Open Thread #3

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6554952/UN-food-summit-fails-before-it-begins.html
UN food summit ‘fails before it begins’ Excerpts:
The leaked World Food Summit draft declaration falls short of a UN goal of eradicating hunger by 2025. Instead, leaders are expected to to sign a watered down declaration in Rome next week that calls for vague increases in aid for farmers in poor countries but sets no targets or deadlines for action.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which is organising the three day conference, had hoped to win a clear promise from rich countries to increase the amount they give each year in agricultural aid from $7.9 billion (£4.8 billion) to $44 billion.
“It’s a tragedy that the world leaders are not going to attend the summit,” said Daniel Berman of Medecins Sans Frontières . Aid groups said the summit was a missed opportunity to tackle malnutrition, which kills a child every six seconds, despite the fact that the world produces a surplus of food. Cereal crops this year are expected to be the second largest ever, after a record harvest in 2008.
According to FAO, the number of hungry people rose this year to 1.02 billion people, as a result of the global economic crisis, high food and fuel prices, drought and conflict.
“This scourge is not just a moral outrage and economic absurdity, but also represents a threat for our peace and security,” said FAO’s director, Jacques Diouf, who will embark on a 24 hour fast on Saturday to show solidarity with the world’s hungry.

Tin foil hat time
Some one has got their hands on notes from the G20 meeting.
http://www.bilderbergbook.com/
Timmy Geitner
President optimistic have basic elements in place next year.
Nobody has mandate for specific numbers
Basic US? architecture for financing only thing needed? to do
Has the original summary there as well

AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent is sure bottled up at the moment. It’s flatlined a few times, now for 3 days. Ice is growing W of Greenland but diminishing N of Siberia. I don’t suppose there is any quiet recalibration going on? It’s just that we haven’t seen such a jagged growth line in previous years. They wouldn’t be priming for Copenhagen, would they be? Naaahh….

I hope you’re on a beach somewhere, Anthony –having cabana girls rub suntan lotion on you between rounds of Mai Tais delivered to your beach chair!

REPLY: Sadly no, climate work beckons.- A

So what’s scarier? The most hysterical AGW projections, or the fact that mainstream science has been corrupted by postmodern politics?

NZ Willy (21:19:44) :
diminishing N of Siberia
I haven’t looked in to this. Is it from compaction?

“Is it from compaction?”
If I were to venture a guess, it is due to winds. Seems like persistent low pressure in the general location of Iceland pulling warm air up from the South.
It would be compacting the ice North of Iceland.

There will be no more traveling over the river and through the woods to visit grandmother. If CO2 legislation passes, we will not even be allowed to have a turkey. Too many resources wasted.

Being open-thread night, I thought this would be a good place to the mention that WUWT is approaching its third anniversary.
Looking through the archives, I found this:
Welcome To: Watts Up With That?
http://wattsupwiththat/2006/11/17/welcome-to-watts-up-with-that/
Had a total of 3 comments, and here is a nugget from the second comment, dated Nov. 17, 2006:
Jack Lee (21:02:31) :
“I’m very pleased to see you writing this column Anthony! It’s sure to be a big hit.”
Jack, if you’re still out there, I’d have to say you hit that one big !
With WUWT closely approaching twenty-four million hits, I would say a very big hit indeed.
Anthony, I hope you get a chance to enjoy a little time off this Tuesday. You deserve it!

The (London/UK) Times Saturday 14th Nov front page is all about the results of a survey on climate change.
“Global warming is not our fault, say most voters in Times poll”
Story:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916648.ece
Comment
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6916347.ece
Environment section response:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916510.ece
and pdf of (very limited and slightly confusingly presented survey results)
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/tthstreetpoll2.pdf
The majority of comments on the storys were from skeptics at the time of writign although I have to say some are fairly poorly informed.
The environment section response has a photo of smoke stacks with the caption “The Government’s message on climate change does not appear to be getting through”.
(How do I flag a moderator?)

I think almost all the world’s starvation problems are political in nature, and sending money to poor farmers won’t help.
The FAO is advocating sending more food to poor countries, not money. This in fact makes the problem worse by reducing the incentive for farmers in these countries to grow more food or even the same amount of food in the future.
What is needed is money in the hands of the hungry and there are various ways to do this. Not least funding basic environmental improvements.
But that would make the UN’s FAO irrelevant, and heaven forbid get people working and make them self reliant, as well as injecting much needed cash into these economies.

Doesn’t this just sum up the present situation on climate change?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916648.ece

Hey, denialists, a la Lindzen, have you voted?
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit.aspx
The no seem to be stalled ( like the ice). Has it reached saturation of available votes? it used to be 3 no to 1 yes. Of course schools visiting the museum will be voting yes, because the thing is guiding them to “yes”, but where have the denialists gone?

Is the tide turning in the Hotheadbed of AGW? – (Britain)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916648.ece
And I quote;
“Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said that growing awareness of the scale of the problem appeared to be resulting in people taking refuge in denial.”
They (the politicians/met officers(( towing the line, who pays the piper?))) are surely the one’s in denial, the more they push, the more ‘us proles’ push back, its a law of physics.
Because the growing scientific evidence points to natural warming in the last part of the C20th, the Met Office don’t get it!!
Refuge in Denial! Its enough to make you swear(snip).
Perhaps the people ‘get it’ and then the politicians will have to ‘get real’ , I await the time when the Met Office issues a ‘we were wrong’ statement, though I don’t hold my breath about it, though I do believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden and that pigs maybe some day will learn unpowered flight.

Ric Werme asks “What timeline do you expect to pass before the mainstream media starts talking about the demise failure of global warming?”
The politicians will be the last to know, closely preceded by the environmental editors of the serious papers. I won’t believe the tide has turned until a stand-up comic dares make a joke about the Maldive Islanders.

I think it wont change until some skeptical politician administration will emerge as the result of elections, preferably in US.

NZ Willy (21:19:44) : AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent is sure bottled up at the moment. It’s flatlined a few times, now for 3 days.
Close eyeballing, it’s evident that such flatlining has NOT happened before at this time of year, at least not during the lifetime of this form of recording. Neither would I expect it in the season of most rapid cooling and refreezing. And don’t we know anecdotally that the Arctic has NOT been warm this last summer? The fact that the red line is now into “worse than expected” “worst ever” range does make me concerned. Now if you wanted to falsify data, you’d do it in little bits, running up to Copenhagen… but I cannot assert that this has happened here without some other clear evidence.

Vicky Pope of the Met Office also said “people see the problem being used to charge them more taxes.” Got it in one, Vicky!

Skeptical & Denialists?
Always the AGW stuff turns everything it gets it’s hands on upside down.
The Warmists say we are overheating and will cook and drown.
The Skeptics say prove it, show us your calcualtions.
The Warmists, instead of answering the questions shoot the messenger, calling them heretical deniers.
If a Skeptic were truly in denial, they would have to deny what is in front of us daily in a cooling world in order to accept the Warmists claims at face value.

TonyB 00:19:16:
“….Romans fighting Vikings, James Hansen and the IPCC…”
My money’s on the Romans beating all three at once!
Seriously, though, I followed your link and read Mr Id’s fascinating article. I would have thought WUWT readers would find it interesting also, if those wonderful – and good-looking – moderators could persuade Mr Watts to re-publish it here.

Lucy (02:44:41) – there’s no need for excessive paranoia. The thread below has been very active and there’re a couple of widgets linked to count the voting.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/23/and-then-what-happens/#more-12043
You can also see for example:
http://wermenh.com/proveitraw.html
There was a hockey stick jump in warmist votes, possibly after Monbiot’s we’re losing piece and the graph does show some other issues.
Two points to bear in mind – 1) it’s more than likely that the alarmists will win the poll 2) science is not and never has been a democracy – a prove it poll on evolution v creationism would likely weigh in in creationism’s favour, as I’m sure they’ll be quick to point out.
The poll is purely political and despite early shenanigans from both sides (although the skeptics one was pre-announced) and the scope for egg on face for the museum, it will achieve very little whatever the outcome. The same is true for the Times poll which will only cause efforts to ‘re-educate’ the masses to be increased.

Lucy Skywalker (02:42:09) :
NZ Willy (21:19:44) : AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent is sure bottled up at the moment. It’s flatlined a few times, now for 3 days.
Over at http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ there has been no update since 09/11. It does look odd, unless of course the Russians have found ways of keeping the waters open. Interestingly both the Russian and Alaskan oil fields are in areas of late freezing water. Considering the efforts and expertise that go into ice roads, it would not be unreasonable for the oil organisations to find ways of delaying the freeze up. However, creating ice roads is all about augmenting the freeze up, which has to be easier than holding back the freeze up. However how about the following:
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/index.html
“Schools of fish or flocks of waterfowl can also adversely affect the relative safety of ice. The movement of fish can bring warm water up from the bottom of the lake. In the past, this has opened holes in the ice causing snowmobiles and cars to break through.”

the museum poll
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit.aspx
at the time of this post
* 4516 counted in so far
* 7265 counted out so
at (22:22:38) :
# 4504 counted in so far
# 7253 counted out
Note the reversal of previous rates:
14 new in
12 new out
when it was a factor of three in the rate of out to in, in favor of out a while ago.
I put my money on schoolchildren walked through the exhibit and guided how to vote

… but you will note that in both posts I strenuously refrained from stating observations as conclusions and asked for that most dreadful of things, evidence
🙂

Three days to WUWT third anniversary. How shall we celebrate this outpost for enlightenment in a dark world? Here in Melbourne I intend to put on a fire works display.

Sort of peripheral to the CO2, but often comes up in debates with environmentalists is the whole “Factory Farm” issue. Here’s a reality check dealing with dairy farms:
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/free/news/template1&paneContentId=5&paneParentId=70104&product=/ag/news/topstories&vendorReference=1b861f28-ff0b-4ef5-b365-607270b90575
Quote:
Dear Readers:
When an environmental regulator speaks, you expect to hear statements like, “Manure is a long-standing, pervasive, persisting and vexing water-quality problem in Wisconsin.” You don’t expect to hear, “The largest livestock operators aren’t the primary sources of the problem.”
A group of folks attending the Society for Environmental Journalists’ annual meeting in October heard both from Gordon Stevenson.
Stevenson is Mr. Runoff at Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources. “America’s Dairyland,” as the state calls itself, has been plagued in recent years by manure-runoff problems — contaminated wells, dead fish and dead zones in rivers.
“We haven’t made the kind of progress we’d like to” in solving the runoff problem, Stevenson told a busload of the environmental journalists as they journeyed to Waterloo, Wis., for a tour of a 1,000-cow dairy.
But the cheese-head state’s 190 CAFOs — an acronym Stevenson says is short for Concentrated (not Confined) Animal Feeding Operation — aren’t the problem. “This runs contrary,” he admitted, “to the belief system of many people,” whose attitude is: “Aren’t CAFOs awful?”
Dairies and other livestock operations with more than 700 cows must receive permits, submit manure-management plans, hold discharge to zero and undergo state inspections. Wisconsin’s nearly 30,000 smaller livestock and poultry operations don’t have to do any of this.
If regulators don’t like one of these smaller operations’ manure-management practices, they can demand fixes. But the state must pony up 70 percent of the cost of the improvements. Stevenson said this would require an additional $900 million and 250 regulators. The state legislature isn’t likely to provide either.
“The political will to regulate ma and pa doesn’t exist,” he said.
These weren’t the only kind words about CAFOs the journalists heard this day:
— Cows at large dairies are more productive. Bruce Johnson, a University of Wisconsin ag economist, said annual milk production averages 30,000 pounds per cow nationwide, compared to a 20,000-pound average for all dairies.
— Large-dairy cows tend to receive better treatment — a better diet, soft bedding, good medical care and warm barns in winter. “If I’m a dairy cow, I hope to go to a CAFO,” Stevenson said. “I’m going to get proper housing and nutrition, because I’ll produce more.”
— Only a large operation can afford to spend $4 million on an anaerobic digester like the one on Crave Brothers Farm the journalists visited. Carl Crave, the son of one of the four Crave brothers and the operator of the digester, said only 25 farms in Wisconsin have the machines, and only 250 could support them. Digesters keep methane, a greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere and produce electricity and a useful solid byproduct from manure without removing nutrients, leaving a valuable liquid fertilizer.
Amid all the happy talk, the journalists also heard some less favorable reviews. James Saul, an environmental lawyer, complained that CAFOs in Wisconsin are only inspected once every five years — and that some very large dairies that fall just below the 700-animal threshold aren’t inspected or regulated at all.
Saul said too little is known about how runoff reaches the water. He suspects slow leaching, which could mean CAFOs are causing problems that will only show up years from now. He urges CAFOs to consider filtering and treating their wastewater, which is what municipal sewage systems do. And he’d like a moratorium on new CAFOs until the environmental consequences of existing ones can be studied in more detail.
“Nutrient management planning can do a lot to remedy” slow leaching, Saul said, but “I’m not convinced yet that nutrient management is the solution.”
And, as some of the journalists noted afterwards, the day dealt mainly with dairies in Wisconsin. Cattle feedlots and large-scale hog and poultry operations may raise different issues.
Still, going into the tour, many of the journalists had equated all CAFOs everywhere with what Stevenson called “the double-F word” — factory farms. To them, FF meant animal-abusing, corporate-owned, pollution-spewing wastelands.
“There’s a general perception,” Stevenson said, “that CAFOs are owned by villains, people sitting on Wall Street dressed in three-thousand-dollar suits. The truth is, CAFOs are more often than not family farms.”
Whether the day changed any minds is open to question; when new information, however compelling, crashes into a wall of strongly held views, the wall doesn’t always give way. No matter. It’s enough if the environmental journalists took away a realization that the factory farms issue may be more complicated than they had realized. The organizers of the conference deserve credit for devising a program that offered journalists a more balanced perspective.
Urban C. Lehner
Editor-in-Chief
DTN/The Progressive Farmer — A Telvent Brand
Endquote

Here’s a good read on “Black Liquor” and a cool subsidy loophole courtesy of the biofuels lobby:
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/free/news/template1&paneContentId=5&paneParentId=70104&product=/ag/news/topstories&vendorReference=b88006fa-b53c-4980-88e5-e3a4e3a4d33e
OMAHA (DTN) — Thanks to a 2008 Internal Revenue Service ruling, American taxpayers will shell out at least $6 billion this year to subsidize an “alternative fuel” that has actually been the main fuel used in paper mills for decades.
In the first six months of 2009, payments to the paper industry for black liquor could reach $2.5 billion, according to the Congressional Joint Committee. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
“Black liquor” sounds like a trendy new drink, but in fact it’s a byproduct of the paper-making process, which paper mills use to run their boilers. Responding to inquiries from paper companies late last year, the IRS says black liquor could qualify for a 50-cent-a-gallon alternative-fuel subsidy Congress created in the 2005 highway bill and extended in the 2007 energy bill.
The provision’s intent seemed to be spurring the development of new fuels. It was only expected to cost $265 million over five years.
For the struggling pulp and paper industry, the subsidy is very good news, turning some money-losing operations into profit makers. It’s bad news for supporters of ethanol, biodiesel and other renewable fuels.
Tom Buis, the chief executive officer of renewable-fuels group Growth Energy, says unhappiness over the loophole could discourage Congress from expanding renewable-fuels subsidies or creating new ones. By his understanding of Congress’s intent, paper mills “would never qualify” to the degree they have. “The cost,” he noted, “is pretty significant.”
Indeed, owing to the black-liquor controversy, Congress may not renew the 50-cent credit, which is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. But even assuming the credit lapses, the controversy continues. A $24 billion cellulosic credit dubbed “son of black liquor” is in line to replace it.
EXAMPLE OF PAPER INDUSTRY’S PROWESS
The black-liquor maneuvers are just the latest examples of the paper industry’s growing prowess at cashing in on federal subsidies designed to promote the development of new kinds of fuels. As DTN indicated in the first story in this two-part series, old-line forestry companies are lining up to capitalize on a biomass subsidy written into the 2008 farm bill.
Boiling wood chips in caustic soda creates pulp, which is made into paper. As byproducts, the paper mill gets back caustic soda, which it recycles, and black liquor, which provides about two-thirds of the energy used in the pulp industry. The industry has used black liquor as a fuel since the 1930s, says Scott Milburn, a spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Association.
“So we’re darn near self-sufficient when it comes to energy,” Milburn says. “And this is a clean energy. It’s renewable. It’s carbon neutral, so it’s a lot better than if we were lighting up all of our facilities with fossil fuels.”
Milburn says black liquor creates more energy than all of the solar, wind and geothermal power produced in the country combined. “So that gives you a kind of vastness of the scale here.”
Paper mills lost $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to industry analysts. Earnings in 2008 fell 40 percent from 2007 levels. For some mills, the tax credit alone floated their operations this year.
To qualify for the 50-cent-a-gallon alternative-fuels credit, all companies have to do is add a splash of diesel fuel to the black liquor. The industry didn’t specifically lobby for the black-liquor provision in the 2005 highway bill, or the extension in the 2007 energy bill. Only late last year did industry officials ask the IRS if black liquor would meet the “alternative fuel” definition, Milburn says.
Earlier this year, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation stated that in the first six months of 2009, the payments for black liquor could reach $2.5 billion.
Private analysts from Deutsche Bank and Forestweb have put the forest and paper industry’s tax-credit windfall at $6 billion to $8.5 billion by the end of the year.
BOON OR BOONDOGGLE?
Some lawmakers have expressed outrage. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, released a joint statement in June saying they were drafting legislation to eliminate the black liquor loophole. Stated Baucus: “This credit was not meant to provide a boon to companies for a process they’ve already been doing for several decades.”
Yet the promise of a fix has gone nowhere despite the continued outflow of billions. Lawmakers from forestry and paper-mill states have rushed to the industry’s defense. At a Senate Finance Committee hearing in April, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said: “The black liquor tax credit is crucial to the survival of the paper industry, and to maintain and create jobs.”
Backing Snowe is the United Steelworkers Union, whose members include forestry and paper employees. It has called efforts by Baucus and Grassley a “mockery of the intent of Congress around increasing the use of biofuels,” and a “slap in the face to the paper industry.” The black liquor tax credit keeps people employed, the union stated.
In June, the paper company Domtar reopened a pulp plant in Maine. Snowe stated in a news release that the tax credit was cited by the company as one of the primary reasons the plant reopened. Domtar has collected $299 million from the credit in the first nine months of the year.
In a quarterly report last week, International Paper reported it has collected $1.5 billion from the black liquor credit in the past 12 months. Other public companies report hundreds of millions collected from the tax each quarter as well.
Among those outraged by the black liquor provision are companies that make recycled paper. They don’t use black liquor and are thus at a competitive disadvantage to companies receiving the subsidy. The Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries has written Baucus stating the credit gives mills using virgin material an advantage that should be ended.
While there were few if any users of the 50-cent credit for making automobile biofuels, Buis says it would have been important for future biofuel efforts. If the credit lapses, which seems likely, it won’t be available.
BLACK LIQUOR: THE SEQUEL
But whether or not it lapses, “son of black liquor” could be the sequel. With a positive ruling from the IRS in June, the forest and paper industry is eyeing the $1.01-per-gallon cellulosic biofuel producer credit created in the 2008 farm bill. If the paper mills are allowed to use this credit, the Joint Committee on Taxation projects they’d collect about $21.9 billion between now and 2014, and $24 billion total.
Milburn doubts son of black liquor will come to fruition. Unlike the alternative-fuels credit, producers must also be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for the $1.01 cellulosic credit. The EPA has said only fuels for vehicles would meet Clean Air Act requirements. Because the paper industry doesn’t use black liquor as a motor fuel, “We don’t think EPA would certify black liquor,” Milburn says.
Still, EPA hasn’t issued a legal opinion or memorandum. In its quarterly earnings news release last week, KapStone Paper and Packaging Corp. said it was evaluating whether it would qualify for the $1.01 credit for 2010.
In an odd twist, Democratic House members last week attached a provision to the health-care reform bill aimed at ensuring black liquor would not receive the cellulosic credit. The members then claimed the $24 billion “saved” as a way of helping to pay for health-care reform. Although some would see this as budgetary sleight-of-hand, on grounds the EPA would have saved the $24 billion anyway, critics of black-liquor incentives called it a victory.
Buis worries that allowing mills to use the cellulosic credit would harm the biofuel industry’s long-term progress. Growth Energy got involved, Buis says, because “There was an amendment that you couldn’t get a cellulosic tax credit for ethanol if it was mixed in any way with the production of corn ethanol. So that’s why we sprang into action and got that changed, and the leadership did change it.”

Thank you Andrew (21:11:07) :
Have bookmarked that site. Lots to read up there.

Lucy Skywalker (02:42:09) :
Close eyeballing, it’s evident that such flatlining has NOT happened before at this time of year, at least not during the lifetime of this form of recording. Neither would I expect it in the season of most rapid cooling and refreezing. And don’t we know anecdotally that the Arctic has NOT been warm this last summer? The fact that the red line is now into “worse than expected” “worst ever” range does make me concerned. Now if you wanted to falsify data, you’d do it in little bits, running up to Copenhagen… but I cannot assert that this has happened here without some other clear evidence.
=========================================
Nice though the conspiracy theory is, there is no doubt the Arctic has been a bit warmer than normal this fall. Just check the DMI graph that Anthony provides at the side of the home page:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

TonyB (00:19:16) :
It includes Ancient Greeks, Romans fighting Vikings
Did you know there is anecdotal evidence from sketches that seems to show Vikings had skirmishes on the Eastern coast of Canada during the Medieval Warm Period with soldiers from the Ming Dynasty? The dress of what was called Canadian Indians in the sketches looks more like Ming Period style of clothing than Canadian Indian. It is thought that Lief Erikson’s brother was killed in one of these skirmishes.

Dear moderators,
The New York Times has an appalling piece of science journalism about sea turtles and “climate change” today. If anyone has time to post a debunking (I don’t, relatives in town, etc.), that would be a good thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/earth/14turtles.html?_r=1&hp
Regards

Lucy Skywalker (02:42:09) :
…such flatlining has NOT happened before at this time of year, at least not during the lifetime of this form of recording. Neither would I expect it in the season of most rapid cooling and refreezing. And don’t we know anecdotally that the Arctic has NOT been warm this last summer?
I am thinking these same things. So what is going on?
Watts Up With That??
If you look at the DMi graph
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
you can see a similar flattening in 2006 and then it shoots up dramatically at the end of November.
What happened from October 1 until today to make the lower area?
Does anyone know?

anna v (04:51:52)
Thanks, Anna – I outed myself!

Stephen Skinner (04:28:13) :
…Russian…Alaskan…
Wasn’t –PDO supposed to be causing that area to freeze faster?

Beth Cooper (05:11:37)
Beth – I propose lots of Sumerian mead at Wronwright’s place

Mark (06:14:33) :

Nice though the conspiracy theory is, there is no doubt the Arctic has been a bit warmer than normal this fall. Just check the DMI graph that Anthony provides at the side of the home page:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It cannot be warmth. It is way below freezing there. It could be ocean currents, but my money is on winds compacting the ice and creating empty spaces. Ever since that infamous Catlin expedition where the compaction was obvious in huge piles I put my money on wind. It would be good to have the wind pattern in the arctic, but I cannot find it. We have a nice wind pattern for the Aegean 🙂
and Europe, but not arctic. http://www.poseidon.ncmr.gr/

Two headlines.
HEADLINE STORY NORTH SEA STORM SURGE
Piers Corbyn North Sea Storm Surge Countdown for the UK and other world events for the 17th-19th November
Thursday, November 12th 2009, 2:07 PM EST
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4352&linkbox=true&position=3
Winds of up to 100mph (160km/h) have hit parts of the UK as a storm moves across Wales and southern England.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8360106.stm

From the thread
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/23/and-then-what-happens/
First stuffing:
Stephen Brown (11:57:42) :
At 20:00hrs on 23/10/2009 the score stands at 349 IN, 485 OUT.
————————-
Les Johnson (12:08:43) :
A big jump – 349 In, 1388 out.
The 1000 that were declared on went in
————————————-
dodgy geezer (18:01:39) :
I estimate that, on or about 00:00 GMT the ‘Count Me IN’ figure started a regular increase of about 7-8 per minute. The ‘Count Me OUT’ figure at this time was increasing irregularly, by an average of about 1 per minute.
I am going to bed now – the figures at 01:00 GMT are 1515 vs 4248. I
——————–
On 10/26
Robert E. Phelan (23:16:04) :
3830 counted in so far 4545 counted out so far
————————-
Maybe the shift changed and somebody said: “why did we throw out all these votes?”

I have decided that my last comment was a little over the top. My sincere apologies for any disrespect. (Insert bow here)

Mark (06:14:33) :
“The fact that the red line is now into “worse than expected” “worst ever” range does make me concerned.”
Interesting point. I would suggest however that the “flatlining”, or relative smoothing of the wave pattern indicates a return to normal yearly fluctuations in extent/area. Remember that we are recovering from a rather deep low minimum in ’07. I would expect to see the highs and lows be less drastic as an indication of recovery.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent discussion:
Hi all,
Some anecdotal comments.
It has been quite a stormy fall on southern Baffin Island (my parents live there).
They report unusually high winds this fall out of the S and SE. Normally they are coming out of the North at this time. This seems to match with Crosspatch’s (22:37:20) comments.
They had a big storm last night with maximal gusts of 34 knots out of the SE!
Quite a nice independent weather station in their community if you are curious.
http://www.kimmirutweather.com/
Cheers,
Ursus

Richard deSousa (23:23:53) : You asked, “James Hansen has been very quiet lately… is he sensing a turn in the climate? Certainly the climate temperatures have flattened has started to cool during the past decade which is not according to his computer predictions.”
Wasn’t he one of the people walking from somewhere on the west coast to somewhere else on the west coast to bring attention to something that needs attention brought to it?

Sorry, having connectivity problems due to the heavy storms here on the south coast of UK, and the last sentence should read as follows:-
Perhaps this is why the sun influences climate on a quasi-periodic basis.

Stephen Skinner (05:04:33) :
EU sets 20% target for carbon cuts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/23/climatechange.eu1
EU ‘will ignore advice to ban bluefin fishing’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916573.ece
Fantastic, so we will get under control a trace element that has changed it’s relationship to the atmosphere by 1% of 1%. Meanwhile we will continue to overfish an important food to the point where it disappears. Any lessons learnt from the Grand Banks?
The lunatics are running the asylum”.
It’s worse, corrupt lunatics are running the asylum.

To Bob Tisdale: If Hansen is somewhere in my neck of the woods, SF Bay Area, I haven’t heard or seen any headlines.

Steve S. (10:33:41) :
from the article
“Using children to promote any propaganda and especially Global
Warming hysteria is wrong. They don’t have the experience to
separate fact from fiction and need to be protected from predatory
adults.”
“predatory adults”
Perhaps we need to start an international registry.

To-
NZ Willy (21:19:44)
Here is a clue from the Alaska ice service–
remember that Alaska gets its data
(LIVE HUMAN OBSERVATIONS)from fishing
trawlers and icebreakers —
AND ALASKA FROWNS UPON AGW–
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/data/ice/ice.png
THE ALASKA MAP SHOWS TWICE AS MUCH ICE
AS ANY OF THE POPULAR ICE MAPS BEING
TOUTED ON THIS SITE AND ELSEWHERE–
Of course Alaskans only live there . . .
Stating the answer diplomatically–
the mapmakers are lying.
Here is one map that doesn’t
lie too much–
(cache it quickly before
the Watts effect erases it)
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/hires/global.xml
And here is a very obscure quote from Hadley–
“States: Passive microwave underestimates sea ice concentrations by an average of 25% in summer
(but the underestimate can be more than this) and 5-10% in winter. …. its mostly all in one direction.
(Met Office, Hadley Centre)”
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=114#30005
http://ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/meetings/oopc-9/presentations/monPM/Rayner_OOPC9_pr.pdf
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=96
As well, violent icebreaker activity is clearly visible
as scattered and smashed old ice in these actual satellite photos
(which also show completely refrozen sea ice–pale green and white)–
lower right–
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009253/crefl1_143.A2009253000000-2009253000459.250m.jpg
winds and currents do not smash and scatter
heavy sea ice as shown in these photos–
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009252/crefl1_143.A2009252205000-2009252205459.250m.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2009252/?multiple&resolutionlist
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/Ice_Can/Arctic/CVCSWSDNCW.gif
quite a bit can be gleaned from these photos.
also from
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=95
“Jaxa (AMSR-E) isn’t faulty, just (the algorithms are) badly calibrated, and skips
all ice extent less than about 80-90% as I’ve shown many times. In fact,
it appears to need Multiyear ice. This is well understood, as the older ice is denser,
and has a different radar reflection than new ice.
The huge area shown as ice north of Alaska ( http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/data/ice/ice.png), but missing from AMSR_E is mainly new ice. The Alaskan data is accurate, the AMSR-E is just way out.
Overlays to compare:
http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp183/kiwistonewall/layer.gif ”
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/nsidc_pulls_the_plug_on_arctic_sea_ice_graphs/
Also vividly demonstrating the unreliability and dangers of hyped up ice mapping–
Midsummer farce in the Arctic: Greenpeas flees ice ‘way thicker than anything we can break’
they actually believed an ice chart showing low amounts of ice-
— they were later rescued by an ice breaker and unfortunately
will again waste the coast guards’ time and efforts next
summer-
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/08/yacht-fiona-hopelessly-trapped-in-ice.html

Record cold expected in Alaska:
http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=rss&article=8

Before the weekend is over, we will be close to our normal annual snowfall here in Northern Colorado. The climate models predicted that Colorado would see later and lighter snowfall, and snow would only accumulate at higher elevations.

The NASA GISS website is offline for at least 7-8 consecutive hours now. What could they do for so long? Let I guess they are working on a new adjustment method (or just dropping out some inconvenient rural sites for “better” results).

Ric Werme (21:17:48): …promised ills haven’t happened as promised and it’s too cold in a lot of areas.
It may not have been promised, but “too cold” is definitely an ill.
SandyInDerby (00:34:04): So what’s scarier? The most hysterical AGW projections, or the fact that mainstream science has been corrupted by postmodern politics? …Why? and particularly can you prove it?
The scariest thing is neoglaciation, i.e. the return to Ice Age stadial temperatures. No one can prove predictions until the future comes to pass, but strong evidence suggests that over the last 1.6 million years interglacials have been short-lived compared to glacial stadials, both of which have occurred at regular periodic intervals.
Lucy (02:44:41): …there’s no need for excessive paranoia.
Then why is excessive paranoia so rampant? Freakonomic theory holds that humans do not act without incentives. Hence we may conclude that excessive paranoia is generally and specifically incentivized, if not built into our DNA.
Stacey (03:07:51): It is astounding that there are people who want to pump material into the atmosphere… a gradual process which results eventually in ice ages.
That’s some useful paranoia, IMHO. Kudos, Stacey. Hope my compliments incentivize you.
Mark (06:14:33): …there is no doubt the Arctic has been a bit warmer than normal this fall.
Well, duh — “normal” over the last 1.6 million years is Ice Age polar icecap a kilometer thick. Really bad news for bears, whales, and other living things. Mark, your expression of paranoia is far too mild. Come the next glacial stadial, all manner of terrible things are going to happen (recur). You may wish to reexamine your paranoia level and seek the usual incentives to ramp it up.
Warmer is Better. Fight the Ice.

Jeff Master’s blog at wunderground has been discussing the floods in Virginia. To show why storms are having more effect now than in the past, he produced a graph of the last 80 years of relative sea level rise at Sewell’s Point VA.
Now maybe I’m just getting old and my eyesight is not what it once was, but consarn it, that graph looks exactly like a straight line with noise. Where’s the hockey stick?

France & Brazil unveil Climate Bible
Make up your own minds why they use this language.
“…We are making public … a French-Brazilian text because Brazil and France, we want Copenhagen to be a success, not a cut-price agreement,” Sarkozy told reporters in Paris.
“We are fighting for the world to live up to its historic responsibility,” the president added.
Lula hailed the text a “climate bible” and a “historic document”.”
Regards
Michael

“China and the U.S. are the two largest contributors of carbon emissions, accounting for over 40% of the world’s total CO2 emissions”
http://www.codaautomotive.com/index.html
This statement denies the existence of volcanoes, ocean and land-based outgassing and natural biomass depletion cycles. It is presented in all earnesty by the Chinese car company CODA. They rely on the “Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency” as the source – which writes reports for The Club of Rome:
http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2009/Growing-within-limits.-A-report-to-the-Global-Assembly-2009-of-the-Club-of-Rome.html
This is not just a truth-in-advertising issue – it’s about mad-dog alarmism making up statistics. Nothing science-based here. Just political hokem.

Ric Werme (21:17:48) :
Discussion question:
“The percentage of the general public skeptical of climate chane/global warming is rising, I suspect because promised ills haven’t happened as promised and it’s too cold in a lot of areas.
The media is showing signs of catching on, though some areas and some radio programs still talk about agw with the same certainty as the Sun will rise tomorrow.What timeline do you expect to pass before the mainstream media starts talking about the demise failure of global warming?”
As I have opined on other threads, it all comes down to a combination of advertising revenue, and a phenomena I call bumstickability.
The money-flows are interesting. Here is how it works (in most western societies):
1. An organization that wants funding engages a PR company to “create a media presence”.
2. The PR people start to issue “press statements” that carry the basic message of the organization with a subliminal message of “give me money”. The “press statements” are presented in various forms – the basic statement – and a set of variations that look, read, and smell like articles in the style of the candidate news media.
3. Journalists, looking for a simple life, and easy copy, take the “article” and submit it to the editorial process for publication. They don’t bother getting unstuck from their chairs to check anything – the “bumstickability” factor – because it is not worth the effort, and besides they are drinking buddies with the PR folks, and their kids all play together.
4. The editorial process decides on the merits of the article in terms of, “how much readership will this attract or retain?” The readership size directly relates to how much the publication makes from advertising revenue.
5. A concerted PR campaign creates nonfactual public consensus (i.e. group-think) in which the belief system has the ability to override factual evidence to the contrary.
6. This upwelling in public group-think is detected, and mirrored, by the local politicians who will then push for funding to “address the issue” so that they can be seen to be doing something about it.
7. If the timing is done right, the original organization applies for funding at precisely the time when such funding becomes available. The spin-doctors are very good at timing.
8. The process continues until a) the government shift budget allocations onto something else; or b) something else comes along that grabs public attention making the original group-think “so yesterday”.
I suspect that public opinion is starting to get a bit jaded – everybody has seen the movies with the Statue of Liberty covered in ice, and tidal waves washing over the Himalayas – ho hum.
The AGW crowd may throw more money into getting more funding, and we may go around the cycle again, but the press (and the PR people behind them) are probably running out of ways to frighten children and old ladies.
Watch for “the next big thing” and you will have your answer. Although, do not expect to see any reversal in reporting in the media – they will just stop reporting anything to do with the climate past the normal weather reports.

Mike Odin (11:38:49)
That was a tour de force, interesting Arctic ice evidence there. Sadly my PC could not cope with the heavy-loading stuff. But it did help me understand. Lots of detail issues, some could perhaps easily make JAXA do “unprecedented” wobbles.
Great discussion on the Solar 24 forum you quote. It’s cooling, as predicted, but it’s warming, as predicted, but you wouldn’t understand, as predicted, so we’ll keep changing our story, as predicted.
Paul Maynard (12:07:26) : Last Thursday evening, Ian Plimer gave a talk for the Spectator events series. This was meant to be a debate with I think Monbiot but he demurred. Plimer was eloquent on the geological history. I’d say the audience was 75% sceptic and 25% warmist. The latter just did not want to hear.
Heck, Paul, that reminds me, I saw one of the email exchanges between Monbiot and Plimer over this, somewhere today. Monbiot claimed Plimer was going to duck the debate, but since it was Plimer there and not Monbiot, that looks like being his deluded excuse that he will tell the world. Yuck! But could you email me please re requests, thanks.
Mike D. (13:15:00) : Lucy (02:44:41)…Lucy (02:44:41): …there’s no need for excessive paranoia.
That wasn’t me, that was Luke Warmer said that in response to me. Just noting. Not paranoid. Or do you want me to be paranoid, if so I daresay I can oblige…

Thanks for the links, Philip and Stephen.
Yes, it helps.
I may be slow in responding if someone addresses me for the next ten days as I am off the France visiting and online time dubious.

Richard deSouza… James Hansen has been very quiet lately… is he sensing a turn in the climate?
Well, to be fair, he has apologised
Sorry to be uncommunicative the past few months, in large part because I had to deal with prostate cancer – which took longer than I expected
But he did manage to present to the Club of Rome, pointing out that The fraction of CO2 remaining in the air, after emission by fossil fuel
burning, declines rapidly at first, but 1/3 remains in the air after a century and 1/5 after a millennium (Atmos. Chem. Phys. 7, 2287-2312, 2007).
I wish Dr Hansen a speedy and complete recovery.

Ric Werme (15:20:01) :
Rick,
Good point. I assumed and you know what that does!
Thank you.
Steamboat Jack

If anyone knows what a time flitch is, please add a comment.

Websters Third New international Dictionary
Flitch: To flay
…
2b : a complete package of thin sheets of veneer laid in sequence as they are sawed or sliced 3: one of several elements (as planks or iron plates) that are secured together side by side to make a large girder or laminated beam
It would as used in context be an ordered set of or sequence of time slices.
Google and the internet are not always good sources to find definitions of terms that are not in common modern usage. The term as defined in the dictionary appears to have been commonly used in the fish, meat and lumber industry as most of the examples listed referenced one of the other application. It would probably be obvious to someone who grew up in a fishing or logging community prior to the 1960’s. This dictionary volume is dated 1966.
Larry

Spen (06:29:30) :
‘ anna v (00:49:41) :
Hey, denialists, a la Lindzen, have you voted?
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/proveit.aspx
The no seem to be stalled ( like the ice). Has it reached saturation of available votes? it used to be 3 no to 1 yes. Of course schools visiting the museum will be voting yes, because the thing is guiding them to “yes”, but where have the denialists gone?’
“The poll doesn’t accept my email address – that’s one way of fixing the no vote.”
Reply: Get yourself a Googlemail account and try again – they’re free and available here (just click the link bottom right of the page) :-
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fmail%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26tab%3Dwm%26ui%3Dhtml%26zy%3Dl&bsv=zpwhtygjntrz&scc=1&ltmpl=default&ltmplcache=2&hl=en

Yet another free energy scam with Barrage balloons for airliners
DaveE.

“Monckton finds out his views on the Copenhagen summit were too extreme even for the Fox News host”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/30/lord-monckton-glenn-beck-copenhagen
A guardian reader (a middle class, leftish brit), is not going to be a fan of Beck. So here is an easy guilt by association: “too far out there even for the uber-conservative Fox talkshow host Glenn Beck.”
(There’s a good chance a Gaurdian reader won’t even watch the show, leaving
only this rather distorting report. A friend only lasted a minute, repulsed by
Glen, seeing him as a disgusting brain-washing hypocrite, I tried to point out that, accurate as she may be, Glen wasn’t why we were watching it, but to no avail.)
I thought this was a typical trick, but it’s worse, and simpler than that:
“Monckton’s circus of climate change denial arrives in cloud cuckoo land”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/20/climate-change-denial-monckton
(Sorry, their Environment blog appears to be sponsored by Shell….)
And here is “Monbiot’s royal flush: Top 10 climate change deniers”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10
Including Václav Klaus, ‘a promoter of “gangster capitalism”‘ but serious
opponent of the Lisbon treaty…
The editors must be really perplexed by the number intelligent comments suggesting their readership isn’t buying it. But despite that, why is there such a Left/Right split on this issue? WUWT readers do seem to be dominantly conservative, and I can understand why, but has the left been so thoroughly usurped already? Is there something about left leaning mentalities that
lends itself to gullibility, deference to ‘experts’ and a preference for consistency (of ideology) over reason?
Makes me wonder what the Guardian is guarding after all. Oh hang on, guards usually guard gates don’t they. That’s it, it should be called: The Gatekeeper.

See here and here
According to Monbiot, Plimer wrote to him and said “he would address my questions and send me some of his own “after undergraduate lectures have finished today”. This was on Friday 7 August.
The Karoly quote is from a lengthy review of the book here http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2009/2593166.htm [click Show Transcript] . I could also have quoted Michael Ashley, professor of astrophysics at the University of NSW:
“Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not “merely” atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer’s book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erch von Daniken.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/story-e6frg8no-1225710387147
You may recall that the original release of the documentary ‘Global Warming Swindle’ included the false claim that volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activity. You may also recall that the director removed this claim from subsequent releases. But you can still find this nonsense being repeated by Plimer, on a BBC 4 Radio programme..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/nov/13/climate-deniers-today-programme

Take a look at some of the pics on this Pielke Sr paper:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/photographs-of-what-land-management-of-landscape-can-result-in/

Electric cars may not reduce carbon dioxide emissions – and could even increase them, a green lobby group warned yesterday.
The Environmental Transport Association said generating electricity – by burning coal and oil – to charge the so-called ‘clean’ cars could cancel out the benefit of abandoning fossil fuel vehicles.
Well it took these brain dead idiots long enough to figure that one out.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227106/The-dirty-electric-cars-actually-increase-CO2.html

Phil Clarke (07:10:14) :
Let us know when any of the Hokey Team at realclimate works up the nerve to debate Viscount Monckton.
Well thats clearly not gonna happen. Why on earth would a professional climate scientist invest his valuable time debating someone who has ludicrously accused them of genocide, someone whose ’science’ is brim-full of errors, someone who spends a lot of his time simply making stuff up,….

Why indeed? Monckton is obviously someone who is better at their own game than they are. But perhaps you can explain why Algore the failed Divinity student, Schmidt the mathematician, Hansen the Astronomer, Monbiot the physicist whose only attempts at science seem to involve fuel cell technology, and Monbiot the Zoologist who seems never to have attempted any zoology are equally reticent about sharing a forum with Lindzen, Spenser, or anyone else whose field of study actually involves weather or climatology.

Errata; should have been Romm the physicist…

“I’m off this weekend and part of next week”
Hmm….could it be… yes it could!
http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/print/0013724
That is certainly an important conference! Best of luck, I hope we get a report or two…

Robert,
I’d be very interested in seeing a citation for the quote since it is highly unlikely that Lord Monckton would use that phraseology himself.
well, he did in fact use exactly those words; the source of the quote is an open letter from the Viscount to Senators Snowe and Rockefeller in which he says:
“, you may wonder why it is that a member of the Upper House of the United
Kingdom legislature, wholly unconnected with and unpaid by the corporation that is the victim of your lamentable letter, should take the unusual step of calling upon you as
members of the Upper House of the United States legislature …”
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf
The reality is that Viscount Monckton inherited his title and has never sat as a Member of the House of Lords. He stood for election to the House as one of a number of hereditary peers but received no votes from his, er, peers.
He also should not really be using that crowned portcullis logo on his stuff …In 1996, the usage of the crowned portcullis was formally authorised by licence granted by Her Majesty the Queen for the two Houses unambiguously to use the device and thus to regulate its use by others (copy of formal grant in appendix). The emblem should not be used for purposes to which such authentication is inappropriate, or where there is a risk that its use might wrongly be regarded, or represented as having the authority of the House.”
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/g09.pdf
So we see the master debater misrepresenting his credentials, fabricating graphs and failing to address over a hundred scientific errors. I am afraid the relevance of the large wiki discussion page copy-and-paste escapes me.

Just read this article in this month’s Wired Magazine. It discusses a movement in some people against child vaccinations due to the belief that they could cause Autism. The parallel between this and AGW is uncanny… although I haven’t looked into this to see if the author’s statements are true!
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/

Phil Clarke (07:10:14) :
“Clearly such a debate would not advance our understanding one jot, the reason the Viscount is so keen is that he wants to be seen sharing a platform with a real scientist … I am reminded of Richard Dawkins explanation of why he will not debate creationists …”
Phil so you know the Viscount well enough to understand how he thinks – do you?
Point being Phil you do need to advance your understanding many amounts of jots. Any debate with the skeptical community about the SCIENCE behind determining what really causes climate change should broaden your view point. Sadly you appear to come here to denigrate and that is not a substitute for healthy debate.
Oh and thanks for your Dawkins reference – highly relevant to the ongoing problem skeptics have debating science with alarmists.
Speaking of religion can you enlighten the Skeptics visiting this blog with any empirical proof showing causation between CO2 and global temperature increases. And also a source list of any computer based climate simulations that have made correct predictions during the last 20 years.
Regards

It looks like JAXA Arctic ice is back on an expected track :
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
I’m wondering if new ice was not recognized by satellite until it was thicker.
Does anyone have the explanation for the jump today?

@Phil Clarke: “flitch, I find (in .06 seconds on Google), is a word commonly used by geologists (Plimer is a geologist and you are not) to describe layers in various deposits. Really, you should avail yourself of the wonderful research opportunities on the web and stop wasting our time on this blog.

Phil Clarke,
” As a transition to a democratic House,”
Democratic house? You’ve got to be kidding right? In my book, a democratic house is one in which the members are voted into their seats by the public. The UK upper house is nothing of the kind. When Blair removed the rights of the hereditory peers to sit, he simply replaced them with his hand picked cronies. We now have the utterly undemocratic spectacle of individuals being enobled into government in order to avoid the inconvenience of an election. I refer most lately to Lord Mandlesson of Hoy, or whatever he calls himself, a government minister who has not even been elected into office.

I agree that Monckton’s demonstrable falsehood is a minor issue, I am more interested in the errors and fabrications in his ‘science’ [ see links above – more here. ]. His defenders seem not to want to discuss these ….

Asia’s getting an early start to winter — look at the huge area of snowcover all the way south to the Himalayans:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
The graphic changes every day.

jorgekafkazar (11:01:57) :
“Interesting: A cruise ship has “encountered a large ice mass” in the Antarctic during “semi-circumnavigation” of the South Pole.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091117/ap_on_bi_ge/aa_antarctic_cruise_ship”
Thanks for the link. After reading the article I’m getting a bad vibe – old ship – thick floating ice – what happens when the wind starts to blow???
I hope all get back safely.

Ok, excuse me, but I wonder if you guys have ever traveled the USA extensively? That heritage.org appears a joke to me.

Could not find a suitable section so I written here, how to become a moderator for your forum, that need for this?