We reported here about a new study by Yarrow Axford that “proved” that the warming in the last 50 years was unusual and man-made. The study relies on investigating midge larvae in sediment cores on Baffin Island as a proxy for temperature. Watts Up With That has posted several rebuttals, including this latest one:

As I’ve pointed out on WUWT several times, the study is terribly flawed, because they haven’t considered other possible factors, such as DDT and other pesticides being transported into the lake from nearby military outposts and settlements, plus the tendency for transport or organotoxins into glacial ice which ends up in meltwater lakes. Plus the nearby weather station shows no significant warming.

WUWT reader “Ecotretas” points out this July 2009  peer reviewed study Evidence for a warmer period during the 12th and 13th centuries AD from chironomid assemblages in Southampton Island, Nunavut, Canada by Nicholas Rolland et al, which uses the same techniques, but just one island west of Baffin… The Rolland et al study temperature reconstruction shows a significantly different result than that of Axford.

Read it here.

We reported here about a disgraceful TV advert in which a child is scared witless by a fictional Armageddon caused by climate change. Due to the number of complaints received, it has been referred to the UK Advertising Standards Authority for investigation:

A £6m government ad warning about climate change is to be investigated by watchdogs over claims it is misleading and too “scary” for children.

The Advertising Standards Authority has received 357 complaints about the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s “bedtime stories” ad.

The ad aims to make adults feel guilty about the impact their carbon emissions are having on their children’s future.
…
The government has already been prevented from screening the ad during children’s programmes.

But the ASA has still received complaints from parents saying it is too frightening, although most complainants questioned the scientific basis of the claim that climate change is man-made.

An ASA spokeswoman said: “It is not just about the issue of climate change in this particular case. We have had a huge number of complaints about the science but also whether the ad itself is scary for children.”

She said the watchdog would be investigating whether the claims about climate change could be substantiated and whether the ad complied with taste and decency rules.

That will be an interesting decision to read.

Read it here.

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.