Dr. Roy Spencer presents the latest measurements of lower troposphere temperature as measured by two sets of satellites. See his post here. He presents a graph showing measured temperatures versus model predictions.

You can see that actual global temperatures have flattened out since about 1998. The “spaghetti” on the graph represents predictions of 44 models and the black line is the average of model predictions.

Monday, April 22, is Earth Day. Begun in 1970, it led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. It is the global platform for the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing the Earth to warm and the basis of the environmental movement’s ceaseless efforts to reduce the use of energy for any reason.

Carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has been increasing, but the Earth has been cooling due to reduced solar radiation. CO2 has virtually no relationship to the climate except to show up well after a significant change has occurred.

On April 18, the Wall Street Journal reported that the International Energy Agency had announced that, despite spending “more than $2 trillion in investment into renewable-energy projects…the world had made almost no progress over the past 20 years in reducing the carbon content of its energy supplies.” It has never needed reduction. How many hospitals, schools, bridges, and other useful things that could have been built instead?

CAUGHT! Today is Friday and in and around Boston it is absolutely crazy. Manhunts, lockdowns, entire communities cordoned off, and more.

I'm sure what's happening in Boston is top of mind for many people, so if you want to discuss or comment on it feel free to do so after the jump. As of Friday, 11 AM E.S.T., suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still 'at large.'

Climate news and discussion, of course, is still welcome.

The Mideast is going jihadist and aggressors are testing America's resolve after failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. What a time for our secretary of state's head to be in the wrong place.

The new secretary of state, the losing presidential candidate against George W. Bush in 2004, John Kerry, just boasted of discussing with Beijing "the possibility of China investing in infrastructure" in the U.S., as the Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper notes.

"We have huge infrastructure needs in the United States for a certain series of projects like water projects, transportation projects, energy projects," Kerry said. "Those are all revenue-producing projects. So they are projects from which pension funds and other kinds of investments can make a return on investment and everybody benefits."

"It's a win-win-win," Kerry enthused. "It's a win for the investors, it's a win for the countries, and ultimately it's a win for the place where the infrastructure gets built."

What follows is the 2nd part of the Weltwoche interview. Yesterday in Part 1 we read:

1. Stocker said the theory claiming global warming causes cold European winters is not robust.
2. Stocker was caught fibbing in claiming that the projections of IPCC models were “extremely good”.
3. Stocker had ignored inconvenient science from his own institute.
4. Stocker appeared unaware that global warming had not risen in 15 years.

Part 2 of the Stocker/Weltwoche interview

In part 2, Stocker contradicts Ben Santer and claims that 17 years are not enough to establish a climate trend, insists that warming is taking place and that the model projections have been “extremely good”. Part 2 reveals how the IPCC science is hanging from a thread. Stocker obstinately maintains there is no CO2 lag behind temperature, claiming that they moved “simultaneously” in the past. Stocker erroneously believes CO2 is the only explanation for the 20th century warming.

There is so much good news about the collapse of the EU's carbon trading scam, that I'm not sure where to begin. But let's start with the fact that it has really, really annoyed Bryony Worthington - the activist from the hard-left anti-capitalist pressure group Friends of the Earth who wrote the most economically suicidal piece of legislation in British history, the Climate Change Act. Even more delightfully, it will also have upset Tim "Trougher" Yeo and Lord "King Trougher" Deben, both of whom were not only fully behind this latest planned EU conspiracy against the energy user and the taxpayer but who also had the sublime gall to suggest that this market rigging is what Margaret Thatcher would have wanted.(H/T Benny Peiser, GWPF)

No, really. Let's pause a moment and cherish the delicious absurdity of this claim. Two Tory wets – of the kind Margaret Thatcher always despised – are now invoking the legacy of Britain's most fervently anti-EU and pro-free-market prime minister in support of an EU attempt to rig the markets and punish consumers with an artificially inflated carbon tax which no one wants. Have a read and be amazed. You couldn't make it up.

Americans concerned about gasoline prices were encouraged by the Pew Research Center’s new poll, whose headline blared, “Keystone XL Pipeline draws broad support.” A score box showed 63% supporting and only 23% opposing the pipeline that would transport oil from Canada’s vast Alberta oil sands deposits through the Plains states to Texas refineries.

“Every one-cent increase at the pump steals about $1 billion from the larger economy that consumers would have otherwise saved or spent on something else,” the Wall Street Journal has pointed out. High gasoline prices thus translate into lost jobs, lost tax revenues and lower living standards. Americans are beginning to understand that, as the Obama “recovery” gives them real-world economic lessons.

The European Union’s climate change policy is on the brink of collapse today after MEPs torpedoed Europe’s flagship CO2 emissions trading scheme by voting against a measure to support the price of carbon permits. The price of carbon crashed up to 45 per cent to a record-low €2.63 a metric ton, after the European Parliament rejected a proposal to change the EU emissions-trading laws to delay the sale of 900m CO2 permits on the world’s biggest carbon markets. --Bruno Waterfields, The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2013

Given the manifest reluctance of the world’s big emitters to accept any legally binding carbon targets and in face of our deepening economic crisis, Europe should undertake a comprehensive review of its economically damaging carbon targets and — in the absence of an international agreement — should consider the suspension of all unilateral climate policies that threaten Europe’s economic recovery. –Benny Peiser, National Post,  25 November 2011

"The decision means the end of a European approach to climate policy." --Felix Matthes, Spiegel Online, 17 April 2013

The government is overreacting to a largely unreal threat of global warming and NASA isn't helping, states a report issued by The Right Climate Stuff (TCRS) research team.

Comprised largely of ex-NASA engineers and scientists, the team acknowledges in their report that "climate science is not one of our data technical specialties," but that, nonetheless, given their experience in their separate fields of physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology and others, they felt the need to speak out.

Specifically, the report responds to what the group feels is unfounded pulpit pounding by certain NASA bureaus regarding a false damnation of global warming that is seen strictly the result of human sin in the form of carbon dioxide emissions.

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has already promulgated a tsunami of 1,920 regulations, many of which will bring few health or environmental benefits, but will impose high economic and unemployment costs, often to advance the Administration’s decidedly anti-hydrocarbon agenda. The Heritage Foundation has calculated that his EPA’s twenty “major” rulemaking decisions (costing $100 million or more annually) alone could cost the United States over $36 billion per year.

The latest example involves a third layer (or tier) of rules that the agency says will clean the nation’s air and save lives, by forcing refineries to remove more sulfur and other impurities from gasoline. EPA and refiners call the proposal Tier 3 rulemaking. Tier 3 tyranny is more accurate – as the rules would cost billions of dollars but bring infinitesimal benefits, and will likely be imposed regardless.