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All the latest news and information related to anthropogenic global warming, manmade climate change, climategate, climate science and public policy
Barclays Closes US Carbon Desk In Latest Cap And Trade Setback
by Simon Lomax / AOL Energy / January 20, 2012 /
A major European bank closed its US carbon trading business this week in a sign that 2012 is a “make-or-break” year for cap-and-trade programs designed to fight climate change.
London-based Barclays determined the US carbon market, currently comprised of a handful of states, is too small to justify the expense of a dedicated trading desk in New York, according to sources familiar with the decision. Barclays was a major player in US greenhouse-gas trading programs on the East and West coasts and remains active in Europe’s carbon market, the largest in the world. Seth Martin, a Barclays spokesman, declined to comment.
“That is not good news for carbon-dioxide trading, especially not in the US,” says Gary Hart, a market analyst for ICAP Energy and a veteran pollution-rights trader. “There’s such uncertainty around the use of carbon cap-and-trade programs.”
h/t ClimateDepot.com
Presentation by global warming skeptics draws big crowd in Portland
By Scott Learn / The Oregonian / January 26, 2012 /
More than 400 people jammed into a Portland hotel ballroom Wednesday night to hear a panel of global warming skeptics assert that manmade increases in greenhouse gases are not driving climate change.
The event, hosted by the 150-member Oregon chapter of the American Meteorological Society, was open to the general public and drew an attentive and mostly sympathetic audience. Chapter President Steve Pierce asked for a show of hands beforehand, then estimated that 90 percent of the crowd favored the statement that human activities are not the main cause of global warming.
Three Oregon-based panelists — physicist Gordon Fulks, meteorologist Chuck Wiese and former Oregon state climatologist George Taylor — used long- and short-term temperature measurements and other data to bolster their case. (more…)
Climate Change Lawsuit In Court In Eugene
via KTVZ.com / January 24, 2012 /
EUGENE, Ore. — A Lane County Circuit Court judge is deciding whether to allow a lawsuit brought by two girls against Gov. John Kitzhaber, accusing him of failing to protect the state’s resources against climate change. Judge Karsten Rasmussen heard arguments Monday and says he’ll take a few days before deciding on the state’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.
The Register-Guard reports (http://is.gd/X3rwlA ) it was filed in May by two Eugene girls – 11-year-old Olivia Chernaik and 15-year-old Kelsey Juliana – with the help of their mothers and funding from the environmental group called iMatter, as part of a national campaign. The girls want the court to order the governor to collect more information on greenhouse gas emissions and to reduce the impact of climate change. The state says that’s a legislative issue.
Climategate 2.0: Al Gore + Kilimanjaro = alarmist hype
by Anthony Watts / via WattsUpWithThat.com / January 20, 2012 /
I’ve said many times that the claims of receding glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro by Al Gore in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth, and by extension, the claims of Dr. Lonnie Thompson are nothing more than alarmist hype. The cause, deforestation leading to reduced evapotranspiration of moisture, rendering upslope winds less moisture laden, and thus depositing less precipitation on the summit. The ice then sublimates away. “Global warming” hasn’t anything to do with it.
A Climategate 2 email shows that Dr. Lonnie Thompson agrees privately, but spouts alarmism publicly. Now we have more on the story from the Miami Herald. It seems tour guides are seeing increased glacier growth now.
Climategate 2.0: Hulme says not enough evidence to start reducing emissions
via Tom Nelson / January 9, 2012 /
1: Do you believe human activities are at least in part responsible for driving global climate change? [Hulme] YES
2: Do you feel the evidence for this is sufficiently strong to start reducing emissions?
[Hulme] NO – to reduce emissions requires more evidence than that humans are altering climate. We need to know something about the potential risks associated with future climate change, whether these risks can be minimised through adaptive action and then have some socially negotiated basis for deciding about the necessity and extent of desirable emissions reductions. On none of these issues do we have a good basis to work from. The precautionary principle, if chosen, would imply start reducing emissions now – but I am not convinced a blind application of the precautionary principle in this case is the most appropriate instrument.
Mike Hulme – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In 1988, after four years lecturing in geography at the University of Salford, he became for 12 years a senior researcher in the Climatic Research Unit, part of the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. In October 2000 he founded the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, a distributed virtual network organisation headquartered at UEA, which he directed until July 2007