'Green Dave’ Cameron as much to blame as 'Red Ed’ Miliband for energy crisis

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"But what few people yet realise is how far this catastrophic mess we are in was not only predictable, but has also been quite deliberately brought about, through the Government’s own policies. Their central aim, though never openly explained, has been twofold. One leg has been to build, by 2020, some 30,000 wind turbines, so ludicrously expensive that we must pay double or treble the market rate for the power they so inefficiently produce. The other leg is that, to make this seem competitive, we should also eventually be made to pay twice the going rate for all other forms of electricity: hence the “carbon tax” on coal and gas, and the colossal price we are to pay for power from Hinkley Point and other new nuclear power stations (four times the cost of nuclear, estimated by a Royal Academy of Engineering study only nine years ago)."

Keenan does AR5

Bishop Hill
"Doug Keenan has written a critique of the IPCC's handling of statistics in AR5. Suffice it to say he is not impressed."

New review paper finds Medieval and Roman Warm Periods were worldwide and warmer than the present

The Hockey Schtick
" We now have substantial evidence that throughout portions of both the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, SSTs in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool were essentially equivalent to those of "the late twentieth century," indicating - once again - that there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about current air temperatures in this critically important region of the globe. "

Commonsense Climate Science and Forecasting after AR5

WUWT
"In the AR5 Summary for Policymakers the IPCC glossed over the developing cooling trend in global temperatures and so lost the last vestige of its scientific credibility and any claim to be a source of useful guidance on future climate trends for policymakers. .....The entire vast UN and Government sponsored AGW behemoth with its endless labyrinthine conferences and gigantic schemes for UN global control over the World and National economies is a prime example of the disasters Eisenhower warned against in 1961.......In plain English this means that they have no idea what the climate sensitivity is and that therefore that the politicians have no empirical scientific basis for their economically destructive climate and energy policies. ....."

IPCC Adjusts Model-Predicted Near-Term Warming Downwards

WUWT
"This is another post that illustrates and discusses just how poorly climate models simulate one of the most important climate variables: global surface temperatures. .....The answer to both questions is, the CLIMATE MODELS CANNOT SIMULATE the multidecadal variations that exist in the surface temperature record....
And it’s well known by the public that the models used by the IPCC are tuned to the upswing that started in the mid-1970s (see Mauritsen, et al. (2012) Tuning the Climate of a Global Model [paywalled]. A preprint edition is here.), while failing to consider the impacts of naturally occurring multidecadal periods of no warming on their long-term (to 2100) prognostications.
Last, as far as I know, the IPCC did not lower their long-term prognostications based on their lower short-term predictions."

How we pay UN bureaucrats to adapt to climate change in comfort

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)

How embarrassing. Our former Labor government was one of the few stupid enough to squander our money on the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund:

Here’s a list of the countries who are both rich and improvident enough to squander their taxpayers’ money on the Green Climate Fund. It’s the usual suspects, my condolences to their citizens who are paying for this:

Australia, $513,000
Denmark, $608,000
Finland, $648,000
France, $326,000
Japan, $500,000
Germany, $1,053,000
South Korea, $2,099,000
Netherlands, $286,000
Sweden, $752,000
UK, $770,000
TOTAL, $7,555,000

The Koreans put in two megabucks … but then, they also negotiated a deal where the Green Climate Fund is headquartered in Seoul. So no tears for them, they’ll make out like bandits.

We were told we had to give this small fortune to the UN to help the poor: ..."

Obama's 'social cost of carbon' is at odds with science & ignores 'social benefits of carbon'

The Hockey Schtick

The Obama administration's latest, greatest weapon to prosecute its war on global warming is something called the "social cost of carbon." It is an instrument honed on ill-founded climate alarm and is readily blunted in the face of the best science.

The social cost of carbon is supposed to be a complete accounting of the market externalities, both positive and negative, resulting from carbon dioxide emissions released by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, or natural gas.

But as its name implies, the government's accounting of the social cost of carbon focuses almost entirely on conjured "costs" while ignoring proven "benefits" of carbon dioxide emissions."

Sat imagery of Bushfires in New South Wales, Australia

WUWT
 From the comments: "Much of Australia’s fire problem caused by loony green laws. Also, the eucalyptus trees there are a pyromaniac’s wet dream. .......62 fires, 287,000 acres total, just a bit larger than the RIM fire (Yosemite) at 257,314. Australia is NOT going up in flames, despite what the media babblers babble. ....What the greens have done is ensure that forests can burn as they used to before they were ‘managed’. It is nothing to do with climate change and all to do with not clearing brush and trying to extinguish every small fire. The result is literally a tinderbox forest just set up for occasional firestorms. .....'The ocean is enveloped in smoke, and it is not visible from any great distance in shore. Bombala, Berry, Kiama, Pambula, and Wynham all complain of the devastation done by high winds and devouring bush fires'.(No, this not a report on the recent fires in NSW by the ABC or Sydney Morning Herald. It is a report from September 14th, 1895) .....Greenies who on the one hand act in council to ban/restrict/resist fire management and clearing, and on the other hand blame global warming should be held responsible for fire damage and be jailed when someone dies in the fires."

It’s Back Again To The Global Cooling Headlines Of The 1970s … Climate Science Now Clearly In Total Confusion, Chaos!

NoTricksZone
"If anything has become clear since the release of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report released last month, it is that climate science has collapsed into a state of complete confusion. It is very clear that they now have no idea where the climate is headed and never before has the science found itself in such a state of open dispute."

BBC – Real risk of a Maunder minimum ‘Little Ice Age’

WUWT
"Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years. He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24. Based on his findings he’s raised the risk of a new Maunder minimum from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%."

The UK Saint Jude’s Day Storm – just another fall storm in a long line of many

WUWT
"Neither the storm of 2002 or this year’s come anywhere close to the Burn’s Day storm of 1990, or the Great Storm of 1987."

Global warming gets nearly twice as much taxpayer money as border security

Daily Caller
"The White House reported to House Republicans that there are 18 federal agencies engaged in global warming activities in 2013, funding a wide range of programs, including scientific research, international climate assistance, incentivizing renewable energy technology and subsidies to renewable energy producers. Global warming spending is estimated to cost $22.2 billion this year, and $21.4 billion next year. At the same time, the federal government will spend nearly $12 billion on customs and border enforcement this year."

Nearly $1 billion a day to change the climate… the invisible vested elephant in the room

JoNova (Australia)
"Here’s a stark statistic that came out last week in a new report: The Climate Industry draws in nearly $1 billion dollars a day. But here’s an ominous combination: … it openly admits that taxpayer money is its “engine-room”. Reading between the lines below, this industry is almost completely dependent on domestic policies that funnel money from citizens to itself, and tilts the playing field — without those policies, it can’t attract much private money. That is, it can only get money at least partially by coercion, people won’t give it money purely voluntarily. These same groups want even more — they want the public to take the risks too. What could possibly go wrong? .....OK. I scoff, but most of the people working in this — the accountants, marketers, lawyers, the odd engineer– are doing a hard day’s work. But in the end, together, this generates the most highly leveraged kind of lobbying machine. Without government policies hoping to change the weather, the industry collapses. That is not like big-oil. If the government stopped subsidizing car manufacturers, people would just import cars from overseas. If the government made the outrageous move of banning all new fossil-fuel cars, everyone would just keep driving their old one. Modern cars don’t need government subsidies to work, and big-oil doesn’t need government policies to sell oil — but windmills and solar panels certainly do."

Claim: Last 100 years may be warmest in 120,000 years in the Arctic, but not so fast

WUWT
"Of course the uncritical MSM is already trumpeting this story without question, with the usual bent that the posited current warmth is a bad thing. What really bugs me (besides the fact the press release can’t even bother to mention the title of the study) is the use of the word “unprecedented” in the title of the press release. Obviously this isn’t true, because it had to be warm enough, long enough, back then to give these mosses a chance to get a foothold and grow. If the warmth today was “unprecedented” they’d find nothing in the way of previous life forms under the receding ice."

Gosh, what could possibly be responsible for the shocking rise in energy prices?

Telegraph
"Today's big story has been Scottish and Southern Electricity's announcement that its energy prices are to rise three times faster than the rate of inflation. Gosh: and why could that be, I wonder? What fascinates me is the concerted efforts made by both the Coalition and Labour to pretend that it has nothing to do with the cost of implementing the lunatic green policies to which LibLabCon remain wedded in defiance of economic and scientific reality."