Gina McCarthy, EPA: carbon reduction is not about pollution – it’s about money

JoNova (Australia)
I don’t think Gina McCarthy had thought this through. McCarthy to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:

“And the great thing about this proposal is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants…It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units,”
“This is an investment strategy that will really not just reduce carbon pollution but will position the United States to continue to grow economically in every state, based on their own design,” McCarthy added.

UN Pushing The Same Arctic Ice Scam For Almost 45 Years

Real Science
In 1971, the UN said that humans were melting polar ice and it could raise sea level by 7 meters. ......Time Magazine reported a 12% increase in Arctic ice in that same year."

Who’s really waging the ‘war on science’?

WUWT
When it comes to attacking climate scientists, the alarmist Left has the market cornered .....
While proclaiming victimhood, they detest and vilify any experts who express doubts that we face an imminent climate Armageddon. They refuse to debate any such skeptics, or permit “nonbelievers” to participate in conferences where endless panels insist that every imaginable and imagined ecological problem is due to fossil fuels. They use hysteria and hyperbole to advance claims that slashing fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions will enable us to control Earth’s climate – and that references to computer model predictions and “extreme weather events” justify skyrocketing energy costs, millions of lost jobs, and severe damage to people’s livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare.
Reality is vastly different from what these alarmist, environmentalist, academic, media and political elites attempt to convey."

Data Tampering With Sea Level

Real Science
Not only is satellite sea level rise much faster than tide gauges, but it is also much faster than older satellite sea level. Look how the University of Colorado has altered their data since 10 years ago. ......Sea level fraud in academia is just as big a problem as temperature fraud. Academics are rewarded for producing large numbers, not for being accurate."

Half the world is immune to “expert consensus” they don’t think scientists know what they are talking about

JoNova (Australia)
The four most skeptical nations were respectively, the US, Great Britain, Australia and Russia. A recent large and detailed poll of the UK with full demographic information showed 62% of the UK (or GB, as it is listed below) were skeptical and didn’t believe the recent floods in the UK were “man-made” through climate change. That detailed poll was more internally consistent than this international one. It also showed there was a higher proportion of skeptics among the well educated, and the largest contingent of believers was left in the unskilled worker category."

LISTEN NOW: Dr. John Christy rebuts climate alarmist talking points

The Hockey Schtick
Dr. John Christy's radio interview today debunks silly misconceptions including the bogus "97% consensus", that all climate change is man-made, that CO2 has a significant effect on climate, that climate models are reliable, that glacier melt is 'unprecedented' or man-made, that skeptics are against clean air, the mistaken beliefs of amateur climatologist Neil Degrasse Tyson, as well as other alarmist talking points. "

Watch what Climate Change SKEPTICS have to say about Climate Change

The Right Scoop
A great video from a gathering of Climate Change skeptics where some weighed in on why this idea of global warming or climate change is just nonsense."

New paper finds 23% of warming in Europe since 1980 due to clean air laws reducing sulfur dioxide

The Hockey Schtick
A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds that clean air laws which greatly reduced sulfur dioxide emissions explain 81% of the "brightening" of sunshine and 23% of the surface warming in Europe since 1980. However, the authors note "this phenomenon is however hardly reproduced by global and regional climate models." 

According to the paper, 

"observed surface solar radiation, as well as land and sea surface temperature spatio-temporal variations over the Euro-Mediterranean region are only reproduced when simulations include the realistic aerosol variations" which the authors state are "however hardly reproduced by global and regional climate models"

‘Climate models not only significantly over-predict observed warming in the tropical troposphere, but they represent it in a fundamentally different way than is observed’

WUWT
New Paper by McKitrick and Vogelsang comparing models and observations in the tropical troposphere "

Get rid of the rogue EPA and pointless “climate” policies. Governments can’t change the weather.

JoNova (Australia)
One day people will marvel that turn of the century governments thought they could control the climate, and needed to issue decrees about how much “change” in the weather they would allow.
From different continents come two articles with a similar theme. It’s time to dump the EPA and pointless “Climate” policies."

Should you trust NOAA claims about May and June records?

IceCap

D'Aleo on temperature adjustments: 'With a major cooling of the past and allowance for UHI contamination in recent decades. The all time record highs and days over 90F tell us we have been in a cyclical pattern with 1930s as the warmest decade.'

'The National Climate Data Center and NASA climate group also control the data that is used to verify these models which is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. At the very least, their decisions and adjustments may be because they really believe in their models and work to find the warming they show - a form of confirmation bias.'

'NOAA and NASA (which uses data gathered by NOAA climate center in Asheville) has been commissioned to participate in special climate assessments to support the idealogical and political agenda of the government. From Fiscal Year (FY) 1993 to FY 2013 total US expenditures on climate change amounted to more than $165 Billion. More than $35 Billion is identified as climate science. The White House reported that in FY 2013 the US spent $22.5 Billion on climate change. About $2 Billion went to US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The principal function of the USGCRP is to provide to Congress a National Climate Assessment (NCA). The latest report uses global climate models, which are not validated, therefor speculative, to speculate about regional influences from global warming.'    (h/t Climate Depot)

GIStemp – who needs Antarctic data or temps near ice.

E M Smith

In Conclusion

I’ve got some more on GIStemp, but that will wait for another posting. The big lumps are just that the source code is out of date, the data looks like it is missing a chunk from ‘down south’, and in 2011 the code was modified to avoid water temps from near ice. One can only wonder what possible rationalization could exist for that change. IMHO, it is totally unwarranted by any means. Might as well just start dropping any thermometers in cold places…"

97 percent of Australian renewables investment dries up without subsidies (so the ABC gives free adverts to the industry)

JoNova (Australia)
We’re told “clean” energy is a viable and cost effective. But cut the government subsidies, and 97 percent of investors vanish (in Australia it’s collapsed from $2.6b annually to $80m). The truth is that renewables are almost totally dependent on taxpayer largess. No wonder they lobby like their life depends on it. It does."

Greenland Was Much Warmer During The MWP

Real Science

Germany’s Habitually AWOL Green Energy…Installed Wind/Solar Often Delivers Less Than 1% Of Rated Capacity!

NoTricksZone
In a nutshell, solar and wind power production are often AWOL and so conventional power systems (coal, gas, nuclear) always need to be on standby, ready to deliver on a minute’s notice."

Owen Paterson: I’m proud of standing up to the green lobby

Telegraph
The Green Blob sprouts especially vigorously in Brussels. The European Commission website reveals that a staggering 150 million euros (£119  million) was paid to the top nine green NGOs from 2007-13.
European Union officials give generous grants to green groups so that they will lobby it for regulations that then require large budgets to enforce. When I attended a council meeting of elected EU ministers on shale gas in Lithuania last year, we were lectured by a man using largely untrue clichés about the dangers of shale gas. We discovered that he was from the European Environment Bureau, an umbrella group for unelected, taxpayer-subsidised green lobby groups."

Faulty and False Global Temperature Readings

American Thinker
So about half of the temperature trend claimed by alarmists is completely artificial (false).  Watts’ team finds that the accurate temperature trends show a rise of about 0.18 degree Centigrade per decade.  NOAA is claiming an increase of 0.32 degrees Centigrade per decade. "

NOAA Breaks Their Dishonesty Record Two Months In A Row

Real Science
More accurate satellite data which actually measures troposphere temperatures, shows that NOAA’s claims of record heat are incorrect. NOAA’s failure to disclose this information in their press release shows that they are intentionally misleading the public."

Wow, look at those BOM adjustments – trends up by two degrees C!

JoNova (Australia)

The mystery of Australian temperature adjustments

Ken Stewart has been checking the Australian BOM official ACORN minima data against the raw data. This week he highlights the six very strange cases of Brisbane Airport, Amberley RAAF, Dubbo, Rutherglen, Rabbit Flat, and Carnarvon. In all these places the adjustments change the trend by more than 2 whole degrees C. It’s a kind of hyper-homogenization.

Thermometers are supposed to be accurate to a tenth of a degree. Australian average trends are sometimes calculated to one hundredth of a degree. What then do we make of adjustments that change the trends by a whopping 2 degrees, and decades after the data came in? The only thing we know for sure about Australian temperatures is that we need an independent audit. Why is it left to volunteers to check? Surely the Greens want good data too? "

Lewandowsky and Oreskes Are Co-Authors of a Paper about ENSO, Climate Models and Sea Surface Temperature Trends (Go Figure!)

WUWT
OVERVIEW
The Risbey et al. (2014) Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase is yet another paper trying to blame the recent dominance of La Niña events for the slowdown in global surface temperature warming, the hiatus. This one, however, states that ENSO contributes to the warming when El Niño events dominate. That occurred from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s. Risbey et al. (2014) also has a number of curiosities that make it stand out from the rest. One of those curiosities is that they claim that 4 specially selected climate models (which they failed to identify) can reproduce the spatial patterns of warming and cooling in the Pacific (and the rest of the ocean basins) during the hiatus period, while the maps they presented of observed versus modeled trends contradict the claims.     ..................Simply put, Risbey et al. (2014) has very effectively undermined climate model hindcasts and projections, and the paper has provided lots of fuel for skeptics."

Why the former Ice Age became global warming, then climate change

Washington Examiner

Take recent history for example. In the 1970s, the hypothesis was that the globe was potentially headed for the next ice age.
I know this not only because of pronouncements from popular press at the time, but also because, as an undergraduate student at one of the top schools of meteorology, Penn State University, the buzz I heard was that the global climate was moving toward seriously colder conditions.
To substantiate this claim, professors referenced not only recent climate trends and observations but also the work of respected scientists, such as astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch, who had investigated long-term climate cycles.  ......................
Today, it is fashionable to expect disaster from too much warmth. So the smart money is on promoting dire predictions and consequences of rising thermometers, even in the face of no global warming for more than 15 years.
From my own 35 years of experience in the atmospheric science profession as an air-pollution meteorologist, air quality program administrator and science educator, I can attest the fact that long-range, global climate-change outlooks are nothing but insular professional opinion.
Such opinion is not worthy of the investment of billions of dollars to avoid the supposed catastrophic consequences of abundant, inexpensive fossil fuels and, subsequently, to impoverish U.S. citizens with skyrocket energy costs."

Global cooling

Catallaxy Files
I realise the left has a great deal invested in global warming, but if they are wrong, and there’s plenty to show that they are, then they are preparing for a very different kind of future from the one we are actually going to have. Warmer makes the planet more lush, specially if accompanied by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide. Colder shortens growing seasons and increases the need for an ability to heat our homes. In my own lifetime, the planet’s population has risen from two billion to seven billion. If the world is warming, we can accommodate the lot. If it is cooling, we cannot, specially if we go out of our way to impair our ability to develop economical forms of energy supplies."

Intellectual and Practical Foolishness: The Precautionary Principle

Dr Roy W Spencer PhD
Now, the foolishness of the PP is that it addresses the potential risks of a particular action without addressing the benefits.
This is just plain silliness, and a prescription for human suffering and death. Every modern advance, invention, or convenience you can think of has risks, and those risks must be weighed against their benefits.
There is no such thing as a no-risk human activity.
People even die from choking on food. Maybe we should outlaw food.
In the early years of the environmental movement, bad science combined with PP idealism led to restrictions on the use of DDT to control mosquitoes, which then led to at least tens of millions of needless deaths.  ...."

NOAA Thinks No Trend In Global Temperatures for Two Decades is a Steady Increase?

American Thinker
So NOAA thinks that the absolute absence of any significant increasing trend in global temperatures for almost two decades is "increasing at a steady rate"?  That's right: using the standard Mann-Kendall test for trends, there is no significant trend in global temperatures since 1995."

German Wind Turbine Investors Dissolve Operating Company After 13 Years Of Poor Returns, Technical Failures

NoTricksZone
There are lots of claims on how successful Germany’s renewable energy program has been. Feed-in tariffs mandated by the government guaranteed profits for windpark investors and operators. You couldn’t lose. So it seemed at first."

Giant wind farm will cost millions and ruin Brighton view

Christopher Booker, Telegraph

Over the next four years, visitors to Brighton and the Sussex coast are in for a shock. Visible all the way from Beachy Head to the Isle of Wight, they will see 100 or more colossal wind turbines rising up to 700ft into the sky, nearly 200ft higher than Blackpool Tower. These will form one of the world’s largest wind farms, covering more than 60sq miles of the English Channel.

If they wonder what purpose is served by this vast industrial installation, last week given the go-ahead by Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, they should not be fooled by the claim of the Rampion wind farm’s developers, the German energy giant E.on, that it will have the “capacity” to generate 700 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Buried in small print on its website, it admits that, thanks to the intermittency of the wind, the actual output of this £2 billion scheme will at best average only 240MW. To see how derisory this is, the latest gas-fired power station opened by another German firm, RWE, at Pembroke two years ago, at only half the capital cost, £1 billion, can reliably produce nearly 10 times as much electricity, 2,000MW, all the time.

Of course, no one would dream of building such a gargantuan wind factory as Rampion if it were not for Mr Davey’s ludicrous subsidy system. It may earn E.on some £325million a year. But £220 million of that will be subsidy, paid for by all of us through our electricity bills. Where the power from that Pembroke plant is costing us only £50 per megawatt hour, for that fed to the grid from Brighton we shall pay £155 per megawatt hour, more than three times as much. ....."

Fraud in renewable energy? Say not.

Junk Science
EPA adopts a voluntary quality assurance program to address past issues with Renewable Identification Numbers for compliance with the Renewable Fuels Standard. A summary of the changes from the National Law Review.  I wonder how much a voluntary program will deter the fraudsters."

The stark reality of green tech’s solar and wind contribution to world energy

WUWT

WSJ: 'Aussies hated having their energy prices raised so elites could feel good about themselves'

The Hockey Schtick
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott fulfilled a major campaign pledge Thursday when his government voted to repeal the country's carbon tax, provoking wailing from the political left and green groups about climate Armageddon. The smarter analysis is that Mr. Abbott proved that conviction politicians are rewarded when their ideas have economic merit—and are clearly explained—to the electorate. Republicans should take note."

Dr. Roy Spencer’s Keynote Speech at #ICCC9

WUWT
Dr. Spencer asks the question: What do we really know about Global Warming?
This is from Wednesday morning July 9th.
This is well worth watching, and I get a mention. Some of the graphs he presents are not only hilarious for their satire of the issue, but are valuable in demonstrating that correlation is not causation."

Was Lawson Right about the UK Floods?

Climate Audit
Conclusion
I have not parsed other issues in the interview: Australian temperatures, global heavy precipitation extremes, Arctic sea ice, as each involves its own issues, and because the focus of the interview was on the linkage of heavy January 2014 precipitation and floods to global warming.
But clearly, inspired at least in part by Hoskins’ fellow Grantham Institute employee Bob Ward, the BBC has arrived at a factually incorrect and unfair decision in respect to the complaint against Nigel Lawson. Perhaps the person best placed to remedy the situation is Hoskins himself. Hoskins surely knows that Lawson was correct in his statement about the linkage between the floods and global warming ( the issue is “marginal exacerbation”). And in his statement about tropical cyclones. And about Chinese emissions. And that he has a legitimate argument on wind turbines.
If Hoskins and the Grantham institutes want to persuade more people of the seriousness of the issues, Hoskins’ obligation is to do a better job, rather than have Lawson silenced by a Grantham apparatchik. I think that Hoskins should write to the BBC Complaints Unit, separating himself from Ward’s complaint and, at a minimum, conceding that Lawson’s position on the (lack of) linkage of floods and global warming is either correct or one that can be reasonably argued.
It is, of course, vanishingly unlikely that Hoskins would do anything so gracious. Hoskins was the go-to person for the University of East Anglia when the Royal Society laundered the list of articles for the Oxburgh inquiry: although Hoskins himself had no informed knowledge of the literature, he immediately endorsed the UEA. Later, he acted as a supporting authority for refusing FOI requests."

People who claim to worry about climate change use more electricity

Telegraph

People who claim to worry about climate change use more electricity than those who do not, a Government study has found. Those who say they are concerned about the prospect of climate change consume more energy than those who say it is “too far into the future to worry about,” the study commissioned by the Department for Energy and Climate Change found."

Is Australia drying out because of global warming? Emissions are behind the country's droughts, claim computer models

Daily Mail
From the comments:
"Another climate conference on the horizon then? The usual codswallop articles proliferate in the run up to these eco-fests. What a shame they can't provide REAL WORLD DATA rather than computer guesswork."

gregg, Wichita, United States, 

Before we cut our military by one person close NOAA. They are deliberately modifying computer models to fit their green agenda. Billions of tax dollars are being pushed into pet projects." 

"Isn't it interesting that all areas of the Southern Hemisphere report general cooling for the last 30 years except Australia and NZ. And by coincidence both scientific bodies in the respective countries have been found tampering with historical data reportage? "

Brisbane hits coldest temperature in 103 years

The Australian
If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years.
Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.
At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.
Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.
“If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.
“The average for this time of year is 12C, so Brisbane was about 9C below average, it is pretty impressive really, to have the coldest morning in 103 years is a big record.”

Climate change once again in the news

Catallaxy Files (Australia)
You don’t often find anything about Australia the headline item on Drudge, but so it is today:

Oz city hits coldest temperature in 103 years

And below the fold there was this as well:

JULY FREAK: CHICAGO BRACES FOR RECORD LOW TEMPS…
Coldest Antarctic June Ever Recorded…

If the planet is cooling and not heating, and who’s to say it’s not, the consequences will be truly catastrophic."

Brisbane records coldest morning in 103 years

ABC
Brisbane has recorded its coldest morning in 103 years, with low temperatures also being felt across the rest of Queensland. The weather bureau says the state's capital dropped to 2.6 degrees Celsius just before 7:00am (AEST) on Saturday. Bureau spokeswoman Michelle Berry said it has been exceptionally cold and temperatures are still dropping. "[It's been] the coldest morning since 1911, so it's quite a record there," she said."

USA’s Monster “Climate-Catastrophe”…Of 1936 (When CO2 Was At “Safe” Level of 310 PPM)!

NoTricksZone
Swindlers are out there trying to sell us that bad weather is something new and happening because atmospheric CO2 concentration are “too high”. If only we paid carbon taxes and gave them more regulatory power, then we could prevent bad weather from happening and return to a Garden of Eden.
To some us all this sounds silly, of course. But many dimwitted people actually believe it.
Steve Goddard at Twitter brought my attention to the following newspaper clipping (I’ve cut and pasted piecemeal below) from the Perth Australia Daily News, dated 1936. As you will read, the scale of the disaster and the extremes are beyond anything we have ever witnessed today."

EPA Says That Winter 2014 Wasn’t Cold In The US

Real Science
The propagandists running the US government are really pushing their luck with this one. The EPA claims that the past winter wasn’t cold in the US.  ..............The Commerce Department says that contraction of the economy was due to the unusually cold winter, which the EPA says didn’t occur."

No, BBC, computer models aren’t 'evidence’

Christopher Booker, Telegraph
In all the excitement over a ruling by the head of the BBC complaints department that it had been “wrong” to allow the climate sceptic Lord Lawson to appear on the Today programme alongside a real scientist – Prof Sir Brian Hoskins – one rather important thing was missed. As one of our chief cheerleaders for climate change alarmism, Hoskins is a computer modeller, funded at Imperial College by Jeremy Grantham, a billionaire who believes that global warming is the gravest threat facing the planet.   .....................How tellingly upside down it is, therefore, that the BBC should rule that “Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence of computer models”. Like Hoskins, the BBC has long shown that its group-think “narrative” is based entirely on those same models. Which is why it now seems more determined than ever to prevent its audiences from being given the actual facts, which are all that proper scientists should recognise as evidence"

WSJ: Confessions of a Computer Modeler: Any model, including those predicting climate doom, can be tweaked to yield a desired result

The Hockey Schtick
Confessions of a Computer Modeler

Any model, including those predicting climate doom, can be tweaked to yield a desired result. I should know."

‘Peer review ring’ – busted

WUWT
From the Washington Post:
Every now and then a scholarly journal retracts an article because of errors or outright fraud. In academic circles, and sometimes beyond, each retraction is a big deal.
Now comes word of a journal retracting 60 articles at once.
The reason for the mass retraction is mind-blowing: A “peer review and citation ring” was apparently rigging the review process to get articles published.
You’ve heard of prostitution rings, gambling rings and extortion rings. Now there’s a “peer review ring.”

Axed, £50,000 wind turbine that generated a mere £5 of power a month: Turbine was installed despite council being warned location was too sheltered

Daily Mail

• Structure was placed outside Welsh government offices in Aberystwyth 
• Civil servants were warned the turbine would not get enough wind
• Last year it generated 33 kilowatts a month - equivalent to £5.28 of electricity
• It would have needed to stand for 757 years before its cost was offset 
• Turbine is being removed because manufacturers have gone into liquidation 

Lord Lawson Banned on BBC (only government approved spokesmen allowed to discuss science)

JoNova (Australia)
The evidence for man-made climate change is now so overwhelming and convincing that the BBC has written to a Green politician to apologize for airing alternate views (the dumb punters might get the wrong idea, eh?). The head of the BBC complaints unit told the Green politician it would not happen again.
Well obviously, it doesn’t help the United Kingdom to allow riff raff like the former Chancellor of the Exchequer to present his views — unless he agrees with the doctrine, of course. How could anyone expect listeners who are merely doctors, lawyers, teachers, and businesspeople to be able to understand a debate this complex?  (Only certified government approved scientists, and BBC journalists have the mental ability to understand the nuances of an argument which uses large numbers, like 97%). Henceforth, British voters must be shielded from alternate views. Repeat after me: there is a consensus."

'I've been banned by the BBC!': Ex-Chancellor Lord Lawson, a passionate climate change sceptic, accuses BBC bosses of silencing debate on global warming

Daily Mail
'It is hard to imagine a more blatant breach of its charter, which commits it to political balance, or a more blatant betrayal of the people’s trust, on which the continuation of its licence fee depends'

If AGW Theory Had Started in 1936

Sunshine Hours

‘No Culture of Accountability’ at Greenpeace

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
Organizations such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Environmental Defense Fund are not shoestring operations. They are not the underdog.
Instead, they’re huge corporate behemoths, with tons of money at their disposal. They pay their executives lavishly, employ small armies of lawyers, and host dinners in honour of former CIA directors. Yes, really."

Is it 'cos he's a green?

Bishop Hill
The BBC has announced a series of measures to make it more difficult to challenge green narratives on the BBC, and this is obviously going to lead to new waves of ecodrivel on the national broadcaster's output.  ...................

Update on Jul 7, 2014 by Bishop Hill

The BBC is going in for some naked propagandising on behalf of the green movement this morning."

This wind turbine caught fire and threw a flaming blade dozens of metres

Yahoo News
A FLAMING WIND turbine blade almost sparked a forest fire in Cork after it was thrown several metres from the machine.
The cause of the fire the wind farm in Cork is currently under investigation.
A flaming 28-metre-long blade from one of the turbines flew from the machine and landed close to nearby gourse and forestry as far as 100 metres away.
The turbine, a Gamesa G58, is a common model in operation across the world, but industry experts say it has ‘a strong safety record’.
The incident occurred at the Cappaboy Beg Wind Farm in Co Cork on 19 June."

Green ‘smart meters’ are plain stupid

Daily Mail

The plan for ‘smart meters’ is one such mistake. Even those who now promote them do not fully understand them. Experience in other countries shows they will not fulfil their optimistic official targets and that they are fraught with risks.

They do not work properly in several types of building. Their complex technology could take years to bed down. Yet the policy is to be implemented anyway, publicised at great expense with a launch event starring Bob Geldof. And we, the actual consumers, will pay for it for many years ahead in higher charges, even if we opt not to have the new equipment in our homes. This is a classic example of starting with a theory and trying to force reality to fit. Similar attitudes led to the sclerosis and ultimate collapse of the old Communist systems, which promised utopia and produced poverty, concrete-headed official obduracy and rust. The Green fashion has gone unchallenged long enough.  It is time for Ministers, MPs and the media to re-examine the claims of a belief system which has so far brought nothing but higher prices, diminished efficiency and ugly blights on the landscape.

Unveiled: New £200 'smart' meters every household must pay for (but may not work)

Daily Mail

A Government plan to put ‘smart meters’ into every British home – costing households £200 each – will be launched this week despite fears they will not work and that they pose a security risk to power supplies.

The £11 billion project, introduced to meet EU green targets, is supposed to cut down energy consumption and reduce bills.

But official reports seen by The Mail on Sunday reveal that: trials show consumers with smart meters save far less energy than predicted; five countries considering such a plan have decided it would cost more money than it saves; the meters do not work in a third of British homes, including high-rise flats, basements and those in rural areas: hackers and cyber-terrorists could break into the system  causing chaos in the national grid, or carry out large-scale fraud by fiddling bills.

Energy companies will begin the mass installation of smart meters next year at a cost of at least £200 per home, and have admitted the expense will be passed on to customers."

It's politics, not science, driving climate mania: Why are environmentalists and scientists so reluctant to discuss long-term increases in southern hemisphere sea ice?

Daily Mail

For years, computer simulations have predicted that sea ice should be disappearing from the Poles.
Now, with the news that Antarctic sea-ice levels have hit new highs, comes yet another mishap to tarnish the credibility of climate science. Climatologists base their doom-laden predictions of the Earth’s climate on computer simulations. But these have long been the subject of ridicule because of their stunning failure to predict the pause in warming – nearly 18 years long on some measures – since the turn of the last century. .....

It’s fair to say that this has been something of an embarrassment for climate modellers. But it doesn’t stop there. In recent days a new scandal over the integrity of temperature data has emerged, this time in America, where it has been revealed as much as 40 per cent  of temperature data there are not real thermometer readings. Many temperature stations have closed, but rather than stop recording data from these posts, the authorities have taken the remarkable step of ‘estimating’ temperatures based on the records of surrounding stations.  So vast swathes of the data are actually from ‘zombie’ stations that have long since disappeared.  This is bad enough, but it has also been discovered that the  US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is using estimates even when perfectly good raw data is available to it – and that it has adjusted historical records. Why should it do this? Many have noted that the effect of all these changes is to produce a warmer present and a colder past, with the net result being  the impression of much faster warming."

Global warming computer models confounded as Antarctic sea ice hits new record high with 2.1million square miles more than is usual for time of year

Daily Mail

• Ice is covering 16m sq km, more than 2.1m unusual for time of year
• UN computer models say Antarctic ice should be in decline, not increasing

Nanaimo Hot and Cold Day Histograms – So Much For Extreme Weather

Sunshine Hours
You all know that the AGW cult likes to go on and on about “Extreme Weather” because the warming stopped in 1998 and they like to think the world is coming to an end and only they can save us. Just another end of the world cult.
So I thought I would look at the same data for the weather station closest to my hometown on the west coast of Canada. The data only starts in the late 1940s so there is no extreme’s from the 1930s and 1940s.
One thing to remember. The 2361 Days Over 25C number (for example) includes the 506 Days Over 30C etc.
I don’t see any increase in extreme hot days. I don’t see any increase in extreme cold days.
Aside from 2 hot days in July 2009 (matched by the 3 days in the 1960s) and 1 cold day in 2008 matched by a day in 1968 it seems to have been getting less extreme."

WSJ: Climate of Conformity: One of our writers gets sacked for dissenting on global warming

The Hockey Schtick
Think tanks can support whoever they want, though we thought they were supposed to let people "think." Mr. Rossiter's fate is further evidence of the left's climate of intellectual conformity. If you disagree with the orthodoxy on climate change, you aren't merely wrong, you must be banished from public debate."

Raw Weather Data Destroyed, Lost Forever?…USHCN, NOAA And GHCN “Prime Manipulators”

NoTricksZone
During the search for this data, I came to the conclusion that RAW data simply does not exist for any stations except for the filled-out sheets from COOP stations or the electronic reports from the automated stations. All the on-line data, whether from BEST, NOAA, USHCN, GHCN, GISS, or wherever, has been manipulated in some way. USHCN, NOAA and GHCN seem to be the prime manipulators, filling in missing records with estimates, inventing data for “zombie”stations that won’t die, and “homogenizing”data to supposedly correct for UHI. GISS then takes the GHCN data and adds their own special sauce where they think it is necessary."

Temperature adjustments

Junk Science
Once all the calculating is done, the 2009 study concludes, the new adjusted data suggests that the “trend in maximum temperature is 0.064°C per decade, and the trend in minimum temperature is 0.075°C per decade” for the continental U.S. since 1895. The NCDC folks never rest in their search for greater precision. This year they recalculated the historical temperatures, this time by adjusting data in each of the 344 climate divisions into which the coterminous U.S. is divvied up. They now report a temperature trend of 0.067°C per decade."

Norway To Reap £1.6bn Subsidies From UK Energy Users

NALOPKT
Two Norwegian state-controlled energy companies are in line to receive £1.6bn in subsidies from UK consumers, after deciding to invest £1.5bn in building a wind farm off the coast of Norfolk. ......
The National Audit Office last week criticised the way in which ministers awarded subsidies to Dudgeon and seven other projects, which received contracts early with no competition. The NAO said this could result in “excessive” returns for energy companies and poor value for money for consumers.
The NAO calculates that Dudgeon will receive £1.6bn in subsidy over 15 years – implying it could cost every UK home roughly £1.50 a year on their energy bills."

An expensive way to boil a kettle

Christopher Booker, Telegraph

Driving recently over the Mendips where I live in Somerset, I saw a new wind turbine poking up over the treetops. I was naturally intrigued because a decade ago I chaired a campaign protesting in vain, despite the unanimous support of our local council, against a giant 2 megawatt turbine that now spins 330 feet above the nearby countryside. A closer look revealed that this new windmill was a Canadian-made Endeavor E3120. I was surprised to see that, despite being 120 feet high, its “capacity” is only a mere 50 kilowatts, just a 40th of that of its nearby big brother. Allowing for the intermittency of the wind, this means that its actual output only averages some 13 kilowatts, enough to power just 13 kettles.

So what purpose is served by this mini-monster, which would have cost a minimum of £240,000 to install? The answer, we can see on the Ofgem website, is that it can generate for its owner an income of nearly £24,000 a year, a return of 10 per cent, certainly rather better than the 0.5 per cent interest we get for leaving money in the bank. But only around £6,500 of that is the value of the electricity it feeds to the grid. The remaining £17,500 is what we all pay in “feed-in tariff” subsidies, through our bills.

So the pitiful amount of electricity produced by this windmill, like thousands of others now proliferating over the land, is being subsidised at a rate of 260 per cent: even more than the 200 per cent subsidy we pay for those vast offshore wind farms the Government is desperate to see covering hundreds of square miles of sea around our coasts. Can our wise and clever climate change secretary, Ed Davey, please tell us what other commodity in the history of the world has ever been subsidised to the tune of 260 per cent – just to boil up on average a dozen kettles?

The Imperial President and the Imperious Idiot

WUWT
The issue here is the Imperious Idiot’s asinine proposal to ban the sale of coal and oil, and the Imperial President’s use of executive power to do that."

Practicing the Dark Art of Temperature Trend Adjustment

WUWT
Did Federal Climate Scientists Fudge Temperature Data to Make It Warmer?

Leading German Daily: “Apocalypse Will Not Take Place”…Richard Tol: “97% Consensus Does Not Exist”!

NoTricksZone
The German media are giving time and space to skeptical voices.
The latest is a report appearing in Germany’s print high-profile national daily the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) which features climate economist Richard Tol titled: “The apocalypse won’t take place“.

RSS shows no global warming for 17 years 10 months

WUWT
Key facts about global temperature
Ø The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 214 months from September 1996 to June 2014. That is 50.2% of the entire 426-month satellite record.
Ø The fastest measured centennial warming rate was in Central England from 1663-1762, at 0.9 Cº/century – before the industrial revolution. It was not our fault.
Ø The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.
Ø The fastest warming trend lasting ten years or more occurred over the 40 years from 1694-1733 in Central England. It was equivalent to 4.3 Cº per century.
Ø Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to 1.2 Cº per century.
Ø The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.
Ø In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of the near-term warming trend was equivalent to 2.8 Cº per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction.
Ø The global warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to 1.4 Cº per century – half of what the IPCC had then predicted.
Ø In 2013 the IPCC’s new mid-range prediction of the near-term warming trend was for warming at a rate equivalent to only 1.7 Cº per century. Even that is exaggerated.
Ø Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 Cº warming to 2100.
Ø The IPCC’s predicted 4.8 Cº warming by 2100 is more than twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than ten years that has been measured since 1950.
Ø The IPCC’s 4.8 Cº-by-2100 prediction is almost four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950.
Ø Since 1 January 2001, the dawn of the new millennium, the warming trend on the mean of 5 datasets is nil. No warming for 13 years 5 months.
Ø Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming. It is as simple as that."

Apollo Astronaut: Climate Alarmism Is the ‘Biggest Fraud in the Field of Science’

CNSNews
"If we go back to the warmist hypothesis - not a theory, but, a hypothesis - they've been saying from the very beginning that carbon dioxide levels are abnormally high, that higher levels of carbon dioxide are bad for humans, and they thought warmer temperatures are bad for our world, and they thought we were able to override natural forces to control the earth's temperature. So, as I've looked into those, that's the problem that I've found, because I didn't find any of those to be correct - and, they certainly were not a theory, it was just their guess at what they wanted to see in the data they were looking at."  ......
Cunningham notes that, while climate alarmists are concerned that the atmosphere currently contains 400 parts per million of CO2, that's only a tenth of the level his spacecraft had to reach before causing concern. In his Apollo craft, an alarm would go off when CO2 reached 4,000 parts per million and, in today's space shuttle, the trigger is 5,000. And, in submarines where crewmen may be on three-month missions, CO2 has to reach 8,000 parts per million before the alarm is activated."