As temperatures fail to meet alarmist predictions, and ever-increasing dire warnings of catastrophic, accelerating runaway warming are being refuted by simple observation, the global warming apologists keep rolling out the excuses. Here’s an article from Discovery News.

By Michael Reilly

For those who have endured this winter’s frigid temperatures and today’s heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.

But climate is known to be variable — a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.

Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”

Read the rest of this article at Discovery News.

It was snowing irony in Washington on Monday when global warming activists descended on the District like a storm — but got beaten to the punch by a blast of wintry weather that incapacitated the city.

By Joseph Abrams 

Global warming activists stormed Washington Monday for what was billed as the nation’s largest act of civil disobedience to fight climate change — only to see the nation’s capital virtually shut down by a major winter storm.

Schools and businesses were shuttered, lawmakers cancelled numerous appearances and the city came to a virtual standstill as Washington was blasted with its heaviest snowfall of the winter.

It spelled about six inches of trouble for global warming activists who had hoped to swarm the Capitol by the thousands in an effort to force the government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools a number of government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

The snowy scene, with temperatures in the mid-20s, was reminiscent of a day in January 2004, when Al Gore made a major address on global warming in New York — on one of the coldest days in the city’s history.

Protest organizers said about 2,500 people braved the blizzard to oppose greenhouse gas emissions, but the shroud of snow wasn’t the only wet blanket in the nation’s capital Monday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called on the architect of the Capitol to stop burning coal at the power plant last week, cancelled her appearance at the rally because her flight to Washington was cancelled.

Michelle Obama canned a public “Read Across America” event and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan canceled a meeting with the Democratic Caucus because the members of Congress couldn’t get to D.C. An honor cordon at the Pentagon for Afghanistan’s defense minister also had to be called off.

Some protesters couldn’t make it as dozens of flights in the area were delayed or called off, and some couldn’t face the dangerous roads or blustery weather, leaving hundreds safe, if sorry, back at home.

One protester named Kat had planned to get arrested and be bailed out Monday but decided to stay put and donate her money to a good cause instead.

“I don’t want to travel in the snow today. However, I am donating my bail money to fight mountaintop removal,” she wrote to the Climate Action Web site.

Read the rest of this story at Fox News.

Jym Ganahl

Published in The Other Paper, Columbus OH –  

Just when you thought it was safe to assume that everyone had pretty much accepted climate change and moved on, here comes rogue NBC 4 chief meteorologist Jym Ganahl to blow your freaking mind.

“Just wait 5 or 10 years, and it will be very obvious. They’ll have egg on their faces,” Ganahl said this week of global warming advocates.

The “global warming hoax” is an obvious fallacy, Ganahl said in a YouTube video posted Jan. 23.

In the video, taped at a meet-up of the Ohio Freedom Alliance, Ganahl chats with Dave, the self-proclaimed No. 1 biker talk show host on radio, and—still odder—Robert Wagner, a former candidate for the 15th congressional district.

Although global warming is clearly “a fallacy,” Ganahl told the dudes, “It is remarkable how many people are being led like sheep in the wrong direction.”

Evoking Orwellian mind-control power of the media, Ganahl said it’s remarkable how easy it is to panic the unwashed masses.

Ganahl continued to evangelize offline this week.

Sunspots—and not carbon emissions—are to blame for the slow warming of the globe, Ganahl said. “It has nothing to do with us.”

“When there are sunspots, like freckles on the sun—dark spots—these are like turning on a furnace and the earth warms. When there are no sunspots, it is like the furnace is in standby and the earth cools.

“I have always thought we should celebrate and be thankful we live in a time when it is warmer, not curse it,” Ganahl said. “It allows us to grow food and feed the population—and the warming is slow and we can adapt to it.”

Cold, on the other hand, is to blame for a whole host of worldly disasters, including death of the Aztecs, the Vikings, and who knew?— the bubonic plague.

“Instead of screaming global warming, we should be preaching global cooling,” he said.

But with a new president who apparently buys into the whole carbon emission demonizing scam, Ganahl said, “It’s very scary,” and admittedly “very difficult,” to fight the mob mentality.

Read the rest of this story at The Other Paper (Columbus, OH News & Entertainment Weekly).

By Deroy Murdock

SAN FRANCISCO — So-called “global warming” has shrunk from problem to punch line. And now, Leftists are laughing, too. It’s hard not to chuckle at the idea of Earth boiling in a carbon cauldron when the news won’t cooperate:

Nearly four inches of snow blanketed the United Arab Emirates’ Jebel Jais region for just the second time in recorded history on Jan. 24. Citizens were speechless. The local dialect has no word for snowfall.

Dutchmen on ice skates sped past windmills as canals in Holland froze in mid-January for the first time since 1997. Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop, who inhabits a renovated 17th Century windmill, stumbled on the ice and fractured his wrist.

January saw northern Minnesota’s temperatures plunge to 38 below zero, forcing ski-resort closures. A Frazee, Minnesota dog-sled race was cancelled, due to excessive snow. Snow whitened Surf City, North Carolina’s beaches. Days ago, ice glazed Florida’s citrus groves.

As Earth faces global cooling, both troglodyte right-wingers and lachrymose left-wingers find Albert Gore’s simmering-planet hypothesis increasingly hilarious:

“In terms of (global warming’s) capacity to cause the human species harm, I don’t think it makes it into the top 10,” Dr. Robert Giegengack, former chairman of University of Pennsylvania’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, told the Pennsylvania Gazette. Giegengack voted for Gore in 2000, and says he likely would again.

Commentator Harold Ambler declared Jan. 3 on HuffingtonPost.com that he voted for Barack Obama “for a thousand times a thousand reasons.” He added that Gore “owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming.” He called Gore’s assertion that “the science is in” on this issue “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of mankind.”

“Not only is it false that human activity has any significant effect on global warming or the weather in general, but for the record, global warming is over,” retired Navy meteorologist Dr. Martin Hertzberg wrote on carbon-sense.com. The physical chemist and self-described “scientist and life-long liberal Democrat” added: “The average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere has declined over the last 10 years. From the El Nino Year of 1998 until Jan. 2007, it dropped a quarter of a degree Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit). From Jan 2007 to the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping three-quarters of a degree Celsius (1.35 degrees Fahrenheit). Those data further prove that the fear-mongering hysteria about human-caused global warming is completely unjustified and is totally counterproductive to our Nation’s essential needs and security.”

“It is a tribute to the scientific ignorance of politicians and journalists that they keep regurgitating the nonsense about human-caused global warming,” veteran Left-wing commentator and Nation magazine columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote. “The greenhouse fear mongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind’s sinful contribution — and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism, and greed.”

Read the rest of this piece at Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

NY Times Environmental Reporter, Andrew Revkin

By Andrew C. Revkin 

A new poll suggests that Americans, preoccupied with the economy, are less worried about rising global temperatures than they were a year ago but remain concerned with solving the nation’s energy problems.
The findings are somewhat at odds with President Obama, who has put a high priority on staving off global warming and vowed Tuesday in his Inaugural Address to “roll back the specter of a warming planet.”

In the poll, released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, global warming came in last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. Only 30 percent of the voters deemed global warming to be “a top priority,” compared with 35 percent in 2008.

“Protecting the environment,” which had surged in the rankings from 2006 to 2008, dropped even more precipitously in the poll: only 41 percent of voters called it a top priority, compared with 56 percent last year.

In contrast, dealing with the nation’s energy problems ranked sixth in the poll — just behind education and social security — with 60 percent of voters endorsing it as a top priority.

The declining interest in global warming and other environmental issues might be unsurprising at a time when Americans face far more imminent threats to their jobs and homes. “Strengthening the nation’s economy” was the top-ranked concern of voters in the Pew poll. A relatively cool year and a harsh winter in North America and Europe have not helped, inspiring some commentators and a small cluster of scientists to make skeptical remarks about “global cooling.”

Social scientists say that environmental concerns are often the first to fall off the table when any more immediate threat surfaces. Andrew Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center, said a similar pattern was seen in the Pew poll after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when second-tier issues faded in voters’ minds.

“Concern for terrorism overshadowed all else,” Mr. Kohut said.

The public’s waning interest in global warming poses a challenge for Mr. Obama, who emphasized climate change throughout his campaign and pledged to seek a cap on emissions in the United States of heat-trapping gases, led by carbon dioxide, which come mainly from burning coal and oil. Such a cap, even if it includes various mechanisms intended to ease the cost, would by design raise the price of energy coming from those fossil fuels, which still underpin the American and the global economies.

Mr. Obama’s political foes have already seized on the cooling of public concern.

Marc Morano, the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has been sending out e-mail alerts, sometimes several a day, highlighting stories on winter weather and other surveys suggesting a shift in public attitudes.

Read the rest of this story at the New York Times.

A Cooling World

But a professor of geological sciences at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, characterized the report as telling a “rather sensational story.”

By Paul Walsh

Earth is “on the brink of entering another Ice Age” that will last for the next 100,000 years, reports the Russian Pravda Online newspaper, attempting to counter the widespread view that human activity is contributing to an unwanted and dangerous warming of the planet.

Based on a “large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science,” Pravda reports this week, “many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change” indicate that the current 12,000-year-long warming trend is coming to an end.

Pravda points to three astronomical “Milankovich cycles” for the coming cool-down:

• The tilt of the Earth, which varies over a 41,000-year period.

• The shape of the Earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years, “separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years.”

• The Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth’s “wobble,” which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years.

Read the rest of this story at Star Tribune.

Jason Lewis today, who in turn was filling in for Rush Limbaugh. Most discussion on the program centered on Global Warming. In the first hour, Sue’s guest was Chris Horner, author of Red Hot Lies. I followed to talk about GlobalClimateScam.com in the second hour and came back to discuss Minnesota Majority in the last half-hour. Listen here:

Sue Jeffers

Sue Jeffers filled in for

• Hour 1: Sue’s guest Christopher Horner discusses his new book disputing global warming.
• Hour 2: Sue continues the global warming discussion with Dan McGrath of Minnesota Majority.
• Hour 3: Sue talks about running for office with Jim Schottmueller and Dan McGrath.

Notes on the “Hockey Stick:” Global Warming Bombshell; Breaking the Hockey Stick; Documenting Global Warming Fraud; Hockey Stick a New Low in Climate Science; Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance (McIntyre / McKitrick report)

Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? – Warming Fears in ‘Dustbin of History’

POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.  Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See Full report Here: & See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ]

Full Senate Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned… 

A hint of what the upcoming report contains:    

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.   

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” –  Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology  and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”  

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.  

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.  

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico  

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA. 

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.  

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Read the rest at the United State Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.

By Victoria Guay

While a large number of people, including some scientists, believe that we are in an unprecedented period of global warming caused primarily by humans, Dr. James Koermer, a meteorology professor at Plymouth State University, would beg to differ.

During a presentation at the university on Wednesday, Koermer explained why there are a growing number scientists, such as himself, who don’t subscribe to the popular theory on global warming.

Koermer said the Earth’s climate has always changed and has experienced alternate warming and cooling trends long before the dawn of man.

Koermer said most research suggests that at the beginning of the last millennium, there was a global warming period that ended around 1600, when a significant cooling trend — which he called a mini ice age — lasted for approximately 100 years.

The most recent global warming trend picked up during the 1700s, which coincides with the start of the Industrial Age, Koermer said.

Going back millions of years, some research suggests the Earth has had much more extreme climate changes than are occurring today.

“Over millions of years there have been periods when we have been hotter than we are today,” Koermer said.

He added that while humans do have an impact on the climate, it is minimal compared to natural phenomena. He also said that humans are not the biggest producers of carbon dioxide and that the gas is not the most abundant green house gas in the atmosphere. That title goes to water vapor, which is produced by the world’s oceans.

Koermer said that water vapor is responsible for 95 percent of the green house gas effect in a given year while another 4.72 percent is caused by a mix of other greenhouse gases, including methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, which are naturally produced.

Humans are only responsible for .28 percent of all greenhouse gases produced during a year, he said.

Koermer said just because he doesn’t think man-made carbon dioxide is contributing significantly to climate change, it does not mean he is opposed to the increased use of renewable fuel sources. He said that fossil fuels are a limited resource, so finding alternatives is necessary.

Koermer said scientists are not yet sure what has caused climate change in the past, but factors may include shifts in the Earth’s axis as well as changes in the orbit of the Earth around the sun. Over time, Koermer said, the Earth’s yearly path around the Sun changes from circular to more elliptical before changing back.

Sunspots and solar flares may also effect the Earth’s climate. Koermer said solar flares and spots seem to increase and decrease on an 11-year cycle. He noted that there was a marked decrease in solar flares during the mini ice age of the 1600s.

Read the rest of this story at The Citizen.

By Barry Brown 

Canadian researchers studying the Arctic´s ancient permafrost have discovered 700,000-year-old ice wedges buried in the soil that have survived earlier periods of global warming, adding complexity to predictions about the impact of contemporary climate change. Duane Froese, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at the University of Alberta, found what he describes as “the oldest ice in North America” in the Klondike region of Canada’s Yukon Territory about 10 feet below the surface.

Because these ice wedges were found under a layer of volcanic ash, researchers from the University of Toronto and the Geological Survey of Canada were able to use a technique known as “fission track dating” of the ash to date it at roughly 700,000 years old.

This means the ice was older than the ash and older than the previous record holder – 120,000-year-old ice wedges found in Alaska.

“The fact that this ice survived the interglacials about 120,000 and 400,000 years ago, which we think were warmer than present, really illustrates how stubborn permafrost can be in the face of climate warming,” Mr. Froese said.

Read the rest of this story at Washington Times.

Despite the message favoured by environmental campaigners, temperatures in this decade have not been worse than expected 

By Björn Lomborg  

Have you noticed how environmental campaigners almost inevitably say that not only is global warming happening and bad, but also that what we are seeing is even worse than expected?

This is odd, because any reasonable understanding of how science proceeds would expect that, as we refine our knowledge, we find that things are sometimes worse and sometimes better than we expected, and that the most likely distribution would be about 50-50. Environmental campaigners, however, almost invariably see it as 100-0.

If we are regularly being surprised in just one direction, if our models get blindsided by an ever-worsening reality, that does not bode well for our scientific approach. Indeed, one can argue that if the models constantly get something wrong, it is probably because the models are wrong. And if we cannot trust our models, we cannot know what policy action to take if we want to make a difference.

Yet, if new facts constantly show us that the consequences of climate change are getting worse and worse, high-minded arguments about the scientific method might not carry much weight. Certainly, this seems to be the prevailing bet in the spin on global warming. It is, again, worse than we thought, and, despite our failing models, we will gamble on knowing just what to do: cut CO2 emissions dramatically.

But it is simply not correct that climate data are systematically worse than expected; in many respects, they are spot on, or even better than expected. That we hear otherwise is an indication of the media’s addiction to worst-case stories, but that makes a poor foundation for smart policies.

The most obvious point about global warming is that the planet is heating up. It has warmed about 1C (1.8F) over the past century, and is predicted by the United Nations’ climate panel (IPCC) to warm between 1.6-3.8C (2.9-6.8F) during this century, mainly owing to increased CO2. An average of all 38 available standard runs from the IPCC shows that models expect a temperature increase in this decade of about 0.2C.

But this is not at all what we have seen. And this is true for all surface temperature measures, and even more so for both satellite measures. Temperatures in this decade have not been worse than expected; in fact, they have not even been increasing. They have actually decreased by between 0.01 and 0.1C per decade. On the most important indicator of global warming, temperature development, we ought to hear that the data are actually much better than expected.

Likewise, and arguably much more importantly, the heat content of the world’s oceans has been dropping for the past four years where we have measurements. Whereas energy in terms of temperature can disappear relatively easily from the light atmosphere, it is unclear where the heat from global warming should have gone – and certainly this is again much better than expected.

We hear constantly about how the Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than expected, and this is true. But most serious scientists also allow that global warming is only part of the explanation. Another part is that the so-called Arctic oscillation of wind patterns over the Arctic Ocean is now in a state that it does not allow build-up of old ice, but immediately flushes most ice into the North Atlantic.

More importantly, we rarely hear that the Antarctic sea ice is not only not declining, but is above average for the past year. IPCC models would expect declining sea ice in both hemispheres but, whereas the Arctic is doing worse than expected, Antarctica is doing better.

Ironically, the Associated Press, along with many other news outlets, told us in 2007 that the “Arctic is screaming,” and that the Northwest Passage was open “for the first time in recorded history.” Yet the BBC reported in 2000 that the fabled Northwest Passage was already without ice.

We are constantly inundated with stories of how sea levels will rise, and how one study after another finds that it will be much worse than what the IPCC predicts. But most models find results within the IPCC range of a sea-level increase of 18-59cm (7-23in) this century. This is of course why the thousands of IPCC scientists projected that range. Yet studies claiming one metre or more obviously make for better headlines.

Since 1992, we have had satellites measuring the rise in global sea levels, and they have shown a stable increase of 3.2mm per year (1/8 of an inch) – spot on compared to the IPCC projection. Moreover, over the last two years, sea levels have not increased at all – actually, they show a slight drop. Should we not be told that this is much better than expected?

Read the rest of this article at the UK’s Guardian.

By Andrew Bolt 

Global warming believers told us this year to look at the Arctic – and heed the awesome lesson.

And, boy, were they right.

In fact, Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull especially should check it out, from the North Pole to Canada, which went to the polls last week.

Of course, the reason the religious told us to look north was that they were sure a warming world had reached a deadly “tipping point”.

Last year’s summer melt had been so fierce that climate scientists warned that the warmed seas gave us a 50-50 chance of an ice-free Arctic this summer.

“It’s hard to see how the system may bounce back,” fretted Washington University’s Ignatius Rigor.

Countless headlines around the world blared this latest “proof ” of global warming (which, sshhh, actually halted in 1998). The ABC and Fairfax flew reporter Marian Wilkinson up to file scary reports from an ice-breaker, declaring: “Here you can see climate change happening before your eyes.”

Eco-explorer Lewis Gordon Pugh even announced he’d paddle a kayak all the way to the Pole to draw attention to this terrifying loss of ice.

But, oops. Pugh actually had to quit paddling when he found 1000km more ice in front of him than he’d expected.

Indeed, there was at least 9 per cent more Artic ice this summer than last, and the refreeze so far this autumn is so extraordinary there’s a third more ice than there was this time a year ago.

Canadians have sure felt this cold, too, enduring a miserable summer.

Perhaps it was this growing mismatch between the heat the alarmists predict and the cool we actually feel that explains the mood of Canadians on election day. Or maybe the financial crash made people suddenly leery about grandiose green promise that costs money and jobs.

Whatever, voters last week gave the Left-wing Liberal Party its worst hiding in a century, returning the Conservative Party of Stephen Harper.

Read the rest of this story at Herald Sun.

By Lorne Gunter 

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to “a negative PDO” or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs — El Ninos — produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones — La Ninas — produce below average ones.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as “solar minimums” magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded — none — and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. “This is no coincidence,” he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.

Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather — even harvest totals and censuses –confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers’ claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented — a result of human, not natural factors — the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann’s “hockey stick,” in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.

Dr. Loehle’s work helps end this deception.

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, “It’s practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling,” as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an “almost exact correlation” between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost “no correlation at all with CO2.”

An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, “Man-made global warming is junk science,” explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year “equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration … This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun’s radiation. This is an insignificantly small number.”

Read the rest of this article at National Post.

High snowfall and cold weather to blame.

By Michael Asher

A bitterly cold Alaskan summer has had surprising results. For the first time in the area’s recorded history, area glaciers have begun to expand, rather than shrink. Summer temperatures, which were some 3 degrees below average, allowed record levels of winter snow to remain much longer, leading to the increase in glacial mass.“In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound”, said glaciologist Bruce Molnia. “In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years”.

“On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface [in] late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying [did] not become snow free until early August.”

Molnia, who works for the US Geological Survey, said it’s been a “long time” since area glaciers have seen a positive mass balance — an increase in the total amount of ice they contain.

Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months.

Those records date from the mid 1700s, when the region was first visited by Russian explorers.  Molnia estimates that Alaskan glaciers have lost about 15% of their total area since that time — an area the size of Connecticut.

Read the rest of this story at Daily Tech.

From Utah’s Daily Herald 

A week ago Utah joined in announcing a plan to fight global warming — but the real danger lies in cooling: the cooling of the world’s climate, and the chilly outlook for the state’s economy.

The Western Climate Initiative has trumpeted a cap-and-trade system to cut carbon emissions and thus fight “greenhouse gasses.” Joining the Beehive State in the proposal are six other Western states and four Canadian provinces.In cap-and-trade programs, businesses are allowed to pump out certain levels of substances such as carbon dioxide and methane. If emissions exceed statutory levels, the businesses have to pay the government. If they are under that level, they can trade those credits to other enterprises.

Utah would have to pass legislation to implement these ideas. But they couldn’t have been announced at a worse time.

The news indicates that, if anything, our planet is growing not hotter but colder. Recently, NASA’s Ulysses project reported that the intensity of the sun’s solar wind — a flow of charged particles — is at its lowest point of the Space Age. This adds to the mounting evidence that the Sun’s activity is decreasing, and could signal the start of an era of cold weather, as in the Little Ice Age from the mid-16th century to the middle of the 19th century.

Four major agencies that keep track of the Earth’s temperature agree that the Earth cooled 0.7 degrees Celsius in 2007, the biggest such dip on record. In short, as Utah and other states panic over global warming, global cooling may be the bigger threat.

The real danger posed by the notion of global warming is that it will put the economy into a deep freeze. Utah’s own experts already predict a sluggish economy, at best, through 2009. The Legislature has just finished slashing $270 million from the state’s budget. Meanwhile, the “meltdown” in the credit markets has Washington scrambling for answers. This is the worst time in the past half-dozen years to place added strains on the state’s economy.

Read the rest of this piece at the Daily Herald.