The Russians Did It

Looks like Babs 'Call me Senator' Boxer (Moonbat-CA) will have to demand that Putie 'fess up and hand over his IT KGB goons to be prosecuted for causing ClimateGate. Or, just STFU already.

Emails that rocked climate change campaign leaked from Siberian 'closed city' university built by KGB

Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.

The leaks scandal has left the scientific community in disarray after claims that key climate change data was manipulated in the run-up to the climate change summit of world leaders.

The row erupted when hundreds of messages between scientists at the university’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and their colleagues around the world were placed on the internet along with other documents.

The CRU is internationally recognised as one of the most important sources of information on the rise in global temperatures.

Its data is relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body which co-ordinates the world response to climate change.

But now the CRU’s findings are under suspicion.

The leaked emails appear to show that CRU director Professor Phil Jones and colleagues attempted to manipulate the figures and hide their raw data from researchers with opposing views.

Prof Jones has stepped aside from his post while claims are investigated that he wanted certain papers excluded from the United Nations’ next major assessment of climate science.

Russia – one of the world’s largest producers and users of oil and gas – has a vested interest in opposing sweeping new agreements to cut emissions, which will be discussed by world leaders in Copenhagen tomorrow.

Russia believes current rules are stacked against it, and has threatened to pull the plug on Copenhagen without concessions to Kremlin concerns.

The Mail on Sunday understands that the hundreds of hacked emails were released to the world via a tiny internet server in a red brick building in a snow-clad street in Tomsk.

The original internet link was quickly removed after the information spread from it like wildfire on to international websites.

A message written in English accompanied the leaked package of emails. It read: ‘We feel that climate science is too important to be kept under wraps.

'We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.’

The files can be downloaded here

Climate-change sceptics in the West seized on the emails as evidence that the books were being cooked by the global-warming lobby.

Stories highlighting the ‘scandal’ began to appear from November 21, three or four days after the information was first released on to the server. Some of the leaked emails date back to March, 1996.

Tomcity – the server – and Tomline, its parent company, were unavailable for comment yesterday.

The firm offers an internet security business to prevent hacking and bugs and the ‘compromising of confidential information’.

Other divisions of the firm are involved in laying the cable which provides high-speed internet access to companies in the Siberian city.

The server is believed to be used mainly by Tomsk State University, one of the leading academic institutions in Russia, and other scientific institutes.

Computer hackers in Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service (FSB) to shut websites which promote views disliked by Moscow.

Such arrangements provide the Russian government with plausible deniability while using so-called ‘hacker patriots’ to shut down websites.

In 2002, Tomsk students were said to have launched a ‘denial of service’ attack at the Kavkaz-Tsentr portal, a site whose reports about Chechnya angered Russian officials.

The FSB office in Tomsk put out a special Press release saying that what the students had done was a legitimate ‘expression of their position as citizens, one worthy of respect’.

A Russian hacking specialist said last night: ‘There is no hard evidence that the hacking was done from Tomsk, though it might have been.

'There has been speculation the hackers were Russian. It appears to have been a sophisticated and well-run operation, that had a political motive given the timing in relation to Copenhagen.’

And gazeta.ru news website, having received information about the Tomsk server connection, said: ‘Presumably it was Russian hackers who broke into the servers of the university.’

The university said that there was strict security on its server, heightening the theory that an extremely sophisticated hacking operation was carried out to obtain it.

East Anglia University has gone out of its way to promote itself to students from the former Soviet Union. Its website says that 33 Russian students currently study there.

It is not known if they have fallen under suspicion as part of the police investigation. Tomsk – 2,190 miles east of Moscow – was closed to foreigners during the Soviet era.

Its population of 630,000 includes the secret satellite city of Seversk, formerly known as Tomsk-7 and seven miles to the north, which houses strategic uranium and plutonium plants and remains shut to Westerners.

It was built in the Fifties by 20,000 prisoners from nearby Siberian labour camps.

Today, the city, and especially Seversk, remains closely monitored by the FSB, the successor security service to the Soviet-era KGB.

The city’s academic quarter – some of which uses the server that revealed the climate-change scandal – includes a leading world expert on the subject, Professor Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist of Tomsk University.

He was unavailable yesterday and has not commented on the email controversy.

Previously, in research with academic Judith Marquand from Oxford University, he warned of the risk of the release of billions of tons of methane gas because of the melting of the Siberian peat bogs, seen as being due to global warming.

Kirpotin described the situation as ‘an ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming’.

Russia is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and lags behind many Western countries in greening its industry.

However, its emissions plunged in the Nineties as its economy collapsed and it now sits on a treasure trove of unused carbon emission permits that could be sold to other countries.

These are due to expire in 2012 with the Kyoto Treaty. The Kremlin wants these to be rolled forward and last week signalled they would not sign a new deal without this, threatening the whole Copenhagen summit.

The crisis caused by the Climategate email row has resulted in the UK’s Met Office being forced to re-examine 160 years’ of climate data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made warming had been undermined by the leaks.

A new three-year analysis of the data will mean the Met Office – which works closely with Prof Jones’s unit – will not be able to declare with complete confidence the extent of global warming trends until the end of 2012.

The Norwich-based university has called in Sir Muir Russell, a former senior civil servant, to investigate the row, which is also the subject of a separate probe by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Last night, news of the Kremlin connection coincided with Norfolk Police confirming to The Mail on Sunday that it was now ‘investigating criminal offences’ in relation to the data breach.

Norfolk police sources said they were working with ‘other agencies’ on the inquiry. But they were unable to say if these included the British security services MI5 and MI6.

This newspaper has established, however, that Scotland Yard computer experts from its Central e-Crime unit are helping Norfolk officers track down the hacker responsible for the leaks.

A Norfolk Police spokeswoman said last night: ‘Norfolk Constabulary can confirm that it is investigating criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia (UEA).’

The Mail on Sunday tracked down Professor Ross McKitrick, a world-renowned expert on the economic effects of climate change, who said Prof Jones had tried to stop his findings being published in an influential UN report.

Prof McKitrick concluded that Jones and his colleagues at the CRU had overstated the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures by failing to take account of external factors linked to population growth and urbanisation.

The attempt to silence McKitrick was revealed in an email from Jones to a US colleague in 2004, when the UN was preparing for a major report by the IPCC.

After describing McKitrick’s findings as ‘garbage’ and dismissing another researcher’s work as inaccurate, Prof Jones wrote: ‘I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! Cheers, Phil.’

‘Kevin’ is understood to refer to Dr Kevin Trenberth, a Jones ally and climate analyst at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said last night: ‘A police inquiry is under way.’

Will Stewart and Martin Delgado

Via The Daily Mail/Mail On Sunday

al-Goracle was unavailable for comment.

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. ― Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

Thanks to Hot Air for the link.

Say It Ain't So, al-Gore!

How sweet it is.

Gore cancels personal appearance in Copenhagen

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

As described in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multimedia public event to promote Mr. Gore's new book, "Our Choice," included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a "light snack."

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that "great annoyance" was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Mr. Gore's program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

"We have had a clear-cut agreement, and it is unusual with great disappointment that we have to announce that Al Gore cancels. We had a huge expectation for the event. . . . We do not yet know the detailed reasons for the cancellation," said Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO of Berlingske Media, in a statement posted by the company.

The ClimateDepot,com, an online news aggregator that tracks global-warming news reports, referred to the situation as "Nopenhagen," and evidence that popular momentum for the Copenhagen conference "is fading."

There are a few floor shows taking place stateside as well.

Pajamas Media founder Roger L. Simon and independent filmmaker Lionel Chetwynd -- both members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Oscar nominees -- have called on the academy to rescind Mr. Gore's Oscars in light of the Climategate revelations.

"In the history of the academy, not to my knowledge has an Oscar ever been rescinded. I think they should rescind this one," Mr. Simon said Thursday.

News that British and American scientists had manipulated global warming statistics to suit their agenda was made public two weeks ago after their personal e-mails were posted on the Internet.

The film version of Mr. Gore's book "An Inconvenient Truth" won two Oscars in 2007 -- for Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song.

Via The Washington Times

The crew at CRU was unavailable for comment.

Gimme Dem Global Warming Blues

Christopher Booker is the global warming climate change reporter for The Daily Mail And, yes, this about his book. However, Booker's column also focuses on recent events, as well as the not-so-recent.

The devastating book which debunks climate change
Just imagine if we learned we were about to be landed with the biggest bill in the history of the world - simply on the say-so of a group of scientists. Would we not want to be absolutely sure that those scientists were 100 per cent dependable in what they were saying?

Should we not then be extremely worried - and even very angry - if it emerged that those scientists had been conspiring among themselves to fiddle the evidence for what they were telling us?

This is the extraordinary position in which we find ourselves thanks to news reported in Saturday's Daily Mail which has raised huge question marks over the reliability of the science behind the theory of global warming.

Hundreds of emails leaked from the internal computer system of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia show how a small group of highly influential senior British and U.S. scientists have for years been secretly discussing ways in which their evidence could be manipulated to make the threat posed by global warming sound much worse than it is.

To place the significance of these revelations into context, let us recall how exactly a year ago, Parliament passed, virtually unopposed, what was far and away the most expensive new law ever put before it. On the Government's own figures, the Climate Change Act is going to cost Britain £18 billion [US$29 billion ed.] a year - that's £720 [US$1198.13 ed.] for every household in the country - every year from now until 2050.

We shall be paying this through soaring 'green taxes' on everything from air travel to the £3,300 [US$5,490.58 ed.]tax being proposed on each new car; through rocketing fuel bills to subsidise thousands more wind turbines and to pay for removing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations.

In fact, the true cost of the act, if complied with to the letter, would certainly be far higher, because what it lays down is that, over the next 40 years, we must cut our emissions of carbon dioxide by over 80 per cent.

Pretty well every aspect of our lives in today's industrialised society involves emitting carbon dioxide - and short of some technological revolution as yet undreamed of, the only way we could meet that target would be to close almost every part of our economy. Yet, astonishingly, scarcely a single MP even questioned the need for such a law; only three voted against it.
...

We all know the basic thesis: that thanks to mankind burning fossil fuels, the world's temperatures are hurtling upwards, and that unless the most drastic action is taken, we can look forward to an unprecedented global catastrophe - droughts, hurricanes, killer heatwaves, melting icecaps, sea levels rising to the point where many of the world's major cities are submerged.

All this is what has been predicted by the expensive computer models relied on by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), which the politicians tell us we must trust as the ultimate source of authority on the future of the world's climate.

On every side we are told that 'the science is settled', that '2,500 of the world's top climate scientists' agree that these terrifying predictions will all come true unless we take the most drastic action. So carried away have they all been by this belief that scarcely a single politician dares question it.

Yet the oddest thing which has become increasingly evident in the past year or two is the fact that almost none of these things is happening, certainly not in the way those computer models have been predicting. Although carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, temperatures have not been rising in the way the computer models all agree they should have done.

In the past decade, the overall trend of temperatures has been not upwards, but down.

The hard evidence tells us that there have actually been fewer major droughts, hurricanes and heatwaves in recent years than there were in earlier decades.

There is no less ice at the Earth's poles today than there was 30 years ago. Sea levels may have been rising very slowly, but no faster than they have been for 200 years.

In other words, as a growing army of genuine experts across the world has been trying to tell us, there is not a single item on the list of apocalyptic predictions we have been fed for so long by the IPCC and the likes of Al Gore which is not being called into question by what is actually happening to the world's climate.

The scientists who have been challenging almost every aspect of the official theory on global warming have ranged from world-ranking physicists such as Professor Richard Lindzen, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professors Will Happer and Freeman Dyson of Princeton University, to 700 scientists of many disciplines.

These include Nobel Prize-winners and former contributors to the IPCC, who signed a 'minority report' of the U.S. Senate's environment committee.

It is beginning to look as though the panic over global warming, which has our politicians so in its grip, may have been no more than a colossal scare story - to line up alongside all those other scares which have raced in and out of the headlines in recent decades, such as the 'Millennium Bug', which at midnight on December 31, 1999, was going to crash the world's computers.

So the real question which arises from this most terrifying of all scare scenarios is: why did the world's politicians get swept along by it?

One of the more suspicious features of the man-made global warming theory is precisely this extraordinary pressure, which has been built up to insist the evidence for it is so overwhelming that it is a moral crime to question it.

For several years, anyone daring to doubt the theory - not least some of the world's most eminent climate scientists - has been vilified as a 'denier', to be compared with those who try to deny the historical reality of Hitler's Holocaust.

Al Gore was one of the first to condemn as 'flat earthers' anyone who was sceptical of his reckless scaremongering, likening such people to the cranks who believe the Moon landings were all somehow 'faked on a movie lot in Arizona' (delightfully, among the scientists who have come out as 'climate sceptics' are two of the U.S. astronauts who did land on the Moon, Dr Buzz Aldrin and Dr Jack Schmitt).

In the scientific world, notably in the U.S. and Europe, it has long been a major scandal that those daring to doubt the official orthodoxy on global warming face ostracism from their academic colleagues, have had research funding withdrawn and have not been allowed to publish their papers in the leading scientific journals.
....

It gets better. Read the rest at The Daily Mail

"I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: 'future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age'”. ― Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

al-Gore's scientists were too busy spinning to comment.

Uh-Oh

Something told me to bring along my laptop to the med center I get to spend a good part of today at. The "something" ends up being that wireless is now available. Pretty cool since there's a major shitstorm swirling amidst the 'global warming' community.

Hackers target leading climate research unit
The e-mail system of one of the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.

E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

"We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites," the spokesman stated.

"Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.

"This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.

"We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry."

Researchers at CRU, one of the world's leading research bodies on natural and human-induced climate change, played a key role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, which is considered to be the most authoritative report of its kind.

'Inside information'

Graham Cluley, a computer security expert, suggested that December's key climate summit in Copenhagen, which has made headlines around the world, could have increased the university's profile as a possible target among hackers.

"There are passionate opinions on both sides of the climate debate and there will be people trying to knock down the other side," Mr Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, told BBC News.

"If they feel that they can gather inside information on what the other side is up to, then they may feel that is ammunition for their counterargument."

Mr Cluley added that universities were vulnerable to attacks by hackers because some many people required access to IT systems.

"You do need proper security in place; you need to be careful regarding communications and make sure your systems are secure.

"I trust that they will now be looking at the systems, and investigating how this happened and ensuring that something like this does not happen again."

Via The Beeb

Now, if anyone would be interested in going through the files, you can download your very own copy (62 meg file). Might make the perfect winter holiday gift for your favorite al-Gorista.

An Inconvenient Truth

Stagnating Temperatures
Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

And may G-d, in his infinite wisdom, demonstrate his sense of humor with unrelenting blizzard conditions.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

Reached a Plateau

The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.

"It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community," says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. "We don't really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point."

Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius -- in other words, a standstill.

Oops.

The differences among individual regions of the world are considerable. In the Arctic, for example, temperatures rose by almost three degrees Celsius, which led to a dramatic melting of sea ice. At the same time, temperatures declined in large areas of North America, the western Pacific and the Arabian Peninsula. Europe, including Germany, remains slightly in positive warming territory.

Mixed Messages

But a few scientists simply refuse to believe the British calculations. "Warming has continued in the last few years," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). However, Rahmstorf is more or less alone in his view. Hamburg Max Planck Institute scientist Jochem Marotzke, on the other hand, says: "I hardly know any colleagues who would deny that it hasn't gotten warmer in recent years."

The controversy sends confusing and mixed messages to the lay public. Why is there such a vigorous debate over climate change, even though it isn't getting warmer at the moment? And how can it be that scientists cannot even arrive at a consensus on changes in temperatures, even though temperatures are constantly being measured?

The global temperature-monitoring network consists of 517 weather stations. But each reading is only a tiny dot on the big world map, and it has to be extrapolated to the entire region with the help of supercomputers. Besides, there are still many blind spots, the largest being the Arctic, where there are only about 20 measuring stations to cover a vast area. Climatologists refer to the problem as the "Arctic hole."

The scientists at the Hadley Center simply used the global average value for the hole, ignoring the fact that it has become significantly warmer in the Arctic, says Rahmstorf. But a NASA team from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which does make the kinds of adjustments for the Arctic data that Rahmstorf believes are necessary, arrives at a flat temperature curve for the last five years that is similar to that of their British colleagues.

Marotzke and Leibniz Institute meteorologist Mojib Latif are even convinced that the fuzzy computing done by Rahmstorf is counterproductive. "We have to explain to the public that greenhouse gases will not cause temperatures to keep rising from one record temperature to the next, but that they are still subject to natural fluctuations," says Latif. For this reason, he adds, it is dangerous to cite individual weather-related occurrences, such as a drought in Mali or a hurricane, as proof positive that climate change is already fully underway.

Ouch.

"Perhaps we suggested too strongly in the past that the development will continue going up along a simple, straight line. In reality, phases of stagnation or even cooling are completely normal," says Latif.
....

Read the rest at SPIEGEL Online

"I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. ― Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

al-Gore was unavailable for comment.

Obama Lied To Europe

Da bloom has done fell offa da rose.

Christian Schwägerl delivers a scathing opinion piece in today's edition of Spiegel Online. Indeed, it's one of the best editorials I've read in a long, long time. That it is from a 'global warming' kool aid drinker makes it especially sweet.

Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change
US President Barack Obama came to office promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush. Now, should the climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with Obama.

The folder labeled "climate change" that George W. Bush left behind for his successor on the desk of the Oval Office in January likely wasn't a thick one. Although Bush once said that America is overly-dependent on oil, he never got beyond that insight. He was too busy waging war on Iraq and searching for a legal basis for extraordinary renditions to pay much attention to the real threat facing humanity. "Forget the climate" seems to have been Bush's unofficial motto.

Still suffering from BDS, Herr Schwägerl?

But few people expected that the Barack Obama, of all people, would continue his predecessor's climate change plan. When he took office at the beginning of 2009, it was clear that the success of the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December depended almost entirely on the US -- that America needed to take a clear leadership role on a problem that could shake civilization to its very core.

Only if the US manages to reduce its excessive energy consumption, commit itself to mandatory CO2 emission reduction targets and help finance the move away from oil for poorer countries, is there still a chance that countries like China and India will do the same and that a dangerous warming of the Earth can be stopped. On the weekend, Obama announced that there would be no agreement on binding rules in Copenhagen. It was the admission of a massive failing -- and the prelude to a truly dramatic phase of international climate policy.

Obama Lied to the Europeans

Barack Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world" when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely his country's addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.

Obama's announcement at the APEC summit that it was no longer possible to secure a binding treaty in Copenhagen, is the result of his own negligence. China, India and other emerging economies have always spoken openly about the fact that the US, as the world's largest emitter of CO2, has to be proactive in commiting itself to targets agreed on by way of international negotiation. But that is not America's style. The US is quite happy to see itself as the leader of the Western world. But when it comes to climate change, America has once again failed miserably -- for the umpteenth time.
....

And it gets better. Read the rest at SPIEGEL Online

UPDATE Dr. Rusty links. Thank you!

UPDATE The NoisyRoom links. Thank you!

UPDATE Don Surber links. Thank you!

No Cajones, al-Gore?

Gore allegedly afraid to debate Klaus
Former U.S. vice-president Albert Gore allegedly feared a direct confrontation with Czech President Vaclav Klaus at a conference on global warming, and this is why Gore's presentation was rescheduled for another day, Lidove noviny (LN) writes Thursday, referring to Klaus's spokesman.

Klaus will take part in the two-day international conference in Santa Barbara, the United States, on Friday, March 6 when he was to get involved in polemics with Gore, one of the main supporters of the global warming theory, which Klaus is sharply challenging.

However, Gore, a Nobel Peace prize winner, will speak at the conference Thursday. The organisers have changed the programme at the very last moment, LN writes.

"A dialogue (between Klaus and Gore) was to take place on one stage. We accepted the U.S. proposal positively. But the organisers reassessed the idea in the end," Klaus's spokesman Radim Ochvat told the paper.

"Gore might have feared such a clash," he added.

Indeed. As Jammie posted earlier, al-Goracle is scared shitless of an honest debate.

However the reason was allegedly more pragmatic, LN notes.

The organisers decided to change the conference programme to attract the maximum attention on both days as Klaus and Gore are the key speakers at the conference, LN writers, referring to a source close to the organisers.

Klaus will also touch upon global warming in his 30-minute speech titled "Europe, Global Warming and the Current Economic Crisis: As Seen from Prague" at the Columbia University in New York on Monday, Ochvat told LN.

Klaus has repeatedly criticised Gore for not being willing to listen to other climate theories.

Most recently, Klaus commented on global warming at the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, in early February. In his speech Klaus said "the environmental militant approach to global warming" was challenging human freedom.

Klaus also presented his stances on climate change theory in his answers to the questions of U.S. Congressmen two years ago, and in his latest book "Blue, Not Green Planet."

'Global warming' expert Timothy Geithner was unavailable for comment.

Via The Prague Monitor

Memo To al-Gore

Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century
Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on earth.

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.

When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.

But this year -- which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 -- has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.

The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.

The paper's lead author, William Livingston, tells DailyTech that, while the refusal may have been justified at the time, recent data fits his theory well. He says he will be "secretly pleased" if his predictions come to pass.

But will the rest of us? In the past 1000 years, three previous such events -- the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a "mini ice age". For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts, who runs a climate data auditing site, tells DailyTech the sunspot numbers are another indication the "sun's dynamo" is idling. According to Watts, the effect of sunspots on TSI (total solar irradiance) is negligible, but the reduction in the solar magnetosphere affects cloud formation here on Earth, which in turn modulates climate.

This theory was originally proposed by physicist Henrik Svensmark, who has published a number of scientific papers on the subject. Last year Svensmark's "SKY" experiment claimed to have proven that galactic cosmic rays -- which the sun's magnetic field partially shields the Earth from -- increase the formation of molecular clusters that promote cloud growth. Svensmark, who recently published a book on the theory, says the relationship is a larger factor in climate change than greenhouse gases.

Heresy! Heresy! Who's he to contradict the teachings of al-Gore's Religion of Environmentalism™?

Solar physicist Ilya Usoskin of the University of Oulu, Finland, tells DailyTech the correlation between cosmic rays and terrestrial cloud cover is more complex than "more rays equals more clouds". Usoskin, who notes the sun has been more active since 1940 than at any point in the past 11 centuries, says the effects are most important at certain latitudes and altitudes which control climate. He says the relationship needs more study before we can understand it fully.

Other researchers have proposed solar effects on other terrestrial processes besides cloud formation. The sunspot cycle has strong effects on irradiance in certain wavelengths such as the far ultraviolet, which affects ozone production. Natural production of isotopes such as C-14 is also tied to solar activity. The overall effects on climate are still poorly understood.

What is incontrovertible, though, is that ice ages have occurred before. And no scientist, even the most skeptical, is prepared to say it won't happen again.

Article Update, Sep 1 2008. After this story was published, the NOAA reversed their previous decision on a tiny speck seen Aug 21, which gives their version of the August data a half-point. Other observation centers such as Mount Wilson Observatory are still reporting a spotless month. So depending on which center you believe, August was a record for either a full century, or only 50 years.

Busy saving the planet, al-Gore and Nancy Pelousi were unavailble for comment.

Via DailyTech

He's Ba-a-a-ack

It damn sure would be nice if McCain - or Dubya - or any other so-called Conservative politician had a pair even half the size . . .

Climate concern ripped as 'religion'
Czech leader condemns it
Environmentalism, says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, is the new communism, a system of elite command-and-control that kills prosperity and should similarly be condemned to the ash heap of history.

The provocative Mr. Klaus, an economist by training and former prime minister, said in an interview that today's global warming activists are the direct descendants of the old Marxists who trampled on individual freedoms and undermined free markets in pursuit of a greater good.

"I understand that global warming is a religion conceived to suppress human freedom," he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "It is used to justify an enormous scope for government intervention vis-a-vis the markets and personal freedom."

The 66-year-old Mr. Klaus was in Washington this week for talks with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, and to tout his new book, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles," about the dangers to life, liberty and prosperity posed by the modern environmental movement.

His Washington meetings included discussions on a pact to situate key parts of a U.S. missile defense shield in the Czech Republic. A top Bush administration priority, the system is designed to defend against attacks from rogue states such as Iran.



Mr. Klaus said he expected the Czech parliament to ratify the pact by the end of the year, but acknowledged it "won't be an easy debate."

Russia has fiercely opposed the system, something the Czech president said may actually build public support for the plan back home.

"The stronger the Russian position opposing the system, the easier it is in the Czech Republic to get support," he said.

Having experienced decades of Soviet domination during the Cold War, Czechs are "extremely sensitive to any patronizing from that part of the world," he said.

Especially when Vladimir Paranoid and/or a stooge or two steps forward to extol the virtues of the Soviet Russian good neighbor policy.

Mr. Klaus was a leading figure in the first Prague governments after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was prime minister when the former Czechoslovakia broke into two countries in the "Velvet Divorce" of 1993.

He barely won a second five-year term as president in February amid divisions in the rival Social Democratic Party.

An admirer of conservative former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he has emerged as a leading voice in Europe for free markets and individual rights.

He opposed the first drive for a European Union constitution, which collapsed when French and Dutch voters rejected it. The Czech parliament is expected to ratify an amended EU constitution by the end of the year.

He's not particularly fond of the new European Union constitution Treaty of Lisbon. The Heritage Foundation has an excellent overview of this farce.

The outspoken Mr. Klaus does not appear to mind being out of step with his government at times.

He criticized the Czech Republic's decision last week to recognize the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, over the fierce objections of Belgrade.

GLOBAL WARNING: Czech President Vaclav Klaus thinks global-warming activists are elitists who threaten freedoms and free markets.

Mr. Klaus said his experience with the breakup of Czechoslovakia convinced him that any separation had to come from within and accepted by all parties.

"If we had had U.S. or EU commissioners coming into Czechoslovakia telling us how to divide the country, there would have been shooting," he said. "I'm sorry that in [the United States], the substance of this argument was not appreciated."

That formative experience growing up under communism, said Mr. Klaus, has led him to his own strong views on the modern environmental movement, which he charged has failed to do a basic cost-benefit analysis in its drive to force people to obey its dictates.

While saying he was not a "total libertarian," Mr. Klaus observed, "For most of my life, I lived under a regime where the public debate was manipulated. That is why I feel so strongly about this."

Former Vice President Al Gore - whom Mr. Klaus has challenged to a public debate - won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Czech Republic ratified the Kyoto climate treaty seven years ago, but Mr. Klaus insisted he had the world's "silent majority" behind him in the green debate.

"I don't feel alone," he insisted.

He rejected the "fashionable" idea of a cap-and-trade pollution control system, endorsed by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain and his two Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Under cap-and-trade, the government would set a ceiling under which companies could trade "credits" on how much carbon they produce.

"It's a scheme to play the market and I refuse to accept that concept," he said. "Please don't try to play the market."

More practically, he said, government bureaucrats will be so afraid of setting the cap too low - stifling all economic activity - that they will set the ceiling too high, making it "meaningless."

Mr. Klaus pointed to the sharp rise in global energy prices as a sign the market is a far better engine for social change than politicians or bureaucrats.

The recent price increase "is so much more than any government would dare to do," he said. "Can you imagine if the U.S. Congress tried to introduce such a tax to cut consumption? The Congress would disappear tomorrow morning."

Unfortunately President Klaus, on your last point, we can only hope.

Busy with important paperwork, al-Gore was unavailable for comment.


Via The Washington Times

Global Obscenity

DESECRATION OF IWO JIMA: FOR TIME BY ARTHUR HOCHSTEIN, INCLUDING AN IWO JIMA PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE ROSENTHAL-AP

The 6,800 US service personnel (mostly Marines) killed during the Battle of Iwo Jima most certainly appreciate this sick rendition of their valiant efforts.

Law of Unintended Consequences Or Just Old Eugenics?

They're going to starve the children and kill all of the old people!

Not the Rethuglians, though. al-Gore, along with his cadre of schmuck scientists and hysterical psychophants.

UN chief calls for review of biofuels policy

• Ban Ki-moon speaks out amid global food shortage
  
• 33 countries facing unrest as families go hungry
  

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a comprehensive review of the policy on biofuels as a crisis in global food prices — partly caused by the increasing use of crops for energy generation — threatens to trigger global instability.

"We need to be concerned about the possibility of taking land or replacing arable land because of these biofuels," Ban told the Guardian in Bucharest while attending this week's Nato summit. But he added: "While I am very much conscious and aware of these problems, at the same time you need to constantly look at having creative sources of energy, including biofuels. Therefore, at this time, just criticising biofuel may not be a good solution. I would urge we need to address these issues in a comprehensive manner."

How about a simple, straightforward German analysis? No sense in wasting any more time.

Climate change has been a priority for Ban since he took over from Kofi Annan, and he has embraced the potential of biofuels, derived from plants, as a long-term substitute for fossil fuels. But as food prices have soared — driven by rising demand, high fuel costs, and climate change — the cultivation of biofuels has come under fire for diverting fertile land from food production.

Some of the loudest criticism has come from within UN food agencies, which are struggling to keep up with commodity prices. Last month the World Food Programme issued an emergency $500m appeal to donors to help it meet its existing commitments to the world's hungry.

WFP officials say 33 countries in Asia and Africa face political instability as the urban poor struggle to feed their families.

There are also mounting concerns over the benefits of biofuels to the environment. They generally burn cleaner than fossil fuels, but fuels such as grain-based ethanol are energy-intensive to produce, and tropical rainforests have been cleared to produce palm oil for use as a fuel.

The role of biofuels is under review in Britain pending an inquiry into the indirect impact of their cultivation by the Renewable Fuels Agency.

How about considering these reviews? No sense in wasting any more time — or money.

Against this backdrop some senior UN officials are pushing for a change of policy, and attack Ban in private. "Ban is just out of touch," one said. " He doesn't know what is really going on in our agencies."

Ya nitwit! Why do think the movers and shakers nominated him?

The UN's own special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, called biofuels "a crime against humanity", and called for a five-year moratorium.

Let's see if anyone in The Hague has balls enough to at least investigate al-Gore for crimes against humanity. Profiting from the misery he's visiting upon the Third World and urban poor, it's not as if he can't afford a lawyer.

Better yet, just sue the bastard.

Ban rejected that proposal. "At this time I wouldn't make any definitive judgment or definitive plans, in particular vis-à-vis these biofuels," he said. "I know there are some concerns raised by certain quarters about biofuels. But biofuels are a renewable source of energy when we are experiencing extreme difficulties [with] resources."

But Ban conceded that there was a food supply problem and said the primary Millenium Development Goal of halving global hunger by 2015 looked harder to reach than ever. "This steeply rising food price is a new phenomenon," he said. "We have only seven years left to meet the target of 2015. This is very serious."

It was all forseeable, asshat. It's called supply and demand.

He said he was overseeing a multi-agency investigation of the issue involving the UN Energy Programme, the UN Development Programme, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the World Food Programme. "They are all working on this issue," the secretary-general said.

So were the UN's Oil for Food folks.

Via The Guardian.

When asked if man was ruining Earth, Czech President Vaclav Klaus replied, "Perhaps only Mr. Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing.... For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa. It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature — by eliminating private ownership and similar things — much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago."

Ouch. ;-)

The Evidence Mounts

Click on image to enlargeMaybe there's something to this 'global warming' nonsense after all.

Click on image to enlarge
UPDATE: At 9:00PM CET, snow continues to fall in North Moravia.

Click on image to enlarge
Such mishegas, al-Goracle & 'global warming'.

Some Climate Change Here; 'Global Warming' There

Major accidents on D1 due to blizzard
Jihlava - As a result of icy road conditions and a snow storm this morning, there has been a series of multi-car accidents on the D1 highway between Prague and Brno, considered to be some of the most serious this busy road has seen in years.

There is not confirmation yet, but at least a few dozen, if not a hundred, cars are said to have been involved in accidents in both directions of the highway between the 90th and 140th kilometers of the road. This section lies primarily in the Vysočina region.

According to first reports, six people were seriously injured, and 16 others suffered light injuries. So far, there are no reports of fatalities.

The serious situation is further worsened by the occasional snowfalls and road maintenance says traffic delays could last for hours.

An Aktuálně.cz reporter, Adam Junek, was stuck in one of the traffic jams on his way to Brno in a Student Agency bus. "We are standing on the 94th kilometer. All the cars in front of us are just standing. Some drivers say that there are a few multiple-car accidents on the highway in front of us," said Junek. "The bus driver warned us that we will probably be sitting here for a few hours, until the roads are cleared."

Prague firefighters helping out

Fire brigades and rescue workers from the whole Vysočina region are already working at the various accident sites.

"Five of our teams from Jihlava, Humpolec and Pelhřimov are trying to clear the roads," said Petra Musilová, spokeswoman for the Vysočina regional administration. "Firefighters have sent a helicopter from Prague," she added.

There is still no way to tell how long it will take to make the road passable. D1 is apparently closed between the 97th and 100th kilometers. A detour route has not yet been determined, because of the heavy snowfall.

The end of the week, marking the beginning of the spring season, will be mostly cloudy with a lot of snow and rain. Highest day temperatures will range between 3 (37.40F) and 7 (44.60F) degrees centigrade.

While Vaclav Klaus was waxing his skis, neither al-Gore nor EU 'global warming' alarmists were available for comment.

Via Aktuálně.cz and Radio Praha/Prague


Click on map to enlarge

Those Pesky Czechs

Here's another reason for the Left to hate Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John-Paul II.

Czechs oppose EU carbon auctioning plan
The Czech Republic may block the European Commission's plan to auction carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions permits to energy companies after 2012, government officials said on Tuesday.

The Commission, the EU's executive branch, introduced a plan last month to cut CO2 emissions after 2012.

Under the current trading system, companies are granted some emissions permits for free, but in future they will have to buy all the allowances, increasing their costs significantly.

Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek told an energy conference in Prague the plan would harm the Czech energy sector and undermine necessary investments into ageing power plants. He called for gradual implementation of the changes.

"Until then (2013) we will not be able to carry out the key investments, we would withdraw more money from the sector," Topolánek said.
"I want to promise that I will do my best not to back down (in opposition to the plan)," he added.

High-emission coal plants make up for more than half of Czech electricity production.

Industry Minister Martin Riman said he would propose that the government blocks the plan in the EU.

"The French, who make 80 percent (of their electricity) in nuclear plants, do not care," Riman told Reuters.

"I think this is absolutely fundamental, we cannot accept the proposal of 100 percent auctioning," he added.

New Europe™

Via The Guardian

Memo to al-Goracle

Czech president again warns of panic over global warming

"Global warming alarmism is marching on," Czech President Vaclav Klaus said in his speech at an international conference on climate held by the conservative Heartland Institute in New York Tuesday.

"We have to therefore concentrate not only on adding new arguments to the already existing ones, but also on the winning of additional supporters of our views," Klaus added.

The Heartland Institute has questioned the extent and importance of climate change and opposed the efforts to take global restricting measures over them. One of the conference's main goals is to explain the often "overlooked" other side of the debate on climate change.

"The insurmountable problem as I see it lies in the political populism of its exponents and in their unwillingness to listen to arguments... The only way out is to make the domain of their power over our lives much more limited," Klaus said in his speech.

Klaus pointed out that people "tend to blindly believe in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s conclusions despite the fact that from the very beginning, the IPCC has been a political rather than a scientific undertaking."

"Many politicians, media commentators, public intellectuals, bureaucrats in more and more influential international organisations not only accept them but use them without qualifications which exist even in the IPCC documents," he said.

Klaus objected that to really decrease carbon dioxide emissions, the countries would have to "either stop the economic growth and thus block further rise in the standard of living, or stop the population growth, or make miracles with the emissions intensity."

"I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries," Klaus said.

He stressed that this ambition goes very much against the past human experience which has always been connected with a strong motivation to go ahead and to better human conditions.

"There is no reason to make the from above orchestrated change just now - especially with arguments based on such an incomplete and faulty science as is demonstrated by the IPCC," Klaus concluded in his speech.

Klaus recalled his words at a meeting commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist coup in then Czechoslovakia where he warned against the repetition of similar events in the future.

Klaus noted that such events would certainly not arise from the same ideology, but that he is convinced that the substance will be the same.

"What I had in mind is naturally environmentalism and its currently sharpest form - climatic alarmism," Klaus said.

He noted that junior ruling Greens chairman Martin Bursik, Czech deputy PM and environment minister, had "dramatically criticised" these statements.

"I suppose it is very good he [Bursik] has understood them," Klaus added.

He explained he decided to attend the conference in New York to stand up to the tendencies pushed through by environmental activists headed by former U.S. vice-president Albert Gore.

"I am not able to accept the one-sided attacks concerning global warming by people around Al Gore," Klaus told ČTK.

"I think that every freedom-loving and rationally thinking person must say no, it is not so, it is infinitely more complicated," Klaus added.

Klaus said previously he is convinced that courage is needed for a discussion on global warming, which, in his opinion, environmentalists reject as they are short of their own arguments.

Klaus told CNN Headline News last night [Monday, ed.] he is aware of the fact that such stances like his are considered politically incorrect. However, he added, though everybody in the Czech Republic knows his views of global warming and climate change, he was recently re-elected president for the second [and his last] five-year term.

Klaus will be on Glenn Beck's CNN/HN show tonight.

Klaus has in the long run challenged the opinion that people's behaviour must change over the alleged global warming. He has repeatedly called for a serious discussion and warned against the threatening of freedom and prosperity by the efforts to prevent climate change.

Klaus talked on these issues at a conference on climate change at the U.N. seat last autumn.

Some environmentalists have often expressed disagreement with Klaus's opinions. They argue that global warming is obvious and information on this phenomenon has been available for decades.

Bursik has criticised Klaus for weakening the Czech Republic's authority in the climate change agenda.

al-Goracle was unavailable for comment.

Via ČeskéNoviny.cz