Following the ClimateGate scandal the global warming scaremongers couldn’t get more unhinged, could they? Get a load of these recent articles putting the warmers in the spotlight. You can’t make this stuff up, except, well, they did make it up.

UK Times: The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

… In its [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

Oh, it gets better. Honest mistake, one may say. Well, turns out the UN knew of the source issues prior to publishing their report, but they published it anyway. Just how stupid do they thing people are?

UK Times: The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Mr. Pachauri was sent several e-mails questioning the data as early as November of last year, but disregarded the critics saying, “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.” Perhaps because he’s received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money..?

Among some other errors by the IPCC:

[WSJ] … that 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States (it was 1934); that sea levels could soon rise by up to 20 feet and put Florida underwater (an 18-inch rise by the year 2100 is the more authoritative estimate); that polar bears are critically endangered by global warming (most polar bear populations appear to be stable or increasing); that—well, we could go on without even mentioning the climategate emails. For the record, most Himalayan glaciers do seem to be retreating, and they have been “since the earliest recordings began around the middle of the nineteenth century,” according to a report from India’s ministry of environment and forests.

Finally, you’ll never believe who’s become a global warming jihadist! Literally!

CAIRO (AP) – Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.

In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.

Right, because Indians and Chinese don’t use a lot of energy… well, nobody ever accused bin Laden of being rational. Apparently, he values the lives of polar bears more than people. After all, he has no problem blowing people out of the sky or collapsing buildings upon them. Sounds like your everyday Earth Liberation Front sociopath to me. Maybe extreme leftists have more in common with jihadists than we first thought.

“If you make less than $250,000 your taxes will not go up. Not one dime.” — Barack Obama.

Not one dime, that is, as long as you’re not married. If you’re married the ObamaCare bill would hit couples making as little as $25,000 each. From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON – Some married couples would pay thousands of dollars more for the same health insurance coverage as unmarried people living together, under the health insurance overhaul plan pending in Congress.

The built-in “marriage penalty” in both House and Senate healthcare bills has received scant attention. But for scores of low-income and middle-income couples, it could mean a hike of $2,000 or more in annual insurance premiums the moment they say “I do.”

… For an unmarried couple with income of $25,000 each, combined premiums would be capped at $3,076 per year, under the House bill. If the couple gets married, with a combined income of $50,000, their annual premium cap jumps to $5,160 — a “penalty” of $2,084.

Via Michelle Malkin’s website I came across these clips from CNN Christine Amanpour’s show which pitted her and another high-brow opponent of waterboarding against former Bush speechwriter, author and proponent of waterboarding, Marc Thiessen. Generally, these types of things go bad for the waterboarding proponents because they don’t stick to the core logic behind laws of war and enemy combatants, such as:

* Geneva Conventions weren’t designed to “protect soldiers” but to give them incentives to follow the laws of war.

* What the CIA calls waterboarding isn’t the same thing as or as dangerous as or as barbaric as Khmer Rouge waterboarding or what other governments have done.

* If waterboarding is torture than we’re apparently torturing thousands of U.S. servicemen and women who go through SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Extract) training.

Thiessen sticks to all these points and in short kicks the arse of his detractors. His point that the waterboarding actually allows Islamic extremists to spill their guts without betraying their service to Allah is fascinating.

Because he did so well, I doubt if CNN will ever have Thiessen back on.

Not exactly a “Down goes Frazier” or “The Giants win the pennant moment” — Martha Croakley Coakley was an awful, awful candidate from the get go. One gets the impression that in any state not so Uberliberal as Taxachusetts a trained monkey could have defeated her, no disrespect to Scott Brown.  Indeed, it underscores the imperial hubris of the Democrats, that they were arrogant enough to think they could without repercussions attempt to sell this charisma-lacking lousy candidate to the people of Massachusetts.

But don’t think the Chicago political machine will go down without a fight.

Mainstream media mouthpieces for the Democratic Party have previously and unabashedly announced their true feelings about Democracy with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz digging in, saying “if I could vote 20 times, that’s what I’d do.” (Ed says his critics are “nutjobs.”) Nutjobs they may be, but they don’t promote election fraud.

I’m sure we’ll have activist groups coming out of the woodwork to attempt to recount or commit lawfare to prevent Brown’s certification too. Then again, Coakley was so bad a candidate that Brown appears at least right now to be enough ahead that such a strategy wouldn’t be feasible.

Other Democrats (John Kerry) have indicated that they’ll purposely refuse or delay any election certification. Again, what lovers of Democracy are the Democratic Party leadership!

Best guffaw of the day: Barney Frank discovers a “constitutional crisis” via the 60-vote filibuster rule, a rule which Democrats have both championed and enjoyed but which Mr. Frank now finds unconstitutional. Enjoy that crow, Barney, try not to choke on it.

What’s next? Think the Democrats might try to get a fence-sitting Republican to switch parties?

What’s remarkable about this article is just how unapologetic and brazen the UN is about making claims — and thus promoting expensive, uneconomic policies — that aren’t remotely based on science. This is precisely the pattern that was fortified from the ClimateGate e-mails.

[Wall Street Journal] An influential United Nations panel is facing growing criticism about its practices after acknowledging doubts about a 2007 statement that Himalayan glaciers were retreating faster than those anywhere else and would entirely disappear by 2035, if not sooner.Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said Monday that the U.N. body was studying how the 2007 report “derived” the information about glacier retreat, according to a spokesman at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, where Dr. Pachauri is the director. Dr. Pachauri said glaciers were melting, but the 2035 date was in question, the spokesman said.

It was unlikely that these revelations about the IPCC report would overturn the scientific consensus on glacial retreat, but they raised questions for the IPCC about how the data on Himalayan glaciers were collected and reviewed.

“There’s a failure to review this data adequately by qualified experts,” said J. Graham Cogley, professor of geography at Trent University in Ontario, who is one of the first people to track down some of the apparent errors.

The IPCC report stated that the total area of Himalayan glaciers would likely shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers by 2035. The report cited a 2005 study by the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy group. That study cited a 1999 article in New Scientist magazine that quoted Indian glacier expert Syed Hasnain as saying Himalayan glaciers could disappear “within forty years.”

Dr. Hasnain presented a report on Himalayan glaciers in the summer of 1999, but it made no reference to 2035.

Earlier this month, Dr. Hasnain said in another New Scientist article that his previous assertions were based on “speculation,” rather than firm science.

Here’s Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg on the folly of trying to reduce carbon emissions:

Two points underlie the issue of global warming: First, developing nations have no intention of letting the developed world force them to stop using carbon-emitting fuels. They are understandably wary of any policy that might curtail the domestic economic growth that is allowing their populations to clamber out of poverty. And that is precisely what drastically reducing their carbon emissions would do.

Second, even for more-developed economies, trying to force drastic cuts in carbon emissions makes no economic sense. All the major climate economic models show that to achieve the much-discussed goal of keeping temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius, we would need a global tax on carbon emissions that would start at $102 per ton (or about 90 cents per gallon of gasoline) — and increase to $4,000 per ton (or $35.51 per gallon of gasoline) by the end of the century. In all, this would cost the world $40 trillion a year. Most mainstream calculations conclude that this is 50 times more expensive than the climate damage it seeks to prevent.

In other words, trying to force cuts in carbon emissions is a solution that will cost far more than the problem it is meant to solve.

It is said that President Barack Obama is fond of using problematic events as “teachable moments.” Well here’s a teachable moment for Republicans in the wake of Harry Reid’s pre-2008 election comments that Obama was “light skinned… with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”: In matters of racial politics Republicans should consider fighting back and sticking up for themselves instead of apologizing, genuflecting, and committing self-flagellation.

The utter hypocrisy shown in the reaction from the vast majority of liberals to Reid’s nonsensical and bigoted comments proves that they care nothing about race or stereotypes except as how they can wield it as a bludgeoning weapon against Republicans. Were a Republican to have said these things the 24-hour cable media, activist groups and Democratic politicians would be demanding their resignation and painting every Republican as an ignorant Klansman.

Instead we have the race-baiter in chief, Al Sharpton, deflecting criticism of Reid by saying he was far more offended (and if there’s ever someone who’s made a living by being offended it’s Al Sharpton) by the comments of Bill Clinton. In the same new book by Mark Halprin quoting Reid, Clinton is quoted as saying of Obama, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”

Really, Al? He’s more offended by what was clearly a reference to inexperience (i.e., interns get you coffee or more if you’re Clinton, I suppose) than he was to “light-skinned, negro dialect”?

It’s preposterous. How does one expect to find any reasonable debate or common ground on race when the liberal masses champion idiocracy? Answer: Don’t bother.

Unless the remark is beyond the pale, and most of us have the common sense to judge that, do not apologize and pander to this foolishness. The next time a Republican is caught with their foot in their mouth, I’d hope they fight back just a little bit.