According to Australian scientists, kangaroos could be the answer to global warming, reports Medindia.com. Kangaroo farts contain virtually no methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent that CO2. Obviously, bacteria in kangaroos’ stomachs makes the digestive process much more efficient and could potentially save millions of dollars in feed costs for farmers. If we can transfer the kangaroo bacteria to cattle and sheep, it may be the answer to global warming.

“Fourteen percent of emissions from all sources in Australia is from enteric methane from cattle and sheep,” said Athol Klieve, a senior research scientist with the Queensland state government.

“Not only would they (cattle and sheep) not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 percent more energy out of the feed they are eating.”

This is great news. I only hope it also works for human flatulence.

You have probably heard of Mark Lynas, 35 years of age, alarmist writer and environmental activist focused on climate change. In today’s Guardian he serves us a scary dish - forget about the 2 degree C global warming. It’s going to be much, much worse.

According to Lynas, the former chairman of the IPCC, Bob Watson, warns us to prepare for 4C global warming. To avoid that, we must make drastic CO2 cuts now. Bob was kicked out of the IPCC by the Bush administration for being speaking too loudly about the global warming threat, Lynas says. Nevertheless, he has continued his quest for a carbon-free world. After leaving the IPCC, he chaired the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, a UN study looking at the sad future of our planet’s natrual systems. So he, if anybody, should know.

Lynas and Watson are very skeptic about the future of humanity.

“Yes, we should certainly prepare for the worst as far as possible – with flood defences, drought-resistant crops and strategies to ameliorate the loss of wildlife, at the very least – but a look at the likely impact of a four-degrees temperature rise suggests that such a dramatic change would probably stretch society’s capacity for adaptation to the limit, not to mention having a disastrous effect on the natural ecosystems that support humanity as a whole.

(…) The planet would be in the throes of a mass extinction of natural life approaching in magnitude that at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65m years ago, when more than half of global biodiversity was wiped out.”

Rivers will run dry, rainforests will collapse and burn, ferocious heatwaves will kill millions. We are heading for a total meltdown of life as we know it. The solution? STOP BURNING ALL FOSSIL FUELS NOW! Sure, there are no viable alternatives but Mark Lynas would rather see the world return to medieval living conditions than allow for the mercury to rise.

Do not miss to read the comments. Some of them are quite funny.

Wednesday’s Seattle Times article, ”UW Study Examines Decline of Snowpack” begins as follows,

“Maybe the snow in the Cascade Mountains isn’t in such immediate peril from global warming after all.

Despite previous studies suggesting a warmer climate is already taking a bite out of Washington’s snowpack, there’s no clear evidence that human-induced climate change has caused a drop in 20th century snow levels, according to a new study by University of Washington scientists.”

The study findings (note: the study has not yet been peer-reviewed) have already become part of a scientific debate with an unusually political tone. A leading scientist on the other side of the debate (presumably an AGW-supporter) said the latest analysis speculates about the future and offers little new about the past. Well, almost the same is applicable to IPCC’s reports. Aren’t they just loose speculations about the future with no empirical evidence whatsoever?

We’ve been warned that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer. But according to the latest ICESat thickness estimates, it appears that the first-year sea ice in the Arctic Ocean so far this season is comparable in thickness to what it was in 2006 and 2007. Why is that?

The NSIDC says that sparse snow cover over the Arctic Ocean last winter resulted in less insulation from the bitterly cold air, resulting in faster, first-year ice growth. Snow was unable to accumulate last autumn since much of the Arctic Ocean was still ice-free, causing the snow to just melt into the open waters. Once the ice formed later in the fall, it accumulated more quickly than normal as there was very little barrier (snow) between the ice and the cold air just above the surface.

And how about that global warming anyway? The recent years’ fall in global temperatures has led to increasing speculation that global warming is over. The AGW-supporters explain that even if global temperatures rise and fall year-on-year this does not mean that global warming has stopped; only that the continuing rise in temperatures due to man made emissions of greenhouse gases is being temporarily masked.

So the first important question we should ask is:

Is the Earth warming?

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has confirmed that an impending phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation will likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years.

What if the planet is actually entered a cooling phase while the world’s governments do their best to restrain the use of fossil fuels with no viable alternative at hand?

Regardless of the answer to the first question (“yes” or “no”), there are further uncertainties. Question number two is therefore:

If the world indeed is warming, what is the main cause of this warming and can we do anything to control climate change? And should the world be cooling, can we do anything to stop that?

If climate change is something beyond our control, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to adapt instead of putting our money on useless mitigation measures?

IPCC indicates that the consequences of a global warming will be dire, with floods, droughts, famine and overall misery devastating the lives of all people.

But what if warming actually turns out beneficial? What is it is cooling we should worry about?

That is the third question we need to ask.

The papers are full of reports on shrinking glaciers, collapsing ice-sheets and worried polar bears. But the most important questions, those above, questions that still remain unanswered, have eluded us. So let’s get back to the basics of climate discussion instead of losing ourselves among thousands of fairly vague implications of what might or might not happen.

If you follow the climate debate you have probably noticed a slight change. What was formerly referred to as “global warming” is now called “climate change”. Perhaps to safeguard the case against a sudden 180-degree swing. This year’s record cold winter has paralyzed many parts of the world despite the ever-growing amount of greenhouse gases billowing out from India and China.

Even though there is some uneasiness among the alarmists, they can’t just put down arms and acknowledge defeat. Too much money has already been invested. Too many jobs and reputations are on the line. So they add some wrinkles to the story and hope nobody will react. It’s like the story about the boiling frog. By making small gradual adjustments the alarmists hope change will be imperceptible.

Take for example John Tierney in The New York Times. It looks like someone at the NYT has finally caught on to the hoax but won’t admit it. So instead they try to gently slip in the truth.

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed.

Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead.

All the faithful are of course a little worried. How can this super-cold winter happen? What is wrong with the climate change? Around the world, the modeling teams are sweating to adjust their calculations. At the same time other scientists, such as Ferenc Miskolczi, discover that “greenhouse warming” may be mathematically impossible. In short, the warming models assume that the atmosphere is infinitely thick. If on the other hand, you assume the atmosphere is about 100 km thick (about 65 miles) - which has the big advantage of being true - the greenhouse effect disappears! Oops, no more global warming.

What happens once this farce is finally exposed? Whose heads will roll?