On July 12th Coral Davenport reported for Politico:
Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

While Republicans and polluting industries will celebrate, most know their victory will be fleeting…
Over the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out four rules that, in the absence of climate change legislation, eventually would give the executive branch command-and-control power to limit carbon pollution from power plants, factories

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As Mark Twain told us, there are three types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. Unfortunately, Agence France-Press (AFP) reporter Marlow Hood reminds us of Twain’s truth in his April 29th article entitled “Sea ice loss major cause of Arctic warming.” Mr. Hood uses the typical statistic-manipulator tactic of cherry-picking data points and wording descriptions in a way likely to mislead the average reader.

Hood begins his article by claiming that “melting sea ice has dramatically accelerated warming in the Arctic” and continues to talk about data from 1989 to 2008, as if the present is irrelevant.

In fact, … Continue Reading

Stephen Dinan’s March 5th Washington Times article entitled “Climate scientists plot to fight back at skeptics” allows a climate alarmist  to assert that scientists “will never be able to compete with energy companies” when it comes to pushing their side of the debate.

The claim is false for several reasons:

• Energy companies have funded research on both sides of this debate, but spent more funding those “alarmists” who support claims of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (“AGW”).
• No

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Writing about the mainstream climatologists’ attempt to restore their credibility on March 2nd, John Broder of The New York Times all but dismisses the flaws in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report:

No scientific body is under more hostile scrutiny than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiles the climate research of hundreds of scientists around the globe into periodic reports intended to be the definitive statement of the science and a guide for policy makers. Critics, citing several relatively minor errors in its most recent report and charges of conflict of interest

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The November 27th Washington Post had a front page headline under a Juliet Eilperin article reading: “China sets target for emission cuts. Premier to go to Copenhagen. Moves could signal progress in climate talks.”

The theme of the story is a looming, possible and very significant policy development, in which the United States would commit to binding, steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions produced by combusting traditional energy sources (hydrocarbons or “fossil fuels”). This is a policy goal in favor of which the Post has aggressively editorialized. Other than massive expansion of nuclear power, there is no known way to … Continue Reading

The November 6th USA Today has an article by Dan Vergano titled, Gore’s book a toolbox for fixing climate crises, on former Vice President Al Gore’s new book, Our Choice, A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. Included in the article is the following paragraph:

The book resulted from two years of ‘Solutions Summits’ with scientists, economists and engineers, and lists four pages worth of contributors as well as 25 independent reviewers. The fact checking follows jibes over small errors in An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary that turned Gore into an icon of climate change.

In fact, that film’s errors were … Continue Reading

Juliet Eilperin’s October 28th Washington post story Economics of Climate Change in Forefront reports:

In June, the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute predicted that a $150 billion annual public and private investment in clean energy would produce a net increase every year of 1.7 million jobs.

It’s true, CAP did release such a “study” in June of this year. But they also released a very similar study in September of 2008 showing that $100 billion in annual spending on clean energy would produce 2 million jobs. That is a … Continue Reading

A unattributed October 21st Associated Press article reports:

The industrialized world again in 2007 boosted, rather than reduced, its emissions of global-warming gases, the U.N. reported Wednesday, as international negotiators looked ahead to crucial climate talks in December.

But a search of the Web easily turns up news stories that show 2008 data, referring to numbers compiled by the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (“IWR”). This data, when compared to the IWR’s prior year data, shows that CO2 emissions from the “industrialized world” dropped substantially in 2008 versus 2007 (although the IWR goes out of their way … Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin published a story September 30th on Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) “climate bill” which Eilperin reports:

aims to make deep cuts in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in the near and long term while setting a limit on the cost of carbon allowances, according to several sources and a close-to-final version of the bill obtained by The Washington Post.

The bill, which is still being revised, would make it easier for businesses to compensate for their carbon pollution by expanding the available pool of domestic offsets by 40 percent compared with the House-passed climate bill

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Several days before key Senators introduce that body’s version of controversial global warming “cap-and-trade” legislation, and several months after EPA whistle-blower Dr. Alan Carlin drew attention to the fact that the recent published scientific literature presents a decided tilt against prevailing “global warming” scientific wisdom, the New York Times has run a piece diminishing Dr. Carlin’s stature and findings. The September 24th John M. Broder article reads:

Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration.

In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the

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The Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein published an article September 23rd, titled “NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening.” The story opens, “New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.”

Oddly, there is no mention of “runaway” in either the British Antarctic Survey’s press release or the research paper itself. Yet the lurid conclusion appears in the reporter’s first paragraph.

Although the paper at issue is already, as we see here, being spun as evidence of impending catastrophic sea level … Continue Reading

Reporting on President Barack Obama’s September 22nd address to the United Nations Climate Summit, USA Today’s Traci Watson writes:

The Earth isn’t waiting, scientists say.

If emissions keep increasing as they have, the planet’s average temperature will rise 3 to 7 degrees by 2100, according to the U.N. climate panel’s 2007 report.

But what Watson completely fails to tell her readers, is that the “3 to 7 degrees by 2100″ temperature increase is nothing but a estimate based on computer modeling. It does not reflect an actual observed rise in temperatures. Science is based on the collection observable evidence. And the … Continue Reading

The Washington Times published a story September 1st by Amanda DeBard under the header: “Climate Change Bill To Boost Nuclear Plants” which starts out good:

Nearly half of the nation’s nuclear power plants stand to earn a windfall if the climate-change bill passed by the House becomes law.

But then DeBard goes on to report:

The bill will cause an “increase in revenues to carbon-free power sources like nuclear, and this is exactly what is supposed to happen,” said John Shelk, president of the Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA).
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“The money isn’t really a ‘windfall profit,’ ” Mr. Shelk said. “Instead, it is

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A unattributed August 18th Associated Press story titled China Mulls Climate Resolution (printed in the Wall Street Journal), reports that China might vow that it will, or at least should, begin reducing its greenhouse gas emissions possibly around 2050. Early in the piece is a one-sentence paragraph, sandwiched between two others:

China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases and has not set a cap on its emissions, believing it needs to continue to expand its economy and lift millions out of poverty. The country’s stance is expected to be key to a successful December U.N. conference in Copenhagen, which

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In the August 8th edition of The New York Times, columnist John M. Broder, who writes frequently for the paper on global warming issues penned a column titled, “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security.” Broder reported on recent studies and exercises conducted by the military that looked at the security implications of global climate change. He then concluded:

a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest. If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus

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On August 10th the BBC ran an image showing smog-choked streets accompanying a story originally titled “Bonn hosts climate change talks” – since updated to a more excited “Time ‘runs short’ on climate deal” – about negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

The context is inescapable: the photo caption below the choking pollution states “There are demands for China and India to commit to cutting emissions”, and the story is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The BBC implies it … Continue Reading

In the August 8th New York Times, John Broder reports:

Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition.

Considering that this paragraph comes under an article titled “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. security”, one would hope Broder knew he was on solid ground here. Unfortunately he is not. The Arctic ice cap – which principally, and as referenced in this story, … Continue Reading

In their story August 3rd Cover story, Congressional Quarterly reporters Coral Davenport, Benton Ives and Phil Mattingly perpetuate a common mythology about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which surely will proliferate as reportage increases, with numerous international confabs scheduled to discuss an international treaty in coming months. Their piece, Carbon, From the Ground Up at least admits that “carbon dioxide [is] a naturally occurring by-product of human and animal respiration, and the principal gas breathed in by green plants”, but then goes on to state:

The more than 2,000 scientists on the Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel

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Editorializing on what they see as “promising” and “increased activity” between China and the United States on climate change, the Washington Post wrote on August 2nd:

This is a far cry from what happened under President George W. Bush. After spending most of his eight years questioning the science buttressing predictions of catastrophic climate change.

Although an opinion piece, this assertion is  risibly misleading if not outright false. In reverse order, Bush always acknowledged a human contribution to climate change — though the annual, rapidly increasing climate science appropriations continue to affirm his point that we do not know what … Continue Reading

In her July 3rd “Obama to seek climate deal in Moscow” article, the Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg reported that, on his current trip, President Barack Obama is seeking to entice Russia into keeping the Kyoto process alive, in advance of talks on a successor to the five year plan that expires at the end of 2012.

In its story, the paper writes “‘I think there is a much more realistic appraisal about the potential pros and cons of climate change. It is hard for them to ignore what is happening in the Arctic [which is warming rapidly],’ said (Andrew Kuchins of … Continue Reading

Fiona Harvey writes in the May 29th Financial Times:

Climate change is claiming 300,000 lives a year and costing the global economy $125bn annually … according to a report from the Global Humanitarian Forum. … The study was compiled using a widely accepted methodology for examining the effects of climate change developed by the World Health Organization.

But as University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke has noted, not even GHF head Kofi Annan was willing to call the study “scientific.” Why not? Pielke explains:

Why can’t the work produced by the GHF be “as rigorous as a scientific study”? Well, one answer

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The May 8 New York Times Magazine ran a piece by Nicholas Schmidle titled “Wanted: A New Home for My Country”, repeating debunked mythology about atoll nations being submerged by rising sea levels as a result of Man-made global warming.

Scmidle writes: “Even a slight rise in global sea levels, which many scientists predict will occur by the end of this century, could submerge most of the Maldives.”

However, there is no evidence of sea level rise around the Maldives, at all. This claim was popularized in “An Inconvenient Truth”, prompting the only court to examine its merits (Dimmock v. Secretary … Continue Reading

With the Antarctic now demonstrably cooling and gaining ice mass, media outlets have recently shifted to touting ice-shelf break-off in the northernmost Antarctic Peninsula as evidence of “global warming”. Today’s example comes from AP’s David Rising whose Antarctic Ice Shelf Falling Apart article carries a pictorial “Frightening Forecast for Earth”. The piece begins:

BERLIN (April 29) — Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice — an area larger than Rhode Island — was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.

The Wilkins Ice

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For the second-straight year the media are trumpeting a “record-warm” March. This year the April 16th USA Today touts its version with the headline “Earth’s temperature 8th-warmest on record so far in 2009” – on the basis of just three months’ data. Doyle Rice’s accompanying article is textbook hype.

We are in a slow recovery since the little ice age with 60 year cyclical ups and downs. We peaked around 1940 and 2000 and reached bottoms near 1910 and 1970. We have been cooling for the last 7 plus years. Claims of warming are increasingly tenuous.

When turning to surface station … Continue Reading

U.S. News has a story posted April 28 by Kent Garber titled “In Climate Change Debate, It’s All About Jobs: Many in Congress worry about the economic impact of curbing emissions”. The story repeats the Environmental Protection Agency’s remarkably low expected cost per household from draft “global warming” legislation, despite the fact that the bill actually provides no specifics to use in any such assessment. Key details missing include how industry would obtain emission “allowances” (for free, or sold by the federal government), what sort of “offsets” would qualify, or how much (if any) consumers would receive in energy … Continue Reading

An April 21 BBC article, “‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers”, by Pallab Ghosh tries to blame the sun for the fact that doom-saying computer modelers haven’t been able to predict the past 15 years of no warming and a decade of cooling. The article begins:

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.
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Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a

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One of the most consistent errors of logic in the dominant liberal media is their willingness to blame anything and everything on man-made global warming even when the very same article contains evidence to the contrary.

An April 16th, 2009 article by Andrew Revkin in the New York Times is a perfect example. Here are some highlights of the article entitled “Study Finds a Pattern of Severe Droughts in Africa”:

• Droughts have consistently “seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa” for over 3,000 years, typically “every 30 to 65 years”.
• “The last such drought, persisting more than three centuries, ended around 1750,

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A large Arctic ice mass loss in 2007 was widely reported as proof of man-made global warming, even though NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories attributed it instead to unusual winds. Now, as a April 7, Associated Press story by Seth Borenstein affirms, the massive 2008 gain of Arctic ice mass is being presented not as recovery, but used to perpetuate the meme of a melting Arctic.

That piece, “Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring”, opens with “The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before.” Outside of the improper use of “ever” in the two spots that … Continue Reading

The March 22 London Independent has an article titled “The incredible shrinking polar bear” by Geoffrey Lean. It begins:

Polar bears are shrinking, along with the ice on which they live – and are turning to cannibalism – as global warming increasingly stops them getting enough to eat.

Scientists say the animals are now only two-thirds as big as they were 30 years ago as melting ice makes it harder for them to catch seals, and that they have begun to hunt each other instead.

The thrust of the piece was that stress and alleged cannibalism, due to global warming, is responsible … Continue Reading

Matt McGrath’s  March 12 BBC article, “Earth warming faster than thought,” offers no evidence of any such thing. It merely reveals claims of impacts that modelers project would result from a large warming – impacts greater than previously asserted by others, as is how things work when it comes to global warming.

Examples include one person cited who “said that if the world was to warm by 5C over the next century there would be dramatic consequences for millions of people.” Also, “There was also new information on how the Amazon rainforest would cope with rising temperatures.”

The article said “New … Continue Reading