The number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts. Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. -- Claude Allegre +15,
The Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2012
Data for the three main surface global annual average temperature datasets are now available for 2011. Overall, data from 2011 in all three temperature databases continue to display the lack of increase in global annual average temperature since at least 2001. The standstill is now entering its second decade. --David Whitehouse,
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 26 January 2012
David Cameron is under fresh pressure from his own backbenchers to slash subsidies for controversial onshore wind farms. Dozens of Tory MPs are joining forces in a new group pressing for the Government to review funding for a technology they argue does “more harm than good”. --
Yorkshire Post, 26 January 2012
Public concern about climate change is on the wane. The number of people willing to alter the way they live in the hope of making a difference to global warming fell by around 10 per cent last year. There was also a sharp drop in those who regarded themselves as ‘fairly concerned’ about climate change. The figures, released by the Government yesterday, suggest that doubts about global warming have been growing since the summer of 2009. Dr Benny Peiser, of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘Climate change is dropping off the political agenda. The person in the pub no longer cares. It is bottom of their list of priorities.’ --Steve Doughty,
Daily Mail, 27 January 2012
Over in the dodgy logic section, Mr. Obama suggested that shale gas success demonstrated that it took time for energy research to pay off, thus he was right to stick with promoting alternatives. However, the cases are entirely different. U.S. government research laboratories may indeed have been involved in technologies such as fracking and directional drilling, but these technologies were first developed in the private sector. Government presence should be attributed more to jumping on winners than skill in picking them. Plus, there is the private sector’s incurable penchant for grabbing government funds. When it comes to alternatives, however, while rent seekers are as thick on the ground as subsidized solar panels, the government has no winners on which to jump. --Peter Foster,
Financial Post, 27 January 2012
