posted August 02, 2007 01:25 PM            

There are several long threads on this forum dealing with the global warming issue. If you're really interested, you could go find them.

As for the polar bear issue, let's consider that during the Medieval Warm Period there was no ice cap on Greenland and in fact Greenland was farmed. It was warmer then than it is now and the polar bears seemed to have survived.

Let's also consider that the Vikings discovered an area off the East coast of Canada they named Vinland...Wineland. They discovered grapes growing wild as well as fertile lands and forests. This, about 1000 years ago and obviously, it was warmer then than now because grapes will not grow..or ripen at those northern latitudes now. Oh, and by the way, the polar bears seemed to manage to survive quite nicely too.

Let's consider what you must believe in order to justify a belief in man made global warming.

You must believe that man made CO2 which represents only .04% in the atmosphere..that's 4/100th of one percent..is the cause of global warming.

But, CO2 is not the most potent trapper of heat in the atmosphere..nor is it the largest component of the green house gasses.

Water vapor from evaporation off the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers comprise more than 97% of all green house gasses in the atmosphere....and it's a far more potent as a heat trapper than CO2.

Well, the crackpots and general nutty putty scientists and pseudo scientists can't do a damned thing about water vapor...which is the biggest component of green house gasses in the atmosphere so they picked the least potent and the 2nd to last by percentage in the atmosphere to pick on.

Methane is the least of the green house gasses but it's about 30 times more potent as a heat trapper than CO2.

Opinion is fine for making decisions in the private sector. The free markets will decide if a white cream filling for Twinkies is superior to a chocolate filling.

But in the public sector, hard scientific evidence should be the basis for public policy...and spending what would amount to hundreds of trillions of dollars to combat a man made problem which exists only in the minds of the nutty putty set.

You may have a range of opinions and most people do. But when your opinion comes up against hard scientific proof to the contrary, it's foolish to continue with that opinion.

BTW, CO2 trapped in ice core samples from various periods dating back more than 500,000 years which were carbon dated showed a remarkable correlation to temperature changes on earth.
The problem for the nutty putty set is that those ice core samples showed temperatures on earth rose about 800 years before a corresponding rise in CO2 levels...which fits in very nicely with the peak of the Medieval Warm Period...about the year 1200AD.

INHOFE SPEECH ON POLAR BEARS AND GLOBAL WARMING
January 5, 2007

Yesterday, Senator Inhofe delivered a speech that addressed the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (FWS) recent action to begin formal consideration of whether to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The speech is now available to read, listen, or watch on the EPW Web site. Additionally, included here, is the the Wall Street Journal Editorial, “Polar Bear Politics” (January 3, 2007) that Senator Inhofe cited.

Senator Inhofe also addressed the issue of polar bears and global warming in his speech last year on the Senate Floor titled, “Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming.” From his speech:

POLAR BEARS LOOK TIRED?
Finally, a September 15, 2006 Reuters News article claimed that polar bears in the Arctic are threatened with extinction by global warming. The article by correspondent Alister Doyle, quoted a visitor to the Arctic who claims he saw two distressed polar bears. According to the Reuters article, the man noted that “one of [the polar bears] looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted." The article did not state the bears were actually dead or exhausted, rather that they “looked” that way.

Have we really arrived at the point where major news outlets in the U.S. are reduced to analyzing whether or not polar bears in the Arctic appear restful? How does reporting like this get approved for publication by the editors at Reuters? What happened to covering the hard science of this issue?

What was missing from this Reuters news article was the fact that according to biologists who study the animals, polar bears are doing quite well. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, refuted these claims in May when he noted that

“Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.” http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Taylor/last_stand_of_our_wild_polar_bears.html

Sadly, it appears that reporting anecdotes and hearsay as fact, has now replaced the basic tenets of journalism for many media outlets.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Press Room.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f339c09a-802a-23ad-4202-611ef8047a6b

Polar bear worries unproven, expert says
Last Updated: Monday, May 15, 2006 | 3:44 PM ET CBC News

Polar bears are becoming the poster-species for "doomsday prophets" of climate change, even though groups pushing for higher protection for the animals don't have the evidence to prove their case, Nunavut's manager of wildlife says.

"It makes a great story because it is simple and intuitive," Dr. Mitch Taylor wrote in a 12-page document for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's review of the animal's status. "However, the reality is much more complex."

The USFWS review follows a petition from the Centre for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and other groups, who want polar bears upgraded to "threatened" on the U.S. Endangered Species list.

The groups say the animals' population is suffering because of climate change, development and contaminants.

While Taylor said it's expected that climate change will affect all species worldwide, that shouldn't mean governments should rush to list every one as "threatened".

Delving into the patterns of polar bear eating habits, ice floe loss, population densities and other issues, Taylor downplays the overall impact of climate change.

"No evidence was presented by the proponents and no evidence exists that suggests that both bears and the conservation systems that regulate them will not adapt and respond to the new conditions," he said. "Polar bears have persisted through many similar climate cycles."

He said no one is suggesting that climate change isn't affecting some polar bear populations, but noted there are 20 polar bear populations in the world and each one should be considered independently.

"The references listed [in his document] suggest that each polar bear population is unique with respect to seasonal cycles, sea ice conditions, prey base, summer-retreat areas, and fidelity," he wrote.

"The 20 existing populations of polar bears are not all identical to the two populations that constitute the majority of the examples in the petition.

Taylor says many of the groups filing the petition have a long history of opposing hunting.

He said Canada has one of the best management systems for polar bears in the world, allowing Inuit to hunt in a sustainable manner and generating $3.5 million in Canada through sport hunts and the sale of hides.

"At present, the polar bear is one of the best-managed of the large Arctic mammals," Taylor said. "If all the Arctic nations continue to abide by the terms and intent of the Polar Bear Agreement, the future of polar bears is secure."

Taylor noted the estimated number of bears on the Boothia Peninsula, 1,300 kilometres west of Iqaluit, has actually increased to 1,500 animals from 900. He said environmental groups don't seem to want to take information like that into consideration when pressing their case.

posted August 07, 2007 02:20 PM            

They've also proven that there can be no way of accurately measuring average global temperature in the way it is now done. CO2 cannot play the role attributed to it by the supporters of the global warming theory, and the very idea violates the laws of thermodynamics.

In an exhaustive 113 page report, "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics," released in July, professors Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner used the science of physics to once and for all disprove such claims by the promoters of the global warming hoax.

The greenhouse effect refers to what happens when sunlight penetrates the glass in a greenhouse and then traps the heat inside. The proponents of the global warming theory claim that the tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere plays the same role as the glass in allowing heat to do come through to the earth's surface and then blocks it from radiating back into space, thus heating the globe.

Global Warming: Pure Fiction

Gerlich, a professor of mathematical physics at the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Germany and his colleague professor, Ralf D. Tscheuschner, examined the so-called "greenhouse effect" and found it to be pure fiction as an instrument of alleged global warming. In 113 pages laden with complicated equations, citations from the scientific literature, examinations of various experiments and conclusions based on physics and the laws of physics, the researchers expose the fraudulent grounds upon which the global warming theory rests.

"It is shown that this effect neither has experimental nor theoretical foundations and must be considered as fictitious," the report states, adding that "The claim that CO2 emissions give rise to anthropogenic [manmade] climate changes has no physical basis."

Noting that "there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects" the report adds "there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet," disproving the contention that a fictional average global temperature proves that the planet is warming.

The report is based on hard facts, written by scientists for scientists: "The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with, but radiatively equilibrated to, the atmospheric system.

"According to the second law of thermodynamics, such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation," The report affirms.

The report pokes holes in the shaky global warming theory: "(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, and (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet."

The report makes it clear that the greenhouse effect and the propaganda surrounding the miniscule amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere are based on fraudulent science.

According to the report, "It is shown that this effect neither has experimental nor theoretical foundations and must be considered as fictitious. The claim that CO2 emissions give rise to anthropogenic climate changes has no physical basis.

"For years, the warming mechanism in real greenhouses, paraphrased as ‘the greenhouse effect,' has been commonly misused to explain the conjectured atmospheric greenhouse effect. In school books, in popular scientific articles, and even in high-level scientific debates, it has been stated that the mechanism observed within a glass house bears some similarity to the [human caused] global warming. Meanwhile, even mainstream climatologists admit that the warming mechanism in real glass houses has to be distinguished strictly from the claimed CO2 greenhouse effect."

One section of the report deals with prior evidence of scientific skullduggery: "Recently, the German climatologist Grabl emphasized that errors in science are unavoidable, even in climate research. And the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] weights most of its official statements with a kind of a ‘probability measure.'

"However, some authors and filmmakers have argued that the greenhouse effect hypothesis is not based on an error ..."

As early as 1990, the Australian movie "The Greenhouse Conspiracy" lays bare the case for the greenhouse effect:

the factual evidence, i.e., the climate records, that supposedly suggest that a global warming has been observed and is exceptional

the assumption that carbon dioxide is the cause of these changes

the predictions of climate models that claim that a doubling of CO2 leads to a predictable global warming

In the movie, these were disputed. The speaker states: "In a recent paper on the effects of carbon dioxide, professor Ellsaesser of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, a major U.S. research establishment in California, concluded that a doubling of carbon dioxide would have little or no effect on the temperature at the surface and, if anything, might cause the surface to cool."

Another movie was shown recently in the U.K. entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" supporting the thesis that the supposed CO2 induced global warming has no scientific basis.

In his paper "CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time," the eminent atmospheric scientist Jaworowski made a well-founded statement: "... Sir David King, the science advisor of the British government, stated that ‘global warming is a greater threat to humanity than terrorism' ...

"In an uncountable number of contributions to newspapers and TV shows in Germany the popular climatologist Latif continues to warn the public about the consequences of rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But until today, it is impossible to find a book on non-equilibrium thermodynamics or radiation transfer where this effect is derived from first principles."

Average Global Temperature Debunked

The report also addresses the impossibility of calculating an average global temperature: "In global climatology temperatures are computed from given radiation intensities, and this exchanges cause and effect. The current local temperatures determine the radiation intensities and not vice versa. If the soil is warmed up by the solar radiation, many different local processes are triggered, which depend on the local movement of the air, rain, evaporation, moistness, and on the local ground conditions as water, ice, rock, sand, forests, meadows, etc.

"One square meter of a meadow does not know anything of the rest of the Earth's surface, which determine the global mean value. Thus, the radiation is locally determined by the local temperature. Neither is there a global radiation balance, nor a global radiation budget, even in the mean-yield limit.

"Regardless of any ambiguities, a global mean temperature could only emerge out of many local temperatures. Without knowledge of any science everybody can see, how such a changing average near-ground temperature is constructed: There is more or less sunshine on the ground due to the distribution of clouds. This determines a yield of local near-ground temperatures, which in turn determines the change of the distribution of clouds and, hence, the change of the temperature average, which is evidently independent of the carbon dioxide concentration."

The report quotes physicist Freeman J. Dyson about relying on computer modeling to predict climate change: "'The models ... do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in ... It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds.'

"Making such predictions nevertheless may be interpreted as an escape out of the department of sciences..."

The report's conclusions: "Modern global climatology has confused and continues to confuse fact with fantasy by introducing the concept of a scenario replacing the concept of a model."

The report aptly states, "There are so many unsolved and unsolvable problems ... and the climatologists believe to beat them all by working with crude approximations ... "The horror visions of a risen sea level, melting pole caps and developing deserts in North America and in Europe are fictitious consequences . . . The main strategy of modern CO2-greenhouse gas defenders seems to be to hide themselves behind more and more pseudo-explanations, which are not part of the academic education or even of the physics training."

One statement, above all, sums up this hoax perpetrated on its gullible followers: "statements ... induced [from] global warming out of the computer simulations lie outside any science."

posted August 07, 2007 02:49 PM            

Now that Algore's a Doctor of Climatology, perhaps it's time for Algore to begin writing some papers for peer review on the subject.

Or, perhaps Algore could defend his indefensible positions on man made global warming by consenting to debate the subject. So far, Algore has declined debate...after all, Algore says it's all settled

Monday, Aug. 6, 2007 9:59 p.m. EDT
Gore Refuses to Debate Global Warming Theory

Best-selling author Dennis Avery is the next prominent figure to challenge the facts Al Gore is promoting in his global warming crusade. Mr. Avery is co-author of

"Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years." Both Al Gore and Dennis Avery have New York Times best-selling books on global warming, but with opposite conclusions.

The list of Al Gore detractors continues to grow as his extreme rhetoric and conclusions get dissected by scientists, economists, and researchers.

Avery joins Lord Christopher Monckton (former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher advisor), Bjorn Lomborg (Danish economist), author Michael Crichton, Prof. S. Fred Singer (former director of the U.S. National Weather Service), Tim Ball, Ph.D. (historical climatologist), Prof. Ian Clark (University of Ottawa), and Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT) among others.

Gore claims recent climate change is the result of human activities, and society must give up most of its energy supply to prevent global catastrophe. Conversely, Avery amassed physical evidence of past warming/cooling cycles and experimental evidence demonstrating variations in solar activity affect Earth's constantly varying temperatures.

"My book says our warming is natural, unstoppable -- and not very dangerous anyway," stated Avery.

"These books represent the two leading explanations for the Earth's recent temperature changes-and they conflict. If global warming truly is the most important public policy issue of our day, then it is high time the public got to hear the arguments from both sides matched up against each other," continued Avery.

posted August 18, 2007 03:39 PM            

Their climate models just don't work....but they want the world to throw trillions of dollars at a problem which doesn't exist.

Now, it's revealed their model of rainfall increases...as a result of rising CO2 levels is also faulty.

Hey, it's raining more but it's not CO2 related. As the sun produces more radiant energy, more of that energy strikes the oceans and seas...the earth's surface being about 2/3rds water...and warms the water...causing evaporation from the surface and increasing water vapor in the atmosphere...and more rain when it condenses and it always does.

Every 7th grader in America used to know that. Now, even the brain dead morons Algore has collected around him don't seem to know or understand a very natural cycle.

August 17, 2007
Global climate models fail yet another reality check
Marc Sheppard

Once again, computer-driven climate simulations have fallen short when measured against real-world scientific observations. That's right -- the very same climate models, on which warming "experts" the likes of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and NASA's GISS base their catastrophic projections, have proven utterly unreliable once more.

In a piece entitled Trouble in Climate-Model Paradise, Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso, writing in CO2 Science, tell the fascinating story of a recent attempt to harmonize the model / reality relationship that, instead, yielded "embarrassing results" for the researchers.

The mission was to verify an accepted prediction by the esteemed Coupled Model Intercomparison Project and others that for every degree centigrade of surface global warming, precipitation would increase by between 1 and 3%:
"Hence, they decided to see what has happened in the real world in this regard over the last 19 years (1987-2006) of supposedly unprecedented global warming, when data from the Global Historical Climatology Network and satellite measurements of the lower troposphere have indicated a global temperature rise on the order of 0.20°C per decade."
What they found by marrying satellite observations with rain gauge measurements was an actual precipitation increase of 7% per degree C [emphasis added],
"which is somewhere between 2.3 and 7 times larger than what is predicted by state-of-the-art climate models."
Baffled by the sheer magnitude of the inconsistency, researcher F. J. Wentz and company attempted to reconcile it to global wind speed variations. They failed, forcing them to admit that,
"the reason for the discrepancy between the observational data and the GCMs is not clear."
Wentz confessed that the disparity his team discovered between the actions of nature and those of virtual simulations "has enormous impact."

posted September 12, 2007 04:32 PM            

Whoops, there isn't a consensus among real climate scientists at all and there never was.

When the global warming nuts spout their nonsense, it's usually in conjunction with a UN doctored pronouncment.

However, when real scientists speak out it's with "peer reviewed" studies...which means their results and conclusions are available to other scientists to study and also reproduce the same results.

In the case of the global warming nuts, their conclusions are a result of skewed computer models...where they begin with a desired result and manipulate the input data to produce that result.

In the real world, their computer models have proven to be bullshiiiit.

Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears
Posted : Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:58:42 GMT
Author : Hudson Institute

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."
The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.
"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.
The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.
Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.
Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.

posted September 20, 2007 02:27 PM            

Perhaps listening to Algore will help you position yourself well in the coming real estate boom at the North and South Poles.

Algore says the ice caps will be gone in only 23 years. Time now to snap up this bargain basement real estate before word gets out.

Paying dearly to hear Gore's climate story
Email Print Normal font Large font Ben Doherty and Marian Wilkinson
September 20, 2007

In a passionate attack on the climate policies of Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush, the former US vice-president, addressing a very expensive lunch in Sydney yesterday, called Australia and the US "the Bonnie and Clyde" outlaws of the global environment for their failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Mr Gore called on Australia to change course on Kyoto and its climate policies, saying if it did "it would be impossible for the United States to withstand the pressure" to join the rest of the world in ratifying Kyoto.

Labor under Kevin Rudd has promised to ratify the protocol while Mr Howard is adamantly opposed to it and is backing Mr Bush's efforts to find a "post-Kyoto accord".

posted September 21, 2007 02:06 PM            

Cold yet?

NASA scientist James E. Hansen, who has publicly criticized the Bush administration for dragging its feet on climate change and labeled skeptics of man-made global warming as distracting "court jesters," appears in a 1971 Washington Post article that warns of an impending ice age within 50 years.

"U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming," blares the headline of the July 9, 1971, article, which cautions readers that the world "could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age, a leading atmospheric scientist predicts."

The scientist was S.I. Rasool, a colleague of Mr. Hansen's at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The article goes on to say that Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus.

The 1971 article, discovered this week by Washington resident John Lockwood while he was conducting related research at the Library of Congress, says that "in the next 50 years" — or by 2021 — fossil-fuel dust injected by man into the atmosphere "could screen out so much sunlight that the average temperature could drop by six degrees," resulting in a buildup of "new glaciers that could eventually cover huge areas."

If sustained over "several years, five to 10," or so Mr. Rasool estimated, "such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

Post staff writer Victor Cohn penned the story about the article, which appeared that same day in the journal Science. For his part, Mr. Cohn contacted Gordon F. MacDonald, a top scientist in the Nixon administration, who considered Mr. Rasool a "first-rate atmospheric physicist" whose findings are "consistent with estimates I and others have made."

posted October 10, 2007 01:46 PM            

Yep

Judge rules Gore climate film requires guidance notes
Oct 10 10:08 AM US/Eastern

A judge on Wednesday ruled that Al Gore's award winning climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" should only be shown in schools with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.
High Court judge Michael Burton's decision follows legal action brought by a father of two last month claiming the former US vice-president's film contained "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush".

Stewart Dimmock wanted to block the government's pledge to send more than 3,500 secondary schools in England and Wales a DVD of the documentary to demonstrate the need to fight global warming.

Judge Burton said the Oscar-winning film should be accompanied by government guidance notes and to distribute it without them would breach education laws prohibiting the promotion of unbalanced political viewpoints.

But the victory was only partial, as Dimmock failed to get the film totally banned from schools.

The lorry driver said after the case that he was "elated", but disappointed he had not secured an outright ban.

"If it was not for the case brought by myself, our young people would still be being indoctrinated with this political spin," he told reporters.

Dimmock is a member of the New Party, a fringe political organisation which describes itself as "a party of economic liberalism, political reform and internationalism."

Its supporters include industrialists and small- and medium-sized businesses. The party accepts climate change is a major issue but says the argument that it is man-made is not unequivocal.

Instead, it argues for developing new technologies, building new nuclear power stations and providing "positive incentives" for developing countries to support cleaner technologies.

posted October 10, 2007 01:57 PM            

So say the demented loons at Greenpeace.

The Kangaroos are unanimous in their opposition to the suggestion from the lunatic fringe

Let's file this one where we filed the "suppress cow farts" suggestion.

Greenpeace urges kangaroo consumption to fight global warming
Karen Collier
October 10, 2007 02:35pm

MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.

The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.
Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.

"It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make," Mr Wakeham said.

"Changing our meat consumption habits is a small way to make an impact."

The eat roo recommendation is contained in a report, Paths to a Low-Carbon Future, commissioned by Greenpeace and released today.

It also coincides with recent calls from climate change experts for people in rich countries to reduce red meat and switch to chicken and fish because land-clearing and burping and farting cattle and sheep were damaging the environment.

They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane.

Roughly three million kangaroos are killed and harvested for meat each year. They are shot with high-powered guns between the eyes at night.

Australians eat about a third of the 30 million kilograms of roo meat produced annually. The delicacy is exported to dozens of countries and is most popular in Germany, France and Belgium.

The Greenpeace report has renewed calls for Victoria to lift a ban on harvesting roos for food.

Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia spokesman John Kelly said roos invading farmers' crops were already being illegally shot.

"They are being culled and left to rot," Mr Kelly said.

Kangaroo meat sold in Victoria is imported from interstate.

Australia's kangaroo population has halved to 25 million in the past five years as the drought has taken a toll on breeding and the animals' food sources, Mr Kelly said.

Under a quota system, 10 to 12 per cent can be killed for the meat and leather industry. Aerial surveys estimate their numbers.

Today's report by leading scientist Dr Mark Diesendorf, from the University of NSW, says greenhouse gas emissions need to be slashed by at least a third by 2020 to avoid a climate change catastrophe.

His recommendations include:

REDUCING beef consumption and increasing kangaroo meat production.

CUTTING gas and coal production.

HALTING land clearing and deforestation.

SHIFTING to renewable energy such as wind power and bioelectricity from crop residues.

"The world is currently on track to experience runaway global warming with average temperatures soon to exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, Dr Diesendorf said.

"We face a catastrophe unless there is urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 per cent by 2020."

posted November 08, 2007 01:45 PM            

If the founder of The Weather Channel spoke out strongly against the manmade global warming myth, might media members notice?

We're going to find out the answer to that question soon, for John Coleman wrote an article published at ICECAP Wednesday that should certainly garner attention from press members -- assuming journalism hasn't been completely replaced by propagandist activism, that is.

Coleman marvelously began:

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious.

posted November 17, 2007 02:06 PM            

The headline is wrong. It should read:
ALGORE STILL WRONG

Further, Algore said we only have 10 years to reverse "global warming"...or the world will end.

Seems as though 'global warming' is self correcting. Now parts of the world are undergoing record and near record low temperatures.

Oh but wait one. If it's hotter, it's because of 'global warming'. If it's colder, it's because of 'global warming' too.

Al Gore Wrong Again
Posted by ReasonMcLucus at 05:54 on 16 Nov 2007

On October 14, 1997, Vice President Al Gore said, “For those who argue that global warming is already changing the world’s climate, this year’s El Nino weather front is more than enough evidence”, the audience was told by Gore. In the next day, a report by the San Francisco Chronicle said: “Gore links El Nino to Global Warming”. The Vice President stated at the summit that growing frequency of El Nino episodes could be connected to the gradual heating of the atmosphere caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Ten years later residents in Argentina and Brazil are wondering if this winter will ever end. Buenos Aires recorded this Thursday (November 15th) the lowest November temperature in 90 years. Temperature in the Downtown weather station reached 2.5C. Since records began more than a century ago, only two days had colder lows in November. It was in 1914 (1.6) and 1917 (2.4). And ninety years ago the urban heat island effect was much less pronounced than nowadays. In Brazil's southernmost province Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil temperatures fell to 2.3C. In Sao Joaquim Monday's (Nov., 12) the temperature was -1.2 C with frost.

The culprit is a developing la Nina , a cooling of the water in the eastern Pacific along the South American coast, that some climatologists believe could indicate a return to the la Nina dominated situation that dominated from1947 to 1977. El Ninos, a warming of East Pacific waters. have been more common since then. Some climatologists believe the el Ninos may have caused what the IPCC calls "global warming".

posted December 14, 2007 01:09 PM            

It's not about saving the earth. Not about saving mankind.

It's all about sticking socialist hands in the pockets of Americans to redistribute our wealth to others....others who are no doubt far more worthy than we rich, greedy Americans. Straight Marxist Communist theological drivel.

Oh, that and giving sovreignty over American energy production and use to a gaggle of incompetent, corrupt, bunging boobs at the United Nations.

Global Carbon Tax Urged at UN Climate Conference

BALI, Indonesia – A global tax on carbon dioxide emissions was urged to help save the Earth from catastrophic man-made global warming at the United Nations climate conference. A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog following the panel discussion titled “A Global CO2 Tax.” Schwank is a consultant with the Switzerland based Mauch Consulting firm

Schwank said at least “$10-$40 billion dollars per year” could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”

The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”

The UN was presented with a new report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”

The tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would “flow into a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund” to help nations cope with global warming, according to the report.

Schwank said a global carbon dioxide tax is an idea long overdue that is urgently needed to establish “a funding scheme which generates the resources required to address the dimension of challenge with regard to climate change costs.”

'Diminish future prosperity'

However, ideas like a global tax and the overall UN climate agenda met strong opposition Thursday from a team of over 100 prominent international scientists who warned the UN that attempting to control the Earth's climate was "ultimately futile."

The scientists wrote, “The IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions." The scientists, many of whom are current or former members of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sent the December 13 letter to the UN Secretary-General. (See: Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN Against 'Futile' Climate Control Efforts.

‘Redistribution of wealth’

The environmental group Friends of the Earth, in attendance in Bali, also advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations on Wednesday.

“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

Calls for global regulations and taxes are not new at the UN. Former Vice President Al Gore, who arrived Thursday at the Bali conference, reiterated this week his call to place a price on carbon dioxide emissions. (LINK)

In 2000, then French President Jacques Chirac said the UN’s Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic global governance." Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide." Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed Kyoto as a “socialist scheme.” (LINK)

'A bureaucrat's dream'

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen warned about these types of carbon regulations earlier this year. "Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life," Lindzen said in March 2007.

In addition, many critics have often charged that proposed tax and regulatory “solutions” were more important to the promoters of man-made climate fears than the accuracy of their science.

posted December 14, 2007 02:35 PM            

by John Carey

On Dec. 5, the U.S. Senate will begin marking up a bill that would, for the first time, put mandatory limits on the gas emissions that are warming the planet. The bill, sponsored by Senators John Warner (R-Va.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), imposes caps on the amount of carbon dioxide allowed to spew from power plants, cars, and others sources. It would also permit companies that cut more emissions than required to sell their excess reductions to those that can't afford to meet the limit. Economists say this sort of cap and trade scheme, which has worked well in reducing acid rain-causing pollution, could help the economy slash emissions at the lowest possible costs.

Meanwhile, delegates from around the world are meeting in Bali, Indonesia, trying to hammer out a global agreement to cut emissions. One of the biggest stumbling blocks: the perceived high costs.

But what are those costs? If you listen to opponents of action against climate change, the American economy will be brought to its knees by such efforts. The Chamber of Commerce, for instance, says the bill would cost 3.4 million Americans their jobs; the nation's gross domestic product, now about $13 trillion, would drop to $12 trillion; and American consumers would pay as much as $6 trillion more because of higher prices for gas, heating oil, and many other goods. Other economic projections put the total price tag for preventing dangerous climate change at up to $20 trillion.

Yet a new analysis from McKinsey & Co. not only pegs the price tag for making substantial cuts at just a few billion dollars, it also shows that at least 40% of the reductions bring actual savings to the economy, not costs.

Long-Term Forecasts Are Less Reliable
Why the big difference? First consider the numbers used by the opponents. Typically, they come from large-scale mathematical models of the economy. These models look at the economy from the top down. They try to calculate the effects of changes such as rising energy costs or financial penalties for carbon emissions. These models are widely used to predict short-term changes in the economy. But longer-term forecasts are less accurate because of their increasing reliance on the initial assumptions.

For example, the final result varies dramatically depending on the assumptions about the pace of innovation. If the model assumes that development of new forms of renewable energy will continue at the same rate as before carbon emission limits were enacted (when the financial incentives for development were lower), then cutting carbon emissions will be costly. But if you assume that an added financial incentive, such as a price on carbon emissions, will increase the pace of innovation and the development of new technologies, then meeting the limits will be cheaper. And if the model discounts the future benefits of avoiding the dangers of warming in terms of their present value, it will also predict higher overall costs.

Different Conclusions Are Possible
Yet even with these inherent limitations, many of the models suggest that the ultimate cost of slowing global warming is reasonable. Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider, for instance, has analyzed one of the most prominent models, from Yale's William Nordhaus. According to Nordhaus' results, stabilizing the climate would be "unimaginably expensive—$20 trillion," Schneider says.

But the $20 trillion hit to the economy isn't immediate. Instead, that's the calculated cost in the year 2100, Schneider says, not now. What does that really mean? Schneider ran the numbers, assuming the economy grows at about 2% per year. The seemingly huge $20 trillion price tag works out to "a one-year delay in being 500% richer," he says. In other words, paying the price to reduce climate change would mean Americans would have to wait until 2101 to be as rich as they otherwise would have been in 2100. To Schneider, that's a minuscule price to pay for saving the planet from the dangers of global warming. "Are you out of your mind? Who wouldn't take that?" he says.

There's also a completely different way to approach the question of costs. Instead of using a big, complicated mathematical model that looks down at the economy, you can start by looking at the many individual steps that could be taken to reduce emissions, and work from the bottom up. That's what McKinsey did in its recently released report.

Cost-Saving Steps
The report was "born of the frustration that there are no solid facts out there about the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," explains McKinsey director Jack Stephenson. So Stephenson and his team plunged ahead. They got support for the effort from Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa), Pacific Gas & Electric (PCG), Honeywell International (HON), DTE Energy (DTE), and a couple of environmental groups. They analyzed 250 possible steps, from more fuel-efficient cars and buildings to all types of cleaner energy. And they assumed people wouldn't change anything about their lifestyles, driving just as much and not lowering their thermostats.

The results are surprising. The report concludes that the U.S. can cut its greenhouse emissions in half from projected levels in 2030 at minimal cost. None of the steps would cost more than $50 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions avoided. Plus, 40% of the reductions would actually save money. That puts the overall cost at just a few dollars per ton of carbon dioxide—or in the tens of billions of dollars overall.

Moreover, it doesn't take any breakthroughs in technology. "Eighty percent of the reductions come from technology that exists today at the commercial scale," says Stephenson. And the remaining 20% comes from ideas already well along in development, such as hybrid cars that plug into electrical outlets and have batteries big enough to go 30 or 40 miles on electric power alone and biofuels made from cellulose (such as prairie grass) rather than foodstuffs like corn.

Waste Not
The overall price tag is so low because there are many simple ways the country can use energy more efficiently, Stephenson explains. "The U.S. wastes a huge amount of energy," he says. The vast majority of the power used by VCRs and DVD players occurs when they're not even turned on, for instance. Electronics equipment, buildings, lighting, water heaters, and autos are just some of the many products and facilities that could be far more efficient. Improving efficiency in this way would save money, not cost money, McKinsey figures.

Overall, the McKinsey report paints a far more encouraging picture than the figures from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It's the difference between a business consultant who sees opportunities for business, and a hired-gun economist," says Dan Lashof, science director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Until the U.S. actually tries to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, we won't know who's right. But it does seem clear that the economy wouldn't be crippled. "The common perception of high costs is just so radically wrong," concludes Stanford's Schneider.

Join a debate about climate change

Carey is a senior correspondent for BusinessWeek in Washington . http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2007/db2007123_373996.htm?c han=search

posted December 15, 2007 11:25 AM            

Yeah, all those so called opportunities are going to cost the buying public trillions of dollars. You don't actually think there's a free lunch do you?

Algore has already created an opportunity for himself. He's selling carbon credits to others....and himself. Imagine Algore taking money out of one hand..his...and putting that money in another hand...his, then feeling oh so good about himself while nothing whatsoever has changed and he's still pumping the same amount of that evil CO2 into the atmosphere.

P.T. Barnum was right. There IS a sucker born every minute. That should be updated to: "there's a sucker born every second".

Expect your electric power bill to go up about 40% and the cost of everything you buy which has to be transported to go up as well.

Expect your taxes...if you pay federal and/or state taxes to go up to pay for all the government handouts to the crackpot scientists to fund all their global warming boondoggles.

posted December 15, 2007 12:02 PM            

It's too hot...it's global warming.

It's too cold...It's global warming.

Record snow falls...it's global warming.

It's just right...it's global warming.

My washing machine quit working...it's global warming.

Whatever happens...it's global warming.

New England digs out after record snowfall
Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:33am EST

BOSTON (Reuters) - New England dug out on Friday from a record-setting storm that dumped 10 inches of snow on Boston, more than the city typically sees in the entire month of December.

Thursday's storm hit hours before the afternoon commute, snarling roadways and leaving some travelers -- many of whom left their offices early only to face the storm's full force on the road -- stranded for hours during their trips home. Others had to abandon their cars or sleep in them after running out of fuel, local media reported.

More than 400 flights were canceled at Boston Logan International Airport.

The National Weather Service said the region could expect another blast over the weekend, when a second storm is expected to drop 6 inches of snow and sleet starting on Saturday evening.

"It is a powerful Northeaster," said Charlie Foley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts. "The difference in this storm is that it is going to occur during the overnight hours and on the weekend, so we wouldn't expect it to have the impact that this thing yesterday did.

Thursday's snowfall set a new one-day record for December 13, and was more than the 7.8 inches that typically falls during the entire month of December.

Foley said temperatures were expected to reach 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 C) on Friday, warm enough to melt some of the snow.

Logan Airport had returned to normal operations by Friday, with about 41 outbound flights canceled, said spokesman Phil Orlandella.

"The airlines will have to play catch up for a couple of days," Orlandella said. "It's not a madhouse here, things are moving pretty well."

posted December 19, 2007 12:18 PM            

Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.

Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.

Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared. In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.

Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952. The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.

Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri are just emerging from a destructive ice storm that left at least 36 people dead and a million without electric power. People worldwide are being reminded of what used to be common sense: Cold temperatures are inimical to human welfare and warm weather is beneficial. Left in the dark and cold, Oklahomans rushed out to buy electric generators powered by gasoline, not solar cells. No one seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of polar bears, penguins or walruses. Fossil fuels don't seem so awful when you're in the cold and dark.

If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.

Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

posted December 28, 2007 11:39 AM            

Review by Jorg von Uthmann

Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Climate-change skeptics are taking a beating these days even in France, where people long resisted the green creed.

Paris bookstores brim with guidebooks -- including one shaped like a toilet seat -- that tell readers how to help save our planet. Yet the dissidents refuse to shut up, even now that Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize and the U.S. government has agreed to negotiate a new global-warming treaty by 2009.

The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, ``Ma Verite Sur la Planete'' (``My Truth About the Planet''), doesn't mince words.

He calls Gore a ``crook'' presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.

Allegre doesn't deny that the climate has changed or that extreme weather has become more common. He instead emphasizes the local character of these phenomena.

While the icecap of the North Pole is shrinking, the one covering Antarctica -- or 92 percent of the Earth's ice -- is not, he says. Nor have Scandinavian glaciers receded, he says. To play down these differences by basing forecasts on a global average makes no sense to Allegre.

posted February 09, 2008 01:35 PM            

Climate Change:

Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.

In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."