The climate meeting in Copenhagen was actually not all about alarmism. Jonathan Bamber, an ice sheet expert at the University of Bristol, told the conference that previous studies had misjudged the so-called Greenland tipping point, at which the ice sheet is certain to melt completely.

“We found that the threshold is about double what was previously published,” Bamber said. This means it would take an average global temperature rise of 6C to push Greenland into irreversible melting.

Barber also said that evidence from past climates confirms  that Greenland should be able to survive temperature rises higher than 3C. An ice sheet about half the size is known to have persisted there during the Eemian period, about 125,000 years ago, when temperatures were about 5C higher than today.

Time to rearrange your slides again, Al?

Science Daily reports about the proceedings at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen this week. According to research presented at this congress, we are in deep trouble. The upper range of sea level rise by 2100 could be around one meter, or possibly more. In the lower end of the spectrum it looks increasingly unlikely that sea level rise will be much less than 50 cm by 2100.

“The oceans are continuing to warm and expand, the melting of mountain glacier has increased and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are also contributing to sea level rise”, says Dr John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research and the lead speaker in the sea level session.

“The ice loss in Greenland has accelerated over the last decade. The upper range of sea level rise by 2100 might be above 1m or more on a global average”, says Konrad Steffen, Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado, Boulder and co-chair of the congress session on sea level rise.

And John Church again: “Unless we undertake urgent and significant mitigation actions, the climate could cross a threshold during the 21st century committing the world to a sea level rise of metres.”

Global sea level? What’s that? A computed average just like the global temperature? As if the sea level was exactly the same all over the world. And affected by the very same factors. Are the alarmist getting desperate in their attempts to curb our use of fossil fuels? First, it was the temperature, then the acidification of the ocean, now we are going to drown. What’s next?

According to a just released poll from the Gallup Organization, 41 percent of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated. That is the highest percentage of “skeptics” since 1998. The exaggerated statistic has been steadily rising since 2005 after a drop from 2004 to 2005.

At the conference in New York, almost everybody was a skeptic. It felt bizarre to hear that the claims of global warming are grossly exaggerated, while at the same time, media frolic on future catastrophes.

The Swedish government has just issued a climate proposition to reduce Sweden’s CO2-emissions by 40 percent. The already high CO2-tax will be raised even further. In 2030, all cars in Sweden are supposed to run on other than gasoline or diesel. Worth knowing is that Sweden’s CO2-emissions make up for 0.2 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, the Swedish government is out there to save the world.

Parallelly with the Heartland conference, there was a big AGW-meeting in Copenhagen. AGW-people signalize that we are facing an even greater disaster than previously anticipated. Greenland is melting fast. The CO2 will stay in the atmosphere forever. The world as we know it is about to end. At the same time, the sun remains quiet, and the temperatures refuse to rise. And no matter how hard I try, I still cannot see the emperor being other than stark naked.

Good news! Fred Singer and NIPCC will soon publish the main (”real”) report on climate change. The report is now available for peer-review. Those interested should contact Joseph Bast at Heartland, jbast@heartland.org

Here’s the evidence of the report’s existence.

“The globe is freezing. Even Al Gore is looking for an extra blanket”, says Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

Record snowfalls, lowest-ever temperatures, polar ice accumulating faster than ever - what happened to global warming? Don’t worry, it’s just been rebranded. It is now called “climate change” which covers every possibility of what might happen to the globe. Clever thinking.

“It’s clear now that the earth has been cooling for the past decade”, Wesley Pruden writes, “to the sorrow of the special pleaders and despite everything Al can do about it. The solar cycle peaked, the sun is quieter, the sunspots have faded and everybody but Al is cooling off.

Even the United Nations says so. The director of the U.N.’s panel on climate change concedes that nature has overwhelmed everything man can do and it might even be another decade before man can rally and the warming resumes. Until then, like it or not, nature rules the cosmos.”

Read the entire column in today’s Washington Times.

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.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming. He has just presented the English version of his new book, “Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms.

“I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he’s not too much willing to make such a conversation,” Klaus said. “So I’m ready to do it.”

Vaclav Klaus has long opposed climate alarmism, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

“In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet.”

Read more…

It’s been long argued that environmentalism, and especially climate alarmism, is based more on faith that facts. According to the Greens, Man is a destroyer by nature, and his actions should be strictly controlled. It is often said that the Earth would in fact benefit if mankind was eradicated once and for all. On our quest to transform the nature so that it best suits our dirty needs, we pervert and pollute what’s pure and innocent.

Jonah Goldberg has written an interesting article about the difference between environmentalism and conservationism.

At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. (…) Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past.

Read the entire article on Townhall.com.

A great little woman has passed away. A true hero. Irena Sendler, who smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II, died on Monday in Warsaw. She was 98.

Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city’s welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and all the Jews in Warsaw were forced into a walled-off ghetto. Seeking to save the children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. She and her assistants smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory,” Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.

For her efforts, Irena Sendler was nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Her nomination was supported by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It might have been the first time a Nobel Prize would be awarded in connection to the Holocaust. However, that didn’t happen.

Instead, the Peace Prize for 2007 went to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“For their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The following is a statement by IFSW.

“IFSW sends congratulations to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on winning the Nobel Peace Prize 2007. The issue of climate change is affecting all individuals and societies and it is a more than worthy cause to help begin the change in our lifestyle to prevent destruction of our planet. Social workers know from daily experience that this is an immediate and pressing social and personal issue.

‘However IFSW is deeply saddened that the life work of Nobel nominee Irena Sendler, social worker, did not receive formal recognition’, said David N Jones, IFSW President. ‘Irena Sendler and her helpers took personal risks day after day to prevent the destruction of individual lives — the lives of the children of the Warsaw ghetto. This work was done very quietly, without many words and at the risk of their lives. This is so typical of social work, an activity which changes and saves lives but is done out of the glare of publicity and often at personal risk. IFSW recognizes her again and at the same time celebrates the commitment and dedication of thousands of social workers around the world who also bring hope and care to people often living on the edge of despair,’ David N Jones concluded.”

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

So, here we have a woman who put her life on the line every day to save people with whom some might say she had only a country and a God in common, and she was passed over for a prestigious award in favor of a man who invented the Internet and whose goal will make billions miserable for the sake of bad science.

“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference,” said Boerge Brende, former Norwegian Minister of Trade, when congratulating Al Gore on winning the Peace Prize.

Irena Sendler insisted she did nothing special. In an interview she said: “I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality. The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.”

Here’s to you, Irena. I hope you will be remembered by many.

A month has passed since the “Gang of Four” sent their letter to the IPCC demanding they reverse their view on global warming. Piers Corbyn, one of the four, said on May 11th: “We have as yet received no response from the IPCC which is astounding since the matter is of such great importance. I do not believe they can give an adequate response.”

Why am I not suprised?