CONTIGUOUS UNITED STATES

Climate Summary

December 2009

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html

There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.

The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

Mr Gore is not the only titan of the world stage finding Copenhagen to be a tricky deal.

World leaders — with Gordon Brown arriving tonight in the vanguard — are facing the humiliating prospect of having little of substance to sign on Friday, when they are supposed to be clinching an historic deal.

Meanwhile, five hours of negotiating time were lost yesterday when developing countries walked out in protest over the lack of progress on their demand for legally binding emissions targets from rich nations. The move underlined the distrust between rich and poor countries over the proposed legal framework for the deal.

For the rest of this story please go here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

Face Forward Comments:

Have you asked yourself, “if the earth has been warming since the industrial age began, and the ice around the north and south poles have been melting, where’s the water?”  We always hear about New Orleans but that really should be an example of how little additional water there is.  New Orleans was built at or just under sea level and kept afloat by the silt bought  down by he Mississippi river.  New Orlean’s problem is that it’s sinking not that it is being covered by global warming’s waters.  And what about Venice or Holland…..  Last time I checked they were still there.

Climatgate debate erupts in angry words and slurs

One day after reports that Britain’s Met office intends to reexamine 160 years’ worth of temperature data, emotions over what’s now being dubbed “Climategate” are getting more raw by the day.

During a live television faceoff hosted by the BBC, Marc Morano, a former communications director of the U.S. Senate Environment Committee and now an editor with the Web site Climate Depot squared off against Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. It didn’t take long before the two got in each other’s face and Watson became increasingly annoyed with Morano’s loud interruptions. He finally lost it by the end when the anchor thanked the participants.

“What an asshole,” Watson said.

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/05/blogs/coopscorner/entry5905404.shtml

The Fiction Of Climate Science: 1975 the coming Ice Age

Gary Sutton

Why the climatologists get it wrong.

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed “the coming ice age.”

Random House dutifully printed “THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age.” This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported “many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age.”

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: “During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/03/climate-science-gore-intelligent-technology-sutton.html

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”

Q&A: the thinking person’s guide Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

Please go here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html

Former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the venture capital firm where Mr. Gore is a partner.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore’s firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses.

Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

For the rest of the article please go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html

Face Forward Comments:

Remember how you felt when you found out that a television evangelist with a great following got caught bilking the his followers of millions of dollars? That is how the nation should be feeling right now over AL Gore but no one is saying anything. It is well documented how much carbon his home estate and private jet fleet cost (in carbon dollars) to operate, but no one in his church cares.

 It is really not to far of a stretch to see “Global Warming” as a religion and Al Gore thinking of himself as a pope. Not just a pope in the modern sense but a pope with medieval, pre-reformation papal powers. Remember the Spanish Inquisition? Here is a little something to brighten your day from a classic Monty Python.

I view Al and his church to be just as false as these so called church officials in the Monty Python skit. The difference is that Al is back by governments that see this as a huge opportunity to tax business, by organizations like moveon.org to get even the American Middle Class and folks looking for redistribution of wealth on an international basis. Their cry is, “down with Western Europeans they have had it too good for too long”.

 The problem with Al’s new church Instead of taking up an offering from willing givers, this church is looking for the power to take your money. And this time the inquisition won’t be led by Terry Jones of Monty Python.