Oops! The wheels may have just come off Al Gore’s Oscar-winning, eco-friendly tricycle/global-warming scam. From the U.K. Times on Line today (Sunday):

World may not be warming, say scientists

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

In other news of the rapidly-unraveling hoax that has enriched a few greedy men, frightened millions and threatened to beggar the economies of the post-industrial West, Britain’s left-wing Guardian reports:

Climate scientists admit fresh error over data on rising sea levels

Climate experts have been forced to admit another embarrassing error in their most recent report on the threat of climate change.

In a background note – released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last night – the UN group said its 2007 report wrongly stated that 55% of the Netherlands lies below sea level. In fact, only 26% of the country does. The figure used by the IPCC included all areas in the country that are prone to flooding, including land along rivers above sea level. This accounts for 29% of the Dutch countryside.

In the immortal words of Emily Litella (the late, great Gilda Radner):

[youtube V3FnpaWQJO0 nolink]

Read Lord Monckton’s well-deserved victory lap here.

The next thing you know, it will be time for this guy to sing.