Via Dr. Roy Spencer.

Before any of you alarmists out there start cheering and conducting any animal sacrifices to your high priest Al Gore, this data simply shows that after a decade of flat lining and cooling temperatures that warming may be starting again.  That may seem strange considering the record cold temperatures and wild weather around the globe this year, but it actually does make sense.  The warming from the satellite temperature data is linked to the El Nino effect being seen in the Pacific causing temperatures over the oceans to rise.  Oceans of course make up the most of the Earth’s surface, especially the Pacific and any temperature rise there can easily off set the temperature drops we have seen over the land this year.

Here is a great graphic from NOAA that shows the current El Nino warming in the Pacific:

There has been so far no proof that El Nino is linked to manned made global warming and scientists cannot even through computer models connect El Nino to natural global warming.  In addition the current temperature levels are still no where near temperature levels seen in the past to include the most recent Medieval Warming Period.

China has started exploring how to reap economic and strategic benefits from the ice melting at the Arctic with global warming, a Stockholm research institute said Monday.

Chinese officials have so far had been cautious in expressing interest in the region for fear of causing alarm among the five countries bordering the Arctic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.

“The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months, leading to both shorter shipping routes and access to untapped energy resources, has impelled the Chinese government to allocate more resources to Arctic research,” SIPRI researcher Linda Jakobson said.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are already at odds over how to divvy up the Arctic riches, claiming overlapping parts of the region — estimated to hold 90 billion untapped barrels of oil — and wrangling over who should control the still frozen shipping routes.

Most Europe-Asia trade now travels through the Suez Canal.

Diverting this traffic through the famed Northwest Passage, which according to different predictions could become ice-free in the summer months any time between 2013 and 2060, would cut travel distance by 40 percent.

“To date China has adopted a wait-and-see approach to Arctic developments, wary that active overtures would cause alarm in other countries due to China’s size and status as a rising global power,” Jakobson said.  [AFP]

The fact that the Arctic sea ice is in fact expanding back to normal levels since the record 2007 melt was some how missed by this reporter, which is causing all the usual suspects like Al Gore to adjust their own fearmongering claims.

Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms.

The benchmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that a worldwide increase in hurricane-force storms since 1970 was probably linked to global warming.

It followed some of the most damaging storms in history such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans and Hurricane Dennis which hit Cuba, both in 2005.

The IPCC added that humanity could expect a big increase in such storms over the 21st century unless greenhouse gas emissions were controlled.

The warning helped turn hurricanes into one of the most iconic threats of global warming, with politicians including Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, and Al Gore citing them as a growing threat to humanity.

The cover of Gore’s newest book, Our Choice, even depicts an artist’s impression of a world beset by a series of huge super-hurricanes as a warning of what might happen if carbon emissions continue to rise.

However, the latest research, just published in Nature Geoscience, paints a very different picture.  (………………..)

“We have come to substantially different conclusions from the IPCC,” said Chris Landsea, a lead scientist at the American government’s National Hurricane Center, who co-authored the report.

He added: ”There are a lot of legitimate concerns about climate change but, in my opinion, hurricanes are not among them. We are looking at a decrease in frequency and a small increase in severity.” Landsea said he regarded the use of hurricane icons on the cover of Gore’s book as “misleading”.

Do these guys have any creditability left?

A seven-month-old baby girl survived three days alone with a bullet in her chest beside the bodies of her parents and toddler brother.

Argentines Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their children before killing themselves after making an apparent suicide pact over fears about global warming.

Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back.

But their unnamed daughter cheated death after the bullet from her dad’s handgun missed her vital organs.

Paramedics rushed her to hospital covered in blood when police alerted by worried neighbours discovered the massacre three days later.

The youngster is recovering in hospital in the town of Goya in the northern Argentine province of Corrientes, where doctors say she is out of danger.

Her parents said they feared the effects of global warming in a suicide note discovered by police.  [Daily Mail]

This case is tragic and hopefully this now orphaned girl will have a full recovery.

It must count as one of the more bizarre bits of diplomacy in recent times. Last week, on the eve of a visit by Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia threatened to take Japan to the International Court of Justice if it did not stop whaling in the Southern Ocean, the part of the Indian Ocean south of Australia.One may dismiss this as a politician’s gesture aimed at a domestic audience that has taken to emotional “save the whales” campaigns. Though whale oil and bone had once been Australia’s biggest export, the nation had no tradition of eating whale meat, and a shortage of whales caused the closure of its last whaling station in 1978.

But such outbursts in favor of one member of the mammal kingdom by a major exporter of red meat is likely to do more damage to Australia’s image than to Japan’s. Most of Australia’s Asian neighbors — other than Japan — may not care much one way or the other about whaling. But the tone of moral superiority adopted by Australia — its apparent belief that it is the guardian of the Southern Ocean from Asian depredation — grates on many Asians who also resent environment lessons from a top carbon polluter.

From an Australian perspective it may seem reasonable that the largest, most advanced country in the Southern Ocean should assume some responsibility for it. But such assumptions of its rights and duties in international waters can easily keep alive lingering Asian resentments of Western colonialism — European expansionism that gave a small new nation with a population only a little bigger than Shanghai control over a vast, mineral rich landmass. Does Australia want to control the ocean too, some ask?  [New York Times]

Make sure to read the rest but here is how it end:

Australia’s elevation of its selective emotion into a diplomatic feud with its major Asian ally is nothing short of ridiculous.

By the way South Korean whaling gets brought up in the article too, which is something I have long covered here at the ROK Drop.  Also you can read my thoughts before in regards to Australian complaints about Japanese whaling here.

Who could forget the $5 billion in Obama administration stimulus money that was going to rapidly create nearly 90,000 green jobs across the country in these tough economic times and make so many thousands of homes all snuggy and warm and energy-efficient these very snowy days?

Well, a new report due out this morning will show the $5-billion program is so riddled with drafts that so far it’s weatherized only about 9,000 homes.

Based on the initial Obama-Biden program promise that it would create 87,000 new jobs its first year, that would be about 10 jobs for each home weatherized so far. Makes for pretty crowded doorways.

ABC News reports that the General Accountability Office will declare today that the Energy Department has fallen woefully behind — about 98.5% behind — the 593,000 homes it initially predicted would be weatherized in the Recovery Act’s very first, very chilly year.  [LA Times]

Read the rest at the link, but according to the LA Times report the cost to weatherize these houses is $57,362 per home.  It seems like it would have been better just to give home owners this money to pay down their mortgage, it probably would have been less wasteful than this program.  Anyway at least the government has not killed anyone with this program yet unlike in Australia:

Environment Minister Peter Garrett will axe the Rudd Government?s disastrous home insulation program – and replace it with another scheme entirely.

Mr Garrett will make the announcement at 1.45pm today, in Sydney.

The $2.5 billion scheme, which has been in place since last year, has led to four deaths, countless injuries and around 100 house fires.

Under the new scheme consumers will have to pay for insulation work and get the Government rebate through Medicare offices.  (…………..)

An industry source told The Age that consistent reports of dodgy installers, including allegations of sexual misconduct on behalf of one installer raised on Radio 3AW this morning, tipped the troubled scheme over the edge.  [Tim Blair]

A group of conservationists threw bottles of butyric acid at Japanese whalers and blasted their ship with paint balls, while the Japanese fired water cannons in their latest Antarctic Ocean clash, both sides said Thursday.

No one was injured in Wednesday’s confrontation, the most recent in a string of increasingly aggressive clashes between U.S.-based activist group Sea Shepherd and the whaling fleet. Japan condemned the conservationists’ actions as dangerous and violent. Sea Shepherd said they are simply doing what is necessary to protect whales.

Sea Shepherd has long used butyric acid, produced from rancid butter, in their annual fight to stop the whalers and maintains that the substance is nontoxic.

Earlier this month, Japan claimed three crew members on one of its whaling vessels suffered face and eye injuries from an acid attack.

“We don’t throw acid on them — we throw rotten butter, which technically is butyric acid,” Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson told The Associated Press by satellite phone from the Antarctic on Thursday. “We’ve been throwing rotten butter at them for five years.”  [Associated Press]

Butyric acid is classified as a toxic substance and here are the potential harm of hitting people with butyric acid:

Harmful if swallowed or inhaled. Corrosive. Extremely unpleasant smell may cause nausea. Liquid may burn skin and eyes. Readily absorbed through the skin. Severe skin, eye and respiratory irritant.  [MSDS]

If this “rotten butter” as Paul Watson claims is so harmless than why doesn’t he show the world how harmless it is by pouring a whole bucket of it over his head and rub it in his own eyes?

Anyway this is part of the article which is real interesting:

On Monday, Sea Shepherd activist Peter Bethune jumped aboard the Shonan Maru 2 from a Jet Ski with the stated goal of making a citizen’s arrest of the ship’s captain and presenting him with a $3 million bill for the destruction of the Ady Gil.

He was taken into custody by the whalers and will face charges in Japan of trespassing and assault.

I think it is great they are going to bring this guy back to Japan and try him for piracy.  Now if only Paul Watson would have the guts to jump on a Japanese ship than maybe he could be locked up as well and this annual eco-drama could end.  The reason though that Sea Shepherd boarded the ship is that they are trying to cause an international incident between Japan and Australia because the Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada is scheduled to meet with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd this weekend.  Like I said before this is all staged eco-drama.

With UN climate guru Rajendra Pachauri under fire for alleged conflicts of interest and the purveying of flawed “science,” another United Nations eco-official is stepping forward to defend UN climate findings.

His name is Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Program, or UNEP, based in Nairobi. If you are curious about potential conflicts of interest among the UN climate crowd, Steiner, along with Pachauri, is someone to watch.

Like Pachauri, Steiner is still talking about “overwhelming evidence” supporting the findings of Al Gore’s co-Nobelist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — despite the growing body of evidence that the IPCC’s findings were more a product of UN politics than of science. In recent remarks featured as a top item on the UN’s official news site, Steiner has just praised the IPCC and re-issued the UN’s usual apocalyptic warnings: “Any delay… risks of a magnitude…urgent international response” — etc.

Who is Achim Steiner? A German, born in Brazil, he is a longtime environmentalist, former head from 2001-2006 of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN….

Anyway, in December, 2005, Achim Steiner served as a judge on a panel in Dubai that awarded a $500,000 environmental prize to then-Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan. With a big smile, at a banquet in Dubai, Annan — then the UN’s top official — accepted this six-figure purse for his personal use. About three months later, Annan named Steiner, one of the judges who picked Annan for the prize, to head UNEP.  [Pajamas Media]

Like Andrew Bolt says, green is the color of money.

The anti-whaling ship the Bob Barker and a Japanese harpoon boat collided in the icy waters off Antarctica on Saturday — the second major clash this year in the increasingly aggressive confrontations between the two sides.

No one was reportedly injured in the latest strike. The U.S.-based activist group Sea Shepherd, which sends vessels to confront the Japanese fleet each year, said a small hole was torn in the hull of its ship, but it was above the water line and the vessel was not in danger of sinking.

Sea Shepherd founder Captain Paul Watson said by satellite telephone that the Japanese ship rammed the Bob Barker — named after the U.S. game show host who donated millions to buy it for Sea Shepherd — as it blocked the slipway of the Japanese fleet’s factory ship.

Watson’s claim that the Bob Barker was deliberately hit could not be independently verified.

Japanese Fisheries Agency official Takashi Mori said officials were trying to confirm details of a reported clash.  [Associated Press]

This comes on the heels of last month’s incident when the Sea Shepherd speed boat the Ady Gil was sunk after being struck by a Japanese ship.  Anyway Sea Shepherd must desperate to create some drama for the next season of Whale Wars, but this is what known liar Paul Watson says happened:

Japanese whaler Yushin Maru 3. Pic: Australian Customs Service

On Saturday, the Bob Barker found the whaling fleet for the first time since the time of the Ady Gil clash, Watson said.

The Bob Barker took up a position behind the Nisshin Maru — the Japanese factory ship where dead whales are hauled aboard and butchered — so the four harpoon vessels could not reach it, he said.

“The harpoon ships started circling like sharks,” Watson told The Associated Press from his ship, the Steve Irwin. “They were making near passes to the stern and the bow of the Bob Barker, then the Yushin Maru 3 intentionally rammed the Bob Barker.”

The Bob Barker sustained a 3-ft. long, 4-inch wide (1-meter long, 10-centimeter) gash in its hull. Welders aboard the ship were already working on patching the hole, and the Bob Barker would resume its pursuit of the whalers, Watson said.

Video shot from the Bob Barker and released by Sea Shepherd shows the two ships side by side moving quickly through the water. The ships come closer together and the Japanese ship then appears to turn away, but its stern swings sharply toward the Bob Barker. The collision is obscured by spray, but a loud clanging noise can be heard before the vessels separate.

Watson said the Yushin Maru 3 appeared to stop moving after the collision and had not been seen by the Bob Barker’s crew to have moved since, suggesting it also may have been damaged.

Here is what the damage to the ship looked like:

You can view video of the crash at the Sea Shepherd website where it looks like the Bob Barker is heading towards the whaling ship and in response the Japanese tried to maneuver their ship to the right with the tail of the ship hitting the Bob Barker.  The bottom line is that the Sea Shepherd ship should have never been that close to the whaling ship to begin with.

What Sea Shepherd is trying to do is to continue to create headlines in the media, drama for their show, as well as try to get the Australian and New Zealand governments involved in what is going on in the Antarctic waters by intentionally causing these incidents.

You can read what I think of Sea Shepherd and the whole whaling issue here and here.

It times like this that everyone should once again watch the South Park episode Whale Whores to really appreciate what is going on.

So the IPCC cites a boot and clothing cleaning guide as evidence that the “multiple stresses of climate change…have necessitated the implementation of stringent clothing decontamination guidelines”. That might be laughable in and of itself, but the problem is the article doesn’t even mention climate change. Once. Nothing at all about global warming, or temperature increase. Nothing! [Watts Up With That?]

Make sure to read the rest at the link, but keep in mind that this is the science that the global warming alarmists want you to believe in, boot cleaning guides.

You can read more about fraudulent IPCC scares here.