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“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.”
Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review
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 source: The American Thinker
By Jerome J. Schmitt
Global warming theory is a prediction based on complex mathematical models developed to explain the dynamics of the atmosphere. These models must account for a myriad of factors, and the resultant equations are so complex they cannot be solved explicitly or “analytically” but rather their solutions must be approximated “numerically” with computers. The mathematics of global warming should not be compared with the explicit calculus used, for example, by Edmund Halley to calculate the orbit of his eponymous comet and predict its return 76 years later.
Although based on scientific “first principles”, complex numerical models inevitably require simplifications, judgment calls, and correction factors. These subjective measures may be entirely acceptable so long as the model matches the available data — acceptable because the model is not intended to be internally consistent with all the laws of physics and chemistry, but rather to serve as an expedient means to anticipate behavior of the system in the future. However, problems can arise when R&D funding mechanisms inevitably “reward” exaggerated and alarming claims for the accuracy and implications of these models.
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 source: KOMONews.com
PORTLAND, Ore. — Detectives interviewed former U.S. Vice President Al Gore this past week in San Francisco, a law enforcement source has confirmed to KATU News.
Portland police detectives interviewed Gore on Thursday, questioning him further about allegations that he sexually abused a licensed a massage therapist.
Investigators had filed a special report in January 2007, recording the massage therapist’s claims that Gore grabbed and groped her when she gave him a massage at a Portland hotel in October 2006. The woman went public in a June 23 National Enquirer story and held up “soiled” pants for a June 30 Enquirer cover.
On July 1, the Portland Police Bureau reopened its sexual assault investigation into the former vice president. Officials said the extra review was needed as detectives looking into the matter this past year failed to notify high-ranking officials of the decision to drop the case.
The Enquirer has published the stories of two other massage therapists. Those therapists, who worked at hotels in Tokyo and Los Angeles, have also claimed Gore made unwanted sexual advances toward them.
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 source: The Huffington Post
At Netroots Nation today, Van Jones sought to rally attendees after the Senate leadership put plans for a climate protection bill on the back burner: “This thing is not over.”
He’s right, for one very simple reason. It is against the law under the Clean Air Act, the Supreme Court has ruled, for the Environmental Protection Agency to ignore greenhouse gas pollution. And a congressional attempt to gut the Clean Air Act and block the EPA from acting was defeated this year.
That fact has always been part of the argument to press Senators from coal, oil, manufacturing and agribusiness states to accept climate compromises: if Congress doesn’t do it, the EPA will.
And that same fact has always the Obama administration’s Plan B.
The EPA is not going to announce an economy-wide carbon cap overnight. But it has been and will continue to announce a rule here and a rule there, continually ramping up pressure on Congress to pass legislation that will cap carbon emissions in a way that businesses will find more flexible than what the EPA is able to do.
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source: SmallDeadAnimals.com
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 source: Politico
The Senate climate bill has been at death’s door several times over the past year. But with the days before the August recess quickly slipping away, the case may truly be terminal now.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has wanted to introduce a sweeping energy and climate bill by next week, and Reid even told POLITICO on Monday night that the package was almost ready to go.
But by Tuesday afternoon, Reid was noncommittal about when a bill would come or what it would contain.
“We’re going to make a decision in the near future,” Reid said, describing plans for a Democratic caucus on the issue Thursday. “We’re really not at a point where I can determine what I think is the best for the caucus and the country at this stage.”
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source: The Hockey Schtick
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 source: WattsUpWithThat
The American government has suspended its funding of the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit (CRU), citing the scientific doubts raised by last November’s leak of hundreds of stolen emails.
The US Department of Energy (DoE) was one of the unit’s main sources of funding for its work assembling a database of global temperatures.
It has supported the CRU financially since 1990 and gives the unit about £131,000 ($200,000 USD) a year on a rolling three-year contract.
This should have been renewed automatically in April, but the department has suspended all payments since May pending a scientific peer review of the unit’s work.
The leaked emails caused a global furore. They appeared to suggest that CRU scientists were using “tricks” to strengthen the case for man-made climate change and suppressing dissent.
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 source: EurActiv
European industries are subsidising direct competitors in China and India by buying international credits to offset their carbon dioxide emissions, an NGO said in a new report.
EU companies spent around €860 million last year buying 78 million international offset credits (CERs) in order to meet their emission caps under the EU’s cap-and-trade scheme.
The credits, issued under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), are designed to allow companies to meet their targets more cost-effectively by financing projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.
An analysis of UN and EU data on credits bought in the EU last year by green NGO Sandbag showed that steel companies in China and India were benefiting directly from money flowing from European competitors.
German steel company Salzgitter’s ‘Glock Salzgitter’ plant, for instance, bought 40,000 credits from an Indian steel project, the NGO said. The company offset 99.5% of its emissions with CERs, escaping the need to improve domestically, it added.
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