Should you think that gumment (any) will forswear the Goresent opportunity of raising taxes by scaring the crap out of an ill-educated populace, then the Earth is truly flat.

Al Gore, at the moment, is both promoting AGW, and financial products related to it.

I think it is about time the FSA carried out an investigation.

Is he acting fraudulently? There does seem to be a conflict of interest there somewhere.

In fact the Junkman (http://junkscience.com/(Link)) has indicated he is planning on initiating legal action against AGW proponents for misrepresentation. For those who wish to keep up to date on climate discussions this is a site worth watching

"I wager, from here on in: 2007 will be seen as the high water mark for the anthropogenic global warming "theory"."

That was a commenter on the New Statesman article, and I think he is right.
On that article, and on this one from the NYTimes, more than 3/4 of commenters are skeptics or "deniers". And these are left-wing, MSM, publications.

This comment from the New Statesman is also interesting.

Our local high school participated in a government sponsored science program called "GLOBE". They faithfully recorded air temperatures (high/low/noon) for 12 years, even during vacations and summer breaks. No matter how the numbers crunched- no evidence for rising temperatures. Curious, we tapped into the data for all the other school's data participating- no evidence. We chalked it up to the fact that data since 1994 isn't a good enough time period ( but it feels like it when your doing the work).

It's the Gore Effect on a massive scale. It's well documented that when he goes somewhere to talk about Global Warming, cold follows him.

Since he's been talking about Global Warming, he has single-handedly held it at bay. All we need to do now is keep him talking.

Come to think of it, he'll do that just fine on his own.

Yes, clearly there should be an increase in temperature, or at least the moving average of temperatures in the last ten years if global warming is true, and related to the increase in carbon in the atmosphere unless there is - as they usually "explain" - some other event causing an arrest in the temperatures. For the drop in temperatures between 1945 and 1980(ish) they claimed aerosols. Now they claim El Nino, but el Nina was not credited for the "hottest year on record" 1998. It balances out. The catastrophic extreme claims are going to be debunked in the next 5 years. If 15 years after the "hottest year on record" it still remains the hottest year on record we can assume that the more catastrophic effects of global warming across 100 years ( up to 5 degrees etc.) will be debunked. You would need an increase of 1 degree every two decades for that, or about 0.7 every 15 years. ( O.8 is the claimed warming for the last century - they mean until 1998, of course).

Still there are strong millenarian and eschatological beliefs in the mix here; we've been bad, we're going to die in a flood.

It's global warming's fault that the temperature isn't rising. See, we've already done so much damage, there's not much higher we can go.

It's also causing the freezing cold temps in places like Edmonton and Moscow.

Global warming stops in 2001...the WTC towers are destroyed in 2001...I wonder if any moonbats will try to make a connection...

In addition to your point eugene, NASA recently released a corrective to their historic U.S. temperature data that showed the hottest year as 1934, not 1998. In fact 6 of the 10 hottest years on their records were in the first half of the 20th century (with most in the 20s and 30s). Obviously these are not 'global' stats, but given the fact that the U.S. or any other wealthy country is going to have far more reliable historic data than say, Botswana, I saw it as interesting.

Just how reliable is historic temperature data from other parts of the world?

countingcats wrote:

I think it is about time the FSA carried out an investigation.

Is he acting fraudulently? There does seem to be a conflict of interest there somewhere.

It would be lovely if legal wrath were so visited.

Sadly, however, I am as sceptical of the likelihood of successful prosecution of snake-oil salesmen as I am of the presence of CAGW.

Best regards

"I wager, from here on in: 2007 will be seen as the high water mark for the anthropogenic global warming "theory"."

I sincerely hope so. Even the EU can't ignore all observational evidence in everything it turns to all the time. Although it does a pretty good job trying.

For those who haven't seen it, here is another report from one of the last bastions of rationality and common sense, this time on that oft invoked 'consensus' -

20 December, 2007
U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

This item points to a topic I have been wondering about for a while: What would be the consequences if the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming becomes untenable in a few years time?

With another hot air fest in Copenhagen in 2 years time and the expiration of Kyoto in 5 years, AGW is going to remain a visible topic. Perhaps Gaia will not behave as her devotees expect. Could see some pretty cold years before then.

So, what would it do to the UN set if they are caught in a clear lie? Would it be like when they exaggerated AIDS -- i.e., no consequences? Or could it bring down the whole edifice of political correctness?

Alice wrote:

Or could it bring down the whole edifice of political correctness?

More optimism; maybe it's the Christmas spirit coming through.

Is there something we all can do to make more likely this happy outcome?

Oh, and thank you Alice for such a cheerful thought.

Best regards

Or could it bring down the whole edifice of political correctness?

I don't think so, the anti-people, anti-choice, authoritarians are too well entrenched in the supragovernmental organisations (UN, NGO's, EU, State owned media like the BBC and SBS) for this to have much effect.

The problem is, even if there are a few red faces and a bit of house cleaning for show, these organisations have been captured, lock, stock and two smoking barrels, by a single uniformity of thought, and without a major world war two style shakeup this ain't going to change.

The problem we have here is my old description of the left and right - the right believes its opponents to be mistaken, the left believes its opponents to be evil.

Those who work within these organisations and share the world view KNOW that their beliefs are morally superior to those who disagree with them. Simply being wrong on global warming really ain't gonna change that.

Don't forget, a lie told by Greenpeace with the purpose of damaging Shell is morally superior to a truth told by Shell in their defence.

So when all this is disproven, obviously everyone will come forward, hold up their hands, and admit they were wrong.

Just like they all did about the Soviet Union and Socialism.

Joyeux Noel!

Certainly it takes big changes to set a new trendline in a statistically significant way. I guess it is not only the average that is a significant statistics. For instance if the temperature remains the same all day of the year at exactly the point of the many years statistical average, that is a really big change in the weather. No winter, no summer. I live in a country which is not significantly warmer in the yearly average, only in some months, plus we had extremely dry outlier years, 10 in 12. Maybe it is not global warming, but the quote of the day suggests as if weather was not changing. Maybe it always has been changing. But the average is clearly not a good measure.