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A mini-edition of climate cuttings while I'm up to my neck in other things:

George Monbiot is singing the praises of wind power. I'm intrigued to know the sources for his figures.

Meanwhile, back in the real world,  the momentum of the shale gas is looking unstoppable.

Climate Realists takes a look at an old paper by, among others, Mann and Schmidt on the subject of the solar influence on climate.

"Sceptics" was deemed too polite, so "deniers" was introduced. "Cranks" enjoys favour from time to time. Now, the epithet-du-jour from the climate PR people is climate "truthers". I can't imagine what it's like to spend your whole career thinking up rude names for people.

And lastly, a fascinating article looking at the similarities, or not, between the proxies in one of Mann's temperature reconstructions.

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Here is my latest attempt to round up the bits and bobs that I should have blogged about in recent weeks but haven't quite got round to.

Hilary Ostrov noted the IPCC apparently approving their recent report on renewables before they actually reviewed it. Some deft rewriting of history by the IPCC appears to have ensued.

Shub Niggurath takes a look at what I call the "official sceptics" and finds that almost none of them are sceptical of climate change. Does this say more about the nature of their scepticism than the status of global warming research? You would have thought the falsification of the models (or the lack of falsifiability according to some) would have raised a few doubts.

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I'm pretty busy at the moment, so rather than write anything, I'm just going to round up a few interesting links:

Shub shares my interest in the "official sceptics". His latest article looks at a critique of the movement from one of its members.

Robert Bradley Jr, writing at Master Resource, takes a long hard look at the symbiosis between BP, government and environmentalists.

Also following the money is Garth Paltridge, looking at how consensus can be bought and wondering where the independent advice is. Of course this used to the the role of the Royal Society, but they have taken the government shilling too, with inevitable results.

A shale gas well has apparently "blown", leaking fracking fluid into a river. Emma Pullman at Desmog says it's a disaster, others think otherwise.

Subscribers to the global warming hypothesis are very excited at the moment, the object of their interest being this article by Chris Mooney. The great communicators is looking at yet another cod-psychology piece about why sceptics don't believe what they are told.

The subscribers are having a bit of a fallout among themselves, with the vexed question being whether greens have more or less money to spend than big oil. A report by Matt Nisbet was rebutted by Joe Romm (who broke the news embargo in the process). Much shouting followed. Pielke Jnr and Keith Kloor watch on.

Pielke Jnr looks at the IPCC's new policy on conflict of interest and finds much to admire.

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Still lots of interesting stuff around, so...

First up is the news that even though the legal wranglings over Cuccinelli's attempt to get the Mann emails continue, it is likely that they will be revealed by another route. Christopher C. Horner of the American Tradition Institute’s law center, David W. Schnare, a federal attorney and Bob Marshall is a Virginia Republican delegate have requested the same information as Cuccinelli, but under FOIA, which has few get-out clauses for the university. A response should be swift.

Also interesting is an article in Forbes magazine by Larry Bell, author of a forthcoming book called Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax.

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There is still quite a lot of new material around on the climate front, so once again, here are the links catching my eye this morning.

Steven Hayward notes climatologists' recent explanations of the factors that are (allegedly) making global warming cause so much cold weather in parts of the northern hemisphere. If this is so, he asks, why didn't they include these factors in their original models?

Tom Crowley has issued an apology for misrepresenting his early correspondence with Steve McIntyre. Five years after the event is a long delay, but the correction is welcome nevertheless. I will have to add a footnote to future printings of the Hockey Stick Illusion.

Paul Hudson notes that in the UK, December was the second coldest since 1659. Things are not looking so hot in the USA either, according to Steven Goddard. Or Asia.

Roger Pielke Jnr notes the continuing failure of the disaster records to pick up a global warming signal. With weary inevitability, Joe Romm is unimpressed.

One for the statisticians among you - Barry Brook looks at Phil Jones' claim that there has been no significant warming since 1995.

Chris de Freitas looks at public understanding of climate science.

Much fun is still being had at the expense of the Met Office. Anthony Watts has a round-up here. Matt Ridley thinks the weather guys at the Met Office would be better off separating themselves from the climate people.

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There are quite a few climate-related stories doing the rounds today, so here is something of a New Year's roundup.

Der Spiegel looks at the failures of scaremongering tactics and wonders if maybe the environmental groups shouldn't adopt the quiet tactics of Amnesty international. Similar thoughts, including some academic research on the subject, are discussed at Collide-a-Scape.

Politico notes that contrary to common perceptions, Republicans are much keener on global warming than they are letting on.

The cost of CFL (low-energy) lightbulbs is set to soar, as subsidies designed to soften the blow of their introduction are removed.

Tropospheric temperatures are dropping sharply, with the current anomaly only 0.180 degrees above its long-term average.

Matt Briggs has been much amused by his elevation to "villain of the day" by the Global Warming Superheroes site. One of his commenters, writing from Spain, notes that the Iberian Peninsula has a similar group called Ecoheroes.es, whose antics included getting college students to generate electricity from static bicycles hooked up to generators. As Briggs puts it:

The only point of bringing this up is to offer one more (minor) piece of evidence that the fight about “climate chance” is an ideological and not a scientific one. Evidence has little to do with it, belief is everything.

Some frightening stuff from Germany. First Haunting the Library discusses a climate change conference at which putting an end to democratic government is once again proposed as part of a solution to global warming. Almost as bad is the news from P Gosselin that Germany appears to have put in place legislation that will permit energy rationing as a means to save the planet. This is apparently a response to an EU directive, so similar legislation will be coming the way of all readers in the EU soon.

And lastly, as an antidote to all this pessimism, Matt Ridley looks at reasons to be cheerful.

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Blogging will remain light for the time being, as I try to get on top of the day job and the house ahead of Christmas. In the meantime, here are a few bits and pieces I've noticed recently.

A German meteorologist wonders if we are about to enter another little ice age.

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Welcome to another edition of Climate Cuttings, in which I round up some global warming links you may have missed.

First up is Judith Curry, who has had a letter from Congress following up on her earlier testimony. The theme seems to be - do you think we should listen to scientists who don't release their data?

Things don't seem to be going so well for the Campaign against Climate Change, who are suffering, along with many other charities, from a lack of donations.

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As I noted last week, the BBC is doing a highbrow radio series on climate through history. It looks as though they are on a full-scale climate season (...again...) with the World Service doing what looks like a rather thinly disguised propaganda piece called "The Climate Connection 2010".

The Climate Connection explores a key question in the story of action on climate change: what's stopping us?

Australia's Jennifer Marohasy has a paper out looking at issues around Freedom of Information and environmental data, majoring on Doug Keenan's experiences with Queens University Belfast. QUB don't look to have come out of it too well.

Mike Hulme has a guest post at Klimazwiebel, calling on politicians to adopt the new "reality-based" language that Hulme himself has taken to using.

Lord Rees celebrated the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society, by sounding off on climate change:

The concentration of carbon dioxide is rising inexorably...the science is firming up and that tells us that there is a risk of serious climate change in the next 50 years.

He clearly hasn't got the message about talking about uncertainties. Oh yes, and he wants more money. (This was Lord Rees' last action as President of the Royal Society. He steps down today. I wonder how history will look on him?).

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The Guardian announced what it modestly described as "The Ultimate Climate Change FAQ".  We should be so lucky.

The Economist meanwhile was struck by a sudden burst of realism, in an article calling for adaptation to be taken much more seriously than it is now.

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This week marks the first anniversary of Climategate and it looks as though the media are not unaware of this.  As a result there are a number of stories on the climate front today.

The Guardian sets out their case that the scientists have been exonerated but that damage may have been done to "the cause". 

Booker reckons the climate change movement is dying on its feet, but says that politicians are carrying on regardless. Booker's ideas seems to be echoed by Investors.com who report the Scientific American poll results and conclude that it's curtains for the warmists.

If the global warming movement is about to meet its demise, then it's probably a good idea for warmists to have their fun while the going is still good. A trip to Bangladesh to play with the idea of a court where poor countries could sue rich ones over climate change probably sounded like a good wheeze.

It was only a mock tribunal, organised by Oxfam, but it explored the growing idea that the largest carbon emitters should be bound by international law to protect the lives and livelihoods of those most at risk from the impacts of climate change.

I can hear standing orders to Oxfam being cancelled as we speak.

David Henderson has picked up on the Deutsche Bank sceptic-bashing paper and the embarrassing shambles the scientists concerned seem to have got themselves into. As Henderson asks "It would be interesting to know whether The Deutsche Bank officials who sponsored and approved this deeply flawed initiative took the precaution of submitting a draft for expert review to persons not already firmly convinced that the 'skeptics' have been refuted."

The Scotsman reports that the lights are going to go out in Scotland shortly. The politicians can't say they didn't know.

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There are quite a few interesting links and snippets around this morning, so here, without further ado, is the latest instalment of Climate Cuttings.

Ars Technica uses CRU data difficulties to kick off an article about the problems academics have in storing their raw materials. I'm not sure that this excuses CRU, who of course had access to plenty of data repositories.

Also on the subject of openness, John Graham-Cumming returns to the subject of code availability, knocking back some of the arguments that are made against such transparency.

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Another round of Climate Cuttings to set you up for the weekend...

Vaclav Klaus rounds of his trip to the UK with an article in the Spectator: Thank Heavens for Bob Carter.

Carter himself is meanwhile telling the residents of Hong Kong about what we know (or not) about the climate.  Buy Bob's book here.

Also in the Spectator, Rod Liddle says that Dellers has lost his sense of humour over the 10:10 video. Liddle thinks it was "quite funny, and nicely done and even self-deprecatingly ironic". Right.

McIntyre seems to have got hold of one of Ray Bradley's emails, in which Mann's lieutenant says he has offered to drop his plagiarism charge if Wegman requests the withdrawal of his report to Congress. Commenters wonder if this amounts to blackmail and interfering with the congressional record. More at WUWT.

Donna Laframboise notes the curious case of Richard Klein, who moved from Greenpeace campaigner, to MSc, to IPCC lead author, to IPCC coordinating lead author and finally to his doctorate, in that order.

Michael Mann et al try the ad-hominem approach to dealing with Nature's positive review of Pielke Jnr's book.

And lastly, Nature reports that space tourism will accelerate climate change.

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There are a lot of climate related stories around at the moment, so I thought I'd wheel out the Climate Cuttings series once again.

First up is Roy Spencer, discussing a new paper by Lacis (Schmidt) et al. The authors seem to be trying to sideline the role of water vapour in the climate system so as to leave the road clear for carbon dioxide. Their results, however, appear to rest on the assumptions they make. Pielke Snr wonders why Science published the paper at all, unless for propaganda purposes.

Stephen Goddard looks at Hansen's 1988 predictions and finds that warming of 8 degrees in the Antarctic is probably somewhat (ahem) off the mark.

Jeff Id looks at the proxies from the recent Ljungqvist reconstruction and finds that the temperature pattern in the reconstruction is rather robust.

The Hal Lewis resignation story rumbles on. Andy Revkin has taken a potshot at Lewis here, prompting a further response from another APS member, Roger Cohen, at WUWT.

Geoff Chambers, writing at Harmless Sky, notes the difficulties the Guardian has got itself into over research funded by oil companies.

I'm rather late to this one, but the Environment Spokesman for Germany's CDU/FDP party has come out as a sceptic, referring to climate change as an ersatz religion. The greens are not happy.

And lastly, help Steve McIntyre be chosen as Canada's top science blog by voting here.

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Global warming campaigners have started what appears to be a concerted media campaign and the media is doing what it always does, failing to question anything they are fed by the PR people inside the climate machine. I've already pointed to Sir John Houghton's article in the Times. We've also had Lord Stern on Radio 4, desperately trying to shift the burden of proof onto those who doubt the word of the activists. US scientists have started a letter writing campaign, led by the usual suspects. The Australians have bashed together a six (!) page report repeating the mantra one more time.

Michael Mann and Judith Curry are interviewed in Discover magazine, as noted in an earlier post. Mann's contribution could probably best be described as "more of the same", while Curry's is fairly breathtaking.

TonyN at Harmless Sky (now up and running again) runs his eye over Peter Stott's recent attribution paper that received quite a lot of media attention this side of the pond.

An Australian academic has accused Steve McIntyre of being behind the UEA "hack". Everyone seems to think that John Quiggin will be lucky to get away without being sued.

Richard Tol continues to tear Working Group III's work to shreds. He finds that the IPCC's claim that emissions can be reduced at zero marginal cost is wrong.

BH reader, Adrian Ashfield, has been engaging in some correspondence with the HockeyStickMeister himself in the pages of his local paper. Original letter here, Mann's response here.

Update on Mar 16, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Chris Smith, the UK Environment Secretary, joins the green propaganda push, in a piece for the BBC website.

Simon W in the comments notes also that BBC TV gave space to the head of Greenpeace yesterday.

Still no questioning by the media.