Climate change skepticism growing in UK...

Anthropogenic climate change skeptics in the UK have quadrupled since 2005...

A report from the UK Energy Research Centre also shows the number of those who resolutely do not believe in climate change has more than quadrupled since 2005.

The Government funded report shows 19 per cent of people are climate change disbelievers - up from just four per cent in 2005 - while nine per cent did not know.

The report comes as climate change scientists working on a landmark UN report on climate change are struggling to explain why global warming appears to have slowed down in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. 
Dr. Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist and author of Climate Confusion, argues in his influential blog the UN report shows scientists are being forced to "recognise reality".

He said: "We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations." Read more here...

Electric Car Sales in UK Suffer Brown Out

Consumers on both sides of the Atlantic show lackluster interest in electric cars.

(The Guardian)- Hopes that £5,000 government grants would make 2011 "remembered as the year the electric car took off" have been dashed with the release of new figures showing uptake of the greener cars has sputtered out.

Only 106 electric cars were bought in the third quarter of 2011 through the "plugged-in car grant" scheme, launched in January. It marks a significant slump in demand on already sluggish-take-up, with 465 cars registered through the scheme in Q1 and 215 in Q2.

However, trade body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) pointed out that all electric car registrations – both inside and out of the grant scheme – have gone from 167 in 2010 to 940 in 2011.
Electric car campaigners and industry had hoped this would be the year the year the cars – billed as a clean low carbon alternative to conventional petrol and diesel models – made a breakthrough. Former transport secretary Phillip Hammond said in January: "Government action to support affordable vehicles and more local charging points means we are on the threshold of an exciting green revolution – 2011 could be remembered as the year the electric car took off."

The number of electric vehicles in the UK stands at just 1,107, a tiny chunk of the country's 28.5m cars. But the government had hoped to incentivise take-up with the launch of grants of up to £5,000, preserving the grant during last summer's cuts and putting aside £43m, or enough for 8,600 cars, until March 2012. The scheme is due to be reviewed in January.

Climate Scientists Want a Do-Over on Temperature Record

NASA GISS Temperature Station # 425724880010

UK's Met office is pushing a surface temperature data do-over. This proposed do-over is in response to the many problems with the data sets and methods used to calculate global temperature.

FOX News reported:

After the firestorm of criticism called Climate-gate, the British government's official Meteorological Office has decided to give its modern climate data a do-over.

At a meeting on Monday of about 150 climate scientists in the quiet Turkish seaside resort of Antalya, representatives of the weather office (known in Britain as the Met Office) quietly proposed that the world's climate scientists start all over again on a "grand challenge" to produce a new, common trove of global temperature data that is open to public scrutiny and "rigorous" peer review.

In other words, conduct investigations into modern global warming in a way that may help to end the mammoth controversy over world temperature data that has been stirred up in the past few years.

Among the changes they are proposing(pdf) are:

• "verifiable datasets starting from a common databank of unrestricted data"
• "methods that are fully documented in the peer reviewed literature and open to scrutiny;"
• "a set of independent assessments of surface temperature produced by independent groups using independent methods,"
• "comprehensive audit trails to deliver confidence in the results;"
• "robust assessment of uncertainties associated with observational error, temporal and geographical in homogeneities."

Wouldn't 'real' scientists have already done these things already? It sounds like an admission their records and methods are not: well documented, peer reviewed, independent, well audited or robust. Hmm... And the world is supposed to commit trillions of dollars to prevent man-made global warming based on this and similar data?

UK Met Office Flip-flops and Agrees To Re-examine Data

In a flip-flop from their November 24th statement completely reaffirming global warming, the UK Met office has announced there is reason to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that Climategate has shattered public confidence in the science of man-made global warming.

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The UK Met Office has also promised to release some data and code.

UK dumps Gillispie

The University of Kentucky decided to dump basketball coach Billie Gillispie. You can be a nice guy or be a winner. Billie Gillispie was neither.

Gillispie out as Kentucky opts for coaching change
Mar 27 05:36 PM US/Eastern
By WILL GRAVES
AP Sports Writer


LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - Impatient for a winner and a coach who embraced all the things that come with running college basketball's all-time winningest program, Kentucky fired coach Billy Gillispie on Friday. Saying the Wildcats deserve a leader who understands "this is not just another coaching job," athletic director Mitch Barnhart and president Lee Todd made the unusual decision to dismiss Gillispie less than two years after he was hired to replace Tubby Smith.

"He's a good basketball coach," Barnhart said. "Sometimes it's just not the right fit and that's my responsibility."

It's a move Barnhart felt was necessary following a couple of turbulent seasons in which the Wildcats struggled to improve under their hard-working but sometimes aloof head coach.

Hired to rejuvenate a program after Smith bolted for Minnesota, Gillispie struggled to find any consistency on the court or off it.

Gillispie went 40-27 in two seasons with the Wildcats, including a 22-14 mark this year that tied for the second-most losses in the program's 106-year history. A stumble down the stretch left the Wildcats out of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1991.

Yet Gillispie's problem went beyond wins and losses.

Barnhart said rebuilding years are expected when a new coach is hired. The trouble were "philosophical differences" between the university and Gillispie on the role the school's coach plays in the fabric of a fan base that refers to itself as Big Blue Nation. (excerpt) read more at breitbart.com.