon cycle for interpretation of observations and for data-model intercomparison."  
Note man-made emissions are only about 4% of the total CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, and CO2 only represents about 0.04% of the entire atmosphere.

Heaviest snowfall in a century in Moscow - WWF blames global warming

NnoN
"Moscow has seen the heaviest snowfall in a century, the Moscow Times reports:.......It comes as no surprise that WWF Russia blames the exceptional winter weather on global warming: ....."

In Their Own Words: Climate Alarmists Debunk Their “Science”

WUWT
"Larry Bell has a great column at Forbes ......I highly recommend this article, read it in full here, and bookmark it for future reference: ...."

NOAA Slays the Billion-Dollar Disaster Meme

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog
"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps a tally of "billion dollar disasters" which have occurred in the United States. The number of disasters which exceed the billion dollar threshold has increased since 1980. This increase has been often cited as evidence that the climate has become more extreme and is attributable to emissions of carbon dioxide. A new peer-reviewed paper from NOAA pours cold water on both claims."

New paper finds tree-ring studies underestimate climate extremes of the past

The Hockey Schtick
"A new paper published in Nature Climate Change finds tree-ring reconstructions of temperature, such as Mann's infamous hockey stick, "underestimate climate fluctuations of, for example, air temperature," due to data complicated by "the climate of past years and other factors like tree age" and precipitation. "Our results point to uncertainties in the global climate system that were previously not recognized," says David Frank, co-author of the study."

Pachauri Takes WWF Money

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is supposed to be a scientific body. But its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, can’t seem to help himself. He keeps associating with green activists. Every year, a sustainability summit is held in Delhi, organized by TERI, the institute of which Pachauri is the Director-General. This year’s event wrapped up two days ago."

Residents on estate with super-insulated 'homes of the future' featuring rainwater harvesters and solar panels hit with electricity bills double the national average

Daily Mail
"Residents promised cheaper bills to live in a multi-million pound eco-friendly 'homes of the future' complex say they will have to move out after being hit with sky-high electricity charges. The Pavilion Gardens complex in West Bowling, Bradford, West Yorkshire, was heralded as being the most environmentally-friendly in the county when it was completed in July 2011 at a cost of £5.6million. Residents were told their electricity bills would be £500 cheaper than average because the houses are super-insulated with biomass boilers for heating and solar panels for electricity. But just 18 months after moving in, many residents say they have been hit with massive electrical bills almost double the annual average and they can't afford to live in the properties."

Cancun can-do is a con

Catallaxy Files (Australia)
"Developed countries are also avoiding new emission abatement measures. While their politicians enjoy the accolades of the green commentariat, cold reality usually dominates policy actions. Thus, Canada’s Kyoto commitment was to reduce emissions by six per cent below their 2000 levels by 2012, but with emissions tracking at 30 per cent above this,Canada simply abandoned the pledge. Last month, Japan became the latest country to drop its greenhouse reduction targets, which involved a 25 per cent reduction in emissions.
Europe, the epicentre of climate orthodoxy, is now re-examining its greenhouse gas abatement policies. These are aggravating the region’s economic demise. They are hurtling it towards Angela Merkel’s nightmare where Europe becomes merely “an interesting place to visit”.
Like Europe’s emission policies, those in Australia are also causing economic damage. We have a carbon tax, which at $23 more than doubles the wholesale electricity price and is fivefold the EU’s carbon tax. Australia shares with the EU crippling requirements for the use of wind generated electricity which costs over twice as much as electricity from coal. The costs these measures bring do not effect on emissions at the global level, but do cause relocation of industry and lower income levels."

The Inconvenient Truth About Polar Bears

The Hockey Schtick
" "There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago"... "polar bear populations are large, and the truth is that we can't look at it as a monolithic population that is all going one way or another."

Top Swedish Climate Scientist Lennart Bengtsson Says Warming So Small, Not Noticeable Without Meteorologists!

NoTricksZone
"A major Swedish online daily has an article about what one of Sweden’s leading climate scientists, Lennart Bengtsson, has to say about the global warming hysteria."

Sydney may have shivered through its coolest February weekend in 19 years

SMH
"Sydney may have shivered through its coolest February weekend in 19 years but it won't be long before the mercury jumps back above normal for this time of year. The city's February's average maximum is 25.8 degrees and while temperatures over the weekend were only a couple of degrees below that mark, rain and winds made conditions feel much cooler. The weekend was also the city's coldest in three months. Warmer conditions, though, will build up through the week, said Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist with Weatherzone."

Do forests drive wind and bring rain? Is there a major man-made climate driver the models miss?

JoNova (Australia)
"What if winds were mainly driven by changes in water vapor, and those changes occurred commonly in air over forests? Forests would be the pumps that draw in moist air from over the oceans. Rather than assuming that forests grow where the rain falls, it would be more a case of rain falling where forests grow. When water vapor condenses it reduces the air pressure, which pulls in more dense air from over the ocean.
A new paper is causing a major stir. The paper is so controversial that many reviewers and editors said it should not be published. After two years of deliberations, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics decided it was too important not to discuss.
The physics is apparently quite convincing, the question is not whether it happens, but how strong the effect is. Climate models assume it is a small or non-existent factor. Graham Lloyd has done a good job describing both the paper and the reaction to it in The Australian."

Burying the good news about our climate

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"The Sydney Morning Herald - with the suspicious help of the CSIRO’s warmists - beats up another January of heat and flooding rains: Hottest year start keeps climate change in spotlight In fact, nowhere in the article is the claim of “hottest year” sustained. In fact, Bureau of Meteorology figures dispute it: ...... And in the body of the article comes this grudging admission of something I’ve often noted, to howls of protests by warmists:

Professor John McAneney, the director of Risk Frontiers, an independent research group funded mostly by the insurance industry, said that based on a database of natural hazard events in Australia, including some dating from 1803, ”there has been no increase in the frequency of natural hazard events since 1950”…
“When this data set, and many other data sets in different jurisdictions across the world and for many different perils, is corrected for the increases in numbers of buildings at risk and their value, no long-term trend remains,” Professor McAneney said. ‘’It is indisputable that the rising toll of natural disasters is due to more people and assets at risk.”

Professor John McAneney, the director of Risk Frontiers: "This whole thing about climate change being responsible for an increase in extreme weather, or natural disasters, is just a fiction really."

Tom Nelson
"Professor John McAneney, the director of Risk Frontiers, an independent research group funded mostly by the insurance industry, says that based on a database of natural hazard events in Australia, including some dating back to 1803, "there has been no increase in the frequency of natural hazard events since 1950".

New study finds wind farms last only 50% of claimed lifetime

The Hockey Schtick
"A peer-reviewed study finds from actual performance data of wind farms in the UK and Denmark that the life of wind turbines is only about 50% of that claimed by the wind industry. The report finds the performance "of wind farms declines substantially as they get older, probably due to wear and tear" and that "This decline in performance means that it is rarely economic to operate wind farms for more than 12 to 15 years. After this period they must be replaced with new machines, a finding that has profound consequences for investors and government alike."

Sabotage suspected at toppled wind turbine as second is brought down

Telegraph
"A 115ft wind turbine which collapsed last week may have been sabotaged, officials have claimed as it was revealed that a second has been brought down less than 20 miles away."

James Annan on climate sensitivity

Bishop Hill
"James Annan has a must-read post on climate sensitivity today, picking up on the Norwegian study, Nic Lewis's work and the contents of the leaked IPCC report. Here are some choice excerpts: ......"Since the IPCC can no longer defend their old analyses in any meaningful manner, it seems they have to resort to an unsupported "this is what we think, because we asked our pals". It's essentially the Lindzen strategy in reverse: having firmly wedded themselves to their politically convenient long tail of high values, their response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing "la la la I can't hear you".

Staggering Admission By James Annan: “High Climate Sensitivity Increasingly Untenable”

NoTricksZone
"That is what we call a landmark change of course - by one of climatology’s most renowned warmist scientists. If even Annan can see it, then the writing is truly emblazoned on the wall. For the warmist zombies out there, still desparately clinging to your catastrophe obsessions, take note!"

Encouraging admission of lower climate sensitivity by a ‘hockey team’ scientist

WUWT
"Andrew Revkin published the email today at the NYT Dot Earth blog as a comment in that thread, so now I am free to reproduce it here where I was not last night. Below is the comment left by Andy, quoting Annan’s email, bolding added:
The climate scientist James Annan sent these thoughts by email:
‘Well, the press release is a bit strange, because it sounds like it is talking about the Aldrin et al paper which was published some time ago, to no great fanfare. I don’t know if they have a further update to that.
Anyway, there have now been several recent papers showing much the same – numerous factors including: the increase in positive forcing (CO2 and the recent work on black carbon), decrease in estimated negative forcing (aerosols), combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’

And this is what many have been saying now, that the climate sensitivity has been overestimated. Kudos to Annan for realizing the likelihood of a lower climate sensitivity.