I’m sorry, Pat, but after clicking on your link, I stopped reading as soon as I got to the phrase “overwhelming consensus”.
Oh and I noticed also that you didn’t provide one single solitary viable alternative energy source to the ones that you have relied on all your life. Be sure not to omit them in your next post, please 🙂

I have learned not one but THREE very useful new words today, thanks to The Right Honorable Christopher Viscount Monckton [:())) me, making a 370-pound curtsy]:
“gabfest“; “yatterama“; and “yadayadathon“.
Truly, the language of Shakespeare is… what’s the word? Undrainable.

Pat Ravasio: December 1, 2012 at 8:23 pm
Says: “……. All the climate and environmental scientists in the world ….”
Pat, I know it is easier just to listen to things, but rather than just sitting still and accepting what is preached and sold to you, try doing a little reading on the matter:
Each particular area of climate science seems to be depending on the “facts” from the other areas to shore up the known shortcomings in their own particular area of research. Perhaps without realizing the major shortcomings in every other area.
But, as you work through each one you find:
1. TOA radiation measurements are very imprecise: theorized 0.85 w/m2 imbalance, measured 6.5 w/m2, modeled adjustment required.
2. Ocean heat content, where supposedly 93% of the heat (that 0.85 w/m2 imbalance)is going. So we see published a measured rise of 0.09 degrees C over 55 years for the top 2000 meters of the oceans.
3. Sea surface temperatures are probably accurate enough. But the understanding of cyclical heating and cooling behavior such as ENSO Ocean Atmosphere interactions seems to be in the early stages, and there are some issues with apparent recent cooling of the southern oceans.
4. Sea level rises: problems with satellites detailed in http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/GRASP_COSPAR_paper.pdf. Problems with the accounting, groundwater contributions as here: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1476.html. Problems with recent falls in southern sea levels (increased rain, now is in land reservoirs? Or…perhaps a pause in aquifer usage?) And note no MSM published sea level forecasts yet take into account Mitrovica’s work on polar ocean retreat. http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gravity-of-glacial-melt
5. Ice losses, similar satellite problems to above, unresolved as yet. And the apparent contradiction that Antarctic may be gaining ice, or at least not losing it, while the Arctic is undoubtedly losing ice. They quickly flail around a find that a model somewhere predicted that, and push it up front and center.
Then there is the incessant touting of every storm, drought and wildfire as the final absolute proof.
Funny how previously all our scientific measures can always be added up with great certainty to explain sea level rises of various magnitude, and people at times went searching for and found “missing heat” … then along came the groundwater guys and they threw a small spanner in the works…but with the next set of figures it gets changed and it all still “adds up”.
I hope the GRASP project goes ahead, apparently GRACE has its share of difficulties, and I for one will be interested to see if they have finally got it right: http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/GRASP_COSPAR_paper.pdf
As I like to say, they (our CAGW brethren) have put forward an interesting and plausible theory, and we are all now in the early stages of data collection.

Pointman says:
December 2, 2012 at 1:05 am
What’s your problem with Dagenham ( incidently pronounce dajen-ham). I spent all my youth near there and my parents worked for Fords. ;))

Patricia Ravisio
You say: “What could possibly be the harm in pursuing newer, cleaner forms of energy?” Nothing at all. Do all the research you like but don’t impose any form of energy supply that is expensive, needs subsidy and doesn’t work when it is needed.
Take wind in the UK. A Scottish professor, James Blyth, built the first wind powered electricity generator in 1887. In the 125 years since then nobody has found a way to cause the wind to blow reliably. As small islands, the UK has very limited capacity for hydro-electric schemes to pump-store surplus electricity when the wind blows. Even destroying our landscape by damming and flooding the Lake District and the Highlands would not help much.
If, in the UK, we had already replaced, as the government wishes, fossil and nuclear power that works with wind that does not, and which is not nearly as “clean” as you appear to think, we would be poorer and be killing people through fuel poverty and grid failure.
At midday on 6 February this year, which was a cold, still day over the whole of the UK, wind turbines connected to the national electricity grid were providing just 45Mw of power (out of approximately 6,000 Mw claimed capacity) which was 0.1% of grid demand or enough power to boil just 15,000 3Kw electric kettles.
If, as the result of being forced to invest in subsidised wind (to the benefit of all those rent-seeking, rich landowners) we end up with grid blackouts caused by investment in expensive, unreliable wind-power, not only will poor people suffer through fuel poverty but people such as the old and sick will be vulnerable to power loss. Since much of our society now depends on electricity to operate (computer controls, cash machines, the internet etc.), grid failure due to lack of wind could also disrupt our society.
Kind regards
Mike Post

I think that P. Solar asks some very good questions. Has this article really been written by Lord Monckton? The style is different – here it is more one of name-calling than of trying to present a reasoned or balanced argument.
And has our Lord actually succumbed to using the awful American word ‘gotten’?
It seems so. We now have a post from Monckton of Brenchley himself in which he reuses ‘gotten’. You have been too long in the States Sir, time to come home.

Pat Ravasio says:
December 1, 2012 at 8:23 pm
Boy are you sounding desperate. All the climate and environmental scientists in the world and only two of you are right?

You cannot read and you pretend us to visit your sorry .me site?
Here are your weekend assignments:
1. Learn to read, (tip: “at the conference” does not mean “in the world”)
2. Buy a .com domain.
3. Extra points. Read about the scientific method. Focus on these two points.
a) The only valid data is empirical data (write about why computer generated data is not valid for scientific purposes).
b) Scientific theories have to be discarded when a set of empirical data that does not agree with the said theory is found. The task of climate scientists is to find a theory that agrees with ALL empirical data, not to find some data, empirical or computer generated, that fits their preconceived ideas and ignore the empirical data that does not agree with them.

Pat Ravasio says:
December 1, 2012 at 8:23 pm

Boy are you sounding desperate. All the climate and environmental scientists in the world and only two of you are right? I hope you know that the vast majority of your readers are just curiosity seekers, wondering what the last deniers on earth will say and do to protect their turf. And should I be wrong, that you actually do beleive what you write, then you will publish this comment with a reply. Thank you.

Here’s your reply, Pat:
1) You are the desperate one. I’ve got a few friends that were Warmistas but now, since I’ve pointed out there’s been no global warming for 16 years, they’ve changed their minds.
2) If by “climate scientists” you mean the likes of Trenberth, Mann, and Jones, then they live on a rapidly shrinking world of deception; those rebuking the Warmistas are gaining the upper hand. Science trumps politics (and bad science) any day.
3) Precious few of the posters here are “deniers”–we enthusiastically accept increasing global temperatures as the natural consequence of warming after the LIA. We can’t see an anthropogenic component at all: if you have an article that demonstrates one, please cite it. (To be exceedingly blunt, you are the “denier” here, as your political climate activism is not science at all; indeed, it denies the science.)
4) The only “turf” we’re trying to protect is a more abundant biosphere responding to the additional life-supporting CO2 gas now found in the atmosphere. Plants are lovin’ it! You should learn to identify with the plants.
5) The final point is: you are wrong; I simply have to post these answers to prove it (as per your last statement).
Really, Pat–do you actually believe the tripe they feed you at places like COP17; COP18; future COP19, ad nauseam. The stuff is so bad any thinking person would reject it, which begs an explanation of your situation (ad nauseum comes to mind).
And to show the above is not delivered in a mean spirit, I wish you a good day! May your guiding light always be science and not all that other encumbering baggage.

“up to 1.4 Cº of the 0.6 Cº global warming observed in the past 60 years was manmade.”
Sounds ike one of Wayne Swan’s budgets.

The significance of solar sun spots and flares this year . . . 2012. . . should debunk climate myths once and for all., and proves that the climate “scientists” are ignoring important facts that figure into all the calculations in their so called “models.” Solar luminence this year was extraordinary compared with the recent past and should have jolted us to the reality of our comparative impotence at controlling earth and its systems which are actually beyond our control . . . .approximately 93,000,000 miles beyond, as a measure of significance!

I maybe wrong here but the 16 years without warming is more serious than previously thought. Are we getting near to falsification as projected by the IPCC / Hansen style????? If not then how many years would it take?
References:

“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
14MB

“The LLNL-led research shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2011/Nov/NR-11-11-03.html

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/03/times-up-lack-of-global-warming-has.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/17/ben-santers-17-year-itch/
Then there is the small matter of the predicted yet still missing hotspot. Or was it never predicted?

Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 12:19 am
What could possibly be the harm in pursuing newer, cleaner forms of energy? This activity can help stimulate the economy, and make us all healthier, less polluted people in the long run.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Patricia,
You jumped in demanding a discussion of science, insisting on credible facts to refute CAGW. You got a list of them in short order. So, did you learn anything from the facts and science that were offered to you?
Apparently not. Instead you just changed course. Instead of trying to justify your world view on the basis of CAGW, you proceeded to lecture us about justifying your world view on an entirely different set of criteria. Sounds to me like you’ve made up your mind that your world view is correct, and you’ll just keep changing your mind as to why when your reason of the day meets with facts that don’t support it.
What’s wrong with pursuing newer. cleaner forms of energy? Nothing. But that isn’t what the CAGW movement is advocating. They’re advocating anything except fossil fuels no matter the cost, and there IS a cost. Biofuels turn out to produce more CO2 than just using fossil fuels when all the processing factors are included. Al Gore has even reluctantly admitted this. So, what value a fuel supposedly “cleaner” that produces more of what we’re trying to reduce while reducing what is of value, which is food. Or do you consider less food to feed people with a good thing?
We must also consider cost effectiveness. You ask “what harm” but there is plenty of harm if the alternatives are not cost effective. Do you think there will be any harm to a family on a fixed income if their heating costs triple? Do you understand that forcing the use of alternative energies affects the economics of everything from harvesting to transporting to processing to storing and preparing for use every single thing we take for granted? A 10% increase in fuel cost might show up as a 50% increase in a loaf of bread by the time it gets to your table. Is there any harm to a family on a fixed income of food prices rising by 50%?
Our entire western economy functions on cheap energy. Mess with it in any large way and the economy will collapse, and the suffering will be measured in tens of millions, perhaps billions, of lives.
But most importantly Patricia, we HAVE cleaned up the energy we use, big time. Coal fueled plants have scrubbers on them that remove all the aerosol pollutants that we used to allow them to spew into the atmosphere. The same goes for heavy industry such as chemical processing plants. The entire auto industry is subject to emission controls, and if you haven’t noticed, the fuel economy of most vehicles has risen 40% in the last few years. There was a time when stand up comics made fun of smog in cities with lines like “I shot an arrow into the sky…. and it stuck there”. Not funny today because the problem is gone. We cleaned it up.
So yes Patricia, there is harm if you ignore the big picture, and lot’s of it. And yes Patricia, we ARE pursuing new and cleaner ways of doing things. What we are not doing is assuming that one particular energy source is inherently evil and hence should be eliminated, and changing our minds as to why each time someone explains an important fact that we hadn’t previously considered.

Dear Pat Ravisio,
Being an avid user of this Blog, even on a sunday afternoon without a scotch, I find the reactions to your contribution very interesting and enlightning. As you expressed views relating to the stance that the climate has become an excuse and a bugbear, while its future behaviour seems to be set in stone (based on what I believe is very sloppy “science”: the physics do not fit) you may consider the following.
The workings of our (including mine of course) brain (from Daniël Kahnemann: Thinking fast and slow, Penguin pockets 2011) can be explained by two systems. One, say the automatic or in other words intuïtion, the fast and easy one. The second one may be called “the rater” capable of thinking, defining, evaluating; in need of more effort to be kick-started. When placed in a position of fear, as is obvious from your contribution”: I paraphrase: “we are difiling our earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing, we are paving our wilderness, fouling the biosphere and will end up killing ourselves in the process” we are limiting ourselves to the use of system one: intuïtion. We unfortunately limit our ability to transcend beyond pre-conceived ideas. Intuïtion may be right but more often it is not. The business of a precautionary approach is such a fear driven mechanism on which politics and other questionable businesses thrive.

EU carbon price down the gurgler : best news yet : http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/30/us-carbon-price-idUSBRE8AT0U020121130

Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 12:19 am
Thank you all for clarifying your positions. I guess it’s hard to know which temperature charts to believe. What I do know is that regardless of the position you want to substantiate you can find the numbers to do just that. But to me, I guess it all comes down to this. What’s the harm in trying to clean up the environment?
___________________________________
Most of us here have no problem with that. I, like others here, was a member of Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy…. I am also a scientist.
If you actually look at the facts instead of the hype, CAGW is not about cleaning up the environment, it is about diverting large sums of money into the pockets of large corporations and political cronies.

Enron, joined by BP, invented the global warming industry. I know because I was in the room. This was during my storied three-week or so stint as Director of Federal Government Relations for Enron in the spring of 1997, back when Enron was everyone’s darling in Washington. It proved to be an eye-opening experience that didn’t last much beyond my expressing concern about this agenda of using the state to rob Peter, paying Paul, drawing Paul’s enthusiastic support.
In fact, this case was not entirely uncommon in that the entire enterprise was Paul’s idea to begin with….
The basic truth is that Enron, joined by other “rent-seeking” industries — making one’s fortune from policy favors from buddies in government, the cultivation of whom was a key business strategy — cobbled their business plan around “global warming.” Enron bought, on the cheap of course, the world’s largest windmill company (now GE Wind) and the world’s second-largest solar panel interest (now BP) to join Enron’s natural gas pipeline network, which was the second largest in the world. The former two can only make money under a system of massive mandates and subsidies (and taxes to pay for them); the latter would prosper spectacularly if the war on coal succeeded.
http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/15/lessons-from-the-global-warming-industry/

Then you have WHO funded the CRU (Climate Research Group) of East Anglia. This time it is BP, Shell, Rockefeller foundations (Standard Oil) and some nuclear interests. The climategate e-mails show discussions about getting funding from BP and Shell too. On top of that you have Maurice Strong chair of Kyoto and the First Earth Summit (1972) who is a “Big Oil” CEO. That is why “Deniers” roll on the floor laughing every time they are accused of being in the “Pay of Big Oil”
Then we come to the environmental consequences of shifting to Wind and Solar.

NATURE
… The Spanish Ornithological Society in Madrid estimates that Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines may be killing 6 million to 18 million birds and bats annually. “A blade will cut a griffon vulture in half,” says Bechard. “I’ve seen them just decapitated.”
Wind turbines kill far fewer birds in general each year than do many other causes linked to humans, including domestic cats and collisions with glass windows. But wind power has a disproportionate effect on certain species that are already struggling for survival, such as the precarious US population of golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos canadensis).
“The troubling issue with wind development is that we’re seeing a growing number of birds of conservation concern being killed by wind turbines,” says Albert Manville, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Arlington, Virginia.

It is the raptors that are normally killed because they use the same wind currents to glide on as windmills are designed to capture.
And then there is solar panels.

Rare minerals dearth threatens global renewables industry
Terbium, yttrium, dysprosium, europium and neodymium are widely used in the manufacture of wind turbines, solar panels, electric car batteries and energy-efficient lightbulbs. But because these “rare earths” are mined almost exclusively in China, it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to source them in the required quantities.

Physics Org
“To provide most of our power through renewables would take hundreds of times the amount of rare earth metals that we are mining today,” said Thomas Graedel, Clifton R. Musser Professor of Industrial Ecology and professor of geology and geophysics at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies….

Rare Earths
The term rare earths refers to a group of minerals with chemically similar properties that are important in the manufacture…
They are also crucial to new clean energy technologies, ranging from compact fluorescent light bulbs to electric cars to giant wind turbines.
Though the minerals are not strictly speaking rare — and are metals, not dirt — they have become a significant trade issue with China, which mines 95 to 97 percent of the world’s supply. Efforts to find alternative supplies have been complicated by the pollution that rare earth mining and processing creates — a factor generally overlooked by China’s producers.

In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale
So I am afraid the “Environmental Card” backfires badly if you actually look into the environmental consequences of “Clean Energy” It is not clean it is a disaster for the environment.

The computer boxes the warmists use remind me of a TARDIS: warmer on the inside than on the outside.
Cue the FX.

Lord Christopher Monckton once again perfectly demonstrating why every mainstream media outlet is running scared – terrified – of him. Being the ‘common purpose’ cowards that they are, they dare not let this erudite, informed man speak on air about the folly of CAGW for fear of opening the climate-indoctrinated eyes of a wider viewing public (and this absolutely cannot be allowed to happen or the whole risible house of cards will swiftly come crashing down).
I once again tip my hat to Lord Monckton. Thank god this man speaks for the skeptic cause – along with the likes of Marc Morano and Jo Nova – and, of course, our own Anthony Watts – we have some very capable speakers and advocates. All are, of course, considered highly dangerous (possibly even fatal) by CAGW zealots who will never dare face them in open debate.
You know, because the science is so…settled. Or something.

Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 12:19 am
Thank you all for clarifying your positions. I guess it’s hard to know which temperature charts to believe. What I do know is that regardless of the position you want to substantiate you can find the numbers to do just that. But to me, I guess it all comes down to this. What’s the harm in trying to clean up the environment?
_____________________________________
Then there is the second set of consequences. The human cost. Of course if you believe that humans (except for the privileged few) should be exterminated from the face of the earth or if you agree with Fabian George Bernard Shaw that useless eaters should be killed then this will not bother you until you are affected.

The Real George Bernard Shaw
“The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it … If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way…. Source: George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces (London: Constable and Co., 1934), p. 296.
“We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment …
A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”
Source: George Bernard Shaw, Lecture to the Eugenics Education Society, Reported in The Daily Express, March 4, 1910.

So what do we find in Fabian run UK?

Fuel poverty deaths three times higher than government estimates
The number of people dying as a result of fuel poverty is three times higher than government estimates suggest, according to new academic research.
Some 7,800 people die during winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly, says fuel poverty expert Professor Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster. That works out at 65 deaths a day.
Fuel poverty is defined as when someone needs to spend 10 per cent or more on heating their home.
The new total – calculated using World Health Organisation guidance and official excess winter death figures – is four times as many fatalities as happen in road accidents each year.

End energy profiteering: The rich get richer, the poor get colder
Big Six suppliers heading for bumper profits and bonuses as more than 5.5 million UK homes hit by fuel poverty
More than 5.5 million households are suffering under fuel poverty, many being forced to choose between heating or eating.
Meanwhile the Big Six energy suppliers increased their profit margins by 733 per cent in just three months last year….

Nine out of 10 families will be forced to ration their heating this winter
The soaring cost of gas and electricity is forcing more households to turn off heating. Research from uSwitch suggests 89 per cent of families will ration their energy use this winter to save on bills.
Taking the blame is the 21 per cent hike in energy prices in the past 12 months…. “As the cost of our energy bills escalates people are being forced into making potentially dangerous choices,” warns Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch.

BRITAIN IS FREEZING TO DEATH
MIDDLE class families are among millions of Britons who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, as elderly ride on buses all day to stay in the warm…
Dot Gibson, spokeswoman for pressure group the National Pensioners’ Convention, said: “Now that we have one of the coldest winters, older people are going to have to make the unenviable decision whether or not to put the heating on…

And since that is not killing off old age pensioners fast enough for the government we also have the Liverpool Care Pathway. (I wish I could use a /sarc)

Top doctor’s chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year
* Professor says doctors use ‘death pathway’ to euthenasia of the elderly
* Around 29 per cent of patients that die in hospital are on controversial ‘care pathway’
NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterda

eco-geek;
In fact if we could somehow turn off the outgoing radiation from the Earth’s surface and rely on thermal pick-ups only then the amount of “back radiation” would increase! We seem to have a contradiction: The more energy that leaves the Earth’s surface via radiation (and can thus be re-radiated by GHGs) the less can leave via the thermal pick ups and so less total back radiation can result.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Patricia;
We skeptics have our share of uninformed and/or confused who rant on about things just like the warmist side dies. There are several threads on this site by Ira Glickstein and Robert Brown that go into this issue in detail and deal with it properly. There are also threads specific to the logarithmic nature of CO2’s effects. Search for these and read through the articles is what I’d encourage you to d

In RE:
What Jimbo says:
December 2, 2012 at 3:23 am
“Here is the paper for Santer’s 17 years minimum of lack of warming to separate noise.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016263.shtml”
———————–
I would love to see Anthony add a countdown timer to 17 years of no significant warming and the death of the AGW hypothesis at the top of this website!

Too bad Lord Monckton could have fit “yakity yak, don’t talk back” into his essay 🙂

@Joe Prins says: December 1, 2012 at 8:14 pm
Always thouroughly enjoy the play on words as plied lively by the lord. “rebarbatively” is masterful.
Well done, sir.
/////////////////////////////////////////
M’Lud demonstrates the benefits of a classical education. Once widely available in the UK, now only available, sadly, for the better off. I was lucky enough to study Latin from the age of 8 to 18 (and Classical History alongside it from 16 to 18), and Greek from the age of 8 to 12; I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, even though I ended up in IT.

Pat, the only reason you post here is to drive traffic to your site… you are desperate for readers.. One post on WUWT gets more comments than your total site has had in years.

JB says:
December 1, 2012 at 9:33 pm
….. In the real world, you’re a comical irrelevance.
________________________________
Is that the Real World of the 1%? The world of large Corporation CEOs, Bankers and Political Sycophants?

Good to hear from Christopher Monckton again. Non warming is becoming the new “inconvenient truth”, although I’ll doubt you’ll see Al Gore making any movies about it.

kasphar says:
December 1, 2012 at 10:37 pm
‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPeCaC), the grim, supranationalbureaucracy that makes up turgid, multi-thousand-page climate assessments every five years, has not even been invited to Doha. Oversight or calculated insult? It’s your call.’….
_____________________________________
A bit of background makes it a calculated insult.

Watson Out as IPCC Chair Following ExxonMobil Memo to Bush
…In a secret ballot of 125 governments, 61 percent voted against Dr. Watson and for Indian engineer economist Rajendra Pachauri, currently the IPCC’s vice chairman….
Watson is credited with forging global scientific consensus on key issues within the IPPC. The IPCC in turn has played a strong role in galvanizing political support for policy responses to the threat of global warming.
The IPCC is a joint project of the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization….
Watson, an atmospheric researcher and the chief scientist at the World Bank, is considered one of the world’s leading experts on climate change. He is a strong proponent of the idea that human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels are the primary forces behind the warming climate…
Environmental group Friends of the Earth alleged his expulsion was due to lobbying by the U.S. government and American energy businesses. [snicker giggle] Exxon is the group’s main target for anger….

Then Good old Pachauri became a laughing stock with his Himalayan glacier melt fiasco and his “smutty” romance novel. So the World Bank by-passes the IPCC completely with their new Report: Turn Down the Heat: A 4-degree warmer world can be avoided
When you add in Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak: The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank, it becomes pretty obvious who is running the show.
Then include this graph showing a leap in loans for building NEW COAL fired power plants from $100 million in 2005 to $4,270 million in 2010. And it is obvious the World Bank does not believe in their own hype. All they are interested in is making $$$ and gaining more control over the world.
Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) are economic policies for developing countries that have been promoted by the World Bank and IMF.

…Structural Adjustment Policies are economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and help them make debt repayments on the older debts owed to commercial banks, governments and the World Bank….
In the dozens of countries where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have imposed structural adjustment programs (SAPs), the people who have seen deterioration in their standards of living, reduced access to public services, devastated environments, and plummeting employment prospects…
http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html

The hypocrisy is just amazing.

I have posted this before but it should be compulsory viewing prior to the start of any discussion on climate change. This is the short version of Richard Feynman’s eloquent description of the scientific method. Watch it and weep for the contempt that the MSM and marxist agenda merchants show for true science.

How anyone can claim to be a scientist and think that cAGW theory stands up to the scientific method baffles me.

Why is the long term temperature trend from say 1950 – 2012 higher than for 1950 – 1997 if warming stopped in 1997 as per the article, surely the long term trend should be lower or the same if you include data points from 1997-2012 if warming stopped in 1997?
Have a try yourself on wood for trees, use any dataset or start date.

Great posting but in the mean time we have to deal with media shows like this: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/valerie-jarrett-climate-activist-speech-grassroots-organizers_664311.html

Patricia Ravasio (@patravasio) says:
December 2, 2012 at 1:44 am
“I would also welcome your comments on my blog, especially if any of you are versed in Buckminster Fuller, especially in his views on the importance of harvesting and banking “natural energy incomes.” Thanks again for your time this evening. http://www.buckyworld.me”
I did visit the link you gave, for about 1 minute! I could not take any longer. I guess my eyes are a good few years older than yours and they started to hurt trying to read whatever you had written on the page. Did noone ever tell you that if you want people to read what you have written; putting a deep gold color font onto a black background is not a good idea.
Also, some sort of index to the topics you have written about is usually helpful. That way readers can get to subjects which are of particular importance to them, rather than having to sort through a heap of verbiage.
It is difficult to see what you are campaigning for other than Buckminster Fuller and I am not clear why he appears, to you, to be right about everything.
All in all, it was not a happy experience and I will not be visiting again unless you make it more so.
These are my genuine thoughts and suggestions which I hope will enable you to improve the site.

Dear Pat,
Global warming has Zilch. Nada,. Zip,. Bupkis, to do with fracking or any other environmental issue.

Further to the discussion about the pause in warming. If we are to go to catastrophic temperature levels by the end of this century, then sooner or later the rate of warming has got to exceed the 0.06 C per decade that has persisted for many decades, possibly back to the LIA. And this excessive rate of warming needs to persist for some time if CAGW is going to be seen to be real. It was supposed to have started around 1970, but it has not appeared yet.
How much longer do we have to wait for this excessive rise in the rate of warming to appear, before we conclude that it is never going to appear?

kasphar says:
December 1, 2012 at 10:37 pm
…Maybe Doha is not about ‘the warming’ at all but the redistribution of money from the developed countries to the under- and undeveloped countries – about 100 billion dollars, I believe.
________________________________
It has never ever been about the redistribution of money from the developed countries to the under- and undeveloped countries. It has ALWAYS been about redistributing wealth from the middle class to the upper class. “Help” in “development” of third world countries has been going on for three or four generations. If it was really a “hand-up” there would BE no third world. Instead the $$$ has gone in to the pockets of corrupt officials or corporations have moved in and wiped out local business.
I am talking about food because without a decent stable food supply there is nothing that can be done to develop a country. Food and shelter are primary needs that must be filled before anything else.

Structural Adjustment Policies are economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans … Although SAPs are designed for individual countries but have common guiding principles and features which include export-led growth;
SAPs generally require countries to devalue their currencies against the dollar; lift import and export restrictions
SAPs encourage countries to focus on the production and export of primary commodities such as cocoa and coffee to earn foreign exchange. But these commodities have notoriously erratic prices subject to the whims of global markets which can depress prices just when countries have invested in these so-called ‘cash crops’.
By devaluing the currency and simultaneously removing price controls, the immediate effect of a SAP is generally to hike prices up three or four times, increasing poverty to such an extent that riots are a frequent result….
link

This another example. I am using Mexico because it was tricky for the Multi-nationals like Smithfield of swine flu fame to move into Mexico because of historic legal protection for EJIDO LANDS, Mexican agricultural land held in common. Mexican Agriculture is also one of the biggest in the world and therefore a tasty target for the Ag Cartel.

Small Farmers And The Doha Round: Lessons From Mexico’s NAFTA Experience
…hoped for by designers of NAFTA, has been ‘modernisation’ – a sharp decline in the share of agriculture and allied sectors in the workforce. From nearly 27% in 1991 it declined to slightly less than 15% in 2006, losing more than 2 million jobs[18]. Again small and marginal farmers and agricultural labour bore the brunt, as evidenced by very sharp decline in the number of rural households. According to a study by Jose Romero and Alicia Puyana carried out for the federal government of Mexico, between 1992 and 2002, the number of agricultural households fell an astounding 75% – from 2.3 million to 575, 000.
There has been a significant increase in migration out of rural areas as livelihoods are lost and farms have been abandoned. The hope was that this migration out of low-productivity agriculture would be absorbed into higher-productivity non-agrarian urban employment. But anemic employment growth in the post-NAFTA period, particularly in manufacturing, put paid to that.

The other half of the equation

Food Processing & Distribution
Foreign investment has always been noticeable in food processing and distribution in Mexico. Among the companies in Mexico from abroad are the more outstanding of the world food industry (e.g. Nestle, General Foods, PepsiCo). Today the food industry in Mexico represents one of the fastest growing areas for foreign investment. For example, while the total number of new plants in the Maquiladora industry grows by single digit percentage, the number of food processing plants grows by double digit percentage percent.
http://www.mexicolaw.com/Agriculture.htm

Originally Mexican law does not allow foreigners to own EJIDO LANDS, Mexico’s largest form of property use. To get around this the transnationals corporations collaborated with Mexican nationals. Just before NAFTA the government changed the rules.

In 1993 the government was persuaded to allow ejidos to privatize their lands and, if they wish, sell them to foreign buyers. This has presented opportunities for the folks who have built homes (often expensive homes) to secure their investment with a bank trust. Once the ejido privatization is complete, each ejido member is issued a title for his or her respective parcel. The title can then be transferred to a foreigner in the form of a bank trust. Another option is to buy the entire campo and become a Baja developer. This can be done by establishing a 100% foreign owned Mexican corporation.
http://www.mexicomatters.net/mexicorealestate/04_propertytitlesforforeignersinmexico.php

Privatizing the Commons: Reforming the Ejido and Urban Development in Mexico
…Most assessments of the reform of Article 27 have placed it within the context of structural changes to the Mexican economy which have promoted privatization and deregulation as part of a wider set of neoliberal policy adjustments, or more specifically, in the run up to the North American Free Trade Agreement (Cornelius and Myhre, 1997; Calva, 1993). This work has highlighted the impacts upon agricultural productivity, usually in negative terms, for those ejidos in the most marginalized regions which lack access to commercial markets, multinational corporations or irrigation technology, and which are already heavily in debt, or rely on the dwindling supply of government assistance for survival (Cornelius and Myhre, 1997; Stanford, 1994).
…Generically termed the reform of Article 27, the new legislation inter alia permits a number of important changes relevant to this paper: namely, for ejidos to convert ‘use’ rights into individual rights to sell, rent or mortgage land to non-ejido members; and to set up joint venture contracts with domestic or foreign private companies (see Goldring, 1995; Austin, 1994; Cornelius, 1992 for a more complete discussion).

So NAFTA wiped out protection for Mexican native farmers, 75% lost their livelihoods and the new 1993 law opened the way for the Ag Cartel to move in. This also explains the flood of Mexicans over the US border. A win-win for the Ag Cartel on both sides of the border.

J. Philip Peterson says:
December 2, 2012 at 8:10 am
“Patricia Ravasio,
Here’s the Bucky Fuller item I was looking for. Found it in Wackapedia:
Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, is the ability of technological advancement to do “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing”.”
Which sounds very much like Julian Simon in “The Ultimate Resource”. The book is free on the internet, here:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

From Pats comment http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/01/18-annual-climate-gabfests-16-years-without-warming/#comment-1161858 is this silliness about name calling.
Pat writes:
“From you guys, all I’m reading are nasty snide remarks and poop jokes. Am I really supposed to take you seriously? I know it’s Saturday night, but could you put down the Scotch and provide some facts?”
This after you post a link to a website that continually call skeptics names in EVERY post they make about what skeptics thinks.You also bring up two other warmist sources that have a history of producing ad homonyms against skeptics in their drivel grade babblings.
In my long experience on this topic I see you as a classic ignorant thinker of the subject matter.I have tangled with the likes of you since the early 1990’s when it became clear to me that there is an element of the population that LACK sufficient skeptical and reasoning skills to employ on the subject of climate science.
I have withdrawn from many places now because the level of warmist ignorance and stupidity is so unbelievable that I wonder if this is evidence of mass brainwashing to think like a turgid greenie environmentalist who have no idea what a total fool they make of themselves in propagating their absurd warmist tripe because they are part of some gian crowd.
Facts such as the unending modeled predictions of the last 34 years that have been part of a proven track record of failures? The missing “Hot spot”,The lack of the predicted warming trends that have been predicted over and over starting from the 1990 IPCC report to the last one in 2007.The lack of an accelerating sea level and temperature change increase from 1990.The lack of the widespread positive feedbacks that was strongly predicted over 25 years ago.
Those “facts” you clearly support?
ROFLMAO!
What about the NULL HYPOTHESIS Pat, that you and your deluded CAWG believers keep ignoring where there is no unusual deviations from the trends of the last 150 years after the LIA was thought to have ended.
Here is a temperature chart and comments by a prominent warmist I posted in a forum thread in the tireless effort to help the resident CAWG believer see reason.He is one of the very few warmist left that I bother to spend time trying to help bring him back to a rational state on the climate.He never did address what Dr. Jones said to Roger Harrabin in an interview:
http://ai-jane.org/bb/thread-3546-post-211309.html#pid211309
Buzz’z reaction in the forum thread (The resident CAWG believer) to the chart DR. Jones that was created by Jo Nova using his supplied data in the interview that I repeatedly posted to show the evidence of a natural climate cycle is typical of low IQ warmist thinking capability.He simply fails to realize that his answer makes him a complete fool in the process as the evidence is clearly visible that there is nothing unusual going on temperature wise:
He writes,
“Backed off?? I don’t think so. More like gave up. Gave up because you posted the same damn graph that I had already addressed 3 times in 4 consecutive posts. I learned a long time ago that when you start idiotically repeating yourself over and over again that you don’t know what your talking about and are just repeating another denialist lie.”
http://ai-jane.org/bb/thread-3546-post-215416.html#pid215416
The problem is that he never attacks what Dr. Jones said in the interview that the temperature chart is based on as shown in his FIRST response in the forum thread to the chart based on uber warmist own temperature data and I quote Buzz again:
“So What?? You keep making a big deal about this like it proves or disproves something. IT DOESN’T!! All it really shows is that global warming isn’t always going to be consistent.
There is just way too much more BS for me to debunk all of it tonight but I want to give you guys a link that repeats much of what I am saying and debunks some other common denialist talking points. See if you can respond to any of it without making yourselves look stupid.
Read and learn here.”
The MetOffice link he posted: http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/met-office-in-the-media-the-sunday-times-so-do-we-freeze-or-fry/
My reply here and he proves from them on afterwards that he has no idea what the NULL HYPOTHESIS is in his replies in regard to the chart I stubbornly keep reposting because he was being stupid as hell over it:
http://ai-jane.org/bb/thread-3546-post-211840.html#pid211840
I really piled it on in 5 consecutive posts and he goes to pieces afterwards.
Ha ha ha ha ha….

OOPS! Looks like a yearly failure now.

Independent – March 2000
Dr David Viner, CRU
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,…”

And 12 years later we still have that white stuff of the past.

2 December, 2012 UK
And the end of the cold snap is still not in sight, with freezing temperatures due to last into next week, possibly followed by more snow.
The white start to the month was enough to prompt record numbers of punters to place bets on snow falling on Christmas Day. According to bookmakers Ladbrokes, more money had been staked on a white Christmas on Saturday than by any other 1 December in its history.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/02/snow-icy-conditions-temperatures-plunge

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2635167

richardscourtney says, “Nobody claims the overall trend was a constant before the global temperature stopped rising in 1997.”
In the next comment Jim Cripwell says, ” the rate of warming has got to exceed the 0.06 C per decade that has persisted for many decades, possibly back to the LIA.”
Surely, even somebody sufficiently stupid as to make the comment richardscourtney made can see the humor in him being shown to be wrong so quickly.

Skunkpew says:
December 2, 2012 at 1:06 am
You think after all this time, they’d learn something and hold this convention in the middle of the summer when the alarmism is at its absolute peak. God help them, they can’t even get that right….
__________________________________
Why should they? They want a free vacation in some place nice and preferably warm. They kinda blew it with Copenhagen but I am sure Sex Workers (Prostitutes Offer Free Climate Summit Sex) kept them toasty.

Several writers (andrew@3:38, Dirk@4:42) have mentioned the scale of wind turbines and support facilities. Here are the facts as presented by the site I can see out my window — about 15 miles east of me.
http://pse.com/inyourcommunity/kittitas/Pages/Wild-Horse.aspx
Look beneath the photo for the “Fast facts” list
Concrete is measured in cubic yards; in this case 11,750. An average value for weight is about 150 pounds per cu. ft., but with a very light mix 100 pounds is possible and 300+ is attainable if a heavy aggregate (say hematite) is used. Play with the numbers, if you like. The anchor bolts and nuts are steel (also heavy) but I have never seen the combined weight.
Below are the coordinates for the installation in the link above.
47.012465, -120.201776
The building on which the view is focused is the visitor’s center (very nice and worth a visit). Zoom in and note the long white pointed thing next to it on the north side. That is a blade damaged in transit and used as a “touchable” display.
There is a smallish fixed angle solar unit to the northwest, here:
47.020556, -120.222968
The site gets very strong winds and they chose not to go with a “follow the sun” array because the units are more prone to damage.
Also, with the strong winds the turbines have to be “parked” – and produce no power.

IPeCaC or ipecac. Swallow either one and you get the same result. Look it up.

Why is it almost universal that warmists’ arguments are so threadbare when it comes to
scientifically acceptable data? They seem to rely on the fact that majority rules and the
(presumed) majority is always right. The only deniers I see are those who deny the absence of warming, the absence of predicted super hurricanes, etc. etc. Let’s start pointing out their denials
of patently obvious non-events, and data.

Christopher Monckton,
I appreciated your post. Thank you.
QUESTION – If many scientifically skeptical independent thinkers are considering a new overal strategy to nullify the biased scientific research cherry picked by the IPCC to artificially force a CAGW ‘consensus’, what would be your recommendation for a new strategy?
John

james griffin says:
December 2, 2012 at 2:09 am
It is impossible for CO2 to be the driver to extreme temperatures as CO2′s ability to create heat diminishes as you stack it up. By the time 300-360ppm is achieved a further 60ppm for instance will only produce less than one tenth of one degree. Based on this we have already taken 75% of any of the heat we will ever get from CO2. This appears to be well known but kept from the public as are a number of other things….
_______________________________
Just to add to that. GRAPH: log response of temperature vs increase in CO2 it shows we are at the point of diminishing returns.

“I see what appear to be factual, indepth reports and comments from http://www.350.org, thinkprogress.com…”
Oh my aching sides!!
Whenever did either of those gangs of special pleaders ever produce anything factual or in-depth??
ROFL doesn’t start to describe it. You’ll be quoting SkepticalScience next.

AGW theory is that temperatures will increase as the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increases. My question is simple, is it doing what it says on the tin?
10 year temperature trend is slightly negative -0.04C/decade
15 year temperature trend is slightly positive +0.04C/decade
30 year temperature trend is significantly positive +0.16C/decade
The above are monthly rolling HadCRUT4 trends up to and including Oct 2012.
Whilst the 30 year trend is at present significantly positive, if the 10 year and 15 year trends remain significantly below the 30 year trend it can only reduce. Is it doing what it says on the tin? Don’t know yet, only time will tell, but keep your eye on the shorter term trends because they will dictate the long term future of the 30 year trend. If they go above the 30 year trend then it will increase, if they stay below it will reduce. There will be short term ups and downs from the past data but they will not affect the long term trend. The 30 year rate of warming has been reducing for 9 years, whilst the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has continued to increase.

@Patrick Guinness Ravasio
I actually followed your link to 350.org, just to see what a real science site would look like. I was greeted by an aerial photo of 1200 students arranged to create a cartoon-like image of a lighthouse. That’s not science.
Maybe there was something better if I scrolled down. More photos, this time of people who were walking around, carrying signs in Doha. Silly slogans, similar to the “Think Green” bumper stickers I see on the back of minivans in the suburbs, and just as inconsistent. It’s a little hard to take someone seriously when they use fossil fuels to travel (either to Doha or to the local mall) while protesting the use of fossil fuels. That’s not science.
So I looked even farther down the page. FINALLY an article that contained some science! Concerns about the health effects of living near the proposed Keystone pipeline. Upon reading the article, I found this claim about living near the shipping channel in Houston:
The chances of contracting leukemia here are 56 percent, and of course, this is related to the petrochemical industry.
Really? 56% of all people living within 2 miles of the channel of Houston get leukemia? Well, it turns out that the real study found that leukemia rates were 56% higher than normal for a single type of leukemia, but that’s not nearly the same as a 56% rate of leukemia overall. So, yes, there was some science there, but it was ridiculously alarmist and obviously wrong. That article was posted on November 29th, and in the days that have followed NO ONE (including you) has bothered to fact check it or offer any skepticism about a wildly inflated bit of bad science.

MikeB says:
December 2, 2012 at 8:23 am
“Why is the long term temperature trend from say 1950 – 2012 higher than for 1950 – 1997 if warming stopped in 1997 as per the article, surely the long term trend should be lower or the same if you include data points from 1997-2012 if warming stopped in 1997?”
Because a least squares trend is a nonlinear operation. You can’t expect two partial trends to add up or average out to the trend over the whole series. Notice the behaviour of the OLDS trends against the moving average over a 100 months here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/to:1997/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1950/mean:100

Steve C says: December 2, 2012 at 12:48 am: Pat Ravasio – You want to see some facts? […]
It is precisely through ascertaining the facts that many of us became “disbelievers”: I, for example, used to think as you seem to, until a friend put cash on the table for anyone who could show him a proof of catastrophic manmade climate change. After a couple of weeks’ searching, I became seriously worried at the quality of the “science” I was seeing.
I was luckier: I only needed 30 minutes. It was models all the way down.