News from the Acacademy....

Genghis Khan - Planet Savior....

Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history - after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest.

The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study.

The deaths of 40 million people meant that large areas of cultivated land grew thick once again with trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

And, although his methods may be difficult for environmentalists to accept, ecologists believe it may be the first ever case of successful manmade global cooling.  [Ed., I don't think they'd have any trouble whatsoever employing Genghis's methods.]

‘It's a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era,’ said Julia Pongratz, who headed the research by the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.

.....

Though the Khan will remain known as Genghis the Destroyer and not Genghis the Green, Dr Pongratz hopes that her research will lead to future historians examining environmental impact as well as the more traditional aspects of study.

‘Based on the knowledge we have gained from the past, we are now in a position to make land-use decisions that will diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle,’ she said.

'We cannot ignore the knowledge we have gained.’

Read the whole story here

This one belongs in the shit you can't make up folder.

Also, something to consider:  You may want to keep that AR at hand, just in case the Gorebots decide to implement a policy to "diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle," at your personal expense.

Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of UN's IPCC Admits That "Climate Policy" Really is Just a Big Redistributionist Theft Scam

A hearty tip of the beret is due to Ran at Si Vis Pacem who put me on to this story.

Background: Ottmar Edenhofer is a German economist who deals with climate change policy and environmental and energy policy and energy economics. He is currently professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research as well as Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, Germany.

...

In 2004, Ottmar Edenhofer was a lead author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore. See, Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottmar_Edenhofer

In an interview with Germany's NZZ Online, Edenhofer freely admitted that the goal of Climate Policy is to transfer wealth from the West to the Third World by imposing economy eviscerating carbon caps on the West. If you're lucky enough not to be worried about keeping your job, paying your rent or mortgage and feeding your children now, just wait until this elitist skank pushes through his socialist agenda. You'll be lucky if you can afford a tent, sleeping bag, alcohol stove and pinto beans.

(NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

(NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

(EDENHOFER): Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet - and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 - there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

(NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

(EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

Well, at least Ottmar is being honest about his objectives in this regard, unlike that other-smartest-guy-in-the-room and serial grad school drop-out Al Gore.

Read more at NEWSBUSTERS.

BBC: Global Warming is ... ummmm ... well ... maybe not.

UPDATE Here is a great piece from Real Clear Politics that expands on the BBC story below. Hopefully the tide is turning and serial Graduate School dropout AL GORE will be sent back to Tennessee to enjoy his retirement tippering back Mint Julips.

With Hat Tip to my friend and fellow Fairfield County CT blogger Christopher Fountain who writes For What its Worth comes this story from BBC's Climate correspondent Paul Hudson doing a better than fair Roseanne Rosannadanna impression:

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

For the rest of this interesting piece click here

UPDATE LINK (Well sort of, since it links to a 2007 post):

Weather Channel Founder: “Global Warming is the Greatest Scam in History”

False Religion Debunked: Scientists Prove Human Induced Climate Change a Crock of ....

From CNS News via Sammy at Yid With Lid comes a great piece on mounting challenges to the Left's favorite false religion "Human Induced Climate Change"

Sammy's preface:

Under the cap and trade scheme advocated by Democrats, the federal government would set a limit on the amount of a pollutant that could be emitted. If a company plans to exceed the government cap, it would have to purchase credits from a company that has polluted less. And the fun part is they wouldn't be able to buy the credits directly from the other company, they would have to do it through the US Government. This cap and trade is just another big government tax program. Some studies have said that the plan will increase your household energy bill by $3,100/yr. Even President [Obama] has admitted this proposal will cause the price of your energy to “necessarily skyrocket.”

The worst part of the whole scheme is that the reason for the tax program has not been proved. In fact, recently the evidence disproving the claim that man has anything to climate change. While the President was accepting his Nobel award and John" Why the Long Face" Kerry was writing op-eds supporting camp and trade, a team of scientists were at Capitol Hill, explaining that the Church of Global Warming Moonbats, have been proven wrong:

Scientists Rebut Claim That Man Causes Climate Change
Monday, October 12, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

Fred Singer, founder and chairman of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, holds up a book "Climate Change Reconsidered" that contains hundreds of scientific studies that dispute global warming and CO2 as a pollutant that causes global warming. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

(CNSNews.com) – As the world focused on President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a small group of determined scientists gathered in a Senate office building to present evidence backing their claim that climate change is caused not by man but by nature, and that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but the hope for a greener planet.

John Kwapisz, organizer and moderator at the panel discussion, recalled Obama’s speech at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pa., last month as a way of illustrating the dramatic tone used by those who embrace global warming as a dire and eminent threat.

“That so many of us are here today is a recognition that the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing,” Obama said on Sept. 22 at the summit. “Our generation's response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it -- boldly, swiftly, and together – we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe.”

“No nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change. Rising sea levels threaten every coastline,” Obama said. “More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent droughts and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive.”

“On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees,” he said. “The security and stability of each nation and all peoples – our prosperity, our health, and our safety – are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.”

The scientists said they were on Capitol Hill to challenge the president’s claims and show that Mother Nature controls climate around the world and that CO2 in the atmosphere benefits people, plants and animals.

“Nature, not human activity rules the planet,” said Fred Singer, an atmospheric and space physicist and research professor at George Mason University and professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. “And once you’ve decided that on the basis of evidence, then everything else falls into place.”

“A lot of the problems that President Obama seems to be concerned about are no longer a concern,” Singer said.

H. Leighton Steward holds up his book as he speaks to a crowd on Capitol Hill about the benefits of CO2 to the planet, people, plants and animals. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

“When there’s more carbon dioxide put into the air, the plants respond in an astonishing fashion,” said H. Leighton Steward, geologist, environmentalist, author and founder of the Web site plantsneedco2.org.

Steward said that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1860, the amount of CO2 put into the air has increased average plant growth by 12 percent and average tree growth by 18 percent around the world.

“So if we want to green the earth,” Steward said, “we need to put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s the earth’s greatest airborne fertilizer.”

“If we want the ecosystems and the habitats to be more robust and hold more animal life, more plant life, we need to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Steward said, adding that proponents of man-made global warming have given CO2 a bad name.

“It’s now being looked at and called a pollutant. I can tell you, I’ve asked every scientist that I’ve ever run into, chemical expert,” Steward said. “There is not one, I repeat, not one instance in which carbon dioxide is a pollutant.”

Roy W. Spencer, researcher at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, author, and a former senior scientist at NASA, presented his research on natural global warming and cooling, including the role that cloud cover and the sun play in the changes of the earth’s climate.

In keeping with scientific protocol, much of the presentation consisted of graphs, charts, and other data to make the case that much of climate change is the result of natural phenomenon rather than human activities and that any contribution by humans is miniscule.

The event on Capitol Hill was not without a political twist, with some global warming advocates speaking out during the question-and-answer period. One scientist from NASA claimed he was available after the discussion if anyone was interested in hearing the other side of the issue.

Many in the room laughed at his comment, but the crowd that gathered in the Rose Garden just moments earlier heard Obama use his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as an opportunity to again issue a warning about the threat of global warming.

“We cannot accept the growing threat posed by climate change, which could forever damage the world that we pass on to our children – sowing conflict and famine; destroying coastlines and emptying cities,” Obama said.

Marc Morano, former congressional staffer and founder of the Web site climatedepot.com, told the crowd that he thinks the tide is turning against what he called global warming alarmists. He cited a call by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to hold a global warming trial.

“The Chamber seeks to have a complete trial ‘complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect,’” Morano wrote in an editorial he distributed at the event.

Michelle Malkin's I.E.D. - EPA Actively Suppressing Internal Research that Cuts Against Agency's "Human Caused" Climate Change Health Dangers

Michelle Malkin has today dumped a stunning story on an EPA internal cover-up of a report by EPA economist Alan Carver that challenges the EPA's health "endangerment" position on carbons.

In my view, EPA's suppression of the Carver analysis amounts to nothing less than a massive government fraud upon this republic's citizens and taxpayers. Perhaps it's time for Republicans and patriotic Democrats to call for an independent prosecutor.

Below in part is Ms. Malkin's eloquent story:

EPA’s game of global warming hide-and-seek
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

The Obama administration doesn’t want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they don’t want you to hear them, either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion-dollar, thousand-page “cap and trade” bill that no one has read, environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama’s willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of “consensus.” In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health “endangerment finding” covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin’s study didn’t fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn’t make the cut.

On March 12, Carlin’s director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having “any direct communication” with anyone outside his office about his study. “There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls, etc.” On March 16, Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which runs the agency’s climate change program. A day later, McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true, politicized colors:

“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

Contrary comments, in other words, would interfere with the “process” of ramming the EPA’s endangerment finding through. Truth-in-science took a backseat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from “a very negative impact.”

In another follow-up e-mail, McGartland warned Carlin to drop the subject altogether: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.”

But, of course, the e-mails show that EPA had already predetermined what it was going to do – “move forward on endangerment.” Which underscores the fact that the open public comment period was all for show. In her message to the public about the radical greenhouse gas rules, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson requested “comment on the data on which the proposed findings are based, the methodology used in obtaining and analyzing the data, and the major legal interpretations and policy considerations underlying the proposed findings.” Ms. Jackson, meet Mr. Carlin.