[H/T to Leslie]  A Canadian scientist says the largest known hole in the ozone will occur over the South Pole in the next week. If that happens, it will help us understand global warming.

Dr. Qing-Bin Lu, of Canada’s University of Waterloo, says NASA satellites and laboratory measurements show cosmic rays are the real cause of the seasonal hole in the earth’s ozone layer over the Antarctic. Cosmic rays are tiny, invisible, high-energy particles from exploding stars which constantly strike the earth—and people. Cosmic rays probably cause some of our cancers, by altering the DNA inside our bodies.

However, if Dr. Qing-Bin Lu and others are correct, they also are connected to climate change. The number of cosmic rays hitting the earth varies sharply based on the activity level of the sun and the size of the magnetic wind it projects out into space. A weak sun means a weak magnetic wind and more cosmic rays striking earth. Britain’s BBC recently reported that the solar wind is now blowing at the weakest rate in more than 50 years, and is also 13 percent cooler than it was 15 years ago.

Nigel Lawson

The former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson made a sceptical and profoundly controversial foray into environmentalism earlier this year with the publication of his book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, which argued against the accepted views on global warming and the increasing fears which surround the issue.

In this week's interview for The Green Rush, Times Online's series on business and the environment, he outlines his position, arguing that global warming is treated as if it was "a new religion", rather than being considered in rational terms.

"I do think, because this is a very important issue, because anything we do about it is going to have huge economic consequences, we really do need to approach the subject coolly and calmly and rationally," he says.

Schwarzenegger vetoes port bill that Palin opposed

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday vetoed legislation that would have imposed a pollution fee on cargo ships at California's ports, siding with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The fee would have paid for clean-air programs but was opposed by the Republican vice presidential nominee, who wrote to Schwarzenegger saying it would lead to higher costs on goods shipped to her state. She asked Schwarzenegger to reject the bill in a letter dated the day before she was named Sen. John McCain's running mate.

Schwarzenegger has endorsed McCain's presidential bid.

Czech President Václav Klaus

Strong words from Willamette Week. But, you have to understand that Willy Week is not what you'd call a, ahem, family newspaper. And let's be clear - Czech President Václav Klaus didn't call anyone an a-hole.

Klaus was in Portland yesterday to speak at Portland, Oregon's Hilton Hotel.

Willy Week was there:

The big debate over how to tackle climate change generally boils down to what kind of pain a climate plan will do to the economy; environmental benefits are generally assumed.

But what if the economic pain doesn’t even translate into environmental gain? That’s what happened in Norway, a pioneer in putting a pricetag on carbon emissions almost twenty years ago. Net result? Carbon emissions have increased 15% since then. Leila Abboud writes today in the WSJ:

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. By making it more expensive to pollute, carbon taxes should spur companies and individuals to clean up. Norway’s sobering experience shows how difficult it is to cut emissions in the real world, where elegant theoretical solutions are complicated by economic changes, entrenched behaviors and political realities.

A study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows the nation's top newspapers have largely overlooked the food system as one of the more important contributors to global climate change.

The two-year study, available online in advance of publication in Public Health Nutrition, analyzed coverage by 16 of the nation's largest-circulation newspapers. According to the study, the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions from food production and agriculture was mentioned in only 2.4 percent of climate change articles. In contrast, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that 31 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and forestry (with much of the latter representing deforestation for food production).

For a while, it was a standard-issue Al Gore jeremiad, with calls for everything from installing solar panels in Darfur (seriously) to legal action against "the carbon lobby" for denying global warming (ditto). But then Mr. Gore really got going and told his disciples to head -- literally -- to the barricades to "stop" coal.

Speaking last Wednesday on a celebrity panel in New York, the Nobel Prize Laureate proclaimed: "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration." He added, "clean coal does not exist."

Mr. Gore didn't explain how far he thinks his young acolytes should go in their rage against the coal-burning machines that provide about 50% of U.S. electricity. Sit-ins? Marches against power plants? How about trashing power lines: What could he mean by "civil disobedience"?

If you do the crime, then you'll do the time. I'm busy saving the world!

Gore epitomizes what I suspect future generations will call “The Great Global Warming Hoax”, but in the meantime, he is able to generate the bogus science and anti-energy propaganda that is at the core of environmental ideology.

If it is possible, Great Britain is infected even worse with this idiocy. In early September, a jury hearing a case in which thousands of dollars of damage had been perpetrated against a coal-fired power station decided that the six people involved had a “lawful excuse” to vandalize the Kingsnorth power station in Kent because global warming posed an even greater threat and the plant was contributing to it.

That white stuff you see is water vapor. CO2 is odorless, colorless, and invisible.

Power plant owners and speculators yesterday bid for the right to emit carbon dioxide (CO₂) as part of a new multistate government program designed to reduce global warming pollution. Interested parties during an online auction offered at least $1.86 per ton of CO₂ emitted; there were 12 million allowances (one per ton) to emit climate change–inducing CO₂ from power plants in eastern seaboard states from Maine to Maryland available in a market known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced "Reggie.")

"When your job can provide some social benefit it's exciting and it makes me proud. My kids are saying 'Dad, you've done something about global warming,'" says Phil Adams, president of Worcester, Mass.–based World Energy, Inc., the company that ran the auction. "RGGI is taking a historic step."

Why didn't Gore join the 14 protesters in Wise County, Va., blocking construction of a coal-fired plant? No runway landings for his private jet?

Here’s what he said, according to Reuters :

The BBC is being investigated by the television watchdog over claims that it misrepresented global warming sceptics in a documentary.

Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast recently on BBC Two, was billed as a "definitive" guide to the history of global warming.

During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton, a former advisor to Lady Thatcher. Lord Monckton [pictured] has now complained to Ofcom that his views were unfairly represented on the programme.

"I have no doubt Ofcom will act. The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct," he said.