There have been some breathless headlines in the last few days about the North Pole’s being an “island” for the first time in 125,000 years. Aside from the fact that 90 degrees north sits in the middle of a 2.5-mile-deep ocean, that’s quite a statement considering two things: first, no one has been routinely monitoring sea ice along both coastlines between then and now, and second, the region was clearly warmer than it is today (in summers) around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago — on both the Siberian and North American sides.

And one of the groups focusing most closely on possible Arctic shipping lanes, the National Ice Center operated by the Navy and Commerce Department, says flatly that the satellites are misreading conditions in many spots and that there is too much ice in a critical spot along the Russian coast (highlighted in the smaller image above) to allow anything but ice-hardened ships to get through. In an e-mail message Wednesday, Sean R. Helfrich, a scientist at the ice center, said that ponds of meltwater pooling on sea ice could fool certain satellite-borne instruments into interpreting ice as open water, “suggesting areas that have substantial ice cover as being sea-ice free.” The highlighted area is probably still impassible ice, including large amounts of thick old floes, he said. I sent the note to an array of sea-ice experts, and many, including Mark Serreze at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, concurred.

Read rest…

The US, UK and Germany are responsible on a per capita basis for most of the world's emissions and someone needs to step forward, draw a line in the sand and say: 'No more coal fired power stations'.

—James Hansen, speaking in court on behalf of protesters charged with criminal damage to a Kent power station, after having flown to the UK. Hansen is head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It wasn't clear if U.S. taxpayers paid for his trip to testify for the defendants.


Heard or read a quote you'd like to submit? Send it to CCF with a link for proper attribution and it will be considered.

Solar energy consultant: the U.S. solar market "will just stop dead" once the federal tax credit expires

The solar manufacturing industry has been riding a wave of massive expansion due to government subsidies that exist now, but also because the solar manufacturers are betting that the subsidies will either continue and/or be expanded massively in the future to help us attain "energy independence".

There's one small problem though. Richard Read, The Oregonian's two-time Pulitzer Prize winning writer points out that there is an impending bursting bubble in the solar panel manufacturing industry due to a 30% US federal tax credit that expires at the end of this year. Foreign governments also have expiring tax credits that exacerbate the inconvenient truth of solar panel manufactures - that their product cannot compete at all on a level playing field.

The Opposition Leader is damned for heresy:

BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming.

The Opposition Leader told the ABC on Monday night: “What’s happening at the moment in the Murray-Darling Basin is a consequence of two things: mismanagement of the entire system for almost 100 years and also the worst drought in 100 years. And it is quite wrong for people to suggest that what we’re seeing at the moment is a consequence of climate change.”

Few have combined these sentiments better than former Vice President Al Gore. His comment before the recent Democratic national convention in Denver that, “You understand that the politics of the past are exhausted, and you’re tired - we are all tired - of appeals based on fear.” What we’re tired of is such fatuous statements from the grandmaster of exploiting fear. Within the same speech he said, “We are facing a planetary emergency, which, if not solved, would exceed anything we’ve ever experienced in the history of mankind.” “Many scientists predict-shockingly-that the entire north polar ice cap may be completely gone during summer months during the first term of the next president.

Sea levels are rising; fires are raging; storms are stronger. Military experts warn us our national security is threatened by massive waves of climate refugees destabilizing countries around the world, and scientists tell us the very web of life is endangered by unprecedented extinctions.” Hyperbole heaped on hyperbole based on gross misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the facts around a nonexistent problem.

I think I will be the only person speaking in this debate who has any qualifications in environmental science.

It is not that that should count, but I think that it is significant for what I am about to say—that is, that the entire climate change - global warming hypothesis is a hoax, that the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, that Al Gore is a phoney and a fraud on this issue, and that the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and swindle.

Enacting this legislation will cost New Zealanders dear—that is the point of it - and it will drive up the costs of basic goods and services for New Zealanders probably by at least $500 or $600 a year.

It will put businesses in New Zealand out of business, and put farmers off their farms.  It will put businesses in New Zealand out of business.  It will put farmers off their farms.  And it will do all this for no impact on world weather, for no environmental gain, and for no conceivable advantage to New Zealand or to the world.

We're heading into the heart of hurricane season, and any day now, a storm will barrel toward the United States, inspiring all the TV weather reporters to find a beach where they can lash themselves to a palm tree.

We can be certain of two things: First, we'll be told that the wind is blowing very hard. Second, some expert will tell us this storm might be a harbinger of global warming.

Somewhere along the line, global warming became the explanation for everything. Right-thinking people are not supposed to discuss any meteorological or geophysical event - a hurricane, a wildfire, a heat wave, a drought, a flood, a blizzard, a tornado, a lightning strike, an unfamiliar breeze, a strange tingling on the neck - without immediately invoking the climate crisis. It causes earthquakes, plagues and backyard gardening disappointments. Weird fungus on your tomato plants? Classic sign of global warming.

There was a news release by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer,  entitled “Global warming’s toasty water connection to Gustav.” Among the statements in the text are

“Global warming has probably made Hurricane Gustav a bit stronger and wetter, some top scientists said Sunday, but the specific connection between climate change and stronger hurricanes remains an issue of debate.”

“Measurements of the energy pumped into the air from the warm waters — essentially fuel for hurricanes — has increased dramatically since the mid 1990s, mostly in the strongest of hurricanes, according to a soon-to-be published paper in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems by Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.”

Environment: Al Gore's been busy in recent years scaring everyone about what he's sure is disastrous global warming. More ruinous, though, would be a deep cooling, which is the direction our planet might really be heading.

For most people, August was an unremarkable month. But for those who keep an eye on celestial events, it was an extraordinary 31 days. For the first time in nearly 100 years, the sun created no visible spots. The last time that happened: June 1913.

While this caught some by surprise, it was expected by two astronomers from the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. Dailytech.com reports that in 2005, William Livingston and Matthew Penn, who had been noting small spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun, concluded that "within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely."

WIth Hurricane Gustav dealing a glancing blow to New Orleans, the city won’t, at least for now, experience an event similar to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  With Katrina being the poster storm of the modern global warming movement, I wonder where the global warming activists are with the latest round of tropical storms. 

There have been Hurricanes Bertha, Fay, Gustav and now Hanna (recently downgraded to a tropical storm) so far this year that have been contenders for threats to the mainland United States. 

Gustav only made the Democrats suddenly believe in God, but no real activism has taken place from the global warming activists lately.  I wonder if it could be my article debunking Al Gore’s claims of increases in number and of intense storms due to global warming?  Could it be others that have expressed the same conclusion?