CBC reports that crews have already started pulling up some tulip beds a week before the festival is even due to start.

It isn’t all bad. The late blooming beds are still going strong, although they might not last the full two weeks of the Festival. And there are some beds that have yet to flower.

Yes, this winter it snowed in Europe and the U.S. But it was damn hot up here.

“As in any day where we symbolize a matter of significance, Earth Day highlights the cause, it highlights the importance of all of us making individual efforts, and so yes, it’s important,” he said.

“I would like Canadians to think about our responsibility as stewards as one of the most remarkable landmasses on the earth and the obligation we have to leave Canada, cleaner and better than we found it,” he said.

To make that a reality, he said, Canadians should think about whether they should reduce the size of their car, recycle more, leave their phone chargers plugged in or if they need to keep that flat-screen TV on all the time.

“It’s a question of the individual choices we make,” he added. “How many televisions are you going to have in your house? Are you going to shop and try to get the most efficient appliances in your home? It’s about choices.”

If Canadians should think about changing anything it is their laws and politicians, not their behaviour. We have tried Prentice’s approach before, after all. The One Tonne Challenge was an abject failure of a policy for reducing carbon emissions, and would not have made much of a dent considering the sources of most of this country’s emissions (see chart).

Note: The grey portion of the chart represents GHG emissions from the energy sector. The activity sectors reflect the UNFCCC methodology. Source: Environment Canada, 2007a. National Inventory Report: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 1990–2005. Greenhouse Gas Division, Ottawa, Ontario.

And besides, if Prentice really wants to change Canadians’ behaviour, he should do more than exhort them to just think about doing so for one day a year. A price on carbon, as economists will agree, would do more to change behaviour than would simply thinking a little on Earth Day.

The table below shows c02 increases on Mt Loa since 1959. One can notice the spiking of co2 when el ninos occur, and how the co2 increases were higher when the PDO went warm. This further supports my idea that we are going to get our answer as to what is causing the warming. Cycles of c02 and the evidence that the co2 RESPONDS to warming not causes is pretty straightforward with co-ordinating the data. The real kick in the teeth of co2 being the driver is the big fall with the Pinitubo cooling!

[table at link]

When you put it against the global temps, the co2 is plainly following the Pacific.. the new cold PDO should see a flattening out of the rate of rise.

It would appear the co2 spikes are occurring with warming that is caused by the natural drivers of the warm PDO and the el nino. The most damming of the evidence against co2 being the driver was the drop around 1992 with Pinitubo cooling. To the rationale, objective person, does this look like co2 with its erratic up and downs around the times of el ninos, is the driver, or the driven. The answer is obvious, it is responding to spikes that occur with warming episodes, the driven, not the driver. You can see the response in co2 with and after the nino.

Joe Bastardi is a senior long range weathercaster with Accuweather, and often seen on CNN and Fox News. He is also quite, quite wrong about CO2, fails to explain the year on year overall rise in atmospheric CO2 measured at Mauna Loa and appears to be oblivious to the relationship between gas solubility and ocean temperature.

Meteorologists are not climatologists, and sometimes it shows.

We can get a sense of their ubiquity from the following maps, first showing just the windmills recorded on manors in escheats (inquisitions post mortem). Source: Mills in the medieval economy: England, 1300-1540 By John Langdon.

Water was also widely harnessed on manor lands, both inland and at the coast as tidal mills. 

To get a sense of how common water and wind power was – when it used to be in everyone’s backyard – I also recommend reading The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel.

For a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to Mark Fiore, self syndicated, for his animated cartoons appearing on SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, where his biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary.

According to the San Franciso Chronicle, “Fiore’s winning entry included "Science-gate," which adopts the voice-over tone of a mudslinging political ad to lampoon skeptics of global warming.”

You can see the winning entry here.

The Dutch ambassador isn’t worried:

Dutch ambassador Wim Geerts, who grew up with tulips, said Ottawa residents shouldn’t worry as things could change between now and festival time. "We’ll keep our fingers crossed," he said.

The organisers of the tulip festival plant the tulips to bloom in the early, middle or late season. They planted more than a million bulbs in October 2009.

There is no option of rescheduling the festival to coincide with the blooming of the tulips. "It’s a force that can’t be stopped," said Christine Charette, the festival’s director of planning and operations. "We have booked many acts. It has to begin as scheduled."

The festival, which runs from May 7 to May 24, draws close to 600,000 visitors to the Ottawa area.

Charette says she is hopeful. "This is Canada. It could snow tomorrow. We’re not too worried."

Source: Ottawa Citizen

The Onion.

His motivation:

"We’re putting the FOIs in just to find out what is happening with vivisection at the universities. If they’ve got nothing to hide, then it’s not a problem for them to put the information out there."

The researchers are nevertheless concerned. 

"The way these questions are phrased, I don’t think this is an exercise in openness," said Syed Khawar Abbas, veterinary officer at the University of Leeds. "This information can be used for intimidation. In the wrong hands, this information can cause problems for our scientists."

An information officer at a different university, who did not want to be identified, said: "This has caused a great deal of concern among our staff who are worried about receiving threats or worse. Most scientists faced with FOI requests are happy to put stuff into the open and welcome the scrutiny, but in this case they are having to second guess the motives of people who might use this information."

Oh yes, and this sounded familiar:

One university scientist said: "The most likely motivation here is that they want to catch somebody out. If they can find some bad wording in minutes from a meeting, then they can use that to claim we are up to no good."

I think we can go ahead now and add ‘harassment by FOI’ to the activist handbook.

Now, that is handy.

TREES will not uproot themselves and embark on blood-soaked killing sprees by 2035, global warming experts have admitted.

The International Panel on Climate Change confirmed the evidence had not been peer-reviewed and will now amend the section of its 2007 report devoted to ‘killer trees’.

A spokesman said: "It appears the claim was not based on new data or field research but on that bit with the angry, talking trees in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

"We’re reviewing our procedures to determine how it made it into the final draft, though someone should probably have noticed the vivid description of the attack on Saruman’s underground orc factory.

Given that The Telegraph and The Times are on a mission to identify every single example of grey literature in WGII and III so that they can absolutely lose their shit about it, it’s amazing that they missed this one.

The killer tree scandal is the latest embarrassment for the IPCC which has also been forced to withdraw claims that global warming will cause elephants to grow to more than 200ft tall and develop an extra pair of massive tusks after sceptics pointed out it was obviously from Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King.

Oh, when will it all end?