There are quite a few climate-related stories doing the rounds today, so here is something of a New Year's roundup.
Der Spiegel looks at the failures of scaremongering tactics and wonders if maybe the environmental groups shouldn't adopt the quiet tactics of Amnesty international. Similar thoughts, including some academic research on the subject, are discussed at Collide-a-Scape.
Politico notes that contrary to common perceptions, Republicans are much keener on global warming than they are letting on.
The cost of CFL (low-energy) lightbulbs is set to soar, as subsidies designed to soften the blow of their introduction are removed.
Tropospheric temperatures are dropping sharply, with the current anomaly only 0.180 degrees above its long-term average.
Matt Briggs has been much amused by his elevation to "villain of the day" by the Global Warming Superheroes site. One of his commenters, writing from Spain, notes that the Iberian Peninsula has a similar group called Ecoheroes.es, whose antics included getting college students to generate electricity from static bicycles hooked up to generators. As Briggs puts it:
The only point of bringing this up is to offer one more (minor) piece of evidence that the fight about “climate chance” is an ideological and not a scientific one. Evidence has little to do with it, belief is everything.
Some frightening stuff from Germany. First Haunting the Library discusses a climate change conference at which putting an end to democratic government is once again proposed as part of a solution to global warming. Almost as bad is the news from P Gosselin that Germany appears to have put in place legislation that will permit energy rationing as a means to save the planet. This is apparently a response to an EU directive, so similar legislation will be coming the way of all readers in the EU soon.
And lastly, as an antidote to all this pessimism, Matt Ridley looks at reasons to be cheerful.