Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has begun an investigation into whether Michael Mann manipulated data to show a rapid acceleration in global warming and Virginia Democrats are out to stop him.

Democratic Sens. Donald McEachin of Henrico and Chap Petersen of Fairfax County say their bills won’t give blanket immunity to colleges to defraud the state, but they would curb politically motivated probes.

Whether it’s a mindless shooting or climate change, Democrats never let a crisis go to waste.

Note that Democrats assert the investigation to be “politically motivated.” Does anyone imagine the climate change machine is something other than politically motivated?

And its no wonder they don’t want anyone peering behind the curtain. A report claiming that the Earth would see a huge increase in temperature over the next decade leading to massive food shortages was found to be terribly flawed. It’s called “an honest mistake.”

But that didn’t stop Scientific American from trumpeting it in big bold type.

Oops.

We have heard recently from the Goracle about the floods in Australia:

“As the earth warms, scientists tell us that we will see more and more extreme weather conditions. Each of these occurrences further underscore why we need to take immediate action to solve the climate crisis,” Gore wrote on his website Tuesday.

It wasn’t that long ago that the droughts alone in Australia were caused by global warming. Read the article carefully. Note that the word “flood” does not appear, but this does:

“This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.”

Because it fits the model.

Their model.

Droughts are nothing new to Australia.

“From June until the present time so little rain has fallen that most of the runs of water in the different parts of the harbour have been dried up for several months, and the run which supplies this settlement is greatly reduced, but still sufficient for all culinary purposes… I do not think it probable that so dry a season often occurs. Our crops of corn have suffered greatly from the dry weather.”

That was written in 1791

Neither are Australian floods new.

See this prediction from 2007:

”It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,” said the bureau’s Bertrand Timbal.

”In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.”

Mr.Timbal’s prognostication didn’t pan out so well. Once again- note that he said nothing of floods.

Australia’s state of Queensland finds itself facing what one official described as flooding of ‘biblical proportions.’ Dozens of towns have been submerged as rivers overran their banks from heavy rains and claimed at least eight lives in the process.

But today, both floods and droughts are caused by global warming.

Because it fits the new model. The new, better model.

Remember this classic from 2000?

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

See anything in that article about cold and snow in the future- other than it won’t be there?

Nope. Remember that.

And the esteemed Hadley Centre?

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually “feel” virtual cold.

Children in Britain have just gotten a crash course in snow and cold.

Last month was the chilliest December in 100 years and one of the coldest months ever recorded in the UK, the Met Office said today.

The Met Office also said that December both “cold and snowy” and “dry and sunny.”

In between the snow storms, presumably.

And now we are told that global warming causes both more snow and less snow, at least in New York City.

The critical point of argument here is that in past warming predictions did not include more flooding along with droughts. Warming predictions did not include more snow and more bitterly cold winters along with less snow and warmer temperatures. Why not? Why are we hearing about this only now?

But now weather matters. Because it fits the model.

The one they just made up.

If it fits, it’s climate change. If it doesn’t fit, it’s weather.

A cynical person might suggest that they’re full of crap.

NASA finally mentions the Maunder Minimum in its discussion of the current prolonged solar minimum, but it STILL does not mention that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the onset of the Little Ice Age, or that the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800′s was also cold, as was the unnamed fin-de-the-1800′s minimum.

Thar she blows, the Maunder Minimum of sunspot activity:

As it has done for two years now, NASA is predicting that solar cycle 24 will ramp up tomorrow. Should that broken-clock prediction hits its hour, then NASA is also predicting that solar cycle 24 will have the modest amplitude of the 1928 cycle, indicated by the red arrow.

A look at the temperature record shows the correspondence between solar activity and temperature:

Maunder Minimum cold; Dalton minimum (just before the red thermometer-based line starts) cold; unnamed end-of-1800′s minimum (first dip in red line) cold; “grand maximum” solar activity between 1920 and 2000 warm.

NASA is acutely aware of this correspondence, but is keeping John Q Public in the dark. Now that the sun has gone quiet again, the climate is cooling again, but you will never hear it from James Hansen’s underlings at NASA:

CO2 keeps going up, but temperatures are going down. NASA frowns and scratches.

Gee you tax-payer supported SOLAR SCIENTISTS, busy gaping at “the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” if temperature is not being driven by CO2, what possibly COULD have created warming since 1910 and cooling since 2000?

Deluded people all over the world actually think the planet is still warming

This week’s sky-falling headline, courtesy of the UK Times:

Climate change is already killing 300,000 people a year in a “silent crisis” that is seriously affecting hundreds of millions more, an influential humanitarian group warned today. … The report claims that 90 per cent of the deaths are related to gradual environmental degradation caused by a warming climate.

Whatever those supposed deaths might be attributable to, they cannot be attributed to a warming climate, because THE CLIMATE IS NOT WARMING. It is cooling. Just look at any of the major temperature records:

You’d think that the Times could bother to check with England’s own climate office for something as basic as the temperature record, but the problem isn’t JUST the press. Like NASA, the Hadley Centre tries to keep the most basic climate-science facts from the public. When temperatures were rising, Hadley cried the global warming threat from the rooftops. Now that the planet is cooling, they are doing their best to cover it up. Here is Hadley’s current statement:

The year 2008 was tenth warmest on record, exceeded by 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2001, 2007 and 1997

They are actually describing a jaggedly descending temperature, but with no mention of the cooling that is occurring. All they say is how warm it still is.

Even those who see themselves as trying to take the reasoned middle ground are misled about the most basic facts. A recent Popular Science editorial claimed that:

…few if any doubt any longer that the warming itself is occurring, given the worldwide rise in surface temperature…

HADcrut3 is a surface temperature record. Can PopSci name a single warming skeptic who is ignorant enough think that this record shows that “warming itself is occurring” when it very clearly shows the opposite?

Presumably they mean to refer to the fact that pretty much everybody now acknowledges that there does seem to have been a small amount of warming between the late 70′s and 2000, topped off by the El Nino spike of 1998. It did indeed take a while for many skeptics to acknowledge this small amount of warming, for the simple reason that it was not evident in satellite readings (as can be seen in the above graphic with the gray background), while the surface temperature records were known to be tainted with an upward temperature bias, thanks to growing “urban heat island” effects.

Pre-98, the alarmists were also not yet sure that temperatures were actually rising. Their theory was that CO2 should cause temperatures to rise, and they were watching like hawks for a clear warming signal that they could take as evidence that this theory was right, but it took them a while to get it. In the mid 90′s, even the most radical alarmists, like NASA’s James Hansen, were only talking about whether or not this predicted signal had been seen yet or not.

They even worked it out so they could claim to see CO2-caused warming in the absence of rising temperatures. Aerosols from coal burning are seen as having a cooling effect, so in the absence of CO2 warming effects, cooling would be expected. Thus so long as temperature readings were not actually showing global cooling, Hansen et. al. could claim that human release of CO2 was having a measurable warming effect. (See for instance, the 1995 IPCC report, summary of the science, p. 22, subhead 4: “The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate.)

With the El Nino spike, it became clear that some warming had occurred. But that was the temperature peak. Since then the surface records and the satellite records all show cooling. Thus the alarmists got essentially one data point that can be taken as supportive of their theory: the very late 90’s did show a clear warming signal. Unfortunately for them, the CO2 theory has no explanation for the rest of the temperature record.

There was no significant human production of CO2 before WWII, so the CO2 theory has no explanation for planetary warming from the Little Ice Age to the 1930s (covering about .8° of the 1°C temperature rise between the Little Ice Age and today). In contrast, the theory that solar-magnetic activity drives climate fits this emergence from Little Ice Age very well: goodbye Maunder Minimum, with hiccups at the Dalton Minimum and the fin-de-1800′s minimum.

Ditto for the post-2000 cooling: it does not fit the CO2 theory at all, but fits perfectly with the theory that climate is driven by solar activity.

The Cap and Trade Global Warming Legislation before the Senate needs to die a swift and ugly death. Just for openers . . .

This is the legislation that would increase the Federal gasoline tax from its current 18.2 cents a gallon to 53 cents by 2030.

So in their arrogant attempt to keep the temperature of the EARTH where it is right now, an impossibility, they start by charging you more money for your gas.

But Cap-and-Trade is also an economy-killing boondoggle. Some details from The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of the bill.

Imagine this nightmare economic scenario playing out over the next two decades:

• $1.7 to $4.8 trillion-cumulative losses to economic output by 2030.
• $155 billion to $500 billion-potential single-year losses to economic output.
• 500,000 to 1,000,000-annual job losses before 2030.
• $100 billion-cost of new government permits mandated for energy users by 2020. This could exceed $300 billion by 2030.
• $467-average additional cost per household each year for natural gas and electricity. That means that the average household will spend an additional $8,870 to purchase household energy over the period 2012 through 2030.

Francis Cianfrocca a/k/a blackhedd at RedState succinctly explains what is it.

In brief, the idea behind cap-and-trade is to strictly limit, by law, the total amount of greenhouse gases that may be emitted as a result of business operations in the US. The amount would scale each year, with the final target in 2050 for emissions to be 65% lower than they were in 2005.

So how the heck do you do that? You can’t just go around and negotiate a legally-binding target with every business in America. So cap-and-trade issues “permits” that are like chits allowing you to emit so much and no more. And you can sell the permits to other companies, if you have more than you need.

This is why the initiative is called “market-driven” by its supporters.

Rather than try to comply with the requirements of these anti-capitalist regulations, companies will simply use it as one more reason to go overseas. It is a job killer.

[R]elatively-high taxes on business profits, exports and capital gains make the US less globally competitive. Cap-and-trade is yet another giant step in the wrong direction.

By far the easiest and most efficient way not to be slugged with higher production costs under cap-and-trade, is to move production overseas. That would be the nearly-instantaneous effect of this legislation.

As noted by Heritage above we can expect to lose 500,000 to 1,000,000 per jobs per year by 2030.

If you didn’t like NAFTA, you really aren’t going to like Cap-and-Trade. But hey, we can always do those “jobs that Americans won’t do” that are being done by illegals.

All this is to combat the hoax of man-made Global Warming. Has anybody figured out how we’ll know whether this legislation is working? Are we looking for a decrease in the earth’s temperature? We already have that. We are in a period of Global Cooling that began in 1998 and is expected to continue until 2030. Some scientists believe we may be headed for a much longer period of cooling.

So how do you tell? The answer is that you can’t. We’ll pay all this money and they will never be able to prove it has had any effect on the planet. Never mind the fact that India and China couldn’t give a rat’s rear-end about Global Warming. Their economies will keep chugging along and they’ll have a good laugh about how we have just shot our economy right in the head. Oh yeah, and they’ll start looking for some good real estate and lots of workers for all those new American factories that will be coming their way.

The British have had punitive taxes to combat Global Warming for years and they have finally had enough. Most Britons believe Global Warming is a scam to raise taxes.

More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.

The survey also reveals that most Britons believe “green” taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.

The British have figured out the Enviro-Liberals game: Taxing people to death for the fictitious, unachievable, and unverifiable goal of stopping man-made global warming.

It is like taxing people to try to stop the sun from heating the earth. Oh wait, that is what they are doing.

Also find Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room

Environazi’s exposed!  In the new doom and gloom climate change book, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy (Politics and the Environment), the authors tell us that a Democracy like the United States is bad, an authoritarian government like China – good.

In this provocative book, Shearman and Smith present evidence that the fundamental problem causing environmental destruction–and climate change in particular–is the operation of liberal democracy. Its flaws and contradictions bestow upon government–and its institutions, laws, and the markets and corporations that provide its sustenance–an inability to make decisions that could provide a sustainable society. Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing.Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change. They are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures–for example, in medicine and in corporate empires–that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between “liberty” or “life.”

One of the authors penned this recent article on the subject:

Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled as Marxists, socialists, fundamentalists and worse. These labels are used because alternatives to democracy cannot be perceived! Support for Western democracy is messianic as proselytised by a President leading a flawed democracy

There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. It is not that liberal democracy cannot react once it sees a threat, for example, the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency. If governments can recognise a financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why are they unable to do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? Quite simply our system is seen to live and breathe by the present economic system; the problem is that living and breathing within the confines of the world ecological systems is contrary to the activity of progress and development as defined within liberal democracy.

We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions.

He then proceeds to write glowingly about how great China is because they don’t have to deal with any individual liberties and other such nonsense.  Plastic bags a problem?  China just bans them and closes all the factories.  Why oh why can we not do such things!

They don’t have to worry about loss of political donations or temporarily unemployed workers. They have made a judgment that their action favours the needs of Chinese society as a whole.

For the collective good.  Sound familiar?

A pure socialist/communist heaven I suppose.  But this time its going to be the dictatorship of the scientists.  The elites among the science circles will now be the holders of the keys.

Dr. Sanity:

For most of the 20th century these fascists have sought to escape responsibility for the condequences of their utopian fantasies. The world is littered with the corpses and awash in the tears of the people who they have “helped”. Fantasy environmentalism is only the most recent strategies they have adopted as they attempt reassert their socialist ideology under the guise of “saving the planet”, while they chain all of humanity. Ask yourself how it has come to be that Al Gore’s environmental obsession has become required classroom reading. And how our children are being indoctrinated right this moment in the K-12 classrooms into the holy rituals of the environmental histrionics.

Consider for a moment the call to imprison those who ignore climate ‘science’. The very essence of free scientific inquiry is open discussion and high levels of skepticism; but the fascist ‘elites’ must carefully contain any speech or any attitude that questions their own interpretation of environmental science.

Clearly, this is not scientific inquiry, it is an inquisition. It is not science, it is religious dogma. And if you do not believe, you are in danger of committing the horrific sin of apostasy.

You begin to see how much in common these neo-marxist, fascist ‘elites’ have with the imams of radical Islam. Both suffer from an unquenchable desire for power over others. Either submit to their authority, or else….

I’m guessing that you will not be shocked to find out upon reading the whole article that the only way for this utopia of environmental rainbows to work is that the ones in charge, the holder of the keys if you will, will be people such as the writer himself.

Shocking!