In Australia, climate change initiatives have been delayed until at least 2013.  Despite that, the Federal Climate Change Department is not considering any cutbacks or layoffs.

TAXPAYERS will fork out $90 million a year to keep more than 400 public servants employed within the Federal Climate Change Department – despite most of them now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year.

A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra’s Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week.

It can be revealed that despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

Read the full Herald Sun article – Kevin Rudd’s Department of Hot Air costing taxpayers $90m

From Fox News:

Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore — the public face of global warming — has been mum on the topic.

The former vice president apparently finds it inconvenient even to answer calls to testify before the U.S. Senate. You can call him Al . . . but he won’t call back.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe — a prominent skeptic of global warming theory and the Republican leader of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee — issued a request for Gore to come testify on global warming. In an interview with FoxNews.com, Inhofe said he wants Gore to appear because "it will be interesting to ask him on what science he based his movie," a film the senator considers "science fiction."

Gore has yet to respond, but that didn’t prevent him from causing a stir at Apple’s shareholder meeting Thursday. According to CNET, Gore was seated in the first row while several stockholders bashed his high-profile views on climate change. One reportedly said Gore "has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted."

Read the Fox News article:  You Can Call Him Al … But Al Won’t Call You Back

Meeting in closed sessions in Bali, Environment and Climate ministers from several countries are insisting on a review of the performance of the IPCC and it’s head, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.  According to a UK Telegraph article,  the minister’s main concern is over Dr. Pachauri’s response to errors discovered in the 2007 IPCC assessment report on climate.

Environment and Climate ministers meeting in closed session in Bali last night insisted that an independent review should be carried out following the publicising of mistakes in its last report, and a row surrounding Dr Pachauri’s robust response to his critics. If his management is found to be at fault his position could become untenable.

Participants in the unprecedented meeting – held at the annual assembly of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Governing Council in Bali – were sworn to secrecy over the decision and it is only expected to be announced after its detailed scope and composition have been worked out by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation, the two UN agencies that oversee the IPCC’s work.

The ministers – led by Hillary Benn, the Environment Secretary,and his counterparts from Germany,. Norway, Algeria and Antigua and Barbuda – refused to allow Dr Pachauri to decide who would carry out the review, insisting it must be completely and demonstrably independent of the IPCC.

Read the full Telegraph article: IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to face independent inquiry.

Forbes India has an account of how a retired geologist took apart the alarmist climate claims of a Nobel Prize winning organization.

Hell Breaks Loose
Raina vividly remembers the day the report was released. “It is surprising that even on the day when this document was released by the minister, a lot of press asked me questions but nobody bothered to put them in the papers because probably at that time they thought this fellow knows nothing… yeh to mantriji ne kar diya,” he says. He was partially correct. Not many took the statement too seriously in the beginning, except for some stray critics writing in the media. But the one man who took immediate note of it and reacted bitterly was R. K. Pachauri, chairman of IPCC.

Read the Forbes India article: V K Raina: The Man Who Came In From The Cold

From KUSI News, San Diego, a special report:

Part one:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

A report in Newsweek, Iceberg Ahead, looks at the current state of climate science and politics… and how things got to this point.

What went wrong? Part of the blame lies, of course, with those who obstructed the efforts of the IPCC and the individual scientists, including bloggers who tried to sandbag scientists with spurious FOIA requests, and the perpetrators (as yet unknown) of the hack at the Climatic Research Unit. Part of the blame also falls on the climate scientists themselves. Many of them—including perhaps Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC head—may have stepped too far over the line from science to advocacy, undermining their own credibility. Some scientists, as a result, are now calling for a change in tone from antagonism to reconciliation. Climate science, they say, needs to open its books and be more tolerant of scrutiny from the outside. Its institutions—notably the IPCC—need to go about their business with greater transparency. "The circle-the-wagons mentality has backfired," says Judith Curry, head of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Read more: Iceberg Ahead – Climate scientists who play fast and loose with the facts are imperiling not just their profession but the planet.

The Netherlands’ largest daily newspaper, Der Telegraf, has totally vindicated the country’s most prominent global warming skeptic in an article titled, "Henk Tennekes – He was right after all (English translation)."

The director of the Netherlands Meteorological Institute, KNMI, until the early 1990s, Tennekes’ very vocal skepticism of the climate science from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change resulted in his forced resignation.

Tennekes continues to be very critical of the IPCC and the climate science of today:

“Why does the IPCC ignore the oceans? The top 2½ meters of all sea-water contain as much heat as
the total amount of heat in the atmosphere. Why has the topmost kilometre of the oceans turned
colder during the last five years?

We don’t know. Until we understand what is happening with the heat in the oceans, the models
which aim to predict the climate are totally useless.”

Read more:"Henk Tennekes – He was right after all (English translation)."

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli turned up the heat on global warming yesterday.

On behalf of the state, Cuccinelli filed a petition asking the federal Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its December finding that global warming poses a threat to people.

Cuccinelli also filed a petition with the federal appeals court in Washington seeking a court review of the EPA finding.

read more:  Va. challenges EPA’s stance on global warming

The last several months have been a very interesting time for those who monitor climate change issues.  Finally, problems with  the “settled science” of climate change are hitting main stream media outlets.  A concise Wall Street Journal editorial chronicles the majority of the most significant issues identified so far.

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal: The Continuing Climate Meltdown.

The Great Climate Change Retreat

UN must investigate warming ‘bias’, says former climate chie1f

Nature editor quits ‘Climategate’ review panel

IPCC ex-chairman Robert Watson calls for review of climate change mistakes

Series of missteps by climate scientists threatens climate-change agenda.