TRANSLATION:

Let's try to do some PR so people can go continue in comfortable complacency when we come away from Copenhagen with nothing.

India 'arrogant' to deny global warming link to melting glaciers.

The Indian hubris!

Interesting article. But in apparently setting this report up as a "challenge" to ideas about how global warming may affect glaciers, Ramesh is illustrating perfectly the problem with many politicians - they dont understand what they are reading. Or they read reports with an already established agenda. Or appoint someone to write a report who agrees with them. This applies equally to both sides of the debate, so I would urge everyone to read the report before posting on this. And note that this particular report is not a scientific report but is a Government generated discussion document.

Although VK Raina, the article's author is a well respected scientist, please also do not think he has "proven" anything. Raina's views on the advance and retreat of glaciers are obvioulsy informed BUT they are also challenged. See:

http://www.climatechallengeindia.org/A-retreat-that-s-on-from-285-years-The-Himalayas

So before anyone starts posting and using the words "proof" or "fact" do some additional background reading, preferably from a wide variety of sources.

Yes, that's right dear, the glaciers are just taking a holiday......

Don't forget, the debate is over. If this article looks as though it's reporting, er, a debate, you're imagining things.

'Mid-latitude mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, Alps, Rocky Mountains, Cascade Range, and the southern Andes, as well as isolated tropical summits such as Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, are showing some of the largest proportionate glacial loss'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

This planet is warming up. Human activity is a massive contributing factor. Just look at all the crap we belch out of chimneys and transport for a start. No proof required. Deniers are just that, in denial.

This planet is tough but it wasn't really expecting us to be quite such a big spanner in the works

infrared, is that quote from wikipedia supposed to be an ironic joke?

The report is very detailed and full of information, data and references. And yet Pachauri thinks he can just dismiss it and asks what the 'motive' is. The motive is to study the science and report the facts.

Solarphysicist, my quote from Wikipedia was meant as neither ironic or a joke. To reinforce and back up my opinion let me provide you with a further quote:

'since 1980 a significant global warming has led to glacier retreat becoming increasingly rapid and ubiquitous, so much so that some glaciers have disappeared altogether, and the existence of a great number of the remaining glaciers of the world is threatened. In locations such as the Andes of South America and Himalayas in Asia, the demise of glaciers in these regions will have potential impact on water supplies. The retreat of mountain glaciers, notably in western North America, Asia, the Alps, Indonesia and Africa, and tropical and subtropical regions of South America, has been used to provide qualitative evidence for the rise in global temperatures since the late 19th century.(IPCC2) '

Hi, It's time that scientists from the countries affected are heard. They have their own data and it often contradicts what western models are telling them that they should be observing. One of the posters referred to the snows of Kilanmajaroo. There is a lot of data on that mountain going way back. The mountain as a whole is cooling. It's only the top that is warming. The melting correlates better with changes in circulation due to deforestation. The same might apply elsewhere.

I know many Indian scientists. They are openly skeptical about AGW. It's time to listen to what they are saying without labeling them deniers. We might learn something.

@Mikos

hey, nutznboltz, some of the crap coming out of those chimneys actually cools the planet down you know.

With the level of scientific insight you've shown there, you should try becoming an MP - you'd fit right in with the general level of ignorance in Westminster.

Oh dear Mikos, you really have no idea what you are talking about do you. If there is also stuff coming out of the chimneys that cools the planet down but the planet is warming up, the effect of anthropogenic warming factors would be greater than estimated since the cooling factors would be masking the warming.

This is the same simpleton's argument about lower solar activity as if that were something reassuring. Natural cooling forcings masking an even stronger anthropogenic greenhouse effect.

@Martyfromerie

Hi, It's time that scientists from the countries affected are heard.

Oh dear, the brain trust is really on the rampage tonight. Countries affected by WHAT you naughty naughty little *rol*

They're paying you too many cookies.

Here's some more of what those darned Western scientists are saying.

Another climate impact coming faster than predicted: Glacier National Park to go glacier-free a decade early

Perhaps even deniers can see the glacier getting smaller in the before/after photos. Then again, this is on US government land, as are most glaciers in the US (aha!), so maybe it's all part of the vast global conspiracy to magic up climate change as a pretext for ushering in One World Socialism or something to terrify Glenn Beck.

Mikos:

hey, nutznboltz, some of the crap coming out of those chimneys actually cools the planet down you know. And some of it (the stuff you can't see) warms it up. Chaotic planetary systems and atmospheric science are , y'know, complex. And not totally understood.

The human body (on a systems level) is even more complex and less understood. As you could tell by attempting to write a rigorous mathematical model for your body. That is much, much harder to do than modeling the climate.

If your doctor gives you six months to live, how reassured will you feel from knowing there are still many unsolved mysteries in medicine? And that not only are the models imprecise, your doctor isn't even using one?

Doctors don't know everything there is to know about the human body, and may not know for centuries. But they already know enough to recognize trouble when they see it.

In any case, you can tell whether the Earth's surface is warming or cooling by checking the sea level, which is rising.

Just as there are many factors which can simultaneously add or remove heat from your house, you can see the net effect of all these factors from the level of mercury in a thermometer.

The oceans store vastly more heat than the air, with the entire atmosphere being equivalent to a layer of water about 3 m deep. As the oceans accumulate heat, they expand, and sea level rises.

Do you know of a way to get rising seas on a cooling Earth?

There is no global warming in the Atlantic, there is no global warming in the Himalayas. So it looks like there is only global warming in London!

and Manchester!

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, released the controversial report in Delhi, saying it would "challenge the conventional wisdom" about melting ice in the mountains.

How dare he.
It's not peer reviewed.
The author is old and retired.
It's definitely off message.
Who cares whether he's right or not.

We must silence or discredit all dissent before this cold spell turns nasty.

This is what Jairam Ramesh had to say on the recent report on Bhopal tragedy.

.....that he had gone inside the factory and was still alive. He also remarked on how much greenery there was inside (more than some of the forests for which he is responsible), implying that with so much greenery how could there be contamination.......

That is in complete disregard of those who died and dying to the present day.

Research and scientific proofs have no value before this man ,but unfortunately the world has to deal with such arrogance. India must be told in no uncertain terms that its manipulative posture would not be tolerated any further.

This is what Jairam Ramesh had to say on the recent report on Bhopal tragedy.

.....that he had gone inside the factory and was still alive. He also remarked on how much greenery there was inside (more than some of the forests for which he is responsible), implying that with so much greenery how could there be contamination........

This is in complete disregard to those who died and dying to the present day as a result of the tragedy.

Research and scientific proofss have no value before this man. But unfortunately the world has to deal with such arrogance. India must be told in no uncertain terms that its manipulative posture would not be tolerated anymore.

According to Raina, the mistake made by "western scientists" is to apply the rate of glacial loss from other parts of the world to the Himalayas. "

Wow if that's true - that's really really bad science. Measuring other glacial loses then guesstimating loses in the Himalayas that fit the warmist theory.

In the United States the highest glaciers in Alaska are still below the lowest level of Himalayan glaciers. Our 9,500 glaciers are located at very high altitudes. It is completely different system."

Guesstimating is not science.

Some scientists have warned that the river beds of the Gangetic Basin ? which feed hundreds of millions in northern India ? could run dry once glaciers go. However, such concerns are scotched by the report.

And so they should be. Rivers are sustained by precipitation and most global climate models predict increases in precipitation with increased temperatures. Even if a glacier disappears completely there is still runoff from precipitation. The hydrologic effect of a glacier is to act as a storage reservoir releasing more flow than otherwise in summer months and decreasing flow in the cooler months when the glacier increases in size. However, glaciers only form a small part of the total catchamnt area of rivers such as the Ganges, and low flow is also sustained by discharge from groundwater.

Ah yes , the Chairman of the IPCC , Railway Engineer if I'm not mistaken !!

It is not appropriate for foreigners to try and dictate India's policy. If the IPCC projections are correct, India will be one of the countries worst affected by climate change. If the Indian government do not accept that it is up to them to continue their policies and live with the consequences. It is not for the rest of the world to tell them what they should be doing. The colonial era ended a long time ago.

This is not news. This was something every country did until they could not push back anymore. Eventually, India will get around to this. I am disappointed with this newspaper that it publishes only negative things about India. What does it do, look at only the poor and downtrodden? Why does it not see the positives to the poor due to the change in the economy of India? How is its methods of reporting help the poor in India?

I lived in Germany from 1974 to 1977. We traveled extensively in the Alps and the buzz back then was all about the coming Ice Age. Everyone we met in the quaint alpine vilages were convinced that the glaciers were going to continue to march down the valleys and destroy their ancient dwellings. Much like today, the cycle of climate change churned on around and not one village or villager was lost. I cannot believe with all we know today, that there are still people who do not understand we have seen all this before. Glaciers retreat and advance. They always have and always will. The one fact that goes completely missing when alarmists enter the conversation, is that cold is the real danger on this planet. Cold is responsible for the vast majority of extinctions our planet has experienced. Warming is in fact beneficial, it always has been. Fear the cold and fire the politicians.

So lets get this right:

A railway engineer takes a pop at a mechanical engineer.

Wow.

Time for some real science on both sides of the argument.

People are already acting like global warming is a done and buried deal.....

Fools, and their children will pay for it.

NWH1

Rajendra Pachauri isn't quite a Railway Engineer. In fact his degree was in Industrial Engineering which used to be called "Time and motion studies". He did however work for the Railway.

NWH1

9 Nov 2009, 8:46PM

Ah yes , the Chairman of the IPCC , Railway Engineer if I'm not mistaken !!

And, yes, you are mistaken in your attempt to to be be all snooty and superior..

Certainly he started his career working as a manager in the Varanasi Diesel Locomotive Works but he soon moved on from there. Take a look at his biography.

I worked, when I was 17, in a strip mill of British Steel in Sheffield. Does that make me a steelworker?

Idiot!

Mr Pachauri is not a climate science. He has no degree in climatology, meteorology or any relevant field. He's a railway engineer.

The snows on Kilimanjaro are disappearing, and it's down to de-forestation and nothing to do with CO2.

As for someone from the IPCC calling someone else arrogant, that's one of the most hypocritical things I have ever read.

Mr Pachauri should stop trying to invoke references to the Holocaust and instead actually open up a proper debate on the climate and the things which influence it. But he has no interest in that.

Keep up the good work Indian Government!

Check out IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri - the 'leading climate scientist'. He has no special expertise or training in climatology whatsoever.

Alan C

Certainly he started his career working as a manager in the Varanasi Diesel Locomotive Works but he soon moved on from there. Take a look at his biography.

I worked, when I was 17, in a strip mill of British Steel in Sheffield. Does that make me a steelworker?

He may well have moved on and he may well be many things but what he evidently is not is a "climate scientist".

Oh and please don't call me an idiot , like you did the other poster who you happened to disagree with!

It's the same old story: if any scientists dare to criticise the manmade global warming orthodoxy, they can expect ad hominem attacks from members of the IPCC (who, as we all know, have a vested interest in promoting their belief system).
This is "no way to run a railway", or objective science, for that matter.
Remember the "underwater cabinet meeting" fiasco conducted in the Maldives? Well, a group of scientists from Stanford University did some field work there and their findings are in this link:

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/MornerEtAl2004.pdf

To quote from one paragraph:
"In the IPCC scenarios, the Maldives were condemned to disappear in the sea in the near future (e.g. Hoffman et al., 1983; IPCC, 2001). Our documentation of actual field evidence contradicts this hypothesis."
The reason for the Maldives' histrionics is clear: they want to justify the imposion of a green tax on tourism, which will make them a nice little earner:

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%2BScience/Story/STIStory_426820.html

Not only has AGW revived Al Gore's political career and put him once more in the limelight and will make him the first "green" billionaire, it is a vehicle for any politician to revitalise a flagging career. Witness Mikhail Gorbachev who is now heading an international Climate Change Task Force.
The likes of Goldman Sachs are poised to make a killing out of carbon trading, as are nuclear and windpower energy providers. Already we can see countries jockeying for position in the global economy, and there are many individuals and multinationals who are going to make a fortune out of AGW. Out of whom? Well, the "little people", of course.
Idealistic notions that we must all pull together with some kind of communal altruistic spirit is sheer nonsense. "Saving the planet" never was about saving the planet: it's about influence and money, nothing more, nothing less. AGW could turn out to be the biggest scam of the twenty-first century.

RodMol

9 Nov 2009, 10:51PM

He may well have moved on and he may well be many things but what he evidently is not is a "climate scientist".

Churchill wasn't a tank commander/submarine captain/fighter ace/caode breaker/bomb designer etc etc but he made a bloody good leader! Strange though it may seem to you this world does need people who have the intellectual ability to understand what the experts are saying and can translate that knowledge into effective action. Now just how many full-time scientific researchers are running their research institutes and/or goverenments - care to remind me?

Oh and please don't call me an idiot , like you did the other poster who you happened to disagree with!

If the cap fits, old bean, then wear it - otherwise don't put it on.

Perhaps the PM believes that the power of positive thinking can solve his problems.

changein2012:

I lived in Germany from 1974 to 1977. We traveled extensively in the Alps and the buzz back then was all about the coming Ice Age. Everyone we met in the quaint alpine vilages were convinced that the glaciers were going to continue to march down the valleys and destroy their ancient dwellings.

If you go back far enough in the past, people were wrong about nearly everything. Isaac Newton, for example, was an alchemist. Does that mean physics is a fraud, and despite what scientists say you really can fly by leaping off a tall cliff? Feel free to show that gravity is only a theory and these things go in cycles.

People who don't understand science aren't aware that science generally improves with time, because scientific theories have to account for more and more data. For example, in 1858 it was still possible to be a competent biologist and a creationist at the same time. Biology, at the time, hadn't accumulated the data which would shortly undermine creationism. Today, so much more data has accumulated to support the theory of evolution that the odds of some new discovery overturning existing theory seem to be so low as to be virtually unimaginable. It could still happen, but it would seem to require the discovery that some supernatural being like Satan had planted fake fossils all around the planet, and faked all the other evidence. Overturning evolution would seem to require overturning our confidence that we can know anything at all, including the next theory.

Much like today, the cycle of climate change churned on around and not one village or villager was lost.

No, actually that was not much like today, because only a small fraction of scientists predicted an ice age. There was nothing remotely approaching today's Joint science academies? statement: Global response to climate change.

But go ahead, cling to your delusions. Whatever it takes to keep the fossil fuel dream world alive a bit longer.

People who enjoyed smoking were among the last to accept that it might be harmful. Some smokers still have not accepted this. Fossil fuel addiction is even stronger and more pervasive - do you anyone who has kicked that habit?

I cannot believe with all we know today,

"We" may know a lot, but evidently you haven't bothered to Google for the scientific responses to the common climate change denial memes.

that there are still people who do not understand we have seen all this before.

Au contraire, we (as in humans) have never seen atmospheric carbon dioxide at 387 ppm (and rising) before.

If you want to say we have seen false alarms before, well yes we have. Have you canceled your fire insurance then?

We have also seen that humans may ignore genuine alarms until calamity strikes. Think back to the folks who tried to warn about Hitler in 1935. They were ridiculed as "alarmists" as if somehow that made them wrong.

Climate change might not stop at the English Channel this time.

Glaciers retreat and advance. They always have and always will.

People die. They always have and always will. Do you object then if someone shoots at you?

Nature sends us disasters. All we can do is adapt. But when humans cause a problem, we can try to get them to stop causing it.

The one fact that goes completely missing

...from your mind is that this time humans are causing the glaciers to retreat.

when alarmists enter the conversation, is that cold is the real danger on this planet. Cold is responsible for the vast majority of extinctions our planet has experienced.

By your airtight logic, if guns have been responsible for the vast majority of murders, that makes knives and poisons safe?

Warming is in fact beneficial, it always has been.

Have you convinced the Ugandans of this? They are just now testing the claim that warming is always beneficial.

The biggest extinction of all time seems to have involved catastrophic warming. Of course it's hard to be as sure about the distant past as you seem to be, because it's not as if we had scientists and reporters on the scene to take notes. After hundreds of millions of years, the evidence degrades a bit.

So, it's a bit of a gamble as to whether burning the Earth's fossil fuels as humans are currently on pace to do will trigger the clathrate gun and produce the next anoxic event. Doing so would pretty much mean "game over" for most of the Earth's species possibly including us. That is why people who have bothered to update their knowledge since the 1970s are concerned.

I thought that everyone knew that (economist and former railway engineer) Rajendra Pachauri and his pals at the IPCC were lying bastards. Apparently not.

Its wierd. VK Raina writes a Government White paper that says:
1. Most of Indian's Himalayan glaciers are retreating.
2. Research into glaciers, in India, is weak. There is a need for much more research.
3. There is no evidence that man-made climate change is responsible.

Personally, I would'nt use this report as a basis for arguing about the snows of Kilimanjaro, or the Alpine glaciers during the Seventies, but that's up to you guys. In fact, the report is inconclusive.

I would'nt use this report as the basis for any scientific argument. It is politics. An understanding of Indian politics and economics will tell you that India's carbon output is due to increase (if it continues to grow as it has been doing) massively over the next few years. So those of you who are good at, or keen on, conspiracy theories might want to ask yourself WHAT attitude the Indian Government might have to any suggestion that it should reduce its CO2 emissions ?

Then you might want to look at broader studies on the whole region's environmental position. The local people who are worst affected by ongoing environmnetal changes are incredibly poor. Unfortunately for them, measures that are suggested to remediate/ reduce environmnetal change are incredibly, inconveniently expensive. Additionally, the HImalayas are a huge tourist attraction, bring the Indian Government HUGE revenue every year.

Acting to reduce human impacts on the planet only does one thing for the INdian Government - it causes expense and reduces income. So regardless of scientific advise, the Indian Government (just like our own recently) choose to do nothing. This report was written before it was started - it is a political document. That explains the comments of the IPCC spokesperson.

Chernoby said;

I thought that everyone knew that (economist and former railway engineer) Rajendra Pachauri and his pals at the IPCC were lying bastards. Apparently not.

We know they are lying bastards.
But they're good and kindly, well meaning lying bastards.
They only want what's best for the sky and the trees and the polar bears and themselves. Bless em.

The Truth at last - well done Guardian. Has anyone told George.

Warming is in fact beneficial, it always has been.

This amused me. Humans survive in temperatures well below zero, and cope very badly with heat even a few degrees above core body temperature. You start to see increased mortality in the elderly in the northern hemisphere at sustained temperatures around 40 degrees. Your average body temp is 36.5degrees.

Sigh. Why am i not surprised a denier doesn't use their brain generally.

Anyway, back on message. Mountains also contain a shedload of water, so it is not strictly true that no glaciers = no rivers. The glaciers are melting, however, due to global climate chnage acerbated by hairless monkeys.

This article denonstates why there is so much confusion on this topic: an irresponsible press that has given up journalism and gone full bore into tabloid mode.

The Guradians opening line is balderdash: "A leading climate scientist today accused the Indian environment ministry of "arrogance"...." Since when is a non-scientist a leading climate scientist?

Would that the Guradian would read some real scientists before there propaganda destroys the UK. [I see the your conformity to EU climate rules will most likely bring brownouts and the shutting down of industries in a few years http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/uk_renewables_revolution_threa.html]

?Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them!?- UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Steven M. Japar, PhD, atmospheric chemist, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Second and Third Assessment Reports.

?The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil... I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science? I have found examples of a Summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said.?-- Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author

"Controlling carbon is kind of a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life...
?.One of the things the scientific community is pretty agreed on is those things will have virtually no impact on climate no matter what the models say. So the question is do you spend trillions of dollars to have no impact? And that seems like a nobrainer.?-- Richard Lindzen, Alfed P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, MIT; also served on UN IPCC.

For all the hysterics here, time to read Orwell's 1984.

He is kind of right though, there is no direct evidence that climate change is to blame. It is most likely deforestation that is the biggest accelerating factor for evaporation of the glacier.
That said, he shouldn't really be adding any weight to the old climate denier argument thing.
Someone made the point that if the glacier disappears the Ganges would still have water as most of the source water comes from precipitation. This is true but in the dry season the water level would drop considerably, as would the water table, vastly increasing the cost and difficulty of abstracting water from acquifers in the region. Also only 3% of precipitation enters a river directly, the rest is intercepted, creating a great delay between water falling on a drainage basin and it entering the river itself. The glacier helps to compensate for this delay in dry months with little precipitation.
With such a vast and complicated drainage basin any loss of input has untold effects of the outputs. Which is bad, or at least dodgy.

Safe.

@sdcougar

i have read 1984, it is good. And i do agree that the media are definately in danger of pushing the fear aspect a bit too far.
However, the few scientists that have a problem with the conventional opinions on climate change are in the minority, or have been misquoted or very selectivly quoted. Climate models are just guesstimations and have no real value, they are simply a demonstrating tool for those who fail to grasp the signifcance of existing trends.
Also the link you posted leads to nothing and the scientists you quoted, could you tell me where you quoted them from?

Safe.

DwightVandryver:

It's the same old story: if any scientists dare to criticise the manmade global warming orthodoxy, they can expect ad hominem attacks from members of the IPCC (who, as we all know, have a vested interest in promoting their belief system).

Well let's see. When you accuse the IPCC of having a vested interest in promoting their belief system, what exactly do you mean? Are you suggesting the IPCC has lied about something because of its vested interest? If so, then you are making - guess what - an ad hominem argument. These things can be tricky so you might want to re-read the Wikipedia article about same.

Or do you simply mean that scientists have as their belief system that the scientific method is the most reliable way to pursue truth about physical reality, and they have a vested interest in promoting the facts they have discovered?

Actually the same old story is climate change deniers trying to argue about anything except the evidence. Let's argue instead about the motives of scientists, about which we cannot really know much.

This is also the preferred strategy of creationists, 9/11 conspiraloons, Holocaust deniers, Apollo Moon landing hoaxers, etc. They like to weep and play the victim about how all the mainstream scientists are lined up unfairly against them. This is called shooting the messenger. Because it's harder to shoot the evidence.

As a senior lawyer advised a junior lawyer: when the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When law is on your side, pound the law. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.

The notion that scientists from around the world - who are all just as personally addicted to fossil fuels as anyone else, and come from nations with every kind of political system - would somehow have a "vested interest" in getting humans off fossil fuels as rapidly as possible - that is, a vested interest other than pursuing truth and maximizing our collective chances for long-term survival - simply beggars belief. If you can make yourself believe in what would have to be the largest international conspiracy in history by far, is there anything you can't make yourself believe? You've chucked Occam's Razor in a cannon and fired it over the horizon, along with most of the relevant facts.

The likes of Goldman Sachs are poised to make a killing out of carbon trading, as are nuclear and windpower energy providers. Already we can see countries jockeying for position in the global economy, and there are many individuals and multinationals who are going to make a fortune out of AGW. Out of whom? Well, the "little people", of course.

The alternative is for OPEC and ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal etc. to continue making an even bigger fortune out of quite possibly exterminating most life on planet Earth.

Please give us your take on the way George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made their fortunes in oil and then engineered the invasion of Iraq which by coincidence is the country with third-largest known remaining oil reserves. How many wars has Al Gore started? How many do you expect him to start? Has anyone gone to war to steal someone else's windmills? Is it possible to picture renewable energy as a casus belli?

Incidentally, In 2008 Peabody Energy Corporation, the world's largest private-sector coal company, was named to Fortune Magazine's list of America's Most Admired Companies, ranking first in their sector in: Innovation, People Management, Social Responsibility (italics mine), Financial Soundness, et al.

Even by American right-wing fantasy-land standards that's impressive. My country makes me so proud sometimes.

In any case, we all know that the world is the way it is because rich people allow it or desire it. If the world is going to be some other way, rich people are going to have to be involved. Merely pointing to the fact that rich people are involved in change adds no information, because they were just as involved in whatever we are changing from. The little people always tend to get crapped on - this is not news.

Al Gore is an easy target for people who want to avoid facts, but Al has the ear of the ruling class and that's what we need, like it or not. And Al is trying to get more government money to help the little people insulate their homes etc. - so it's not all bad for the little people.

The real problem is not the science, but the politics of the issue. Warm-mongers rely on imputed models; sceptics rely on observable data. Every year we have valid sattelite pictures of ice extent, but comparing winter with summer levels and - SHOCK the levels reduce in summer! We have ETS schemes that do not lower CO2 levels. The draft Copenhagen Climate Treaty reads like a primer for Soviet-style central planning and sovereign state over-ride. Oh, and temperatures continue to decline locally and globally. This is a political issue -it is a trojan horse for the left, so just because the nag is dead, will not prevent neighing about run-away warming (even as it continues to cool).