The new study claims to show “human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have helped reverse a 2,000-year trend of cooling in the Arctic, prompting warmer average temperatures in the past decade that now rank higher than at any time since 1 B.C.,” according to a September 3, 2009 article by the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin. The study will appear in the September 3, 2009 online version of the journal Science. The lead author was Northern Arizona University professor Darrell S. Kaufman.

The Washington Post also saw fit to gave prominent play to the environmental group World Wildlife Fund’s new dire Arctic study claiming a scary global warming caused “transformation” of the Arctic. (The study is getting the alarmist media promote. See: USA Today: ‘Arctic temperatures hit 2,000-year high’ – But Andrew Revkin of NYT has much more balanced coverage of the study.) The Post article on the new Arctic “Hockey Stick” completely glossed over years of contrary data and instead mostly gave the authors a scrutiny free ride. (Eilperin also misspelled the name of one scientist she quoted.)

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot, “This looks like this week’s “Hockey Stick” including many of Mann’s collaborators.”

AN AUSTRALIAN company has been swept up in a $100 million carbon trading scandal in Papua New Guinea.

The scandal has led to the removal of the head of the country’s Office of Climate Change and has prompted an investigation into claims that fake carbon trading certificates were used to persuade landowners to sign over the rights to their forests.

It threatens to undermine efforts by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong to win support at UN climate talks for a global carbon trading scheme that would include forests in countries such as PNG and Indonesia. Senator Wong yesterday declined to answer questions on whether the scandal had been raised at UN climate talks last month, or whether she had discussed the crisis with PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare or his officials.

The chief executive of the company Carbon Planet, Dave Sag, admitted to The Age that his PNG partner, Kirk Roberts, used mocked-up carbon certificates signed by PNG’s Office of Climate Change director Theo Yasause as ”props” when negotiating with local landowners. But he denied PNG media reports that the certificates were stolen or intended to mislead.

In my opinion, it boggles the mind that anyone or any organization could be so dense as to not predict the public reaction to such a print ad, much less a video. I don’t care how noble you think your cause is, this hijacking of an American tragedy for earth awareness, is not only callous and insulting to the thousands of families affected by this tragedy, but it probably the single most disgusting and stupid application of eco advertising I’ve ever witnessed.

• Glaciers ‘melting faster than ever’ (Ninemsn) – (a)
• Arctic heating up fast, report warns (ABC) – (a)(b)(c)
• Great Barrier Reef faces catastrophe (The Age) – (a)(b)
• Life may depend on giant sunshade (Sydney Morning Herald) – (d)
• No cuts, no glory in global warming battle (Sydney Morning Herald) – (a)(b)(c)

The UK could be rationing electricity within 8 years because demand for power is forecast to outstrip supply.

The British government committed the nation to its Low Carbon Transition Plan in July, an idea that hopes wind and solar can produce enough electricity to power the entire country. Renewable energy is a green dream that will turn into a nightmare for families facing sudden power cuts or scheduled brown-outs.

In the 21st century, the idea that a nation cannot provide enough power for its people and industries should be unthinkable. There is no coal shortage, no oil shortage and no Uranium shortage. The only shortage is plants that convert these fuels into power. But why?

Greens have played a key role in dePowering the UK, Greenpeace scofflaws at Kingsnorth illustrate the radical scaremongering that made the idea of building new generating capacity a political nightmare. Eco-radicals are proud of their drive to deprive people of affordable energy, witness the Sierra Club in the USA and how they brag about the 100 power stations they ‘prevented‘.

The perfect storm of a spineless political class and a somnolent public faced with aggressive green lobby groups has brought the UK to a point where it is a country without an energy future. No one listens to voices of reason, preferring to pretend that renewable energy can fill the gap and ignoring that ‘green’ alternatives require the industrialization of the open countryside:

… the land area occupied by wind farms would be nearly 10 percent of the country, or roughly the size of Wales. The area occupied by desert solar power stations — in the case of Britain, they would have to be connected by long-distance power lines — would be five times the size of London. The 50 nuclear power stations required would occupy a more modest 50 square kilometers.

Even the most devout anthropogenic climate change believer knows that Australia acting alone to reduce carbon emissions will not make a jot of difference to the climate. They also know that Australian industry and jobs will disappear overseas in the absence of a truly global agreement.

Under Labor’s CPRS, prices for everyday goods will rise and every power point will be come a tax collection outlet for a rapacious Government with an insatiable appetite for interfering in our lives. Worse still, acting ahead of the rest of the world might actually mean that Australia is stuck with a scheme that won’t make any difference except to damage our domestic economy.

It’s time for a reality check of the political action attached to the climate change debate.

Labor’s CPRS is so flawed that it should not be reintroduced into the Parliament until after the global climate change talks in Copenhagen later this year. To pass this Bill, or any incarnation of it ahead of the Copenhagen talks, is sheer folly. To do so, when Labor’s scheme is not even scheduled to commence until 2011, would suggest that politics and politicians have taken leave of their senses.

Any talk of accepting, amending, improving or adapting Labor’s scheme before then is to ignore our national interest.

AUSTRALIA just sweated through its hottest August on record.

But it’s not climate change, it’s just hot.

The Bureau of Meteorology says August was almost 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than normal across the country.

The bureau boffins described it as “most extraordinary” as temperatures crept above 38 degrees in some areas.

And winter as a whole came within a whisker of being the warmest of record – it was just 0.01 of a degree cooler than the record-holder, 1996.

Blair Trewin, a climate scientist with the bureau, said the warm weather was caused by a lack of large frontal systems sweeping up from the southern oceans, which would have brought cool air.

Instead, persistent high pressure systems hung about the subtropics.

Dr Trewin said the heatwaves were caused more by natural variability than by climate change.

Climate change [as a result of natural warming after the Little Ice Age, since most of it occurred before 1940, before carbon dioxide emissions were significant – Ed] had pushed up temperatures by about 0.8 of a degree over the past century but August came in at more than two degrees above average.

“The set-up we had this month would have given us an extremely warm month whether it happened 100 years ago or it happened now,” Dr Trewin said.

“There’s a lot of natural variability but you’ve got a climate change signal on top of that.“

And there’s no end in sight to the warm weather – the Bureau is forecasting a hot, dry spring.

That’s because of warm conditions in the Pacific and Indian oceans.