(UK Guardian) The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

Let that sink in for a second: actual scientific research has shown that there was no ice lost in the past 10 years, the decade the Warmist say is the hottest in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Oh, so Warmist are and were wrong on Greenland and Antarctica, too?

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia’s highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern.

This begs the question, why is it a concern? This happens over and over during the warm periods over the last 10,000 years, and, geez, what about the melt from the end of the last glacial period? It also begs the question, why are some glaciers growing and some shrinking? Quite a bit seems to be localized, and doesn’t seem to support the theory hypothesis crystal ball view of anthropogenic global warming, which should mean the entire globe is warming. Which is why the Warmists have latched on to the phrase “climate change”, in order to cover their tracks for their original prognostications, and enfold everything that happens into their cult-like beliefs.

Don Surber: I do not doubt that over time glaciers retreat, or advance. Surface temperatures may even rise. But if man’s production of CO2 were to blame, the glacial meltdown would accelerate, not stop, as the CO2 levels are on the rise (as measured by proponents of the global warming theory). Instead the melt appears to have stopped.

Vox Popoli: Scientists spend an awful lot of time being stunned because they are some of the most naive, credulous, and easily manipulated beings on the planet. That’s why they tend to inordinately fall for every nonsensical philosophical and political ideology that crosses their paths. The average reader of The National Enquirer probably has a better and more-developed sense of skepticism than the average scientist.

Anthony Watts has the graphic of where glaciers are growing based on the Grace data.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Why climate change will make you love big government

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission.

Look back on 2011 and you’ll notice a destructive trail of extreme weather slashing through the year. In Texas, it was the driest year ever recorded. An epic drought there killed half a billion trees,  touched off wildfires that burned 4 million acres, and destroyed or  damaged thousands of homes and buildings. The costs to agriculture,  particularly the cotton and cattle businesses, are estimated at $5.2 billion — and keep in mind that, in a winter breaking all sorts  of records for warmth, the Texas drought is not yet over.

That kind of whining about the weather, which is the fault of Barack Obama cruising the country in 17 car convoys, continues on for a bit longer. Because weather never happened before 1980 (until you cruise Real Science, and see the newspaper headlines from the past)

Such calamities, devastating for those affected, have important  implications for how we think about the role of government in our  future. During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state  for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder  of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our  survival.

In the past, people tended to rely on themselves. And there is nothing wrong with government helping out: it’s one of the reasons we have government. There is no need for a massive central government with a giant bureaucracy. Of course, that’s not the progressive narrative: to them, we need giant over-reaching and all powerful government for when the wind blows, it rains, and it snows….hey, remember when the NYC public sector unions slowed the snow cleanup in 2010?

Anyhow, the author goes on and on about how great big central government is, and why the private sector can’t do anything, ending with

In the face of an unraveling climate system, there is no way that  private enterprise alone will meet the threat. And though small “d”  democracy and “community” may be key parts of a strong, functional, and  fair society, volunteerism and “self-organization” alone will prove as  incapable as private enterprise in responding to the massive challenges  now beginning to unfold.

To adapt to climate change will mean coming together on a large scale  and mobilizing society’s full range of resources. In other words, big  storms require big government. Who else will save stranded climate  refugees, or protect and rebuild infrastructure, or coordinate rescue  efforts and plan out the flow and allocation of resources?

It will be government that does these tasks or they will not be done at all.

What would we do without Big Centralized Government taking charge? Just because they’ll need to take more and more money while imposing more and more regulations/restrictions on its citizens and businesses is Bo reason to poo poo the idea. Government is just here to help. Despite being incompetent and taking vastly too long to accomplish the most minor and mundane task is no reason to be concerned about Government. Just because the climate change movement is about fascism (for everyone else) is no reason to worry.

Isn’t he cute? Don’t you just want to hug him and kiss him and take him home where you can make Seal Flipper Pie or Seal Meat Hash? Well, sucks to be you, because baby harp seals are apparently being killed off by globull warming

Climate change spares no one. Not even the adorable. Baby harp seals, for instance, can’t catch a break. After centuries of looking over their shoulders to spot folks who plan to eat them or wear them, the cute little critters now have to worry about Mother Nature. As climate change warms the Arctic, it is reducing sea ice to historically low levels. Since stretches of thicker ice are getting harder to come by, baby seals are now more frequently drowning or getting crushed by broken-up chunks of ice. Though harp seal numbers remain strong, the pace of sea ice melt has hindered the survival of pups. Canada saw a 25 percent survival rate in 2007, and virtually no pups survived there in 2010.

Bummer. I wonder how they survived during the previous warmer periods over the last 10,000 years. Unfortunately, this turns them into juvenile delinquents

One can only hope that a recent case of baby seal breaking and entering (BSB & E) will not prove to be the start of a trend: Rogue bands of thug baby seals, driven to lawlessness by the cruel dictates of global warming. Believe it or not, that premise is not as satirical as it sounds. Polar bears, like our cartoon friend Bebbo, find that global warming has decimated their opportunities to hunt, so starvation increasingly forces them into town garbage dumps for survival.

Got that? It’s not a case of an animal doing something silly and cute, but a dire cause of someone like DaTechGuy daring to drive a fossil fueled vehicle. I suggest that all Warmists everywhere disconnect their power (no more TIVOing The Daily Show and Current TV, because TV boxes are huge causes of wasted energy) and water (there’s only so much to go around, ya know), wash their clothes in rivers and streams (with expensive Gaia friendly detergents), dry them on clothes lines (hey, what’s a little bird poo when we are saving Gaia?), and walk to work. No more fossil fueled vehicle trips for you!

(BBC News) Growing inequality, environmental decline and “teetering” economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes.

Health and education must improve, it says. Subsidies on fossil fuels should end, and governments must look beyond the standard economic indicator of GDP.

The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability was established in 2010 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

It was launched because fewer and fewer people where buying into the anthropogenic global warming guano.

It is being launched in Addis Ababa by its two co-chairs, Finnish President Tarja Halonen and her South African counterpart Jacob Zuma.

“With the possibility of the world slipping further into recession, policymakers are hungry for ideas that can help them to navigate these difficult times,” said Mr Zuma.

“Our report makes clear that sustainable development is more important than ever given the multiple crises now enveloping the world.”

See? It’s so simple, we’ll simply do away with GDP, redistribute wealth, and all sit around on farms reminiscent of the 5th century digging in the mud while our lords and masters sit in their castles deciding what is best for us.

Sustainable development is simply another version of the Left’s call for fascism, same as the climate change hoax is. I suppose we can also think about it in terms of Soviet style communism, where there was an all powerful central government full of the elites dictating everything, right down to whether you are allowed to have salt and trans-fats, how you can run your business, and how much bread will be available. People are docile when they are standing in food lines for hours. This is the kind of idiocy that creates worthless products like the Chevy Volt, which limits our ability to move around to a small area. These people are true “watermelons”: green on the outside, red on the inside

The report – Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing – includes 56 recommendations that would, if implemented in full, have profound implications for societies, governments, and businesses.

Governments would build the true environmental costs of products into the prices that people pay to purchase them, leading to an economic system that protects natural resources.

Goods would be labelled with information on their environmental impact, enabling consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions.

And even more based on “environmentalism”, natch, climate change controls. They’d do away with all subsidies for fossil fuels, because they are eeeeeevil, and, magically, real world prices would stay low, but, hey, even if they rise exponentially, it’s for our own good. They Know Better.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Green Answers) Cambodia, an exotic land filled with bright colors, city lights and ancient temples is a popular vacation spot. A remarkable country with exquisite culture holds one of the darkest secrets alive today. Very much a real and disturbing reality; we come to unfold this problem and discuss the problems of the sex trade in this area. In fact, children as young as 5 are being sold as slaves in exchange for sex. A problem that has been around for a while is being made worse by the problems caused by climate change.

Sexual slavery/trade has been around for pretty much all of human history. It is a serious concern, I don’t think there is a need to explain why. Yet, rather than taking on the problem, Warmists subsume it into their cult’s beliefs, and you know you just rolled your eyes and head and said “give me a break” when you read the last line of that excerpt, which takes away for dire need to do something about this serious issue, something the liberal extremists just don’t get.

The sex trade in Cambodia has been around since 1999. The sex trade is happening due to thousands of victims in need of natural resources like food, water and trees. Human trafficking affects 2-3 thousand children and young teens each year. Families are deceived by con artists telling them that their daughters will work for hotels, restaurants, hair salons or complete clerical work in order for them to bring money for their families. Truth is, con artists actually take their daughters into sex industries and force them to have intercourse with older men.

The climate has always changed, and can always cause problems. Does anyone think life would be better during a cool period such as the Little Ice Age? Life on Earth has to take the good with the bad as climate changes according to the whims of the natural world, but, then, if Warmists fessed up and said a changing climate was primarily natural, as history and science shows, they wouldn’t be able to push their far left redistributionist and fascist agendas. They believe that if YOU (not themselves, though, they need their Suburbans to get the kids to soccer practice, drive to work, and pick up wine and cheese for their Organizing for America parties) can be made to drive a Chevy Volt and use CFLs, the Cambodian sex trade would simply disappear. So, they waste time and other people’s money instead of dealing with the actual issue, because the actual issue won’t give lefties the control over people and economies they want.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(WCTV) A new campaign, Forecast the Facts (www.forecastthefacts.org), launches Sunday to pressure TV meteorologists to inform their viewers about climate change. The launch coincides with the kick-off of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual meeting in New Orleans, LA.

Since then, this new fatwa has been cropping up all over the left-o-sphere. And here’s a fun unhinged one

The requirements to be a TV weather presenter are fairly slack: an undergraduate degree with some training in meteorology is preferred, but not required, and the main skills seem to be looking presentable with nice hair, being able to dance with a green screen, and being glib and cheerful. So I guess it’s not surprising that the “scientists” leading the charge against global warming are climate-denier TV weathermen. That link takes you to a long list of quotes from various television weather personalities — including a couple from Minneapolis — who all deny reality and use their position as frontmen pretending to be scientists to delude the public. Take a look and see if your local television station has a conspiracy nut doing the weather.

Of course, by the standards of the Cult Of Gore, we aren’t supposed to listen to PZ Myers because he doesn’t have a degree in climatology. Anyhow, so far, the Warmists have failed to prove using the scientific method that this warm period is any different from the previous warm periods throughout the current interglacial period. They’ve established a tentative link to CO2 without the benefit of scientific proof, instead, they use simple conjecture more similar to the Underwear Gnomes. And they refuse to abide by the doctrines of their cult and change their own behavior.

I think we can safely say that no Republican should be allowed anywhere near the reins of government. They’re anti-science through and through.

Silly me, I thought the Constitution forbade any sort of religious tests to be elected.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

This winter is turning out mild over the mid-latitudes of Europe and north America but we should not feel complacent. The severe cold experienced in 2009/10 and 2010/11 could turn out to be a feature of northern hemisphere winters over the next few years, according to research by US climatologists.

Their study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, explains the apparent contradiction between recent harsh winters, global warming and the loss of Arctic sea ice.

The past two decades have seen strong warming during the summer and early autumn over the Arctic, which has caused unprecedented melting of sea ice. The result is more moisture in the atmosphere, which, in turn, results in increased precipitation over the northern Eurasian continent – where it is still cold enough in the autumn to fall as snow rather than rain.

So, just a continuation of the “warmer weather causes more atmospheric moisture which leads to more snow, and it is all caused by people daring to use cable boxes.”

Except for that pesky beginning part about “severe cold” over the past few winters. If it is that cold, how could there be more warm induced moisture? But, these people really do think you’re stupid: by their own silly explanations, the last Ice Age was created by global warming.

But, let’s consider, even if their hypothesis is true, it in no way indites Mankind as the main or sole cause of this warm period.

A theory about the role of carbon dioxide in climate patterns has joined abortion and gay marriage as a culture war controversy. Climate scientists are attacked as greenshirts and watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside). Skeptics are derided as flat-earthers. Reputations are assaulted and the e-mails of scientists hacked.

What explains the recent, bench-clearing climate brawl? A scientific debate has been sucked into a broader national argument about the role of government. Many political liberals have seized on climate disruption as an excuse for policies they supported long before climate science became compelling — greater federal regulation and mandated lifestyle changes. Conservatives have also tended to equate climate science with liberal policies and therefore reject both.

And, Boom! Gerson hits on the true support by liberals of anthropogenic global warming: power, higher taxes, and increased Central Government. Funny how liberals never consider what their support for these ideals would mean for their own lives, but, then, they always think that the “solutions” will always affect Someone Else.

No cause has been more effectively sabotaged by its political advocates. Climate scientists, in my experience, are generally careful, well-intentioned and confused to be at the center of a global controversy. Investigations of hacked e-mails have revealed evidence of frustration — and perhaps of fudging but not of fraud. It is their political defenders who often discredit their work through hyperbole and arrogance. As environmental writer Michael Shellenberger points out, “The rise in the number of Americans telling pollsters that news of global warming was being exaggerated began virtually concurrently with the release of Al Gore’s movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”

Yes, the emails do show frustration on the part of the “climate scientists”: frustration that they are continually being asked to show their work in the public domain, how they got to their answers, and what the raw data shows. They do not like that, so the emails also show arrogance, attempts to circumvent freedom of information requests, attempts to block papers that do not agree with their views, and that the science was politicized and manufactured, among others. Not fudging, but fraud.

Gerson keeps going for a bit about the sociology of the issue, before moving on to

But however interesting this sociology may be, it has nothing to do with the science at issue. Even if all environmentalists were socialists and secularists and insufferable and partisan to the core, it would not alter the reality of the Earth’s temperature.

Since the 1950s, global temperatures have increased about nine-tenths of a degree Celsius — the recent conclusion of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project — which coincides with a large increase in greenhouse gasses produced by humans.

Except, the BEST data also showed that 1/3 of the stations reported cooling. And, despite increases in atmospheric CO2, the last 15 years have been stagnant or cooling. But, we see the Warmist “scientific” Underwear Gnome style belief: temps went up, CO2 went up, Man releases CO2, therefore, it is all Mankind’s fault. Who cares if the oceans put out 16 times the amount of CO2 that Mankind does. It’s all mankind’s fault. So, YOU have to pay for this by driving unsafe motor vehicles while Liberal Elites take limos and private jets to exotic vacation spots for climate conferences.

But any rational approach requires some distance between science and ideology. The extraction and burning of dead plant matter is not a moral good — or the proper cause for a culture war.

But, the theory of anthropogenic global warming, er, climate change, um, climate extremes, climate weirding, extreme weather, whatever they’re calling it now, hasn’t been about science since Keeling did an investigation into CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa volcano observatory in Hawaii in the 1950’s and immediately declared that it was all mankind’s fault. I’ve written it ad nauseum, but, if the Warmists really believe in their “science”, they’d change their own behavior to match their rhetoric. Yet, other than perhaps changing a lightbulb and turning a light off, they don’t.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.

And what are those global threats? Surprisingly, Progressivism/fascism is not mentioned. Instead, we have Nuclear disarmament, Nuclear energy (outdated power plants can be a danger), and….Climate change!

In fact, the global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth’s atmosphere. The International Energy Agency projects that, unless societies begin building alternatives to carbon-emitting energy technologies over the next five years, the world is doomed to a warmer climate, harsher weather, droughts, famine, water scarcity, rising sea levels, loss of island nations, and increasing ocean acidification. Since fossil-fuel burning power plants and infrastructure built in 2012-2020 will produce energy — and emissions — for 40 to 50 years, the actions taken in the next few years will set us on a path that will be impossible to redirect. Even if policy leaders decide in the future to reduce reliance on carbon-emitting technologies, it will be too late.

They forgot to mention that unicorns may become extinct.

The challenges to rid the world of nuclear weapons, harness nuclear power, and meet the nearly inexorable climate disruptions from global warming are complex and interconnected. In the face of such complex problems, it is difficult to see where the capacity lies to address these challenges. The political processes in place seem wholly inadequate to meet the challenges to human existence that we confront.

Inadequate, eh? Obviously, the Atomic Scientists will recommend that every believer live the carbon neutral life, and they themselves will abide by that lifestyle..so, they recommend

• Adopting and fulfilling climate change agreements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through tax incentives, harmonized domestic regulation and practice;
• Vastly increasing public and private investments in alternatives to carbon emitting energy sources, such as solar and wind, and in technologies for energy storage, and sharing the results worldwide.

Well, damn, I thought they might recommend that every Warmist stop driving in fossil fueled vehicles, give up charging their iPhones, and disconnect their homes from the power grid in order to save Gaia from becoming a quarter as warm as the Earth has been for the entire time life has been present on the Earth. So, I blame the Atomic Scientists for the ticking of the Clock.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(Sydney Morning Herald) THE President of what could be the first country in the world lost to climate change has urged Australia to prepare for a mass wave of climate refugees seeking a new place to live.

The Maldivian President, Mohamed Nasheed, said his government was considering Australia as a possible new home if the tiny archipelago disappears beneath rising seas.

”It is increasingly becoming difficult to sustain the islands, in the natural manner that these islands have been,” he told the Herald in an interview in Male, the Maldives capital.

In other words, a bit of hysterical hyperventilation designed to produce a shakedown, because the Earth has apparently been stagnant for the last 4.5 billion years…..say, how did the Maldives come into creation in the first place? What’s that? You say that the sea level was much higher, thereby allowing corals to create the 1200 islands, then the seas retreated? And have done that many times? Well, blind me with science.

Eighty per cent of the Maldivian land mass – a string of more than 1200 islands, 200 inhabited, running 750 kilometres north-south in the Indian Ocean – is less than a metre above sea level. The highest point in the entire country is 2.4 metres above sea level, and already, 14 islands have had to be abandoned because of massive erosion by the sea.

Well, yeah, they are islands. They erode. The ocean is always doing something. That’s the nature of the planet. Nothing anthropogenic about it.

Tim Blair points out that a) President Nasheed just attended a ceremony to make the construction of a new airport (hey, aren’t planes bad for globull warming?) and b) they sure like themselves some heroin in the Maldives. Also, the Maldives have a rising Islamist issue.

Oh, and as The Hockey Schtick points out, sea level rise is pretty much within the norm of the last 7 thousand years.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.