Yesterday, I noticed a couple interesting Global Warming..... oops, I mean Global Climate Change stories and had some Friends of Dave send me a few more. I thought it might be valuable to collect a few of them into a single post.

There were quite a few stories like this one from CNN that discusses record cold winters and high snowfall in various locations.

Chris Giard's kids figured school was going to be closed. After all, a 40-year-old snowfall record was shattered over the weekend, as Burlington, Vermont, saw some 33.1 inches of snow -- the greatest in its history.

I guess this is a good example of why believers have stopped using the term "global warming" and instead use the term "global climate change." By using "climate change", they can point to any dramatic weather as evidence that their theory is correct, even if it wasn't predicted by any of their atmospheric models.

This reminds me of what I consider to be proof that God has a sense of humor. How many times have we read stories about global warming conferences and speeches being cancelled because of cold weather? Here is a list from an Examiner.com article about the "Gore effect" which apparently causes record cold temperatures when he appears:

• January 15, 2004 – A global warming rally held in New York is subdued by one of the coldest days in New York City history. Gore tells the audience it was caused by global warming.
• November, 2006 – Al Gore visits Australia two weeks before the start of summer. Ski resort operators are caught off guard by the snowfall.
• February, 2007 – A hearing in the House of Representatives on global warming is cancelled after a snow and ice storm strike DC.
• April, 2007 – Two feet of snow arrive on Itaca, NY in time for an Earth Day rally.
• April, 2007 – A rally in Reno, Nevada held by the Northern Nevada Coalition for Climate Change is cut short by heavy rain and sleet.
• March, 2007 – A media briefing on the Senate’s climate bill is cancelled due to a snowstorm.
• December 5, 2007 – Washington DC receives its first snow of the season as the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee debates global warming legislation.
• January, 2008 – A global warming rally in Baltimore, Maryland is held amidst falling snow.
• October 22, 2008 – Al Gore appears at Harvard amidst temperatures that approached 125 year old low temperature records.
• October 28, 2008 – The House of Commons debates a climate change bill as London gets its first October snow since 1922.
• October 28, 2008 – John McCain and Barack Obama campaign in Pennsylvania. A wet, wintry mix causes McCain to cancel a rally while Obama goes forward. He teases people holding ‘stop global warming’ signs saying, "This is probably not the weather to hold up those signs. I'm not into global warming either but it's a little chilly today."
• November, 2008 – The “People’s Power for the Climate” protest in Newcastle, Australia is canceled after one day due to rain and cold. Participants had been told to bring sunscreen and hats.
• December, 2008 – The former vice president speaks to an audience in Milan, Italy about global warming. Outside it is snowing, a rare event in the area. Snow and freezing rain also strike Rome, Naples, Palermo and Sicily.
• January 17, 2009 – President-elect Obama on his train tour to the capital stops in Philadelphia. He tells those gathered, “A planet that is warming from our unsustainable dependence on oil." Temperatures were 18 degrees with a wind chill below 10 degrees.
• January 28, 2009 – Al Gore is set to testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about global warming. A winter storm arrives at the nation’s capital.
• February 5, 2009 – Temperatures down to -6 degrees freeze a major global warming conference in Buffalo.
• March 2, 2009 – A major global warming rally billed as “the nation’s largest act of civil disobedience” sees low turnout after a blizzard blanketed the nation’s capital with snow. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi cancels an appearance at the event after her flight was delayed due to the storm.
• July, 2009 – Leading up to a visit from Al Gore to launch Safe Climate Australia, Melbourne suffers through temperatures approaching zero degrees.
• October 9, 2009 – Al Gore is in Madison, Wisconsin for a convention of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Record cold temperatures arrive with him.

I thought this story from ScienceDaily.com was interesting. A researcher at the University of Bristol found that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere hasn't changed in 150 years. That doesn't seem to match what one would expect if CO2 is responsible for warming of the climate.

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

Finally, I thought this blog post from James Delinepole was very interesting. Apparently, someone took it upon themselves to contact Penn State coworkers of Michael Mann, the author of the famous "hockey stick graph" and inform them of the procedures and rewards from reporting the fraudulent misuse of federal funds.

This is why I am so glad to report that Michael Mann – creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal – is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.

Under US law, regardless of whether or not a prosecution results, the whistleblower stands to make very large sums of money: it is based on a percentage of the total government funds which have been misused, in this case perhaps as much as $50 million.

It will be interesting to see if any of Michael's coworkers actually step forward and try to claim the whistleblower money.

Anyway, it wasn't a really good day for the Global Warming.... oops, I mean Global Climate Change community in the media. I guess it is too bad the science is settled.

Just to reiterate my position. I believe the climate changes, but I reject the notion that man's output of CO2 is responsible for the effect.