So the BBC (Radio 4 news) has acknowledged the quiescent sun and links to the Maunder minimum. However Roger Harrabin was on hand to assure us that the warming from AGW was 3 to 9 times stronger than the the cooling caused by the sun - according to projections that is.
But, in the meantime, how to convince freezing people that we have to reduce emissions to stop the warming???? Or words to that effect.

Wow! The Independent has woken up to the story about IPCC and Greenpeace. Even mentions Climate Audit.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-panel-in-hot-water-again-over-biased-energy-report-2298055.html

The world's foremost authority on climate change used a Greenpeace campaigner to help write one of its key reports, which critics say made misleading claims about renewable energy, The Independent has learnt.

Will the next 2011-2020 decade be warmer than the previous 2001 – 2010 decade?
No Tricks Zone and cool readers are pledging money and betting it will be cooler, or the same.

Warm readers, led by Rob Honeycutt, say it will be warmer, and so far have pledged $5200 on it.

We are now trying to get as many pledges for money as we can. The loser of the bet will have to pay the amount pladged to a charity for children in dire need, such as Children Hospice International or Doctors Without Borders.

So far NTZ and cool readers have pledged over $2,000 (10 Jan 2011), betting the next decade will be cooler. If the bet were decided today, then the loser would have to pay this amount to the charity (which has not been chosen yet).

Do you want to join the bet? Pledge an amount!

http://notrickszone.com/join-the-climate-bet-for-charity/

Paul Huson of BBC has an interesting take on recent drought order. Is he suggesting that the timing of the drought order was more for political reasons than climatic reasons? On Friday 10th he had this to say:

June's weather looks set to deteriorate further as low pressure intensifies its grip across the UK.

The timing couldn't be more awkward for the Environment Agency who this morning issued a drought order for parts of Eastern England.

Only hours later, the Met Office issued yellow warnings in parts of the country, including drought-order hit Lincolnshire, for prolonged thundery downpours that could produce 25-45mm in places, with the associated risk of localised flooding.

Just as the atmosphere was 'blocked' through March and April, with persistent areas of high pressure that led to the dry conditions, the atmosphere looks set to stay stuck in a rut of persistent areas of low pressure, possibly for much of the rest of June.

On 13th he followed this up with this:

Sunday saw the heaviest rainfall of the year across parts of Lincolnshire, only 48 hours on from the drought order issued by the Environment Agency for parts of Eastern England.

There is no doubt that parts of Eastern England are in drought, whether this is measured by rainfall deficit, or soil moisture deficit, and more will be needed over the coming weeks and possibly months to resolve the situation.

Yet the timing of the drought order was surprising, given the increasingly clear signal last week from all the main forecasting centres that rainfall totals looked set to increase sharply for the rest of the month compared with what was observed in Spring.

Those who lived through the drought of 1976 will remember that within days of the government appointing Dennis Howell as the Minister for Drought, the heavens opened, indeed September that year turned out to be one of the wettest on record.

It will be interesting to see if the expected rainfall this month will make the drought order issued on Friday as short lived as Mr Howell's then new ministry of drought was back in 1976.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/

Global warming not to blame for 2011 droughts
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028173.100-global-warming-not-to-blame-for-2011-droughts.html

Robin Guenier

Bachmann may well be loopy but she appears to be capable of taking a full part (without autocue) in a debate (contrast Sarah Palin).

Just imagine the fun I am having with my democrat friends suggesting she could win the nomination and the state of the US economy might win her the election!

http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/today-sceptic-at-large-goes-live/

I take a sceptical look at other issues that have emerged in this period, not least climate change, where I am delighted to challenge the orthodox view (which is becoming less and less orthodox). I organised my first climate event in the Brussels parliament in April 2007, when the key-note speaker was former Chancellor Lord Lawson, who also provides a comment on the cover of my book: “Well informed and merciless”. I’ve been involved in the climate debate ever since. My account of my meeting with the Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, home of the Climate Research Unit, is a high point of the book.

http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/old-people-will-die-of-cold/

We have Lord Turnbull, former top civil servant, coming out strongly against the Green Agenda. This last weekend we’ve had editorials in the Telegraph and the Mail, and op-ed pieces by Lord Lawson and Charles Moore, all condemning the huge economic damage that Huhne and his department are doing.

Perhaps most importantly, we’ve had the CBI waking up to the issue at last, and warning in plain terms that we’re driving manufacturing abroad. And while Huhne will never listen, there are hints that perhaps George Osborne is starting to be exercised by the issue. Let’s hope he is.

Meantime our energy security is under threat as never before. We have half a dozen major coal-fired power plants being closed around 2015 by the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive. We have most of our nuclear reactors scheduled for closure in the next ten years. If Huhne were serious about getting 30% of our electricity from wind by 2020, he’d need a huge new investment into gas-fired power plants purely for back-up, when the wind stops blowing. There’s no indication that he’s addressing this problem.

There are two things that the electorate will never forgive. The first is massive hikes in domestic fuel bills, with dire social consequences. And the second is the lights going out. Huhne’s present policies make both these eventualities almost inevitable.

AJC:

According to this article (http://planetsave.com/2011/06/14/michele-bachmann-officially-insane-gop-debate/), Bachmann must be insane (officially?) because she doesn’t understand that “the skyrocketing concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is causing catastrophic global warming”. Hmm … and she doesn’t understand that because she thinks she “knows more about climate change than an MIT scientist”. I wonder which MIT scientist the author, Zachary Shahan, had in mind? I can’t ask him as I’ve been banned.

Behind its paywall the Times has an interesting report ...

Move over Palin, there’s a new mom in town. She’s Michele Bachmann
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/americas/article3061254.ece

Why would it interest us?

“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”

Behind the curve as usual and seemingly oblivious of the growing backlash against biofuels, the US military ploughs on ... Pentagon's First Energy Plan