Europe and parts of the Middle East are having a much colder than normal winter this year in contrast to our warmer than normal winter here in the U.S.

I know, I know....  The Global Warming hangers-on will still say this is evidence of global warming.  But as we have highlighted here recently, even the U.N.'s own "experts" and the "scientists" at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom -- who brought us the original global warming hoax -- have not published that they were wrong and the planet appears now, after all, to be entering a global cooling cycle.

I recommend another article below by Alan Caruba about the effects this all is having on the other side of the planet.  It would appear that the environmental movement's global warming hoax will have the same effects as the environmental movement's banning of DDT.  Millions will die in the name of some forecasted gloomy predictions that are not based on fact and sound, peer-reviewed, reproducible science.  But then, environmentalists place a lesser value on human life which they are perfectly willing to sacrifice to their perceived benefits to nature and their own ideology.  Environmentalists see mankind as the greatest threat to the health of the planet.


Bill Cochrane

1. The Raleigh News & Observer suggests global warming has arrived in NC; the State Climate Office thinks otherwise.

This article appeared on the front page above the fold in yesterday's issue of The News & Observer. The clear implication is that global warming has come to North Carolina and it is having an impact on plant life.  Had the author, John Murawski, checked the web site of the State Climate Office of North Carolina, which would seem a logical starting point for any journalist doing a story of this kind, he would have found the following statements:

"The annual statewide average temperature for NC from 1895-2007 is given in Figure 2, along with the linear trend of the data.  If one focused only on the period since the mid-1970s, a clear warming signal is seen.  This corresponds well with warming observed in global average temperatures from the best satellite data.  However, a review of the entire period of record suggests that the warming since the mid-1970s may not be unprecedented, especially when compared with the warming observed from 1910-1950.  Overall, the trend over the 113-year period is flat, with no long-term trend over the period."

"Local climate variability is so high in NC that significant trends are difficult to deduce."

"...when we separate average temperatures into daily maximum and minimums (highs and lows), we can start to see some meaningful trends.  While maximum temperatures show no trend, we do see a significant trend in minimum temperature (morning lows) in urban areas.  Minimum temperatures are increasing in many urban areas.  These minimum temperature trends are significant, but are not linked to broader global warming.  Indeed, we do not see similar trends at rural locations, suggesting that the observed changes in minimum temperatures are associated with urbanization of our cities and surrounding areas."

So that raises an interesting question:  Why did the article's author miss all of this?  There are several possibilities.

First, it is simply possible that he was lazy and didn't feel like checking with the local experts on the subject.  I don't think that was the case.

Second, he's pushing a global warming agenda and deliberately ignored the facts.  Again, while many of us on the right tend to think that agenda-pushing explains all problems like this in the media, it certainly doesn't make sense in this case.  The story is actually about what could be considered to be a benefit of global warming -- i.e., longer growing seasons.  It is not the kind of story an ideological alarmist would write.

Actually, my thought is that the possibility that North Carolina hasn't been warming just didn't occur to him. In other words, the problem stems from a lack of understanding of the issue.

As "everyone knows", global warming is occurring, and if it is, then it "must" be occurring everywhere on the globe, including North Carolina -- which, of course, is faulty reasoning.  Even if global warming were occurring, though it hasn't been for at least a decade (see the story below and last week's newsletter), it wouldn't mean that all locations on the planet are warming.  It would simply mean that those locations that are showing warming on average more than offset those that are showing cooling or no trend.  Oddly enough, these are simple facts that most people, including reporters, just don't know.

2.  The British Met Office announced no global warming for last 15 years -- do sunspots tell the story?

The UK Daily Mail has run a story that is not getting much publicity:  Global temperature data suggest that there has been no global warming for 15 years.  And given the source of the data, the UK's Met (Meteorology) Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (yes the same group involved with "Climategate"), the evidence must be overwhelming.  According to the Mail:

The supposed "consensus" on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit.  It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

So why might this be happening?  The Mail does a little more digging:

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a "grand minimum" in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call "Cycle 24" -- which is why last week's solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual.  But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Yes I know that this might be quite shocking to you global-cooling deniers out there, but yes, what happens on the sun may actually have an impact on earth's temperatures.


Dr. Roy Cordato

My note:  Folks, note this graph from the Climate Office of NC.  I ask myself a couple of questions:

1.  If this scientific data is correct, what caused the high temperature cycles in the past?  They occur over and over, and the last four were before humans even had campfires.

2.  So, if this be true, how can there be a "consensus" that the current global temperature cycle is "man-made"?

3.  Looks to me like the maximum temperatures in the last four cycles all reach the same peak temps that we have reached in 1998 or so.  If this be true, based on the previous four cycles, global temps could be expected to rapidly fall to the consistent minimums for these global cycles.  It that be true, shouldn't we consider that the Daily Mail article may be correct -- we're now entering a natural global cooling cycle?

Hmmmm.......


Bill Cochrane

__Earlier this week, Stimulus beneficiary Evergreen Energy bit the dust.  Then, Ener1, a manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles and recipient of Stimulus largesse, filed for bankruptcy.  And today, the Las Vegas Sun reports that Amonix, Inc., a manufacturer of solar panels that received $5.9 million from the Porkulus, will cut two-thirds of its workforce, about 200 employees, only seven months after opening a factory in Nevada.

I foresaw this spate of bad news last November. As I explained yesterday,

In a previous article, I compared renewable energy spending in the 2009 Stimulus to a green albatross burdening the President.  I argued that Stimulus spending was inherently wasteful, because politics invariably corrupts government’s investment decisions.  The result is taxpayers' losses on bankrupt companies that existed only by the grace of political favoritism, a la Solyndra.  I predicted the green stimulus would haunt the President, in the form of a slow drip public relations nightmare, as a litany of bad investments go belly-up in the run up to the 2012 elections.

Mr. President, are you still sure you want to “double down” on renewable energy giveaways?


William Yeatman

_This Global Warming Hoax and its evil brother, the Green Renewable Energy Hoax, cannot end too soon for my liking.  Fortunately, more scientists are stepping forward to unmask the devilish lies, greed, and corruption behind this global scam.  But now, even the very self-same groups which brought us the Global Warming idiocy (the East Anglia Climactic Research Unit and NASA) are now bringing us warnings of Global Cooling -- a return to the Mini Ice Age of the 1700s!  Remember, that's what these same folks were saying during the 60s & 70s, too!

You just can't make this stuff up!

When are we going to stop listening to these people?  How many more times will we let them get away with these dire predictions and the money & power grabs that accompany their "warnings"?

You've just gotta read this!:   Forget Global Warming -- It's Cycle 25 We Need to Worry About


Bill Cochrane

_There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy.  There's no Need to Panic About Global Warming.

The following letter has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article.  More will be coming forward to help expose this gigantic worldwide scam.  It is being pushed by crony businesses seeking to secure huge grants, subsidies, and tax advantages from governments.  It is being pushed by government officials seeking to increase their own power, gain, and support.  It is being pushed by agenda-driven groups who favor a statist government ideology, a socialist utopia, or a new global order.  Whatever the motives, the scam is rapidly collapsing.

The chart above shows what is being discussed in the letter and video below.  There has been no global warming since 1999 or 2000 in spite of increasing CO2 levels.


Bill Cochrane

_A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming". Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true.  In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins:  "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement:  'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.  If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.'  In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever.  And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year.  The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.  This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth:  "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."  But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade — indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections — suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause.  Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant.  CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle.  Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth.  This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today.  Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted — or worse.  They have good reason to worry.  In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years.  The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position.  Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before — for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union.  Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs.  Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue?  There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?"  Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow.  Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.  Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office:  There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy.  Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls.  This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now.  Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment.  And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data.  The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history.  However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

_All say that the UN agenda, the Environmental Movement, and Global Warming are a grandiose scam.  I don't need to talk.  The video below does it in both an entertaining and informative way.


Bill Cochrane

_On April 13, 2011, Dr. Stephen J. Milloy addressed the Heritage Foundation about the Green movement and its real goals for regulating all aspects of human life.  This is the real force and diguise behind the Agenda for the 21st Century which simply puts the policy and legislative framework forward for the Greens.

Dr. Milloy talked about his book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery Publishing; March 22, 2009).  In his book Steve Milloy takes a critical look at the environmental movement and argues that it uses scare tactics to push forward its agenda to regulate lifestyles and curtail personal freedom.  He responded to questions from members of the audience.  Steve Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com and a columnist for FoxNews.com.  He is also co-director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Behind the smiley-face rhetoric of "sustainability" and "conservation" -- that warm and fuzzy public image that the environmental movement has cultivated for itself -- resides a dark agenda.  In Green Hell, Steve Milloy examines how the Greens' aim to regulate your behavior, downsize your lifestyle, and invade the most intimate aspects of your personal life.  He reflects on the authoritarian impulse underlying the Green crusade.  Whether they're demanding that you turn down your thermostat, stop driving your car, or engage in some other senseless act of self-denial, he argues that the Greens are envisioning a grim future for you marked by endless privation.

With apocalyptic predictions of environmental doom, the Green movement has gained influence throughout American society -- from schools and local planning boards to the biggest corporations in the country.  And their plans are much more ambitious than you think, says Milloy.  What the Greens really seek, with increasing success, is to dictate the very parameters of your daily life - where you can live, what transportation you can use, what you can eat, and even how many children you can have.

Listen to the audio of the conference presentation below.  If you prefer the video, look here.
Also check out:  The Green Hell Blog


Becky Dunlop, Heritage

_It's so difficult to pick just one, but the two best candidates are surely:

1.  His supposed reversal of support for ObamaCare and the individual
     mandate.
2.  His supposed reversal of support for Global Warming, Cap-and-
     Trade, and Agenda for the 21st Century.

Both would be incredible turnarounds of ideology.  Both would require a life-changing epiphany because of the magnitude and breadth of the revelations necessary.  Where was his epiphany?  What revelations made him completely reverse his positions and beliefs?  He has never offered explanations.  He cloaks himself in conservative rhetoric and hopes you aren't remembering or paying close attention.

That's my explanation:  Newt is in chameleon mode.  He is desperately changing his colors and positions to hide his true nature.  He is camouflaging himself to win the conservative base of the Republican Party.  He certainly knows how to sound conservative.  Unfortunately, he is not conservative -- he is a right wing progressive.  He is a Big Government Republican.  He is, in fact, a true believer in globalism and the New World Order (as first described officially by another Republican progressive, George Herbert Walker Bush, the elder).

But the full extent of Gingrich's embrace of the whole environmental ploy and the Agenda for the 21st Century had escaped me until the following article brought out a fact that I had completely missed during Gingrich's stint as Speaker of the House.  Yeah, I was around then.  I'm getting some mileage on this old frame....  Look:  If you consider yourself to be a true conservative -- especially if you claim to be a true Constitutionally-limited small government Tea Party conservative -- and this doesn't make you run away from Newt Gingrich as fast as you can, then I have a revelation for you:  You are not a conservative; you are actually a progressive.  You have met your enemy, and he is yourself.

Read:  Gingrich Co-Sponsored Global Warming Bill That Also Called For International Agreement on Population Growth


Bill Cochrane