The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?

Oil and gas drilling companies had pushed for the change, but there have been differing scientific estimates of the amount of methane that leaks from wells, pipelines and other facilities during production and delivery. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

President Barack Obama’s campaign to smear and intimidate global warming skeptics in Congress is now in full swing. See: Obama campaign launches plan to shame climate skeptics in Congress: ‘It is time to call out U.S. politicians who deny the science behind climate change’ & Obama Tweets about global warming: ‘Climate deniers in Congress refuse to even debate the issue. Make sure they don’t get away with it’

Obama’s new campaign hopes to silence skepticism, despite the fact that the GOP is the party taking a pro-science stand when it comes to man-made global warming fears. See:  Lord Christopher Monckton defends GOP from Obama campaign attack: ‘Obama climate video stars GOP truthsayers’ — Monckton says GOP ‘talking common sense about climate’

As the EPA snipes at the State Department's approval, Canada's natural resource minister says failure to approve the pipeline would seriously jeopardize our energy relationship and do nothing to save the earth.

Joe Oliver, not amused by the continued delays in perhaps the most shovel-ready project since the pyramids, said Wednesday that rejection by the U.S. of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline "would represent a serious reversal in our long-standing energy relationship."

This critical energy infrastructure project is also perhaps the most studied and approved. After a reroute at the behest of environmentalists allegedly concerned about the sensitive Ogallala Aquifer, it received approval from the state of Nebraska.

The Japanese government is moving to speed up the environmental assessment process for new coal-fired power plants. According to Japanese media reports, the government intends to make 12 months the maximum period for assessing and approving new coal-fired power plants as its utilities seek to develop more power stations to stem surging energy supply bills. With the government considering the closure of much of the installed nuclear capacity over the medium term, the spotlight is back on coal as the cheapest energy source, notwithstanding plans to cut carbon emissions. A commitment to slice 2020 carbon emissions by 25 per cent from their 1990 level will be revised by October, according to Japanese newspaper reports. --Brian Robins, The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April 2013

Suzanne Goldberg displayed the establishment media’s inexcusable ignorance and/or willful distortion of the global warming debate in a Thursday ‘news’ article in the prominent UK newspaper The Guardian.

Writing about an effort by the Obama administration to politicize the global warming debate and direct public ridicule at Republicans who are skeptical of alarmist global warming claims, Goldberg describes that effort as one that will “shame members of Congress who deny the science behind climate change.”

Expressing skepticism about alarmist global warming claims and alarmist future predictions by one segment of the scientific population whose prior alarmist claims and alarmist predictions have routinely proven to be false is not “denying the science behind climate change.” Subjecting theories, predictions, and scientific claims to critical scientific scrutiny is the lifeblood of science. Attempting to vilify, stifle, and shut down critical scientific analysis of scientific theories, predictions, and claims is the very definition of anti-science.

A COMMON feature of debates about global warming is that extreme claims often go unchallenged. At best, criticism is impolitic. Worse, critics are portrayed as tools of malign fossil fuel interests. Being impervious to push-back leads to what I describe in my recent book as climate change derangement syndrome, when normally sane people say dumb things. Examples include the claim that global warming is a greater threat than terrorism, shortly before the Tube bombings. Another is that warming could lead to war between the US and Canada (yes, there was one – in 1812).

The latest example is the spectacularly ill-timed claim that global financial markets are dangerously exposed to a giant “carbon bubble”, representing the value of fossil fuels that will have to remain locked in the ground – and here comes the big “if” – if governments around the world stick to their promise to keep the rise in average global temperature below two degrees Celsius.

Waterfront property owners need not flee inland just yet

AFTER alarming predictions that coastal properties would be swamped by monster tides and capital cities would run dry -- if they weren't ravaged by hurricanes first -- Australia's actuaries have looked at the figures to work out what climate change might cost in claims. The results are reassuring.

The Actuaries Institute, representing about 4000 members, predicts that the impact on private insurance premiums will be marginal over the next 60 years.

A Senate Finance Committee white paper on possible federal tax code changes for energy suggested establishing a carbon tax in place of most or all energy tax incentives.

The paper offered the carbon tax with a range of other policy options to help chip away at a Congressional Budget Office-estimated $16 billion of foregone energy-related tax expenditures in fiscal 2013.

The paper, released Thursday, came with the disclaimer that the policy suggestions “do not necessarily have the endorsement” of committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) or ranking member Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Are those that so adamantly state that “climate change” and man-made global warming are caused primarily as the result of human activity aware of the facts?  If you, like them, believe that man-made global warming is a fact, the following will test your knowledge.

We do know that the atmosphere is constantly in a state of flux.  It attempts to achieve equilibrium, but never gets there.  Global temperature variability is the norm. 

Those who say, for example, that man-made greenhouse gases are the culprit for creating “monster tropical storms” are not considering all the facts.  Atmospheric motions in the upper troposphere, weak vertical wind shear, and normal warm oceanic temperatures are the main factors that enhance the likelihood of tropical storm development.   

I have been neglecting you. Things have quietened down. I am 91 and it is high time I retired, like my friend Will Alexander in South Africa or my major protagonist, former Professor Martin Manning. I thought I would call it a day on Newsletter No 300.

When I began, in 1991 I was still in China. I got involved in commenting on the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and I just completed those on the Fifth Report which will surely be my last.

To begin with I was the only critical voice in New Zealand. Last week I attended a packed meeting of the Press Club in Wellington to hear Lord Monckton tear apart the IPCC and everything connected with it. The University scientists will not listen to him. But one of the organisers of the meeting was from the Music Department.