We come from a land downunder...

...and look likely to lead the developed (Northern Hemisphere) world back to environmental sanity. Not that the NZ Herald would care to notice of course...The wobbly house of cards that represents the IPCC response to climate change is teetering evermore. The latest tilting force (after Australian Senator Steve Fielding's declarations of independence) threatens to bring the whole edifice crashing down...Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.
The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.
“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

...“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.” ...more here...

and STOP PRESS...the renowned Princeton physicist, Will Happer has joined with colleagues in urging the American Physical Society (APS) to rethink its position on AGW. To its credit, it has agreed to do exactly that...more here... H/T The Reference Frame...