Gregory Flap Cole

It is being hyped as the summit that will save the planet. But according to critics, next week's climate change talks in Copenhagen are more likely to cost the earth. Researchers have estimated that the bill for the 12-day jamboree will top £130million - and will generate as much greenhouse gas as an entire Africa country. - Gregory Flap Cole

A pep talk by President Obama wasn't enough to give Senate Democrats the votes they needed to pass a massive health care overhaul, but a Monday vote on abortion funding could determine whether the legislation survives. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the chamber would take up an amendment by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., that would strictly prohibit taxpayer money from being spent on abortion. "I want to get it out of the way," Reid said. "I think we all do." But the amendment could ultimately stand in the way of the bill's final passage, no matter what the outcome of the Monday vote. - Gregory Flap Cole

So far, most of the Climategate attention has been on the emails in the data dump of November 19 (see here, here, and here), but the emails are only about 5 percent of the total. What does examining the other 95 percent tell us? Here’s the short answer: it tells us that something went very wrong in the data management at the Climatic Research Unit. 1. They didn’t want to release their data or code, and they particularly weren’t interested in releasing any intermediate steps that would help someone else 2. They clearly have some history of massaging the data — hell, practically water-boarding the data — to get it to fit their other results. Results they can no longer even replicate on their own systems. 3. They had successfully managed to restrict peer review to what we might call the “RealClimate clique” — the small group of true believers they knew could be trusted to say the right things. - Gregory Flap Cole

As the Senate debates the health care bill put together by Majority Leader Reid, the scramble is on to come up with a new compromise regarding the public option--the public health insurance plan modeled after Medicare that will be offered within the new health insurance exchange to Americans who lack workplace health insurance (and to workers in small firms that decide to buy coverage through the exchange). The goal of the current effort is simple: to get sixty votes to overcome a filibuster and pass a bill. Four of the sixty Senators who caucus with the Democrats have expressed, with varying degrees of certainty and specificity, that they don’t like the public option in the current bill. So the search is on for a compromise, any compromise, that will bring on these four, or allow one or two of them to be bypassed by picking up the support of Republican senators Olympia Snowe or Sue Collins. - Gregory Flap Cole

Suspicions were growing last night that Russian security services were behind the leaking of the notorious British ‘Climategate’ emails which threaten to undermine tomorrow’s Copenhagen global warming summit. An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia. The leaks scandal has left the scientific community in disarray after claims that key climate change data was manipulated in the run-up to the climate change summit of world leaders. - Gregory Flap Cole

As President Obama finished his speech to the Democratic caucus in the Capitol's Mansfield Room on Sunday afternoon, Joe Lieberman made his way over to Harry Reid. The independent who still caucuses with Democrats wanted to point something out to the Majority Leader: Obama didn't mention the public option. "Well, it was interesting to me -- of course everybody hears with their own ears -- that he didn't say anything about the public option," said Lieberman. "In other words, when he outlined how far we've come on the bill, he talked about the cost-containment provisions; he talked about the insurance market reforms; and he talked about enabling 30 million more people to get insurance. He said these are historic accomplishments, the most significant social legislation, or whatever you call it, in decades, so don't lose it." - Gregory Flap Cole

The Gridiron Club's usually low key winter meeting was anything but this year as the politican who's defined herself in opposition to Washington elites and the mainstream media stood before the Washington media elite A crowd of 195 — about double the average attendance of Gridiron members and their guests — came to hear Palin along with Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal, openly gay Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. Palin, in a smart black suit with what appeared to be a fur-lined purse, showed up to burnish her political credentials after a stop in Fairfax for her nationwide tour to flog her bestselling book, “Going Rogue.” +++++++ Loved the Joe Biden Rogaine joke - Gregory Flap Cole

While scientists march to the drumbeat of grant money, at least trees don't lie. Their growth rings show what's happened no matter which philosophy is in power. Tree rings show a mini ice age in Europe about the time Stradivarius crafted his violins. Chilled Alpine Spruce gave him tighter wood so the instruments sang with a new purity. But England had to give up the wines that the Romans cultivated while our globe cooled, switching from grapes to colder weather grains and learning to take comfort with beer, whisky and ales. Yet many centuries earlier, during a global warming, Greenland was green. And so it stayed and was settled by Vikings for generations until global cooling came along. Leif Ericsson even made it to Newfoundland. His shallow draft boats, perfect for sailing and rowing up rivers to conquer villages, wouldn't have stood a chance against a baby iceberg. Those sustained temperature swings, all before the evil economic benefits of oil consumption, suggest there are - Gregory Flap Cole