Global warming is not happening

Great post and a great debate topic! I usually have to see something until I believe it. But I have been up to the Arctic Ocean occassionally in the las ten years and it appears to be detererating. Who knows though? I am no earth scientist:lol: Too many tree huggers dig in to this crap I doubt anything is really wrong at least in our life time!
 
The BBC won't let the sunshine in

In the wake of the BBC's 15-hour marathon promoting Al Gore's propaganda fest for the "consensus" view of global warming (interspersed with rock music), a concerted effort was made last week to discredit the rival thesis which has recently been gaining widespread support: that the key to warming lies in the activity not of man but of the sun.

A rash of stories, typified by the BBC's " No Sun link to climate change", promoted a paper published by the Royal Society which accuses the scientists behind the "solar warming" thesis of "distorting" the data. The paper's authors admit that solar activity was higher in the 20th century than at any time in 6,000 years, and that until recently this could have been significant in raising temperatures on earth. But then everything changed. Since 1985, they claim, solar influence has weakened, while global temperatures have soared. "This debate is now settled," they say. The culprit is CO2 after all.

This may satisfy the BBC - but the latest surface and satellite data show that, since their peak in 1998, global temperatures have in fact dropped back. Last month, according to Nasa, they were as low as in 1983. Tellingly, the Royal Society paper ends its surface temperature graph in 2000 and omits the even more inconvenient satellite data altogether. However, if temperatures fall while CO2 levels rise, how can it be maintained that CO2 is the main driver of global warming?

Far from being settled, this debate is just beginning to get really interesting.

link
 
Global warming? Look at the numbers

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Global warming? Look at the numbers

In his enviro-propaganda flick, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore claims nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the last decade. That's been a common refrain for environmentalists, too, and one of the centrepieces of global warming hysteria: It's been really hot lately -- abnormally hot -- so we all need to be afraid, very afraid. The trouble is, it's no longer true.

Last week, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies -- whose temperature records are a key component of the global-warming claim (and whose director, James Hansen, is a sort of godfather of global-warming alarmism) -- quietly corrected an error in its data set that had made recent temperatures seem warmer than they really were.

A little less than a decade ago, the U.S. government changed the way it recorded temperatures. No one thought to correlate the new temperatures with the old ones, though -- no one until Canadian researcher Steve McIntyre, that is.

McIntyre has become the bane of many warmers' religious-like belief in climate catastrophe. In 2003, along with economist Ross McKitrick, McIntyre demolished the Mann "hockey stick" --a graph that showed stable temperatures for 1,000 years, then shooting up dangerously in the last half of the 20th Century.

The graph was used prominently by the UN and nearly every major eco lobby. But McIntyre and McKitrick demonstrated it was based on incomplete and inaccurate data.

To NASA's credit, when McIntyre pointed out their temperature errors they quickly made corrections.

Still, the pro-warmers who dominate the Goddard Institute almost certainly recognized the impacts these changes would have on the global-warming debate, because they made no formal announcement of their recalculations.

In many cases, the changes are statistically minor, but their potential impact on the rhetoric surrounding global warming is huge.

The hottest year since 1880 becomes 1934 instead of 1998, which is now just second; 1921 is third.

Four of the 10 hottest years were in the 1930s, only three in the past decade. Claiming that man-made carbon dioxide has caused the natural disasters of recent years makes as much sense as claiming fossil-fuel burning caused the Great Depression.

The 15 hottest years since 1880 are spread over seven decades. Eight occurred before atmospheric carbon dioxide began its recent rise; seven occurred afterwards.

In other words, there is no discernible trend, no obvious warming of late.

Ever since the correction became a hot topic on blogs, the pro-warmers have tried to downplay its significance, insisting, for example, that the alterations merely amount to "very minor rearrangements in the various rankings."

It's true the changes aren't dramatic. But the optics are.

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. Imagine the shrieking of the warmers if we had previously thought that hot years were scattered throughout the past 130 years, but after a correction the warmest years could be seen to be concentrated in the past decade.

They would insist the revised data proved their case. They would blitz every news organization and talk show. They would demand to be allowed to indoctrinate school children on the evils of cars and factories.

So they shouldn't be permitted to brush aside this new data, which makes their claims harder to prove.

Ten years ago, warmers found a similarly small error in the temperature data collected by weather satellites. The satellites were a thorn in their sides because while the warmers were insisting the Earth was getting hotter, the satellites showed it was in fact cooling ever so slightly.

Then the warmers discovered that the scientists who maintained the orbiting thermometers had failed to account for orbital decay, the almost infinitesimally small downward drift of the "birds" every year.

When the effects of drift were added into the observations, the cooling was found to be just 0.01 degree per decade rather than the 0.04 degrees previously claimed.

On this basis, the warmers now insisted then that even the satellites were somehow in agreement with their theory.

Of course, the current NASA changes are only for data collected in the United States. But available surface temperature readings cover only half the planet even today. Before the Second World War, they covered less than a quarter. So U.S. readings for a period that goes as far back as 1880 are among the most reliable there are.

Perhaps we will have uncontrollable warming in the future, but it likely hasn't started yet.
 
Before Gore



D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt."



The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and "at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."



"This was one of several such articles I have found at the Library of Congress for the 1920s and 1930s," says Mr. Lockwood. "I had read of the just-released NASA estimates, that four of the 10 hottest years in the U.S. were actually in the 1930s, with 1934 the hottest of all."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070814/NATION02/108140063






Agency roasted after Toronto blogger spots `hot years' data fumble

Aug 14, 2007 04:30 AM
DANIEL DALE
STAFF REPORTER

In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all – until someone checked the math.

After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.

Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. – not 1998.

More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.

NASA officials have dismissed the changes as trivial. Even the Canadian who spotted the original flaw says the revisions are "not necessarily material to climate policy."

But the revisions have been seized on by conservative Americans, including firebrand radio host Rush Limbaugh, as evidence that climate change science is unsound.

Said Limbaugh last Thursday: "What do we have here? We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA ... is in the scientific community with false data."

However Stephen McIntyre, who set off the uproar, described his finding as a "a micro-change. But it was kind of fun."

A former mining executive who runs the blog ClimateAudit.org, McIntyre, 59, earned attention in 2003 when he put out data challenging the so-called "hockey stick" graph depicting a spike in global temperatures.

This time, he sifted NASA's use of temperature anomalies, which measure how much warmer or colder a place is at a given time compared with its 30-year average.

Puzzled by a bizarre "jump" in the U.S. anomalies from 1999 to 2000, McIntyre discovered the data after 1999 wasn't being fractionally adjusted to allow for the times of day that readings were taken or the locations of the monitoring stations.

McIntyre emailed his finding to NASA's Goddard Institute, triggering the data review.

"They moved pretty fast on this," McIntyre said. "There must have been some long faces."

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/246027
 
Arctic August: NYC Sets Record For Coldest Day
High Of 59 Degrees Ties Chilliest August High Set In 1911

Don't forget to bundle up if you're headed out in New York City today. After all, it is August 21.

The city along with the rest of the tri-state region is feeling the chilly effect of a cold front sweeping through the region, accompanied by cool rain showers.

Tuesday's high temperature in Central Park was just 59 degrees. The normal high for today is 82 degrees. The normal low is 67.

"This unusual blast of cold air smashed our previous record for the coldest high temperature on August 21, which is 64 degrees, set back in 1999," CBS 2 meteorologist Jason Cali told wcbstv.com.

In fact, the 59-degree high tied the record for the coldest high temperature ever for the month of August in New York City, when it reached just 59 degrees in 1911.

Today's highs are more common in the city for the final days of October, when the average high ranges from 59 degrees to 61 degrees.
 
Breaking: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
August 29, 2007

Posted by Matthew_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov (4:45pm ET)

Last week in his blog post, New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears, on the Inhofe EPW Press Blog, Marc Morano cited a July 2007 review of 539 abstracts in peer-reviewed scientific journals from 2004 through 2007 that found that climate science continues to shift toward the views of global warming skeptics.

Today, Michael Asher provides more details about this new survey in his blog post, Survey: Less Than Half Of All Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory. Asher writes that the study has been submitted for publication in the journal Energy and Environment.


DAILYTECH

SURVEY: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY; COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF PUBLISHED CLIMATE RESEARCH REVEALS CHANGING VIEWPOINTS

Michael Asher
August 29, 2007 11:07 AM
In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....ecord_id=b35c36a3-802a-23ad-46ec-6880767e7966
 
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'GREEN' GORE GOES GULFSTREAM: VIDEO CATCHES ECO-WARRIOR ON LUXURY PRIVATE JET
Fri Sep 07 2007 07:48:23 ET

**Exclusive**

As former Vice President Al Gore waits to hear if he has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless effort on climate change, a new video will air this weekend capturing Gore on a fuel-guzzling private jet!

FOXNEWS host Sean Hannity is set to unleash the damning video this Sunday night, network sources reveal.

Developing...
 
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Activists take Al Gore to task on his diet
By Philip Sherwell, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:52pm BST 10/09/2007



He may be the hero of the environmental movement for his crusade against global warming but Al Gore is about to be targeted by animal rights activists over his carnivorous contribution to greenhouse gases.


Al Gore has come under fire for failing to highlight the impact of animal agriculture


Citing United Nations research that the meat industry is worse for the environment than driving and flying, animal rights groups are directing a campaign at the former American vice-president's diet.

When he delivers a lecture on global warming in Denver next month, protesters will display billboards bearing a cartoon image of Mr Gore eating a drumstick and the message: "Too chicken to go vegetarian? Meat is the No 1 cause of global warming".

The campaign is being organised by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) and is backed by other animal rights groups.

"For Al Gore, the fact that his diet is a leading contributor to global warming is a highly inconvenient truth - pun intended," said Matt Prescott, a spokesman for Peta.

Mr Gore won an Oscar this year for An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary based on his lecture-circuit presentation detailing how man is allegedly destroying the environment.

But he is now under fire for failing to highlight the impact of meat-eating.

According to recent UN Food and Agriculture Organisation research, animal agriculture generates 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions - more than the 13.5 per cent produced by all forms of transport combined.

Mr Gore's eating habits have previously drawn attention only because of his dramatic weight fluctuations.

He cut a far slimmer figure in the run-up to the 2000 election than since - and observers would regard a reduction in his waistline as a likely sign that he intends join the Democrats' race for the White House next year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/09/wgore109.xml
 
Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears

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.
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years is available from Amazon.com:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,176495.shtml
 
Global Warming? Blame Jane Fonda

Saturday, September 15, 2007 9:54 PM


If you're wondering who's largely to blame for the alleged heating up of the climate you need look no further than Jane Fonda.


That's what "Freakanomics" columnists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt suggest in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.


"If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?" the authors ask.


According to Editor & Publisher, the two cite Fonda's anti-nuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, as helping stoke "a widespread panic." Fonda, E&P notes became a high-profile anti-nuke activist in an already-strong movement that resulted in the nuclear industry halting plans for expansion.


"And so," the authors continue, "instead of becoming a nation with clean and cheap nuclear energy, as once seemed inevitable, the United States kept building power plants that burned coal and other fossil fuels. Today such plants account for 40 percent of the country's energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions. Anyone hunting for a global-warming villain can't help blaming those power plants -- and can't help wondering too about the unintended consequences of Jane Fonda."


Despite Fonda's anti-nuke campaign, the columnists say that the "big news" is that with global warming fears mounting, "nuclear power may be making a comeback in the United States," with plans for two dozen reactors on the drawing boards.


"Will they get built?" E&P asks, explaining that "It may all depend on what kind of thrillers Hollywood has in the pipeline."


Neither E&P nor the Times columnists bothered to note that all those CO2 emissions contribute a barely measurable part of the greenhouse gasses present in the atmosphere. According to Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology, called by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world: "There’s been warming over the past 150 years, and even though it’s less than one degree Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the 'greenhouse effect,' various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.


"Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor ...


"And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide."

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/fonda_global_warming/2007/09/15/32959.html?s=al&promo_code=3A0E-1
 
Quebec introduces carbon tax, Canada CEOs urge more

Mon Oct 1, 2007 6:39 PM BST

TORONTO, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Quebec province slapped the country's first carbon tax on energy firms on Monday, as Canadian business leaders urged "environmental taxation" to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions.

The tax, proposed more than a year ago, is expected to raise C$200 million ($202 million) a year to fund the province's plans to reduce emissions.

It includes a per-litre levy of 0.8 Canadian cent for gasoline, 0.9 Canadian cent for diesel fuel, 0.96 Canadian cent for light heating oil, and C$8 a tonne for coal.

It wasn't immediately known whether the oil companies, including Petro-Canada (PCA.TO: Quote, Profile , Research) and Imperial Oil (IMO.TO: Quote, Profile , Research), would pass along the cost to consumers.



Separately, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives said Canada should become "an energy and environmental superpower," and suggested higher energy prices to help cut emissions, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Monday.

Since 1990, greenhouse-gas emissions in Canada, a net exporter of energy, have risen more than in any other leading industrialized country, data submitted by the Group of Eight rich nations to the U.N.'s Climate Change Secretariat shows.

Quebec has pledged to meet its targets under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Canada has signed on to the agreement, which calls for a 6-percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2012, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that target is impossible to achieve.

Instead, the minority Conservative government aims to cut emissions from greenhouse gases -- the key contributor to climate change -- by 20 percent from current levels by 2020.

http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news..._01_N01295303_RTRIDST_0_CANADA-QUEBEC-TAX.XML
 
Carbon Dioxide Did Not End The Last Ice Age, Study Says

Carbon Dioxide Did Not End The Last Ice Age, Study Says

Science Daily — Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records.

"There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO₂ and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO₂ in climate change," said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express.

"You can no longer argue that CO₂ alone caused the end of the ice ages."

Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO₂, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown -- but was not its main cause.

The study does not question the fact that CO₂ plays a key role in climate.

"I don't want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO₂ doesn't affect climate," Stott cautioned. "It does, but the important point is that CO₂ is not the beginning and end of climate change."

While an increase in atmospheric CO₂ and the end of the ice ages occurred at roughly the same time, scientists have debated whether CO₂ caused the warming or was released later by an already warming sea.

The best estimate from other studies of when CO₂ began to rise is no earlier than 18,000 years ago. Yet this study shows that the deep sea, which reflects oceanic temperature trends, started warming about 19,000 years ago.

"What this means is that a lot of energy went into the ocean long before the rise in atmospheric CO₂," Stott said.

But where did this energy come from" Evidence pointed southward.

Water's salinity and temperature are properties that can be used to trace its origin -- and the warming deep water appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, the scientists wrote.

This water then was transported northward over 1,000 years via well-known deep-sea currents, a conclusion supported by carbon-dating evidence.

In addition, the researchers noted that deep-sea temperature increases coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice, both occurring 19,000 years ago, before the northern hemisphere's ice retreat began.

Finally, Stott and colleagues found a correlation between melting Antarctic sea ice and increased springtime solar radiation over Antarctica, suggesting this might be the energy source.

As the sun pumped in heat, the warming accelerated because of sea-ice albedo feedbacks, in which retreating ice exposes ocean water that reflects less light and absorbs more heat, much like a dark T-shirt on a hot day.

In addition, the authors' model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO₂ from the ocean into the atmosphere, also accelerating the warming.

The link between the sun and ice age cycles is not new. The theory of Milankovitch cycles states that periodic changes in Earth's orbit cause increased summertime sun radiation in the northern hemisphere, which controls ice size.

However, this study suggests that the pace-keeper of ice sheet growth and retreat lies in the southern hemisphere's spring rather than the northern hemisphere's summer.

The conclusions also underscore the importance of regional climate dynamics, Stott said. "Here is an example of how a regional climate response translated into a global climate change," he explained.

Stott and colleagues arrived at their results by studying a unique sediment core from the western Pacific composed of fossilized surface-dwelling (planktonic) and bottom-dwelling (benthic) organisms.

These organisms -- foraminifera -- incorporate different isotopes of oxygen from ocean water into their calcite shells, depending on the temperature. By measuring the change in these isotopes in shells of different ages, it is possible to reconstruct how the deep and surface ocean temperatures changed through time.

If CO₂ caused the warming, one would expect surface temperatures to increase before deep-sea temperatures, since the heat slowly would spread from top to bottom. Instead, carbon-dating showed that the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by surface-dwelling ones, suggesting that the warming spread bottom-up instead.

"The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO₂ rises and the temperature warms," Stott said. The complexities "have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future."

Stott's collaborators were Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii and Robert Thunell of the University of South Carolina. Stott was supported by the National Science Foundation and Timmerman by the International Pacific Research Center.

Stott is an expert in paleoclimatology and was a reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also recently co-authored a paper in Geophysical Research Letters tracing a 900-year history of monsoon variability in India.

The study, which analyzed isotopes in cave stalagmites, found correlations between recorded famines and monsoon failures, and found that some past monsoon failures appear to have lasted much longer than those that occurred during recorded history. The ongoing research is aimed at shedding light on the monsoon's poorly understood but vital role in Earth's climate.
 
Schools must warn of Gore climate film bias

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The lying swine



Schools will have to issue a warning before they show pupils Al Gore's controversial film about global warming, a judge indicated yesterday.


The move follows a High Court action by a father who accused the Government of 'brainwashing' children with propaganda by showing it in the classroom.


Stewart Dimmock said the former U.S. Vice-President's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.


He wants the video banned after it was distributed with four other short films to 3,500 schools in February.


Mr Justice Burton is due to deliver a ruling on the case next week, but yesterday he said he would be saying that Gore's Oscar-winning film does promote 'partisan political views'.

This means that teachers will have to warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film.


He said: 'The result is I will be declaring that, with the guidance as now amended, it will not be unlawful for the film to be shown.'

The outcome marks a partial victory for Mr Dimmock, who had accused the 'New Labour Thought Police' of indoctrinating youngsters by handing out thousands of Climate Change Packs to schools.

Mr Dimmock, a lorry driver from Dover with children aged 11 and 14, said at the outset of the hearing: 'I wish my children to have the best education possible, free from bias and political spin, and Mr Gore's film falls far short of the standard required.'

His solicitor John Day, said yesterday that the Government had been forced to make 'a U-turn', but said it did not go far enough.

He said 'no amount of turgid guidance' could change the fact that the film is unfit for consumption in the classroom.

The case arises from a decision in February by the then Education Secretary Alan Johnson that DVDs of the film would be sent to all secondary schools in England, along with a multimedia CD produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs containing two short films about climate change and an animation about the carbon cycle.

David Miliband, who was Environment-Secretary when the school packs were announced, said at the time: 'The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over.'

But during the three-day hearing, the court heard that the critically-acclaimed film contains a number of inaccuracies, exaggerations and statements about global warming for which there is currently insufficient scientific evidence.

The Climate Change Resource Pack has now been sent to more than 3,500 schools and is aimed at key stage 3 pupils - those aged 11 to

Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said last night: 'The judge's decision is clear that schools can continue to use An Inconvenient Truth as part of their teaching on climate change in accordance with the amended guidance, which will be available online today.

'We have updated the accompanying guidance, as requested by the judge to make it clearer for teachers as to the stated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change position on a number of scientific points raised in the film.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...ews.html?in_article_id=485336&in_page_id=1811
 
Good Video

http://newsbusters.org/

CNN Meteorologist: ‘Definitely Some Inaccuracies’ in Gore Film
By Paul Detrick | October 4, 2007 - 11:35 ET
CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano clapped his hands and exclaimed, "Finally," in response to a report that a British judge might ban the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" from UK schools because, according to "American Morning," "it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies."

"There are definitely some inaccuracies," Marciano added. "The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming."

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Al Gore Getting Rich Spreading Global Warming Hysteria With Media’s Help
By Noel Sheppard | October 3, 2007 - 11:06 ET

Americans willing to look at the manmade global warming debate with any degree of impartiality and honesty are well aware that those spreading the hysteria have made a lot of money doing so, and stand to gain much more if governments mandate carbon dioxide emissions reductions.

In fact, just two months ago, ABC News.com estimated soon-to-be-Nobel Laureate Al Gore's net worth at $100 million, which isn't bad considering that he was supposedly worth about $1 million when he watched George W. Bush get sworn in as president in January 2001.

Talk about your get-rich-quick schemes, how'd you like to increase your net worth 10,000 percent in less than seven years?

Fortunately for the world's foremost warm-monger - a term I'd love to see become part of the parlance concerning what, in the long run, will likely be viewed as the greatest con ever perpetrated on the American people - his current wealth represents a mere pittance of what it will be if governments around the world are scared into all of his preposterous recommendations.

With that in mind, Deborah Corey Barnes published a marvelous piece at Human Events Wednesday that would be rather sobering for folks on both sides of the aisle if only a global warming obsessed media would be willing to share the information with the citizenry (emphasis added throughout):

Al Gore's campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore's followers realized how much their man stands to gain?

Of course it would, Deborah. That's why media have largely been mute on this matter.

With that as pretext, Barnes addressed Gore's cap-and-trade carbon scheme, and how he is well-positioned to benefit if governments across the globe implement it:

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. "Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn't a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets," said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

[...]

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that's almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine. Little is known about his firm's finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports.

After addressing how intimately tied to the investment firm Goldman Sachs Gore and his GIM associates are, Barnes presented further nefarious connections that make Ken Lay's Enron network in the '90s look almost amateurish:

We do know that Goldman Sachs has commissioned the World Resources Institute (affiliated with CCX), Resources for the Future, and the Woods Hole Research Center to research policy options for U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases. In 2006, Goldman Sachs provided research grants in this area totaling $2.3 million. The firm also has committed $1 billion to carbon-assets projects, a fancy term for projects that generate energy from sources other than oil and gas. In October 2006, Morgan Stanley committed to invest $3 billion in carbon-assets projects. Citigroup entered the emissions-trading market in May, and Bank of America got in on the action in June.

Some environmentalist groups disparage Gore and his investment banker friends. They say the Gore group caters to others who share their financial interest in the carbon-exchange concept. The bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement says that members of a United Nations-sponsored group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stand to gain by approving Gore's carbon-trading enterprise. The IPCC has devised what it says is a scientific measure of the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming. In fact, the critics charge, the IPCC sanctions a mechanism that mainly promotes the sham concept of carbon exchange.

The global non-profit organization Winrock International is an example of one IPCC panel member that seeks out groups and individuals with an interest in carbon trading. Arkansas-based Winrock provides worldwide "carbon-advisory services." Winrock has received government grants from the EPA, USAID and the Departments of Labor, State and Commerce, as well as from the Nature Conservancy (whose chairman used to be Henry Paulson). Winrock argues that cap-and-trade carbon trading is the best way to prevent a climate change crisis. But consider this: When a non-profit group takes money from oil companies and advocates drilling for oil as a solution to energy shortages, it is certain to be attacked as a tool of Big Oil. So far, the groups linked to Al Gore have avoided similar scrutiny.

Why is that? Why does everything Gore is involved in avoid government and media scrutiny?

While you ponder, there's more:

In June 2006, the World Bank announced that it, too, had joined CCX, saying that it intended to offset its greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing emission credits through CCX. The bank says its credits would contribute to restoring 4,600 hectares of degraded pastureland in Costa Rica. Somehow, CCX has figured out that this is an amount equivalent to 22,000 metric tons of emission that the bank calculates are created by its activities.

A World Bank blog called the Private Sector Development Blog regularly features items touting Al Gore and the concept of carbon credits. Its articles typically announce corporate "green" initiatives in which carbon credits are said to cancel out "bad" CO2 emissions released by a company's activities.

In fact, the World Bank now operates a Carbon Finance Unit that conducts research on how to develop and trade carbon credits. The bank works with Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain to set up carbon-credit funds in each country to purchase emission credits from firms for use in developing countries. In addition, it runs the Carbon Fund for Europe helping countries meet their Kyoto Protocol requirements. These funds are traded on the ECX (half of which is owned by CCX, itself a creature of Al Gore's firm, Generation Investment Management). Can we connect the dots?

[...]

So it seems banks and investment houses are going green, eager to enter an emerging emissions market. Meanwhile, environmentalists are discovering new ways to get rich while believing they are saving polar bears and rainforests.

Add it all up, Al Gore really is perpetrating a scheme that could end up being much more costly to Americans than anything Ken Lay did. As if that's not bad enough, our media are totally complicit rather than doing their jobs exposing the scam.

I don't know about you, but suddenly I need another shower.



http://newsbusters.org/node?page=1
 
Unusual Winds Caused Arctic Ice Melts, Not Global Warming
By Noel Sheppard | October 5, 2007 - 10:36 ET

Assume for a moment that a new study by NASA proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that manmade global warming was indeed responsible for the recent ice melts in the Arctic. Think media would have reported it?

In reality, that's a bit of a trick question, for in the past several weeks, television newscasts, papers, and magazines have been filled with hysterical assertions about decreasing Arctic ice levels destined to cause imminent flooding to coastal regions around the world.

As such, it certainly was no surprise when NASA released a report Monday claiming "the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds," virtually no media outlets shared the information with the citizenry, and those that did still blamed the melting ice on - you guessed it - global warming.

A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice.

[...]

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.

Hmmm. So, unusual winds pushed ice south into warmer waters causing the above average melt rates. That should be newsworthy, right?

Well, it clearly wasn't, as from a print perspective, only the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor felt this matter to be at all important; no other major dailies thought this announcement to be something the public would care about.

Yet, even those papers skewed the study to make the results support the global warming myth. For instance, the Times' Andrew Revkin wrote Tuesday:

The pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
Proponents of cuts in greenhouse gases cited the meltdown as proof that human activities are propelling a slide toward climate calamity
Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role.
The Monitor also used this report to advance global warming hysteria (emphasis added):

"While a number of natural factors have certainly contributed to the overall decline ... the effects of greenhouse warming are coming through loud and clear," notes Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the Snow and Ice Data Center.

Maybe even more disappointing, the broadcast networks, which had been all over this supposed "record" Arctic ice melt a few weeks ago, completely ignored this announcement.

And, leading the pack for the most disgraceful performance regarding this matter was ABC's Sam Champion who did a story concerning Arctic ice on Tuesday's "Good Morning America" that absurdly omitted this NASA announcement Monday:

Now, in August, we showed you those record levels of the melt of the sea ice. The new information out from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and those are the people who watch the ice all around the world, is that September levels are even lower and they also set a record. On this side of the screen, we're gonna show you generally an average from 1979 when we first started taking pictures with a satellite, all the way to about 2000. You can see the ice stays just about the same even though there is some melting there and almost runs all the way up to the Bering Strait.

This is a picture of the 2007 levels. Now take a look at the empty gap that goes all the way around here. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about the unprecedented melt of all that entire area. Now remember, that important sea ice is there. We believe it kind of regulates the global weather patterns and there's lots of it than ever before.

Out at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, their quote is that every summer, we melt more ice and it's just not getting replaced in the colder winter months because of the unusual amount of warm air that's still around the North Pole.

Nice job, Sam. Thanks for sharing.

As for the cable networks, only CNN thought this issue warranted air time, though not much. When "the most trusted name in news" finally got around to mentioning this study two days after the announcement, Jonathan Mann offered more fear than fact on Wednesday's "Your World Today":

This is big news. Literally news you can measure in miles and tons. News that's trouble for the environment. The Arctic has hit another milestone, or more accurately, you could say it's melted it. Less ice than ever measured before.

[...]

Look at this graph created by NASA. At first, the total of Arctic ice goes up and down year to year. But long-term, the total year-round ice has been going down ever since NASA started studying it by satellite. At first 10 percent per decade, then a whole lot faster.

And 2005 was the worst year, the previous record until just a few weeks ago when NASA saw ice was down by nearly 25 percent. It just about drops off the chart. That is a big, big thaw. The effect is to open up a million square miles or 2.5 million square kilometers of open water in a little less than 30 years. That's an area bigger than Greenland, up in the north, right next door.

To be fair, not all of it is melting. Some of it is actually moving, which is a little weird, too. Wind is pushing huge amounts of it to the west, and it is melting off there. That is still bad news though, because with less ice now, next year's thaw will probably be even bigger. Something to watch and worry about. Back to you.

That's all, folks: one sentence about this issue from all the cable news networks.

Yet, what might be even more disturbing about press coverage concerning polar ice is not just how media ignored something occurring in the Arctic that offerred a contrary explanation of recent melts, but also how what's happening in the Antarctic is similarly boycotted.

As Anthony Watts reported Wednesday:

The Arctic is almost as warm now as it was seventy years ago. Unsurprisingly, Arctic ice has diminished. But, as Polyakov et al.show, the long-term changes are "generally statistically insignificant". But there's more ice in Antarctica now. It seems that points more to a natural, cyclical variation on a global scale when one pole diminishes while another gains.

In fact, when you add up the total square kilometers of ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic, it is only five percent below normal.

Yep. Five percent.

As such, not only are there other explanations for what's happening to Arctic ice than the hysterical claims by media, the total picture at both poles is vastly less dire than what the press are leading the public to believe.

Why might that be?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...ds-caused-arctic-ice-melts-not-global-warming

The largely boycotted announcement out of NASA stated no such thing

http://newsbusters.org/
 
Chilly reception for debate offer

October 5, 2007
STEVE HUNTLEY shuntley@suntimes.com

Seven hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend to try to get someone to talk to you and not get an answer.

That's how much the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based libertarian think tank, has forked over in six months for advertisements in national newspapers trying to persuade Al Gore to debate one of its experts on global warming issues. "We have tried, repeatedly, to contact Gore directly, with registered letters and calls to his office, and have never received a reply," says Joseph Bast, Heartland president.

A spokeswoman for Gore told me by e-mail that Heartland is an oil-company-funded group that denies that global warming is real and caused by human activities.

"The debate has shifted to how to solve the climate crisis, not if there is one," said Kalee Kreider. "It does not make sense for him to engage in a dialogue with them at this time."

The issue is a bit more complicated than that. What Bast wants is for Gore to debate one of three authorities who dispute the former vice president's assertion that global warming is a crisis that requires an immediate, hugely expensive response potentially damaging to the U.S. and world economies.

One of the Heartland experts is Dennis Avery, an economist, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and co-author, with Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, of the book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. As you might guess from that title, Avery sees global warming as a natural phenomenon in which "there may be a human factor but if so it's small." He describes the warming as "moderate" and says there's been no warming since 1998. "Where's the crisis?"

When you talk with Avery, he cites numbers on carbon dioxide and temperature change and dates of previous warming periods, such as during Roman and medieval times. A layman like me soon finds himself in deep water, and you know someone on the other side of the issue will cite other sources, such as a U.N. panel on climate change that says most of the warming since the mid-20th century is likely due to greenhouse gases.

But the point is that Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" aren't the last word. In March, the New York Times reported that while they praise Gore for raising awareness about warming, a number of scientists see exaggerations and errors in some of his assertions. "They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism," the Times wrote. For example, Gore forecasts sea levels rising up to 20 feet, flooding parts of New York and Florida. But the U.N. panel's actual estimate is that seas will rise 7 to 23 inches in this century.

As for the Gore camp's statement about Exxon funding, Bast says those contributions are too little to control Heartland policy and amount to "far less than what Heartland spends speaking out on climate change."

The Heartland case is not the first time Gore has ducked a forum. Earlier this year he canceled an interview with Denmark's largest newspaper when he learned it would include questions from Bjorn Lomborg, respected author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. "Gore's sermon is not one that will stand scrutiny," says Christopher C. Horner, another one of Heartland's debate candidates, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.

Bast says the ad campaign will continue until March, costing a total of $1.2 million. But he won't get a debate from Gore. Still, Heartland's effort serves the worthy purpose to spotlighting the need for an informed discussion on the severity of global warming and how best to deal with it, by trying to halt it or adapt to it. Gore offers a worst-case scenario of unmitigated disaster. If he's wrong about rising sea levels, what else is he wrong about?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/589551,CST-EDT-HUNT05.article
 
Even Journalism Conference Biased on Global Warming
By Dan Gainor | October 5, 2007 - 14:56 ET
So much for that Code of Ethics promoted by the Society of Professional Journalists. The group undermined its own code by holding an entirely eco-friendly session on climate change.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told a group at the 2007 Washington, D.C., conference on October 4 one of the things that made the SPJ great is its Code of Ethics. But the code didn't come into play during the hour-long October 5 program at the convention entitled "Climate Change Affects Every Beat."

The event had three panelists: Larry Evans, managing editor of Daily Environmental Report; Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions at the Pew Center on Climate Change; and Michelle Moore, vice president for policy and public affairs at the U.S. Green Building Council.

"We need help from journalists to explain to the public what is at stake and how we are going to be able to move forward," Greenwald said. "And I guess finally is to where I could use some help is on cap and trade because cap and trade is what we're talking about doing as the centerpiece ... Unless the public really understands how it works and why we need it, we're going to be in trouble, so I could use some help from people who do communication with normal people for a living to explain this and explain why this is the way forward."

However, when the panel was confronted with the question of maintaining the balance between reporting the news and playing the role of advocacy journalist, Greenwald offered the standard talking points.

"I think the facts are actually quite compelling," Greenwald said. "We advocate one thing, but a lot of what we do is just report the facts ... A lot of scientists worked on that question [if global warming was just natural] and did very sophisticated analysis that are sort of hard to explain because a lot of it is about pattern analysis and if you look at the pattern of global warming and try to find some sort of explanation, the only explanation that actually works for it is the greenhouse gases."

SPJ's Code of Ethics, already scarce in the media's climate coverage, includes among its stated principles:

Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting.
Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.
Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others.
The Code was published on page 24 of the SPJ program guide.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/dan-gainor/2007/10/05/even-journalism-conference-biased-global-warming
 
Al Gore’s inconvenient judgment
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter
The nine inconveniences

Al Gore’s award-winning climate change documentary was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, a judge ruled yesterday.

An Inconvenient Truth won plaudits from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry but was found wanting when it was scrutinised in the High Court in London.

Mr Justice Burton identified nine significant errors within the former presidential candidate’s documentary as he assessed whether it should be shown to school children. He agreed that Mr Gore’s film was “broadly accurate”��”�� in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”��”��.


Cows targeted in climate change war
As part of a government-backed project, researchers are trying to find a diet for cattle that will cause less burping and flatulence

In what is a rare judicial ruling on what children can see in the class-room, Mr Justice Barton was at pains to point out that the “apocalyptic vision”��”�� presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change.

“It is plainly, as witnessed by the fact that it received an Oscar this year for best documentary film, a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film,”��”�� he said in his ruling. “It is built around the charismatic presence of the ex-Vice-Presi-dent, Al Gore, whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming.

“It is now common ground that it is not simply a science film – although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion – but that it is a political film.”��”��

The analysis by the judge will have a bearing on whether the Government can continue with its plan to have the film shown in every secondary school. He agreed it could be shown but on the condition that it was accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance Mr Gore’s “one-sided”��”�� views.

The Government’s decision to show the film in secondary schools had come under attack from Stewart Dim-mock, a school governor in Kent and a member of political group the New Party, who accused the Government of brainwashing children.

The first mistake made by Mr Gore, said Mr Justice Burton in his written judgment, was in talking about the potential devastation wrought by a rise in sea levels caused by the melting of ice caps.

The claim that sea levels could rise by 20ft “in the near future”��”�� was dismissed as “distinctly alarmist”��”��. Such a rise would take place “only after, and over, millennia”��”��.

Mr Justice Burton added: “The ar-mageddon scenario he predicts, inso-far as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.”��”��

A claim that atolls in the Pacific had already been evacuated was supported by “no evidence”��”��, while to suggest that two graphs showing carbon dioxide levels and temperatures over the last 650,000 years were an “exact fit”��”�� overstated the case.

Mr Gore’s suggestion that the Gulf Stream, that warms up the Atlantic ocean, would shut down was contradicted by the International Panel on Climate Change’s assessment that it was “very unlikely”��”�� to happen.

The drying of Lake Chad, the loss of Mount Kilimanjaro’s snows and Hurricane Katrina were all blamed by Mr Gore on climate change but the judge said the scientific community had been unable to find evidence to prove there was a direct link.

The drying of Lake Chad, the judge said, was “far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and overgrazing, and regional climate variability”��”��. The melting of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was “mainly attributable to human-induced climate change”��”��.

The judge also said there was no proof to support a claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for icy habitats melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court was aware of were four that died following a storm.

Similarly, the judge took issue with the former Vice-President of the United States for attributing coral bleaching to climate change. Separating the direct impacts of climate change and other factors was difficult, the judgment concluded.

Despite finding nine significant errors the judge said many of the claims made by the film were fully backed up by the weight of science. He identified “four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC”��”��.

In particular, he agreed with the main thrust of Mr Gore’s arguments: “That climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (‘greenhouse gases’).”��”��

The other three main points accepted by the judge were that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that climate change will cause serious damage if left unchecked, and that it is entirely possible for governments and individuals to reduce its impacts.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/corporate_law/article2633838.ece
 
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