Monckton to Obama: “Few challenges facing America and the world are less urgent than combating the non-problem of ‘global warming’” [update 2]

Following up on his pre-election 'Open Letter to John McCain' on the non-worry that is the climate myth – a concise, up-to-date summary of both the peer-reviewed science on the global warming myth and the economic damage that will result from responding to the myth – Christopher Monckton (who he?) has delivered a message to President-Elect Obama on the 'urgency' of combating 'global warming'.  Says Monckton,

    Few challenges facing America and the world are less urgent than combating the non-problem of "global warming". On all measures, there has been no increase in global mean surface temperatures since 1995; and, according to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, near-surface temperatures in 2008 will be lower than in 1980, 28 years ago, the first complete year of satellite observations.
    On all measures, global temperatures have been falling for seven full years since late 2001. The January-to-January fall in temperatures between 2007 and 2008 was the greatest since global temperature records were first compiled in 1880, 128 years ago.
    The rate of new Arctic sea-ice formation in mid-October 2008 was among the fastest since satellite records began almost 30 years ago. There has been no decline whatsoever in the total global extent of sea ice since satellite records began.
   New records for the extent of northern-hemisphere snow cover were observed by the satellites in the winter of 2001 and again in 2007. This year, many ski resorts are opening early as Arctic weather strikes. Many temperature stations in the northern hemisphere recorded record low temperatures in October/November 2008.
    These facts are inconsistent with the notion that "global warming" is occurring, still less that it is dangerous.

Remember how the Obamessiah chose the moment of his nomination to tell the world “This is the moment the waters stopped rising and the planet started to heal.” Be a great miracle to pull off if the Messiah could stop a non-problem, huh?

PS: And by the way, for those of you who’ve bought the myth of the catastrophe of “rapidly rising” anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and who are still flummoxed by that relatively flat line in Friday’s graph (“where’s the huge leap Al Gore promised us?” some of you are still wondering), you’ll appreciate this snippet from Monckton’s letter to John McCain:

The facts about carbon dioxide concentration
    …Greenhouse gases keep the world warm enough for plant and animal life to thrive. Without them, the Earth would be an ice-planet all of the time rather than some of the time. The existence of greenhouse gases, whether natural or anthropogenic, retains in the atmosphere some 100 Watts per square meter of radiant energy from the Sun (Kiehl & Trenberth, 1997) that would otherwise pass out uninterrupted to space.
    According to the UN's climate panel [IPCC, 2007], anthropogenic "radiative forcings" from all sources compared with 1750 account for just 1.6% of this total, or perhaps almost 5% if temperature feedbacks as currently overestimated by the UN are taken into account. I say overestimated because the sum of the UN's high-end estimates of individual temperature feedbacks exceeds the maximum that is possible in the feedback equation used by the UN, implying that the central estimates are also very likely to be excessive…
   …[T]he "worst" greenhouse gas - the one which, through its sheer quantity in the atmosphere, accounts for two-thirds of the 100 Watts per square meter of greenhouse-gas radiative forcing reported by Kiehl & Trenberth (2007, op. cit.) - is water vapor. Carbon dioxide accounts for little more than a quarter.
    Two-thirds of the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is naturally present, and carbon dioxide occupies just one-ten-thousandth more of the atmosphere today than it did 250 years ago (Keeling & Whorf, 2004, updated): for the atmosphere is large and we are small.
    The UN's climate panel [IPCC, 2007] thinks that a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration compared with 1750 might occur later this century on current trends, and may lead to a global temperature increase of almost 6 °F. However, numerous papers in the peer-reviewed literature confirm that the UN's central climate-sensitivity projection must be excessive.
    Allowing for the fact that the UN's climate panel has exaggerated the effects of temperature feedbacks, the temperature increase in consequence of a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration could be as little as 1 °F. Values as low as this have been suggested in the peer-reviewed literature (e.g. Chylek et al., 2007).
    You have proposed … that three-fifths of the US economy should be closed down by 2060 [to combat “global warming”]. Do you not think that a far greater degree of scientific certainty as to the effects of minuscule increases in carbon dioxide concentration on temperature would be advisable before strategic damage on any such scale is inflicted upon the US economy from within, and by a Republican?

UPDATE 1: If you’d like to sit back and admire Christopher Monckton’s debating style, then read the comments thread on this post on CO2 and peer-reviewed science at the Indonesia Matters blog.

UPDATE 2: It’s the attack of the Christophers!  Says Christopher Booker: “President-elect Barack Obama proposes economic suicide for US.”