A Short Summary Of Why The Theory Of Man Made Global Warming Has Failed

Prof. Bob Carter, an Aussie scientist, gives a very good summary of why the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has failed. That theory has at its heart the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is the biggest driver of our climate and that, as carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, our temperatures will warm proportionately. This from a post by Prof. Carter at WUWT:

Though you wouldn’t know it from the antagonistic nature of public discussions about global warming, a large measure of scientific agreement and shared interpretation exists amongst nearly all scientists who consider the issue. The common ground . . . includes:

· that climate has always changed and always will,

· that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere,

· that human emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere,

· that a global warming of around 0.5OC occurred in the 20th century, but

· that global warming has ceased over the last 15 years.

The scientific argument over DAGW is therefore about none of these things. Rather, it is almost entirely about three other, albeit related, issues. They are:

· the amount of net warming that is, or will be, produced by human-related emissions,

· whether any actual evidence exists for dangerous warming of human causation over the last 50 years, and

· whether the IPCC’s computer models can provide accurate climate predictions 100 years into the future.

. . . My answers would be: insignificant, none and no.

What can possibly explain such disparate responses to a largely agreed set of factual climate data?

. . . Given the great natural variability exhibited by climate records, and the failure to date to compartmentalize or identify a human signal within them, the proper null hypothesis – because it is the simplest consistent with the known facts – is that global climate changes are presumed to be natural, unless and until specific evidence is forthcoming for human causation.

It is one of the more extraordinary facts about the IPCC that the research studies it favours mostly proceed using an (unjustified) inversion of the null hypothesis – namely that global climate changes are presumed to be due to human-related carbon dioxide emissions, unless and until specific evidence indicates otherwise.

What hypothesis do we wish to test?

. . . The DAGW hypothesis that I want to test here is precisely and only “that dangerous global warming is being caused, or will be, by human-related carbon dioxide emissions”. To be “dangerous”, at a minimum the change must exceed the magnitude or rate of warmings that are known to be associated with normal weather and climatic variability.

What evidence can we use to test the DAGW hypothesis?

Many different lines of evidence can be used to test the DAGW hypothesis. Here I have space to present just five, all of which are based upon real world empirical data. For more information, please read both Dr. Hayhoe’s and my book.

Consider the following tests:

(i) Over the last 16 years, global average temperature, as measured by both thermometers and satellite sensors, has displayed no statistically significant warming; over the same period, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 10%.

Large increases in carbon dioxide have therefore not only failed to produce dangerous warming, but failed to produce any warming at all. Hypothesis fails.

(ii) During the 20th century, a global warming of between 0.4O C and 0.7O C occurred, at a maximum rate, in the early decades of the century, of about 1.7O C/century. In comparison, our best regional climate records show that over the last 10,000 years natural climate cycling has resulted in temperature highs up to at least 1O C warmer than today, at rates of warming up to 2.5O C/century.

In other words, both the rate and magnitude of 20th century warming falls well within the envelope of natural climate change. Hypothesis fails, twice.

(iii) If global temperature is controlled primarily by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, then changes in carbon dioxide should precede parallel changes in temperature.

In fact, the opposite relationship applies at all time scales. Temperature change precedes carbon dioxide change by about 5 months during the annual seasonal cycle, and by about 700-1000 years during ice age climatic cycling. Hypothesis fails.

(iv) The IPCC’s computer general circulation models, which factor in the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, project that global warming should be occurring at a rate of +2.0O C/century.

In fact, no warming at all has occurred in either the atmosphere or the ocean for more than the last decade. The models are clearly faulty, and allocate too great a warming effect for the extra carbon dioxide (technically, they are said to overestimate the climate sensitivity). Hypothesis fails.

(v) The same computer models predict that a fingerprint of greenhouse-gas-induced warming will be the creation of an atmospheric hot spot at heights of 8-10 km in equatorial regions, and enhanced warming also near both poles.

Given that we already know that the models are faulty, it shouldn’t surprise us to discover that direct measurements by both weather balloon radiosondes and satellite sensors show the absence of surface warming in Antarctica, and a complete absence of the predicted low latitude atmospheric hot spot. Hypothesis fails, twice.

. . . .

Summary

The current scientific reality is that the IPCC’s hypothesis of dangerous global warming has been repeatedly tested, and fails. Despite the expenditure of large sums of money over the last 25 years (more than $100 billion), and great research effort by IPCC-related and other (independent) scientists, to date no scientific study has established a certain link between changes in any significant environmental parameter and human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. . . .

My one caveat to Dr. Carter's summary would be that I have zero trust in the assertion that any warming has occurred in the 20th century, simply because I do not trust the temperature records maintained by global warming theories high priest, James Hansen. Hansen has modified our temperature records on more than one occasion, always reducing older temperatures from the early and mid 20th century while increasing modern temperatures. He should be in jail.

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Warmie Angst & The AGW Theory Hanging By A Single Untested Hypothesis

The warmies are experiencing some epic angst over the letter published several days ago in the WSJ from sixteen distinguished scientists, addressed to our political leaders, stating that global warming is not an issue with which they needed to be concerned. The warmies have responded at the WSJ with a letter from Kevin Trenberth that is jaw dropping in its arrogance and utterly revealing about the state of the anthropogenic global warming theory.

Trenberth's first argument is that the only people that can make judgements about the validity of global warming are "climate scientists." As he puts it, "[d]o you consult your dentist about your heart problem?" But the reality is that "climate science" overlaps significantly with other disciplines, such as physics, meteorology, oceanography, statistics and computer programming to name but a few.  Trenberth gives us no reason whatsoever to discount the opinions of experts in these areas when making assessments of global warming. And as Jo Nova responds with tongue in cheek:

If my dentist tells me that my heart surgeon was caught emailing other surgeons about how to use tricks to hide declines, that he broke laws of reason, that his predictions are basically all wrong, or that his model of understanding is demonstrably wrong, then I’m listening to the dentist.

What is most troubling - and unbelievably arrogant - about Trenberth's argument is that he implies that if you are one of the non-scientists, your only recourse is to blindly trust in the pronouncements of "climate scientists."  What pure and utter bullshit.

What can - and should - we non-scientists do to assess climate science?

Number one, and perhaps most importantly, we can look at the underlying mechanics of a claimed scientific finding to see whether it is based on an experiment that complies with the scientific method - i.e., all the data, methodology, computer programs, etc. are archived and made public so that the results can be analyzed and reproduced by others. If not - and SO MUCH of climate science does not - then we should accord it zero reliability.

We can even take that a step further in evaluating experiments and just take a look at the size of the experimental sample.  If it is large and diverse, then we can mark it down as at least some indication that the results might be trustworthy.  If the sample is extremely small, that is a red flag that the scientist may be cherry picking data to get the result that they want - as happened with the infamous Yamal Tree Ring study.

We can look at how the temperature record itself is compilied - and make common sense judgments about whether the methods used are uniform and reliable.  And if they are not, if there appear to be significant problems with the numbers of temperature stations, their location, and whether they are subject to heat island effect, then we should be very skeptical indeed

We can look at changes to the temperature records to see whether there is any justification for the changes.  And if the changes are to make the older temperatures colder and the later temperatures warmer with no justification given, we can be suspicious that we are being sold a bill of goods.

We can look at the geologic record and see if the claims being made about our modern climate are reasonable within the larger picture.  So if at numerous points in history when there was no human contribution to CO2, the climate was warmer than today, we can legitimately ask why we should believe that increasing temperatures, as we emerge from the Little Ice Age, are in any way unusual, and proof of a human component to climate change.

We can look at the computer models to determine whether they are accurately predicting the heating or cooling of our climate. And if they are not (and all IPCC comuter models fail that test today), then we have no reason to trust the pronouncements of the warmies.

And we can tell whether there are gaping logical disconnects in the warmie arguments. Indeed, Trenberth makes a huge, gigantic, massive, leap in logic in his WSJ article, asking us to take an untested hypothesis as fact.  I'll save that critically important pearl for last.  First, let's deal with the following:

Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter.

Wow.  I seem to recall that a week ago, all of those climate scientists at the MET and the University of East Anglia, two warmie institutions at the heart of climate science (not to mention Climategate), just told us 'unequivocally' that our planet had not warmed at all over the past 15 years.  So Trenberth is deliberately ignoring that to make his absolutist claim.  He has obvious problems with veracity.  So why should we trust anything that he says.

Actually, this latest finding from MET and East Anglia stands in direct contradiction to Jim Hansen's NASA GISS temperature record. The GISS records show red hot warming over the past 15 years. GISS and MET data line up through 1998, but diverge thereafter because Hansen claims that there is massive warming going on in the Arctic region. There is minimal coverage of temperature stations in the Arctic, and Hansen's claims are based almost wholly on a number of questionable extrapolations. Indeed, even while Hansen is showing the Arctic on fire over the past 15 years, we are seeing increases in polar ice there - something that wholly undermines Hansen's claims.  So what Trenberth is doing is the time tested climate scientist technique of cherry picking the data he wants. And since the MET data undermines his argument, he is pretending it simply doesn't exist.

And one more note before leaving the above quote. Trenberth writes that the last decade has been the "warmest decade on record." Now, I will bet that most non-scientists reading that will believe that we are experiencing world record temperatures over the course of geologic time.  But in reality, "on record" is shorthand for the period since 1880, when relatively reliable temperature record keeping began.  Warmies rarely seem to explain that when they make their pronouncements.

Trenberth later makes mention of his 2009 e-mail wherein he bemoaned the fact that the world had stopped warming and the warmies couldn't explain it.  So what has changed since 2009?  It's the mother of all logical jumps.

[C]omputer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.

Did you catch those two things?  One, Trenberth's e-mail is directly undermining the claim of Hansen's NASA GISS that we have had continued warming of surface temperatures over the past 15 years. Obviously Trenberth didn't believe it when he wrote his 2009 e-mail bemoaning the lack of warming. And today Trenberth is taking the position that the surface temperatures have not warmed, but the deep oceans have. So there is no doubt Trenberth is being less than honest when he now embraces Hansen's surface temperature numbers as definitive. But that is not the big thing.

The huge, gigantic, enormous thing in the above statement is this - Trenberth et. al, when he couldn't explain the flatlining of temperatures over the past 15 years, built a new computer model that has spit out a projection that significant warming is going on in the deep oceans. How that happens without warming the middle layers of the ocean is a mystery, but lets leave that aside for the moment.  What the computer has spit out is AN UNTESTED HYPOTHESIS.  In other words, Trenberth DOES NOT HAVE THE DATA to support his conclusion that global warming has gone deep into the oceans. Deep water temperature testing only began with ARGO in 2003, and there is nowhere near the data at this point to even suggest that the ocean depths have, over the past 15 years, absorbed the massive amount of heat that Trenberth's model projects. So simply put, no one today can validate it.  Warming in the deep ocean is not known to be "common" on the basis of any observed data. So in other words, this scurrilous man is asking us to accept the absolute truth of anthropogenic global warming not on data or proven fact, but ON FAITH THAT HIS LATEST COMPUTER MODEL may be right. That is the antithesis of science.

This is incredibly revealing.  It means that the AGW theory is literally hanging on by an untested hypothesis today. It also means that, for the first time since the global warming canard started, it is, today, capable of being falsified. After the moving of goal post after goal post, we finally might be at the point that there is no more space for the warmies to move it. It is put up or shut up time for Trenberth and the warmies. Show us observed facts, not a computer generated hypothesis..

----------------------------- Update: The addressees of Trenberth's letter have responded at WSJ:

The Trenberth letter tells us that "computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean." The ARGO system of diving buoys is providing increasingly reliable data on the temperature of the upper layers of the ocean, where much of any heat from global warming must reside. But much like the surface temperature shown in the graph, the heat content of the upper layers of the world's oceans is not increasing nearly as fast as IPCC models predict, perhaps not increasing at all. Why should we now believe exaggerating IPCC models that tell us of "missing heat" hiding in the one place where it cannot yet be reliably measured—the deep ocean?

-----------------------------

Lastly, Trenberth falls back on the tried and true argument that all people should accept the truth of anthropogenic global warming because it is generally accepted by all right thinking scientists whose papers are accepted for peer reviewed publication. Compare that argument with this:

No theory is carved in stone. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. In science, 100 authorities count for nothing. Experiment counts for everything.

That is from physicist Micho Kaku's article, Has A Speeding Neutrino Really Overturned Einstein, in the WSJ last year. It would seem that Mr. Kaku has a very different opinion than Mr. Trenberth as to what constitutes actual  "science" and how much trust should be placed in the weight of authorities.  Indeed, it would seem that Trenberth is doing anything but making valid scientific arguments.

At the end of the day, there needs to be a reckoning.  The "climate scientists" who have sold us on the canard of global warming cannot escape with their careers intact.  And to the extent that they have committed knowing fraud, they need to be punished criminally.  Those organizations that have told us the sicience is settled need to lose access to all federal funding.  And the entire system of federal grants for research needs to be thoroughly overhauled.  And lastly, we as a nation ought to demand that any scientist who receives federal funding to conduct an experiment must completely comply with the scientific method, making every bit of data, methodology, and computer programs immediately available so that their work can be validated or falsified.  This global warming scam, so costly to our world, cannot be allowed to simply fade into the night as the theory is disproven. They have caused too much damage to entire economies and they have grossly eroded the faith of the average person in the trustworthiness of our scientific community. Examples need to be made.

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Are We About To See The Death Of The Global Warming Scam?

The article in today's Daily Mail

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

- Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

So what is the biggest bombshell in this article?

Is it that the MET and the University of East Anglia have confirmed that there has been no global warming for the past 15 years (contrary to NASA numbers from the despicable James Hansen?)

Is it that all of the IPCC computer models - predicated on the theory that the world will warm in direct proportion to increases in atmospheric CO2 - have failed utterly?

Is it that we seem to be heading into a lull in sunspot activity last seen during periods of intense global cooling - (in particular that period known as the little Ice Age that Michael Mann wiped from the historic records with his hockey stick graph?)

Or is it that we are about to see the heretical theory of Henrick Svensmark - that solar activity, not CO2, is the primary determinant of our globe's warming and cooling through cloud formation - finally given a real world trial? Note that the same theory passed its first test at CERN last year.

This from the Daily Mail:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C. However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

Interestingly, the MET is still taking the position that there will be no global cooling because it will all be offset by increasing carbon dioxide. Cue Henrick Svensmark:

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

Talk about your deadenders. The MET is hanging onto their AGW CO2-centric models with the very edges of their bloody fingernails at this point. They won't be able to do it much longer.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

So is tar and feathering serious enough for these world's greatest scam artists, or is something more serious warranted? Perhaps it is for Al Gore, Michael Mann and James Hansen. What do you think, maybe permanent deportation to Siberia where they can live out their lives with a zero carbon footprint?

The real crime with all of this is that, while our governments still push global warming, the reality is that global cooling may soon be upon us - and the effects could be devastating. Unfortunately, our world will not be able to prepare for this eventuality until the AGW gravy train is brought to its final, bitter end.  And given that the global warming scam is not about science, but rather about political power, patronage and money, we will be well into global cooling before that will ever happen.

Update:  Linked by Paul in Houston

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Hansen Not Even Trying To Hide The Decline Anymore

Why is the off the rails, capitalism hating uber warmie James Hansen still working at NASA and riding herd over our temperature records? Indeed, why is he not in jail for fraud, since he is cooking the books and becoming personally wealthy for doing so? These are but two of the life's perplexing mysteries.

How blatant is Hansen these days about his cooking the temps? This catch from Willis Eschenbach posting at Watts Up With That:

. . . Hansen’s paper says the following (emphasis mine):

The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009).

I bring it up because it is climate science at its finest. Since the observations were not of the expected range, rather than figure out why the results might be wrong, they just twisted the dials to “reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models.”

And curiously, the “imbalance suggested by climate models”, of some 0.85 W/m2, was actually from Hansen’s previous paper. That earlier paper of his, by coincidence called “Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications“, gave that 0.85 W/m2 figure as a result from Hansen’s own GISS climate model … but all this incestuous back-slapping is probably just another coincidence.

Of course, you know what all this means. Soon, the modelers will be claiming that the CERES satellite results verify that the GISS and other climate models are accurately duplicating observations …

Hansen isn't even trying to hide his bastardization of the numbers. If he doesn't like the result, he just changes it. And you don't need a PhD in physics to understand that to go from 6.5 to .85 is change by an order of magnitude.

It really is too bad that Rick Perry, the one person running for the nomination who actually gets that this is all the world's greatest scam, is simply unable to articulate it. All he would have to say is that the whole temperature record is untrustworthy and that climate scientists are refusing to subject their work to the scientific method, instead trying to argue that a corrupt peer review process should substitute. That isn't science.

At any rate, step one to sanity is to fire James Hansen and everyone under him at NASA. Step two is to open up the temprature record to full transparency, including all raw data and all of the underlying math used to arrive at the final numbers. Step three is to withhold all future funding from institutions and individuals that publish findings that do not allow for full replication by the scientific method. Step four is to start putting warmie frauds in jail. Hansen, Gore and Mann should be sharing a jail cell if there is any justice in the cosmos.

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The Facts & Obama's War On Domestic Oil & Gas

Let's go over some of the eye-opening facts about our gas and oil industry:

- Oil Prices: The major oil companies do not set the price of oil. That price is set independently by traders based on world supply and demand, the strength of the dollar, stability in oil producing regions, and weather events, among other factors.

- Oil Usage - Transportation: Per the DOE, oil accounts for 94% of the energy used in our transportation sector.

- Oil As Our Single Largest Source Of Energy: Per the DOE, oil is our single most important source of energy, accounting for 35.6% of all energy consumed in America. In comparison, solar and wind, added together account for less than 1% of all energy consumed in the U.S. There is a reason for that. Wind and solar energy are vastly more inefficient and costly than oil, gas and coal. They are not commecially viable without substantial subsidies.

- Profit Margin: While oil companies' profits may be vast, that is because their volume is vast. America uses over 20 million barrels of oil daily. The actual profit margin across the oil industry averages less than 6 cents on the dollar. By comparison, Obama's favorite crony capitalist, GE, has a profit margin nearly 33% higher.

- Oil Companies & Taxes: The oil and gas industry is a cash cow for government. Oil and gas companies pay, on average, more than 40% of their profits in taxes. To put a number to this, over the past three years, the oil and gas industry has paid over $242 billion in taxes. Obama's favored business, GE, paid no taxes last year.

- Oil Companies & Jobs: Domestic gas and oil companies play a huge role in our private sector, supporting "9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.7 percent of the U.S. economy."

- Reinvesting Profits: Exploring and exploiting new sources of oil is a time consuming and very expensive process. For instance, Exxon, in the first quarter of 2011, made an after tax profit of $10.65 billion. Of that, Exxon invested "$7.8 billion into capital and exploration."

- Our Trade Deficit & Foreign Oil: We are, today, transferring vast amounts of our wealth outside of the U.S. to purchase foreign oil. Approximately 62% of our monthly trade deficit comes from the purchase of foreign oil.

- Who Gets Rich Off Of Oil Company Profits: Profitable oil companies are a key portion of many pensions and portfolios.

[A]bout 1.5 percent of the shares of oil companies are held by the officers and board members of those companies. That is comparable to other industries. Similarly, if you look at who is holding the other 98.5 percent of the shares, more than 60 percent is being held by either mutual funds or the companies that manage large portfolios for pensions. There is another 9 percent that is held directly by pension plans and insurance companies and foundations.
. . . .
What do you say to people who are critical of oil and natural gas industry earnings? Aren't they really being critical of the benefits that are going to millions of American consumers and retirees?

Mr. Shapiro: Those earnings go to two places. They go to the dividends and the value of the stock that is held by pensions and people saving for their retirement. That comprises the overwhelming majority of the ownership of these companies. The other place where oil and natural gas company earnings go is into investment. The oil and natural gas industry has enormous investment needs. . . . That is the other place those earnings go. They go to the retirement plans of both average Americans and certainly the beneficiaries of the major pension plans in the country. They are public employees or auto workers and the earnings also go toward investments that generate returns in the future.

What all of these facts mean are that oil companies are huge industries that, in a myriad of ways, play a very critical role in supporting our economy. Moreover, nothing is going to replace our oil usage at any point in the forseeable future. Yet, with gas prices rising and the oil industry showing huge profits in the last quarter, the left wants to show they are doing something about gas prices - by punishing the oil industry. Specifically, Obama and Harry Reid propose removing "big oil's subsidies." And in reality, this is merely the latest in Obama and the left's much larger war on our domestic oil and gas industry.

George Will recently opined that the ideology and politics of the left are "untethered from the facts." Will, noting the left's substitution of wishful thinking for plans based in reality, chalks this up to deep historical ignorance. Will is half right. The other reason the left's politics and ideology are "untethered from the facts" is because the left are at least as intellectualy dishonest as they are historically ignorant. The actions of Obama, Reid and the left, to demonize and attack our oil and gas industry because gas prices are rising is merely the most recent proof.

The first deceit of the left is that the oil and gas industry receives no subsidies. Rather, what they receive, and that which Obama aspires to remove, are four tax write downs, three of which - domestic manufacturing tax deduction, percentage depletion allowance, and foreign tax credit - are available to every manufacturing entity in the U.S. The only way in which oil companies are treated partially different than other manufacturing entities in the the U.S. is as regards:

Intangible drilling costs -- According to CNN, "[a]ll industries get to write off the costs of doing business, but they must take it over the life of an investment. The oil industry gets to take the drilling credit in the first year."

So when Obama says he wants to take away all of "big oil's subsidies," what he is really saying is that he wants to single out our oil and gas industry for unfavorable tax treatment as compared to all other manufacturing concerns in America. He wants to treat them as a pariah and steal more of their profits.

It is hard to imagine a plan more "untethered from reality" or more cynically designed to gain political advantage, irrespective of the expense to our nation. Basic economics dictate that this plan will negatively impact our economy.

Singling out our domestic oil and gas for special, unfavorable treatment will reduce domestic oil production, it will increase our trade imbalance, it will cost us private sector jobs, it will harm the pensions of millions of Americans, and it will result in rising gas and oil prices to the consumer. Charles Krauthammer does a great job of skewering Obama and the left for the intellectual dishonesty inherent this ostentatious push to punish our oil and gas industry:

Ultimately, this proposal by Obama and the left is going nowhere, simply because there are too many Republicans in Congress to allow them to get away with this insanity. Were this the only attack on our oil and gas industry from Obama and the left, perhaps it would be no big deal. But the reality is that Obama is waging war on our oil and gas industry very effectively by other means.

While Obama recently claimed credit for increased oil production in America under his watch, that was the height of hypocrisy. To the extent that there has been a slight uptick in production under his watch, that is because of expansions of oil drilling on private lands in North Dakota, South Texas and West Texas. Further, these figures have been bumped upward by the opening of BP's deepwater Thunder Horse well. That well was leased under Reagan, the exploratory well dug under Clinton, the well set under Bush, and production only now coming to full flow. In sum, Obama had as much to do with the increase in domestic oil production on his watch as he has had to do with the daily rising and setting of the sun.

To the contrary, as stated earlier, Obama is warring quite effectively on our domestic oil drilling. He is doing so, on one hand, by severely restricting the availability of public lands and coastal regions for exploration and drilling and, on the other hand, by limiting permits for such activities:

In 2008 there were 2,416 new oil and natural gas leases issued on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land spanning 2.6 million acres. In 2010, under the Obama Administration, the number of new leases issued dropped to 1,308 and acres leased dropped to 1.3 million. The total onshore acreage leased under the Obama Administration in 2009 and 2010 are the lowest in over two decades, stretching back to at least 1984.

There is also, of course, the permatorium on drilling in the Gulf, though at least a few drilling permits have recently been issued. The effects of Obama's war will be with us long after Obama himself is but a distant, very unpleasant memory in our national consciousness.

What makes this war on our domestic production, with all its attendant negatives for our economy, all the more mind boggling is that Obama has promised to significantly finance Brazil's development of their own oil industry. That is inexplicable - though of course it does bear noting that George Soros has a substantial investment, close to $1 billion, in Brazil's oil industry.

Fortunately for our nation, Obama's war on our domestic oil production is something that we can change at the ballot box. But there is also another front in the left's war on oil and gas - one that wholly bypasses Congress and the ballot box. I am referring to the radical environmentalists who have been given keys to the courthouse under our environmental laws. They are seeking new ways daily to bring our nation to its knees by hitting the off switch on oil, gas and economic growth.

One of their well honed methods is to request that a species be listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Once whatever little beastie is then declared endangered, any and all human activity that effects that beasties's habitat becomes enjoined. So for example, California's Central Valley, which but three years ago was a thriving bed of agriculture, has seen its irrigation water shut and is today "Zimbabwe West." The reason - a law suit brought under the ESA to protect a 3 inch fish with no commercial value, the Delta smelt.

What the left accomplished in California with agriculture, they are attempting to repeat with the oil and gas industry in West Texas. The left has brought suit under the ESA to have the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard declared endangered. If they succeed, virtually all oil production and exploration in West Texas will come to a grinding hault.

And then there are the law suits charging that carbon dioxide is a pollutant for which emitters are liable. Their ultimate goal is to have the courts take over our nation's energy policy. Whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant and whether it is causing "global warming" are scientific questions very much at issue and that courts are unqualified to answer. Even assuming arguendo that CO2 is a pollutant causing global warming, what to do about it is a political question with massive ramifications for our economy. It is not a question to be decided by our Courts, but by our elected representatives.

Yet our federal judiciary, from the Supreme Court on down - none of whom are scientists - has shown an avid willingness to hear and decide such cases. The EPA is regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant today under the Clean Air Act because five members of the Supreme Court felt qualified to pass judgment on this issue. Moreover, enterprising lawyers have brought suits against power companies under a nuisance theory because they are contributing to carbon dioxide in the air. These law suits are currently in the court system. If the lawyers succeed, the Courts then become the single most important arbiters of energy policy in America. On top of this, we have seen in the past week NASA's Jim Hansen, the "Bernie Madoff of climate science," file lawsuits with children as the plaintiffs seeking to have courts take complete control over our energy policy in the name of Global Warming.

While Obama's attempt to punish our domestic oil and gas industry for daring to make a profit is not going to go anywhere, his and the left's larger war on that industry is "untethered from the facts." We are all going to ultimately pay the price. I am praying that we are able to elect someone in 2012 who is both capable of articulating a coherent energy policy and who is able to take our courts and the radical left out of the business of deciding our nation's energy policy.

Update:



Linked: Larwyn's Linx

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James Hansen - Enemy of the State; Enemy of Humanity: So Why Is He Still Employed By NASA?

James Hansen is the Bernie Madoff of climate science. He heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), from which position he lords over our nation's temperature records, both current and historic. Why he is still in that position is a mystery; that he is still in that position is a criminal travesty.

He is a completely off the rails warmie. He is one of the originators of AGW theory and he has been predicting the end of the world from man-made global warming for decades. For but one of countless examples, in 1988, he delved into pure fantasy, predicting a rise in average temperatures by 9 deg, F. by 2040. In 2008, he opined that the comparatively warm winters in the UK were a clear sign of global warming - an opion immediately followed by three severe winters in the UK. He has called for jailing people who disagree with the theory of antrhopogenic global warming. He recently endorsed a book calling for green sabotage and an end to industrial civilization as the only means to save the planet. Not long ago, he announced that he is spending his time preparing briefs intended to be used in law suits against our government. And several years ago, he was a defense witness for activists charged with damaging a coal fired power station in Kent. He justified their actions on his belief that the damage they caused was far outweighed by the damage to our planet from a coal fired power station.

He is both slopppy and dishonest. His manipulation of our temperature data has been blatant and obvious, as Joe D'Aleo amply demonstrates in a recent publication. Hansen has manipulated the data to make older temperatures appear colder and more recent temperatures appear warmer. While the results of his acts are documented, his work product is not. He refuses to release the algorithms he uses to modify the data, nor does he attempt to justify the modifications. When he recently claimed that 2010 was the warmest year on record, it was issued with a level of trustworthiness somewhere below that of a profit and loss accounting statement from Enron. To quote Powerline: "Under his guidance, NASA's data have become so unreliable as to be an embarrassment to any scientists who may still be in the picture."

And he now has pledged his allegiance to Communist China. This from the Washington Examiner:

The nation's most prominent publicly funded climatologist is officially angry about [Congress's failure to pass cap and trade], blaming democracy and citing the Chinese government as the "best hope" to save the world from global warming. He also wants an economic boycott of the U.S. sufficient to bend us to China's will.

NASA laboratory head James Hansen's anti-democracy rants were published while he was on a November junket in China . . .

According to Mr. Hansen, compared to China, we are "the barbarians" with a "fossil-money- 'democracy' that now rules the roost," making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections. . . .

Mr. Hansen has another idea to circumvent our democracy. Because Congress is not likely to pass any legislation making carbon-based energy prohibitively expensive, he proposed, in the South China Morning Post, that China lead a boycott of our economy:

"After agreement with other nations, e.g., the European Union, China and these nations could impose rising internal carbon fees. Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax.

"The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil-fuel addiction ... or ... accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being."

We got Van Jones out of office as the green jobs czar. Hansen is exponentially worse than Jones. He is certainly not a scientist. He is an advocate - and a completely committed one at that. There has to be some way of getting this joker off the government payroll.

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Gorebull Warming Update

I. How does the global warming canard stay alive? It does so with wholly biased reporting and cynical manipulation of public opinon through programming such as:



(H/T EU Referendum)

II. James Hansen of NASA and his undocumented, everchanging historical record of our temperatures sorely needs to be the subject of a Congressional, if not criminal, investigation.

III. At Watts Up With That, a scientist attempts to reverse engineer one of the computer models relied upon to claim that our climate will turn into a man-made inferno but a century or so into the future. He finds it simplistic indeed. But why is he having to reverse engineer a computer model being relied upon to drive public policy you might ask? Because, even a year on from Climategate, none of the entities involved in pushing climate change have taken to releasing their facts, figures, math and programming that would allow the world to actually check them. The scientific method is looked upon as a distraction to these people, who brook no interference with their narrative. This really is criminal. As I have said before, government employees who do this should be fired. Academics who do it as part of studies undertaken on the public dime should be excluded by law from receiving any more public funding.

IV. The latest apocalyptic warmie nonsense: "The Oceans Are Acidifying!!! We are D-O-O-M-E-D." David Middleton investigates, asking three questions: One, is atmospheric CO2 acidifying the oceans? Two, is there any evidence that reefs and other marine calcifers have been damaged by CO2-driven ocean acidification and/or global warming? And three, does the geological record support the oceanic acidification hypothesis? Answers: No, no and no.

V. It is always worthwhile to listen when MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen speaks, and he does so in this instance opining that the AGW theory is, in the paraphrase of Q&O, driven by money, politics and dubious science:

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. . . .

Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.

For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. . . .

With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.

VI. All of the malignant illnesses that plagued climate science pre-Climate Gate are still very much in evidence a year on from that scandal. William Esenbach discusses this travesty in an Open Letter To Dr. Trenberth, posted at WUWT, responding to Trenberth's recent outrageous claim that, given that the canard of man-made global warming is subject to overwhelming proof, it now falls to its critics to disprove the theory. As I stated a few weeks ago, a question that should be asked of every warmie is what evidence needs to be proven that would show that the theory of man-made global warming is false.

VII. If you think you're being fleeced by the warmies - you are more right than you know. Probably the most galling part of all of this is that they are doing it on our tax dime - billions of our tax dimes, to be precise, taken from us at the point of the IRS gun. PJM has the facts and figures.

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Proof!?!? We Don't Need No Stinkeen Proof (of AGW)

In a post below, I stated that the single most important thing we could do to change the debate on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) was to demand of the warmies that they tell us what facts would disprove AGW theory. Only if something can be disproven is it a science. That is, I argue, step one on the road to ending the AGW madness.

But the road has many bumps, it would seem. Apparently, asking for disprovable facts will only work if the greenie you talk to has any sense of shame, or some modicum of intellectual honesty, or perhaps even a patina of sanity. This from Dr. North at EU Referendum, accurately summarizes the logic of one AGW proponent who authored an article in today's NYT:

We have absolutely no evidence that man-made climate change is causing or will cause more hurricanes, and are unlikely to have that evidence for an impossibly long time – after everyone currently living is long dead – if ever. Therefore, we should proceed on the basis that it is proven.

At least NASA's Jim Hansen makes up facts to support global warming before demanding our wealth and that we devolve our society. This shameless person doesn't even feel the need to do that.

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The Fundamental Lack of Trustworthiness of The Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming

I have blogged on this issue before, but it bears repeating. The above graph shows two vastly different world temperature averages over the past century, but both are from Jim Hansen at NASA and both are based on the same data.

Prior to 2007, NASA showed a world (red line) whose average temperatures were relatively stable from 1880 to about 1998, when world temperatures declined for about a decade. Post 2007, NASA showed a world (black line) that was once cool in the 1880's with the temperatures rising until 1998 when they shot through the roof. Huh? Just who are we to believe, NASA or . . . well . . . NASA? What could possibly justify this massive adjustment to the historical record?

People need to understand that the most fundamental aspect of climate science - measuring prior temperatures to compare them against current temps - lacks any iota of trustworthiness. And that is due not just to the Hansenesque hidden methodology and unsubstantiated changes to actual "raw data," but that the data collection stations themselves have numerous issues of reliability.

At any rate, the graph shows how Jim Hansen at NASA adjusted the historical temperature record in 2007 when the weather wasn't cooperating with the theory of global warming. It is how he is able to claim that we are in the hottest decade on record. It is not merely pure - and costly - fantasy, it is criminal.

As Real Science comments, "If nature won’t cooperate and produce some actual warming, someone has to do the dirty work for her."

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A Question To Ask Every Global Warming Proponent

We are at a critical point in the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) war on prosperity. The EPA is about to engage in economy busting regulation of CO2 on the theory that it is a pollutant. And on that basis, Obama is destroying our energy infrastructure with his war on coal, which accounts for 50% of our nation's electricity generation, and oil, which, with declining domestic productions, now accounts for over half of our trade deficit. This has us on a road to pay disastrous prices for energy in the future, with all that means for our economy and jobs. If our nation is to return to prosperity, we must change the paradigm of the AGW debate.

For the last two decades, the meme of the warmies, repeated ad infinitum, has been that climate science is proven by peer reviewed literature and that the consensus is that the science is beyond dispute. Today, there is a mountain of evidence showing that the meme is a canard. It is time to change the terms of the debate on this issue. It is time to demand, unequivocally, that the warmies tell us exactly what would falsify the theory of AGW. And it is time to demand that the EPA Administrator answer that question under oath before Congress.

We have had fifteen years of stable or slightly falling temperatures (notwithstanding the inane babbling of uber-warmie Jim Hansen and his manipulation of NASA data - including the "raw data"). Much of the world has just experienced one of the most horrendously cold Decembers on record. This comes on the heels of warmies telling us for years (Hansen, the MET, and virtually all other warmies included) that global warming would mean temperatures rising co-extensively with humans pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, causing untold calamities and much milder winters.

Instead, the climate models used by the warmies have catastrophically failed over the past 15 years and we are experiencing record-setting bitter winters. Shamelessly, warmies now tell us that AGW is the cause of this cold weather. AGW is, they alledge, melting sea ice, thus leading to changing weather patterns and increased humidity that is the cause.

It is notable that NASA told us, in 1999, that AGW was causing changing weather patterns over the Arctic, but that the result thereof would be ever milder winters. Regardless, and more importantly, do see Roger Pielke, Sr's specific criticism of this new theory. Pielke, an IPCC scientist, critically notes that the proposed narrative suffers from significant factual errors and actually raises "substantive issues with the robustness and accuracy" of the 2007 IPCC report.

Thus do we need to be forcing the warmies to answer, at every turn, the simple question, what evidence would be necessary to falsify the theory of global warming? What are the "facts" that they identify as forming the crucial underpinnings that AGW? With that answer in hand, then the meme of AGW will cease to be mindless dogma. It will become actual science that cannot withstand scrutiny.

The evidence against AGW is mountainous. The rise in temperatures in the last century are not in any way extreme compared to what we see throughout geologic history. World temperatures are nowhere near a historic high. For but one example, Nature magazine, a pro-AGW publication, is today discussing the study of ice cores showing that temperatures 130,000 years ago were a whopping 9 degrees F. warmer than today.

Geologic history shows no correlation between CO2 and climate. To the contrary, evidence shows CO2 levels lagging temperature spikes by centuries. A very recent study looking at this issue over the past several decades found a direct correlation between humidity and temperature, but no significant correlation between CO2 and temperature.

Our geologic history has shown numerous temperature spikes at least equal to, and in most cases exceeding, the current warming that has been occurring since the end of the Little Ice Age. Just within the past 2,000 years, evidence shows the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming periods likely exceeded temperatures occurring today (notwithstanding the infamous hockey stick). So how can the warmies possibly show that the modern warming trend is anomalous?

What about ice? The warmies would have us believe that the ice caps are melting and that it is only a matter of time until Manhattanites are taking gondalas to work. Yet on the aggregate, we are losing little if any ice cover, and there is nothing anomalous about the local ice cover that we are losing. The vast majority of the world's ice is in Antarctica - approximately 90%. And the ice there is growing, hitting record highs in 2010. The Arctic has lost ice, but this is not an inexplicable anomaly. Moreover, interestingly, we recently learned that the area of thick ice in the Arctic has actually doubled since 2008. Regardless, there have been numerous periods in recorded history where Arctic sea ice has tended low. So how do the warmies distinguish our modern situation from history?

And when the warmies claim that their work is peer reviewed, understand that the term is meaningless as a measure of reliability (that according to one of the fathers of the modern peer review process). That is all the moreso in the context of climate science, where the entire scientific process has been bastardized - AGW proponents have substituted "peer review" as ipso facto proof of reliability in place of reproducibility of their results. Indeed, an important aspect to changing the paradigm on AGW is to ask whether each and every study and data set relied on by the AGW crowd include all the raw data, meta data, methodology and computational formulas such as would allow the work to be independently verified. Anything not meeting this criteria - and it is a very large chunk of the studies upon which the canard of AGW is built, including the temperature data sets of NASA and others - is worthless as proof of AGW. Indeed, we should be demanding that our government pass legislation holding that anyone operating pursuant to publicly funded grants and who publishes studies in respect thereof without information that would allow for independent verification be thereafter banned from recieving any future public grants. I can assure you that would shake the AGW promoting academia to their core. Certainly we should demand that the EPA not place any reliance on unreproducable studies when making regulatory decisions.

It bears repeating that carbon dioxide is a trace gas, forming only 0.03% of the earth's atmosphere. It is not even the most significant of the green house gases; water vapor is. The vast majority of the 0.03% of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is produced naturally. Indeed, all of the human burning of fossil fuels only contributes 0.0042% to the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. And that is what is supposed to be driving our climate? Pay no attention to that little glowing ball in the sky.

The few true believers are nuts. The rest who are pushing this are pursuing either money, dictatorial power over our lives, or the destruction of America - or some combination of all three. Our prosperity depends on winning the argument about AGW in the public square, and that with virtually all of the mainstream media arrayed in favor of AGW. Regardless, the argument can and must be won. Step one is to change the paradigm of the argument.

Welcome, Larwyn's Links readers.

Welcome to The Hud.

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An Invitation To Anarchy

The problems of the UK seem to be multiplying. Britain suffers from an aging system of electrical production and a government that has dithered over its fantasy love affair with non-carbon technologies for over a decade. As the EU Referendum states, the end result is a real possibility of the "lights going out" in the forseeable future. This situation, already quite serious, just got worse. A group of greens who did tens of thousands of pounds in damage to a coal fired electrical plant has been cleared of the charges upon jury trial. The defense turned the trial into a referendum on global warming. The jury accepted the defense. The defense was supported on the witness stand by Zach Goldman, a Tory candidate for Parliament, who argued that civil disobediance was justified in this case.

This from the Independent:

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain's green agenda and could encourage further direct action.

. . . During the eight-day trial, the world's leading climate scientist, Professor James Hansen of Nasa, who had flown from American to give evidence, appealed to the Prime Minister personally to "take a leadership role" in cancelling the plan and scrapping the idea of a coal-fired future for Britain. Last December he wrote to Mr Brown with a similar appeal. At the trial, he called for an moratorium on all coal-fired power stations, and his hour-long testimony about the gravity of the climate danger, which painted a bleak picture, was listened to intently by the jury of nine women and three men.

Professor Hansen, who first alerted the world to the global warming threat in June 1988 with testimony to a US senate committee in Washington, and who last year said the earth was in "imminent peril" from the warming atmosphere, asserted that emissions of CO2 from Kings-north would damage property through the effects of the climate change they would help to cause.

He was one of several leading public figures who gave evidence for the defence, including Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park and director of the Ecologist magazine, who similarly told the jury that in his opinion, direct action could be justified in the minds of many people if it was intended to prevent larger crimes being committed.

. . . During the trial the defendants said they had acted lawfully, owing to an honestly held belief that their attempt to stop emissions from Kingsnorth would prevent further damage to properties worldwide caused by global warming. Their aim, they said, was to rein back CO2 emissions and bring urgent pressure to bear on the Government and E.ON to changes policies. They insisted their action had caused the minimum amount of damage necessary to close the plant down and constituted a "proportionate response" to the increasing environmental threat.

. . . He added: "This verdict marks a tipping point for the climate change movement. When a jury of normal people say it is legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station because of the harm it does to our planet, then where does that leave Government energy policy? We have the clean technologies at hand to power our economy. It's time we turned to them instead of coal."

Ms Hall said: "The jury heard from the most distinguished climate scientist in the world. How could they ignore his warnings and reject his leading scientific arguments?"

Read the entire article.

This is all rather breathtaking in its ramifications for Britain. Energy policy in Britain, already in the hands of the fantasy based folk, has now been handed to the loons to do with as they will. The protection of law has just been removed from every coal plant in Britain. And it has occurred with the blessing of a Tory candidate for parliament. Iaian Murray has much more on the ramifications at NRO.

The Judge allowed the defense to turn his court into a circus from the sounds of it, and into a referendum on global warming itself. This can only turn out very badly for Britain. It makes an utter mockery of the law.

But beyond that, the fact of a Tory candidate coming out in support of the defense just boggles the mind. It is certainly suggestive that the degree of seperation betwen the hard left Labor party and the Tory party is but a few degrees at most. Its tough to have a working adverserial system when the opposing parties have no differences in policy. I await to see how the boy wonder, Tory party leader David Cameron, responds to this one.

EU Referendum has much more commentary and links.

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