For a number years, Dr. John Christie has done tremendous scientific work aimed at increasing our understanding of the climate.

Where many climatological efforts are focused on computer modeling of climate and reaching conclusions based on those models, rather than on analysis and testing of real world phenomena, Christie and several other scientists have turned to the real work of actually observing and measuring the real world.

In a new paper [PDF] accepted in August for publication in the journal Energy and Environment, Christie, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and collaborator David H. Douglass of the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York, examine some of their recent findings.

Much of the current worry over climate change is based on climate models that predict increasing temperatures world wide. Those climate models are based on the hypothesis that increased levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere cause the atmosphere to retain heat.

An indecisive eight per cent felt guilty enough about their flight to book into an environmentally-friendly hotel, while just four per cent stoically refused to go abroad because of the issue.

Hysteria over global warming has opened the door to restrictive energy policies that greatly jeopardize not only average Americans but also low income families in developing countries who are already beset by rising prices, according a new documentary on the modern environmental movement  

"Not Evil, Just Wrong" (http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/)

takes a hard look at the potential human costs associated with the demands of environmentalism in areas of the world where carbon-based energy sources are vital. The current scare surrounding man-made global warming theories should be viewed within a larger historical context that reaches back to the early 1960s when Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," which argued against the use of pesticides like DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane).

A bunch of multinationals have figured out how to make their pollution-based businesses seem like the solution to the climate crisis.

With the world's leading scientists in agreement on the science behind global warming, how are multinational corporations preparing for climate change? Some, like Exxon Mobile, continue to squeeze the last drops of profit out of any oil field they get their hands on while paying scientists to deny climate change. Some see profitability in adapting to a more energy-efficient world. And then there's the third group: the greenwashers -- those hoping to come off as enviro-friendly while they make a buck (or a few million) off our global crisis.

In a time of rising gas prices and rising concern for the environment, we're going the extra mile to help Americans fill up on vegan fuel for their tummies and gas for their tanks.

—Lettuce Lady Colleen Higgins, one of PETA's lettuce ladies, who is giving out free veggie hotdogs and two free gallons of fuel, to help fight global warming, at a Montgomery Shell gas station. Since the hypocrisy irony is so obvious, we'll leave it unstated.

Any guesses where Al Gore points the blame for the June floods and tornadoes that ravaged Iowa?  Yep!

As reported by the Des Moines Register, the world's most famous Chicken Little told attendees of a Saturday night Democrat fundraiser in that city that the devastating floods were due "to man-made emissions causing more water to evaporate from oceans, increasing average humidity worldwide."

He went on say that:

"In 66 of your 99 counties, the flood damage was truly historic. No one has ever seen a flood like this."

Wrong.

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin

Real Climate is a popular blog that advocates action on climate change. Its authors often uses bullying tactics to enforce a view that their views on science are the sole authoritative basis for judging political action. In turn, here at Prometheus I’ve occasionally used the actions of Real Climate as excellent illustrations of how climate science becomes so politicized and partisan by activist scientists. In this way the skeptics and the activist scientists engage in a dance that requires both to participate to reinforce the belief that science provides the basis for political action. So both have an interest in keeping debate on matters of science, rather than more explicitly on the far more important questions of policy and politics.

Lucky for us, the best example yet of these dynamics can be found in the post that that Real Climate have put up today on Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Real Climate post seeks to elevate the importance of skepticism in the climate debate (yes, you read that right) so that it can knock it down, while at the same time ignoring far more meaningful issues related to climate policy, like whether a cap and trade program has any chance whatsoever of actually succeeding. In this way Real Climate serves to politicize climate science, make climate policy an even more partisan issue, and draw attention away from the policy questions that really matter most. (read on . . .)

[H/T to Marc]  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that: Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, mainly carbon dioxide.  This conclusion is based on output from global climate computer models known as General Circulation Models (GCM). 

David Douglass and John Christy, in a paper recently accepted for publication and already available on the internet, have come to a different conclusion.  By considering observed, as opposed to modelled, temperature changes and at different latitude bands they conclude that:

1. El Nino and La Nina effects in the tropics have a more significant affect on global temperature anomalies than carbon dioxide, in particular it was an El Nino event that drove the 1998 global temperature maximum.

AUSTRALIANS are getting bored with climate change, and many still doubt whether it is actually happening, a new survey has revealed.

Only 46 per cent of Australians said they would take action on climate change if they were in charge of making decisions for Australia, a dip from 55 per cent last year, according to the Ipsos-Eureka Social Research Institute's third annual climate change survey.

And almost one in 10 Australians (nine per cent) strongly agreed with the statement "I have serious doubts about whether climate change is occurring". A further 23 per cent agreed to some extent.

Ipsos-Eureka director of Sustainable Communities and Environment Unit Jasmine Hoye believes Australians are becoming more concerned with other environmental issues that they can have more direct control over.

Henry Paulson

One provision in the bill provides preferential tax treatment to publicly-traded institutions that engage in the trading of carbon offsets.  So no matter if your company is green or not, you can receive tax incentives from participating in the carbon trading market if your organization is publicly traded.  But how did it stay in the bill?

Henry Paulson didn’t ask for the carbon credit incentive in the bill, but after reviewing his stance on global warming during his tenure at Goldman Sachs, it’s obvious that he wouldn’t have opposed the addition.  Paulson believed that participation in the carbon market would spur the development of technologies that would lead to a less carbon-based economy.  The Washington Post reported in 2006 that Goldman Sachs believed in the scientific consensus of global warming.  Shocker. 

The slowing economy and financial crisis are testing Europe’s goal of becoming a world leader in greenhouse gas reduction.

Industry has seized on the slowdown to lobby for delayed or watered down regulations, arguing that directives set out by the European Commission earlier this year would force them to cut jobs or relocate factories outside the European Union.

Some politicians also acknowledge that the financial crisis could hinder efforts to forge international agreements on reducing emissions.

“This crisis changes priorities,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, last week told a conference on transatlantic climate and energy cooperation in Berlin. “One cannot rule out that interest in protecting the climate will change because of such a crisis.”

On Tuesday the European Parliament’s environmental committee is to vote on measures at the heart of the EU’s commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.

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