The sea-level guru writes an open letter to President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, after the ridiculous “underwater cabinet meeting” stunt:

And let us, for Heaven’s sake, lift the terrible psychological burden that you and your predecessor have placed upon the shoulders of all people in the Maldives, who are now living with the imagined threat that flooding will soon drive them from their homes, a wholly false notion that is nothing but an armchair fiction artificially constructed by mere computer modelling constantly proven wrong by meticulous real-world observations.

Your cabinet meeting under the water is nothing but a misdirected gimmick or PR stunt. Al Gore is a master in such cheap techniques. But such misconduct is dishonest, unproductive and certainly most unscientific.

Read it here (PDF) h/t Climate Realists

From Watts Up With That:

Global satellite data is analyzed for temperature trends for the period January 1979 through June 2009.  Beginning and ending segments show a cooling trend, while the middle segment evinces a warming trend.  The past 12 to 13 years show cooling using both satellite  data sets, with lower confidence limits that do not exclude a negative trend until 16 to 22 years.  It is shown that several published studies have predicted cooling in this time frame.  One of these models is extrapolated from its 2000 calibration end date and shows a good match to the satellite data, with a projection of continued cooling for several more decades.

Read it here.

See, the science is settled, you denier you. Just like a handful of trees in Siberia created the Hockey Stick, now we have a bunch of sediment cores in the middle of Canada cherry-picked to show that the Medieval Warm Period didn’t exist, the Roman Warm Period didn’t exist, the Holocene climate optimum didn’t exist, it’s warmer now than in the last 200 gazillion years, and it’s all our fault after all. Now can we please just get on with taking our Western economies back to the Dark Ages?

“The past few decades have been unique in the past 200,000 years in terms of the changes we see in the biology and chemistry recorded in the cores,” University of Colorado glaciologist Yarrow Axford said.

“We see clear evidence for warming in one of the most remote places on Earth at a time when the Arctic should be cooling because of natural processes.”

Mr Axford is the chief author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For thousands of years, environmental changes in a remote lake on Canada’s Baffin Island closely matched natural, cyclical climate changes such as those caused by the Earth’s periodic wobble as it swings around the sun, the researchers said.

However, lake sediment cores dating from 1950 show that expected climate cooling was overridden by human activity like greenhouse gas emissions.

Just for interest, here is a section from Ms Axford’s personal web page:

Why study the Arctic?

The Arctic is changing rapidly today. And ongoing changes in the arctic cryosphere (ice and snow) and hydrosphere (water) have important ramifications for global climate. Understanding how the arctic environment has changed in the past may shed light on both the future of the Arctic, and the future of the wider world.

My dissertation research focused on the climate histories of Iceland and Baffin Island. The economies and natural environments of Iceland and Nunavut are potentially very vulnerable to future climate change. It is important to understand the nature, rate, and magnitude of past paleoenvironmental changes in these regions in order to help constrain future risks. Paleoenvironmental records from the warm early Holocene provide glimpses of what the environments of Iceland and Nunavut might look like in a future greenhouse world. (source)

No agenda there, clearly.

Read it here.

UPDATE 1: Anthony Watts posts on this here, and links the decline to DDT use.

UPDATE 2: And this from the BBC, for all you who think tree-rings tell the whole story:

The intensity of cosmic rays also correlates better with the changes in tree growth than any other climatological factor, such as varying levels of temperature or precipitation over the years.

“The correlation between growth and cosmic rays was moderately high, but the correlation with the climatological variables was barely visible.”

This whole ETS debacle isn’t exacly what parliamentary democracy is about. For a start, I cannot remember an occasion where an opposition “negotiated” with a sitting government on a bill. The job of the opposition is to hold the government to account in Parliament, not usurp the authority of Parliament by holding clandestine meetings in order to reach an “agreement” before a vote.

Now there are threats of disciplinary action against Liberals who don’t toe the party line on the ETS, which seems a thoroughly draconian measure.

Liberal Party federal president Alan Stockdale warned that his party had power to take action against MPs who damaged its brand.

Commenting on a recent call by former Liberal staffer Grahame Morris for the party to re-examine its endorsement of MPs who attacked the party, Mr Stockdale said he would not publicly canvass the issues of disloyalty and bad behaviour.

But he said: “People should be aware that at both state and federal level there are mechanisms for reviewing preselections where people take action that damages the party.

“There are a whole raft of stages of counselling and disciplinary issues that arise before preselection.”

Asked whether he believed any MP should face censure over the ETS issue, Mr Stockdale repeated his position that he would not discuss such issues in public, saying they should be handled between party officials and individual MPs. (source)

But at least Cory Bernardi isn’t threatened. Speaking on ABC News radio this morning he said that there was no way he would be voting for an ETS before Copenhagen (no link yet). A breath of fresh are in increasingly crazy times.

As Andrew Bolt puts it:

So may as well fight for what’s right, rather than what seems safe – since it’s better to lose just an election, rather than your dignity and principles, too. (source)

Five years, three years, ten years, fifty years – pick a number. The climate moonbats at WWF are in turbo-hysteria mode as Copenhagen approaches:

The economic modelling, commissioned by WWF Australia, has found that an emissions trading scheme is not enough to drive the change needed to sufficiently cut global emissions.

Instead, it says governments must rapidly put in place greater incentives for industry to make the transition.

Karl Mallon, a scientist with Climate Risk and one of the key authors of the report, says 2014 has been calculated as the point at which there is no longer enough time to develop the industries that can deliver a low carbon economy.

“The point of no return,” he said.

“If we wait until past 2014 or that’s what modelling shows, then simply put, it will be impossible for industries to grow to the scale that has to be achieved in the time that is available.

“So essentially, we’ll miss the target and I guess then we are left with the consequences of what happens if we go about two degrees warming.”

Ho hum.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Piers Ackerman skewers this story here.

It will be interesting to see whether the government is really interested in getting the ETS through, or whether it is more concerned with wedging the Opposition into forcing a double dissolution by rejecting their proposed amendments.

Senator Wong and her counterpart climate change spokesman Ian Macfarlane will hold talks this afternoon after the Coalition agreed yesterday to allow the party leadership to negotiate with Labor over possible amendments to the legislation.

Pledging to protect jobs and limit expected rises in electricity prices for small business, the Coalition yesterday released its wishlist for reform.

It includes protecting farmers by permanently excluding agriculture and treating food processing as an emissions intensive industry.

Electricity generators and the coal industry will also get more compensation, raising the prospect that the scheme will cost taxpayers more if a deal can be struck with the Coalition – a prospect Nationals and some Liberals insist is still unlikely.

Senator Wong said today they intended to continue negotiations in good faith.

“I intend to meet with him today and we will outline what the government’s timetable is,” Senator Wong told ABC radio.

Read it here.

From ABC:

Coalition MPs have backed amendments to negotiate with the Government on its emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The MPs have just emerged from a marathon party room meeting in which Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull detailed the proposed amendments.

As Mr Turnbull left the meeting he said shadow cabinet had received strong support from the party room for the amendments.

He is due to hold a press conference at 8:10pm (AEDT).

The issue had threatened to derail Mr Turnbull’s leadership in recent weeks with increasing backbench resistance to his desire to negotiate with the Government on the scheme.

More to come.

Read it here.

We can’t forget that the Coalition will meet today to discuss their proposed amendments to the government’s ETS legislation.

The Federal Opposition’s emissions trading spokesman says he is optimistic that today’s special party room meeting on emissions trading will accept the amendments he has drafted.

Ian Macfarlane will present amendments that he says protect jobs and industry but would still meet the target of cutting greenhouse emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.

Some in the Coalition argue the Opposition should not be negotiating with the Government on the issue.

But Mr Macfarlane says he expects the Coalition will accept the amendments he is putting up today and he says it will then be up to the Government.

“If the party room accepts the amendments as I lay them out then the negotiation with the Government will begin,” he said.

The real question is whether the government will even bother to look at them…

Read it here.

Here’s the line: the Maldives are being swamped by “rising sea levels,” caused by “global warming,” caused by the evil “carbon” emissions of rich countries, so we are going to pull off a ridiculous stunt in order to get the moonbat media (of which there is plenty) to devote millions of column inches to it and hopefully add more pressure to get an agreement at Copenhagen so that developed countries will send us their money. Phew. And all lovingly reported by Australia’s own moonbat media, Fairfax, in the guise of The Sydney Morning Herald:

The Maldives’ government held an underwater cabinet meeting on Saturday in a bid to focus global attention on rising sea levels that threaten to submerge the low-lying atoll nation.

President Mohamed Nasheed plunged first into the Indian Ocean followed by his ministers, all clad in scuba gear, for the nationally televised meeting in this archipelago known as an idyllic holiday getaway for the rich.

Nasheed and his deputy, Mohamed Waheed, and a dozen ministers sat behind tables arranged in a horseshoe at a depth of six metres (20 feet) and approved a resolution urging global action to cut carbon emissions.

Tropical reef fish swam among the ministers and the nation’s red and green flag with white crescent moon was planted in the seabed behind Nasheed.

After surfacing, he called for the UN’s climate summit in Copenhagen in December to forge a deal to reduce carbon emissions blamed for rising sea levels that experts say could swamp the Maldives by the century’s end.

Trouble is, it is all wrong. For a start, sea levels have been rising at the same rate (2-3mm per year) for several thousand years, and in fact are rising more slowly at the moment. And furthermore, sea levels around the Maldives have actually fallen in the past 50 years. American Thinker sums it up well:

In 2004, Stockholm University professor Nils-Axel Mörner, of Sweden, published a paper in Global and Planetary Change (hardly a bastion for global warming deniers) regarding his extensive research of the ocean around the Maldives.  He noted, “In our study of the coastal dynamics and the geomorphology of the shores we were unable to detect any traces of a recent sea level rise.  On the contrary, we found quite clear morphological indications of a recent fall in sea level.”

Dr. Mörner’s research indicates that sea level about the Maldives has fallen approximately 11 inches in the past 50 years.  In fact, additional research indicates that about the time the leaders of Tuvalu created headlines in 2001, the sea-level surrounding the nine atoll islands of their country had recently fallen 2.5 inches.
…
So what’s really behind the complaints?  In the case of the Maldives, the problem is idiotic development. 

The Maldivian islands are relatively flat atolls, composed of coral. Tourism was only introduced to Maldives in 1972 with the opening of the plush Kurumba Village Resort on the North Malé Atoll.  Now there are 87 beach resorts scattered primarily on three islands: the North and South Malé Atolls and the Ari Atoll.  Tourism has become the largest industry in the Maldives and the primary construction material used to build the expansive resorts is locally mined coral.  Digging up the local coral to build plush hotels and large conference centers is as stupid sucking the air out of your lifeboat to breathe.  The mining has severely compromised the atolls, creating the impression that the islands are sinking, when in fact they’re being dug up.  The problem the Maldives faces is engineering lunacy — not a rising sea. (source)

Once again, our biased and ignorant media have lapped up a global warming stunt in order to promote their alarmist agenda, all the while conveniently ignoring the facts.

Read it here.

P.S. Funnily enough, the Mörner paper is available in PDF on AGW alarmist Stephen Schneider’s web site – here!

Writing in The Australian, Terry McCrann correctly equates the ETS to another GST, but one in which we have no idea what the rate will be:

IMAGINE if John Howard and Peter Costello had proposed a GST with an indeterminate variable rate, with the “variation” left hostage to the manipulation of clever investment bankers and other main-chancers, and you might begin to understand “Kevin Rudd’s GST” — his Emissions Trading Scheme, or ETS.

“His GST?” If we get the ETS, it is going to add to the price of everything — not just power and not just carbon-based power in particular. On that point, it’s worth noting that it is specifically designed to increase the price of all power — quite deliberately, to make wind and solar power “competitive”. That’s to say we pay more for them, but they become “cheaper” than coal-based power.

Indeed, the ETS is intended to be, and will be, even more punitively pervasive than the GST. Because once we get past the early, politically driven, subsidies to hide its real impact and real cost, there will be no carve-outs, as is the case with the GST and fresh food and medical services. They will all become more expensive.

The pervasiveness and very significant impact on your everyday costs make Rudd’s ETS the elephant in every living room. What will turn it into a dangerous, unpredictable rogue is the way it becomes hostage to market manipulation.

Read it here.