By Jim Hopkins

About a year ago, almost to the day, in this column, you may recall a bold prediction, fearlessly made. But lest you don’t, which is highly likely, since most of us wouldn’t remember a Higgs bison if we saw one in a game park, here it is again, much as it appeared 12 months ago:

If you’re worried about all the things you have to worry about, cheer up. Here’s one thing you won’t have to worry about any more. Global warming (remember, this was a prediction) will be the Great Disappearing Act of 2011. It will sink like a stone, exit stage left and generally melt away. Whoopee!

Inspired by the sneaky leaking of all those dodgy East Anglian emails – proof positive of scientific fraud, collusion and deceit – the prediction relied on one basic assumption.

Journalists never admit they’re wrong (see phone hacking). They just stop being wrong. When caught with their sceptical pants down and the spotty globes of their credulity exposed, they simply drop the story and move to something else.

Which is precisely what’s happened. Global warming has left the building.

Where once there were hundreds of horror stories, a daily dose of frightening features, a nightly stack of belching chimneys on the telly (mainly belching steam, in truth, but they still looked really scary) we’ve now got, well, (nervous cough, awkward shuffle) ummm, sweet Fanny Adams, to be frank. There has been a trickle of terror but, by and large, the whole calamitous narrative is a goneburger.

The end isn’t nigh (or nowhere near as nigh as it was). Doomsday’s stuck in the waiting room, reading an old copy of National Geographic and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are back in the barracks.

Read the rest at the New Zealand Herald.

By Jo Nova

Good news. The talented strategists left the UNFCCC team before COP17 in Durban. The A-graders saw the trainwreck coming and moved on.

Everyone knows it’s a herculean task to get 190-odd countries to sign anything, and with a typical pragmatical approach the UN drafting team have gone for … not just a new “International Court” (crikey!) but rights for Mother Earth (can we be sued by a rock?), and oh boy, the holy grail, the whole kit and caboodle … we demand Peace On Earth, and a  Partridge in a Pear Tree, as Part 47a, and starting by morning tea tomorrow.

Monckton  reports that the funereal collapsing Durban talks still held the highest of ambitions. Godlike even. The real action behind the posters of parrots and pleas to save pygmy corals, or spotted limpets is the plea to make some unelected bureaucrats the totalitarian Kings of The World.

In part it’s chilling, a New International Court — which could presumably try you for crimes against coastlines, clouds, or (more likely) against endangered windfarms. Those with their hands on the legal wheel want the power to direct money (was that $1.6 Trillion?)  from the richest nations to their friends, patrons, or pet causes. If they became the anointed Kings, it would swiftly become a crime to speak doubts of climate models upon which billions of trades depends.  The darkest evil always comes cloaked with helpful intentions.

Fortunately, what’s left of the UN strategic team is even lower caliber than B-grade, beyond Z, somewhere into hexadecimal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the grown-ups in the IPCC-support-team left the party sometime after Copenhagen, and the Z++ team are left to guard the bones. No one can take this wild ambit claim seriously.

Read the rest at JoNova.

From the Blaze

On Tuesday, a skydiving team from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) parachuted down on Toti beach, near the city where the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is taking place.

The skydivers carried two signs, one reading “Climategate 2.0 Science Not Settled”, the other “No New Treaty CFACT”. According to a CFACT press release, the dramatic entrance into Durban, South Africa, was to bring attention again to the Climategate 2.0 emails, which were leaked last month.

“Media covering COP17 are kidding themselves if they think they can ignore and wish away Climategate 2.0,” said CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker in the press release.  “Lord Monckton, the folks from Climate Depot and I will carry our message by parachute if that’s what it takes to wake up this conference and place the Climategate evidence of corrupted science where the world must see it.”

Read the rest at The Blaze.

Climate Depot’s Report from Durban, South Africa UN Global Warming Conference – UN Goes Full Climate Astrology

By Marc Morano

DURBAN, South Africa – The South African media and government leaders are borrowing a page from medieval witchcraft when it comes to the science of man-made global warming.

South African President Jacob Zuma literally believes that mankind has caused every storm and that regulatory actions of the UN can prevent bad weather.

“We have experienced unusual and severe flooding in coastal areas in recent times, impacting on people directly as they lose their homes, jobs and livelihoods. Given the urgency, states, parties should strive to find solutions here in Durban,” Zuma said according to an article in the South Africa’s Independent newspaper on December 4.

Make no mistake, President Zuma is claiming that the UN can somehow “find solutions” to flooding in South Africa. The belief that mankind can control the weather is not new. See: ‘Witches,Warlocks and Weather’: ‘In medieval times superstition blamed witches for weather disasters and crop failures…lower temps caused a statistical increase in witch trials’ — Medieval Pope’s version of today’s UN IPCC report: ‘Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that, just as easily as they (witches) raise hailstorms, so can they cause lightning and storms at sea; and so no doubt at all remains on these points’
The Aztecs in 1450, also thought they could end drought by appeasing angry Gods and slaughtering thousands of people. See: Have we advanced? ‘Aztec priests encouraged people to sacrifice blood to the gods’ to end severe drought in 1450 – ‘Sacrificed thousands of people in a few weeks’

Read the rest at Climate Depot.

• 5,000 leaked emails reveal scientists deleted evidence that cast doubt on claims climate change was man-made
  Experts were under orders from US and UK officials to come up with a ‘strong message’
• Critics claim: ‘The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering’
• Scientist asks, ‘What if they find that climate change is a natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us all’

By Rob Waugh

More than 5,000 documents have been leaked online purporting to be the correspondence of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia who were previously accused of ‘massaging’ evidence of man-made climate change.

Following on from the original ‘climategate’ emails of 2009, the new package appears to show systematic suppression of evidence, and even publication of reports that scientists knew to to be based on flawed approaches.

And not only do the emails paint a picture of scientists manipulating data, government employees at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are also implicated.

One message appeared to show a member of Defra staff telling colleagues working on climate science to give the government a ‘strong message.’

The emails paint a clear picture of scientists selectively using data, and colluding with politicians to misuse scientific information.

‘Humphrey’, said to work at Defra, writes: “I cannot overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the government can give on climate change to help them tell their story.”

Read the rest at the Daily Mail.

By Cory Kampschroer

A small group of demonstrators was on hand in Minneapolis today for the arrival of a global warming author and speaker. Dr. Michael Mann spoke Wednesday at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Mann is a physicist and climatologist and is best known as one of the originators of a graph of temperature trends in the past one-thousand years, known as the ‘hockey stick graph.’

Members of the organization, Minnesota Majority, protested Mann’s Minneapolis speech calling it “fraudulent.” Dan McGrath was among the roughly 10 people protesting, calling Mann “among the most guilty parties in what we call the global warming scam.”

Read the rest at KSTP.

Creator of discredited “hockey stick” chart caused US, world much harm, say demonstrators

Dr. Michael Mann was welcomed to Minneapolis today by a group of demonstrators who blame Dr. Mann’s research and publications for damage to the US and world economies and fostering distrust in scientists. The demonstrators believe Mann’s oft-referenced work to prove anthropogenic global warming theory is fraudulent and showed up at the Minneapolis convention center where he was speaking at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America to tell him so.

Mann was made infamous by discredited tree ring research used to create the so-called “hockey stick chart” that purported to demonstrate recent, runaway man-caused global warming. His name came up in the “climategate” email scandal that emerged out of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, in connection to a “trick” employed by Dr. Mann for a paper published in Nature Magazine. That trick involved obfuscating the results of proxy temperature data when it didn’t match actual temperatures recorded by instrumentation. Discovery of that trick called into question the validity of the entire pre-instrumentation climate history constructed from Mann’s work.

The hockey stick chart was the key element in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and the United Nations’ 1997 Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change’s 4th Assessment. The IPCC report has been the underpinning of United States and global warming policy for over a decade. Based upon it’s conclusions, governments have implemented expensive carbon taxes and new overbearing regulations designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, cap and trade schemes, a phased-in ban on incandescent light bulbs, the forced relocation of whole populations of people to make room for carbon credit producing plantations and numerous other far reaching and expensive initiatives.

“There are several reasons for the current economic crisis we’re facing in the United States and globally, but a major contributor has been the suppression of energy production and economic activity by overbearing new regulations, taxes and carbon trading resulting from the misguided belief that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are causing extraordinary warming of the planet,” said Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis. “We feel Dr. Mann’s work has contributed to tremendous economic and societal harm,” he said.

“Where did the medieval warming period go? What decline did he hide? What’s the Nature trick?” are the questions Minnesota Free Market Institute president Kim Crockett wants answers to.

Mann wasn’t available with answers.

Instead, Dr. Mann ironically spoke to the Geologic Society about how some climate scientists in the public arena are “attacked” by their opponents and about how climate scientists are “massively out-manned and out-funded in this battle.”

“His ‘poor me’ routine would be laughable in the face of the trillions of public dollars being poured into the green global warming toilet, if it weren’t for the part about trillions of public dollars being poured into the toilet,” said Davis. “These demonstrators aren’t being paid. In truth, they’re paying people like Mann and they’re turning our tax dollars against us, trying to get even more of our money.”

Dr. Michael Mann seeks the help of other Climategate players to prevent access to his University of Virginia emails.

By Paul Chesser

Dr. Michael Mann, who under a lesser title at University of Virginia created the famed “hockey stick” chart of 20th-century temperature escalations while leveling the Medieval Warm Period, has enlisted a Climategate Cavalcade of Stars to help him enter as an interested party in a lawsuit in which my organization, American Tradition Institute, seeks to get his old UVA emails and data.

Early this month Mann, who is now at Pennsylvania State University, had his lawyers ask for permission to intervene in ATI’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against UVA. Our request seeks correspondence between Mann and 30-plus other global warming activist scientists who form much of the cabal that created the various predictive reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The university, buttressed by the urgings of groups including ACLU, People for the American Way, Union of Concerned Scientists, and American Association of University Professors, is withholding the meaningful documents ATI seeks. Mann himself said the few thousand documents UVA turned over so far were, more or less, meaningless “boilerplate.” ATI lawyers David Schnare and Chris Horner (also an AmSpec contributor), under a court-order, will be allowed to identify some of the remaining emails the university believes should be kept from public view so as to reduce the number the judge will have to examine, and then ATI and UVA will argue which ones should be disclosed in a court hearing this fall. Dr. Schnare and Mr. Horner are under clear orders that whatever they see they must forever keep confidential unless the court later orders those emails released.

In his attempt to intervene, Mann has called upon friends in academe to bolster his claim that, despite using a taxpayer-funded email system at UVA, that he has the right to prevent the public from seeing what he says are “private” emails. The concept that government-owned, or “public,” does not mean “private” is inconceivable to him (see Exhibit 2, here).

Read the rest at the American Spectator.

By James M. Taylor

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

Read the rest at Forbes.

By Rosalind S. Helderman

The University of Virginia and a conservative advocacy group have agreed the university will turn over documents in response to a public information request by the group seeking documents related to the work of a former university climate scientist.

U-Va. will comply with the request by Aug. 22.

The American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center, along with Del. Bob Marshall (R-Prince William), want e-mails and other documents related to the work of global warming researcher Michael Mann.

The university has said the group requested about 9,000 pages of records, and the organization says about 20 percent have been turned over so far.

But the group believes the university has been dragging its feet in producing the records. The university has said it is working as quickly as possible to sift through thousands of pages of records to figure out which should be released.

In an agreement filed in Prince William Circuit Court on Tuesday, the university agreed it will turn over all records, in electronic form, within 90 days–or Aug. 22.

Read the rest at the Washington Post.

Snowmobile on Roof

By James Taylor

Sitting in on a March 1 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) press conference regarding global warming and heavy snowfalls, I couldn’t help feeling like the chairman of the Senate committee questioning mafia capo Frank Pentangeli in Godfather II. The chairman, listening incredulously as Pentangeli contradicts a sworn written statement he had earlier given to the committee, waves the written statement in the air and protests, “We have a sworn affidavit – we have it – your sworn affidavit…. Do you deny that confession, and do you realize what will happen as a result of your denial?”The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report was as straightforward as Frank Pentangeli’s earlier confession that he had killed on behalf of Michael Corleone. “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms,” IPCC reported.

That was in 2001. Now, however, with an unprecedented number of major winter snowstorms hitting the northeastern U.S. during the past two winters, the alarmists are clamming up and changing their tune faster than Tom Hagen can fly in Vincenzo Pentangeli from Italy to aid his brother in his time of trouble.

Read the rest at Forbes.

By Larry Bell

I’ve encountered some folks who appear offended by the title of my new book Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax. Why do you call it a “hoax”? they ask. Why not refer to the matter as a debate? The reason is quite simple: A debate describes a discussion in which participants competitively argue opposing points of view that are assumed to be based upon honest positions.

A hoax is a deceptive act intended to hoodwink people through deliberate misinformation, including factual omissions. My book is about the latter (and by the way, it can be ordered through primary vendors, and is currently being featured on “new releases” tables at 200 major Barnes and Noble Stores).

The central lie is that we are experiencing a known human-caused climate crisis, a claim based on speculative theories, contrived data and totally unproven modeling predictions. And the evidence? Much is revealed by politically corrupted processes and agenda-driven report conclusions rendered by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are trumpeted in the media as authoritative gospel.

S. Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and University of Virginia professor emeritus commented about these sorry circumstances in the foreword of my book, stating in part:

“Many would place the beginning of the global warming hoax on the Senate testimony delivered by James Hansen of NASA [director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies] during the summer of 1988. More than anything else, this exhibition of hyped alarm triggered my active skepticism about the man-made global warming scare. This skepticism was amplified when I acted as reviewer of the first three IPCC reports, in 1990, 1996, and 2001. Increasingly claims were made for which there was no evidence; in some cases the ‘evidence’ was clearly manufactured. For example, the 1966 report used selective data and doctored graphs. It also featured changes in the text that were made after the scientists had approved it and before it was printed.”

Other fraud is evident through public exposure of e-mail files retrieved from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at Britain’s University of East Anglia. Scandalous exchanges among prominent researchers who have fomented global warming hysteria confirm long-standing and broadly suspected manipulations of climate data. The communications also reveal conspiracies to falsify and withhold information, to suppress contrary findings in scholarly publications, and to exaggerate the existence and threats of man-made global warming. Many of these individuals have had major influence over summary report findings issued by the IPCC. Still other evidence comes from mouths of government officials, international climate summit organizers and leading science spokespeople recorded in candid public admissions.

Read the rest at Forbes.

By Phyllis Schlafly

The global warming prophets and propagandists, who enjoy living in style on other people’s money, gathered last month in the plush resort of Cancun, Mexico, where January temperatures usually hover around 80 degrees. God must have a sense of humor because Cancun was hit by its coldest temperature in a hundred years.The first day of the conference featured an address from Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, who spoke with much concern about global warming and the damage that humans are perpetrating on the planet.

He cited the deaths of 60 people in Mexico because of weather extremes, but didn’t mention Mexico’s 22,000 deaths caused by the illegal drug trade.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that “we need to fundamentally transform the global economy, based on low-carbon, clean-energy resources.” Barack Obama’s announced goal of fundamentally transforming the United States has morphed into transforming the world.

This 16th annual conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), called COP 16 (Conference of the Parties 16), attracted some 20,000 delegates from 194 countries.

It had little to do with any science about climate change and everything to do with trying to get the United States and other industrialized nations to redistribute their wealth to the poorer nations under the supervision of eager United Nations bureaucrats.

Read the rest of this editorial at Investors Business Daily.