The battle between reason and hysteria continues unabated.  I hear daily the same tired misrepresentations, emotional appeals and useless calls for change.

The fact is that the truth has not really slowed the Man caused Global Warming Alarmists as much as it has caused the skeptics to fight a little harder for rationality before we spiral into a morass of knee jerk policies.

In gravely narrated special on TV yesterday the fact that China has passed us as the leading CO2 producer, and India is not long in joining them was mentioned.

You may recall that India and China were exempted from the Kyoto Treaty, and it was their exemption that caused Al Gore to note that the treaty was useless without their inclusion.

And now we see the result of that exemption, they have continued unabated to become the worlds leading befoulers.

Droughts world wide have been predicted with dire warnings, and hailed as proof of the warming, yet this study seems to say that droughts are a good thing:

Drought Makes Rain Forest Greener

Droughts, paradoxically, seem to make the verdant Amazon rainforest even greener, a new study suggests, giving scientists hope that global warming's effects on the lush South American ecosystem won't be quite as bad as has been predicted.

Many global climate models have predicted that Earth's rising temperatures will cause intense drought in the Amazon basin, eventually leading to the rainforest's collapse into grass-covered savanna, with only a sprinkling of trees.

A widespread drought hit the Amazon in 2005, becoming particularly intense during the regular dry season, which runs from July through September, and providing researchers with an opportunity to test the climate model predictions.

According to the models, a warming scenario would result in the forest being hit by drought. The trees would then respond by reducing both transpiration (the evaporation of water from parts of a plant, especially the leaves) and photosynthesis. This reaction would exacerbate the drought by reducing the amount of water entering the atmosphere, which in turn would reduce precipitation.

These responses should be observable as changes in trees' leaf area and the amount of chlorophyll (both measures of the forest's "greenness") in the forest trees by satellite measurements even for short-term droughts, so Scott Saleska of the University of Arizona and his colleagues looked at these measurements for the period of the drought.

They found that the greenness of the forest actually increased during the drought. The researchers think this could be because trees actually had more access to sunlight and could dig their roots deeper down in the soil to access water.

And this illustrates the fragility of relying solely on models to determine policy.  They won't admit it but under scrutiny the models used for atmospheric studies as just as flawed, and in some cases intentionally skewed.

The New York Times grimly reports on the reduced Arctic ice cap again as proof of the melting ice that will soon drown our coastlines, and kill all the polar bears, ala Al Gore's Scarefest movie.

Scientists Report Severe Retreat of Arctic Ice

The cap of floating sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, which retreats under summer’s warmth, this year shrank more than one million square miles — or six Californias — below the average minimum area reached in recent decades, scientists reported Thursday.

…

While satellite tracking of polar sea ice has been done only since 1979, several ice experts who have studied Russian and Alaskan records going back many decades said the ice retreat this year was probably unmatched in the 20th century, including during a warm period in the 1930s. “I do not think that there was anything like we observe today” in the 1930s or 1940s, said Igor Polyakov, an ice expert at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Interesting.  In one sentence we have the concession that measurement has only recently (less then 30 years) been accurate, but that they are "sure" that this is the worst ever, even as far back as 1934.

This ignores the findings that places like Greenland have physical evidence of warmer climates, if you go back 400-800 thousand years.

That illustrates the follow of trying to evaluate a planetary cycle where thousands of years pass without a blink relatively speaking, and the human cycle of understanding where even a hundred years is dramatic.

In other words, this is like examining one blade of grass in a foot ball field and making sweeping statements about the health, composition and complexity of the rest of the field.

The times article slips this interesting tidbit in:

Still, he and other scientists acknowledged that both poles were extraordinarily complicated systems of ice, water and land, and that the mix of human and natural influences was not easy to clarify.

Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high.

Yes you read that right.  Despite the alarmists predictions, the Antarctic Ice is growing and is near record levels.  Even they occasionally admit the that science is too complex and the scope of it too vast to nail down.

But undeterred we rely on fantasy calculators to help us reduce our "carbon footprint" spurring the buying of carbon credits and spurious claims that " my house pays a premium to the energy company to purchase only green renewable energy, proving that con men sometimes have college degrees and run large energy companies.

But, what about Biofuels you say?  Surely this is an idea whose time has come?

Yes, perhaps so, just to end our reliance on foreign oil.  But despite the claims to the contrary, the truth is that biofuels are showing not to be any better for the environment in terms of CO2 output, and may be worse.

Study: Biofuels May Produce More Greenhouse Gas Than Oil

A renewable energy source designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions may be contributing more to global warming than fossil fuels, a study suggests.

Measurements of emissions from the burning of biofuels derived from rapeseed and corn have been found to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than they save.

Other biofuels, especially those likely to see greater use over the next decade, performed better than fossil fuels, but the study raises serious questions about some of the most commonly produced varieties.

This is obviously a serious blow to the whole idea.  And oddly, it echoes another study that suggested that the efforts in Europe to curb CO2 had not only failed to bring a reduction but conversely, Europe's output was rising faster then the USA.

One final note.  The story I saw last night, as I mentioned, indicated India and China were the big dogs in pollution and CO2 right now.  It then went on to postulate that rather then intensifying a need to make them produce less, it was still our fault and responsibility, because while they produce more now, we actually made the problem as it sits no by ourselves so we have to moral responsibility to lead them to enlightenment and at our good example they will fall in line and join our bandwagon.

Make of that what you will.  I don't buy it.