POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Letters to the Editor and other People Speak

FROM-Jewish Comment

Global warming Idiocy: Now Babies are Dying

Contributed by : Carol Gould


As we freeze, global warming conferences continue to proliferate......

London

Those of us who stay up late to watch the cycle of American news programmes on British television will know that a newborn baby died in New York this week because the ambulance called to attend could not get through the ice in time. A Brooklyn woman who had called 911 to seek help for her ailing husband watched him die as emergency services simply could not navigate the snow. All over the East Coast of the United States recriminations are reverberating : did Mayor Bloomberg underestimate the gravity of the storm? Were New Jersey Governor Christie and his Lt Governor right to have taken their respective holidays leaving Newark Mayor Cory Booker to personally shovel snow for his citizens? Finger-pointing is rife: were the airports in disaster mode because of local mismanagement? For that matter were hundreds of thousands of people stranded in Britain and Europe left to sleep on cold floors in airport terminals and in endless queues in sub-zero temperatures because of incompetence ?

Or was it something else? Already this week I am being browbeaten by the same colleagues and friends who loudly proclaim this latest winter nightmare the ‘result of global warming.’ When I meekly suggest I have been unable to grow tomatoes for three damp summers in a row even though I am south-facing I am told this is climate change. That is, global warming. An emailer in the United States has been sending me articles by scientists explaining that the slow rise in temperatures in parts of the globe ‘compresses the air patterns’ and ‘pushes cold air into particular geographical areas, causing temporary cold spells that metamorphose into sweltering summers.’ Fine -- if my punishing heating bills this winter mean I can at least grow a big crop of fruit and vegetables and save on grocery bills, I will be happy to accept the theory. Sadly I see no evidence of unbearable winters leading to glorious, sun-soaked summers here in Blighty.

In December 2006 I was lying in a hospital bed watching shocking television images of thousands of stranded Christmas tourists sitting in makeshift white tents and sipping soup at British airports due to freak freezing temperatures and fog. In pain from surgery I was glad to be in a warm, cosy place away from such vile conditions. I remember wishing I could stay an extra night and feeling the perishing cold on my face when I was discharged into the London fog and ice. Since then our winters have got colder and colder. But let’s look back in time.

My late mother used to tell me about women fainting on Yom Kippur despite carrying smelling salts at the local synagogue in Philadelphia in her childhood Septembers. She was born in 1914. She described the Philadelphia summers as deadly nightmares in which the only relief was the occasional release of water from fire hydrants. Remember all those pictures of the dust storms that consumed the United States in the early part of the twentieth century? In fact, in the early 1800s New England was the escape route for New Yorkers and Philadelphians leaving the scorching summer heat behind. Were there motorcars and factories spewing waste and contributing to global warming? No.

In 1916 the temperature in the Sahara desert rose to 136 Fahrenheit. Likewise in 1995 Chicago experienced its coldest temperature ever recorded: minus 27 degrees Fahrenheit. The average summer temperature for Philadelphia in 1995 was 78.6 degrees but in 2005 it was down to 77.8 degrees. Okay, I am willing to accept that globally 2010 was one of the hottest years on record but there were also anomalies : according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration unusually cool conditions occurred in western North America, northern Argentina, interior Asia and Western Europe. Germany had its coolest May since 1991, the 12th coolest on record. And if one more British friend screams at me ‘But Carol, this cold weather is a freak thing! It only happens once in a decade! We don’t need to waste money on ploughs and snow tires,’ I will cry.

So here is my point: I suggest we stop concentrating on global warming and start doing something about our shameful lack of preparation for catastrophically cold winters. Look at the pathetic scenes in London when temperatures had fallen to the minus 20s : I could not go out for ten days as I was not willing to break my hip navigating the endless rink of ice that was most of unsalted and ungritted North West London. Who will ever forget the sight of three men with shovels -- yes, shovels -- trying to clear snow from a massive runway at Heathrow? Or the weeping tourists so grateful to the Salvation Army for stepping in to give something to these folks to eat and drink because the British government didn’t have a clue as to what the hell to do?

We need to be ready for cold weather and we must never again have to witness the tragic scenes and fatalities that have ensued because of governments around the world wasting millions on global warming confabs. Instead we need to spend that money on making sure young mothers who have just given birth unaided are not abandoned because we cannot cope with the reality of global freezing.

******************
Statistics from:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/2010-has-been-hottest-year-on-record-noaa.php .

Sign of the times?

FROM-UK Express



The mini icebergs were formed in the coldest weather Britain has experienced in 300 years

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Letters to the Editor and other People Speak

FROM-Lubbock On Line

Submitted by may on Thu, 2010-12-30 03:18

Unable to pass his massive Cap and Trade Taxes into law, President Obama now plans to use the EPA to attack our economy and to reward his supporters.

Democrats were once satisfied with using the Federal courts to incrementally achieve their goals. Now Obama senses urgency, as many of his Radical supporters actually believe Global Warming is being caused by human economic activity. Other supporters, such as Al Gore, have positioned themselves to make billions of dollars from the Global Warming Hoax.

The EPA regulations that will go into effect will add to Obama’s current efforts to raise energy prices and to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. Obama has already extended his ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and other offshore areas. Obama has also continued his efforts against coal and even nuclear energy production.

The increased use of corn and other farm products to produce energy rather than food has increased the cost of almost all food items. The increase in energy costs and the cost of fossil fuel derived agricultural fertilizers has also significantly contributed to the rising cost of food worldwide. This has been devastating to the poor, especially to those who are poor in developing countries.

The average cost of regular unleaded gasoline in now about $3.14 per gallon. Gasoline prices have increased about $1.25 per gallon since Obama became President. There are predictions of $4.00 per gallon gasoline by summer, with further escalation of fuel costs to follow.

The solutions are simple. The United States of America has more proven recoverable reserves of both oil and coal than any other country. These natural resources need to be produced, sold, and used. The United States should be a net exporter of oil and coal. In addition, we have massive reserves of uranium that can provide us with inexpensive and plentiful electricity for the indefinite future.

We do not have a lack of energy reserves or natural resources in the United States. We do have a lack of courage, common sense, and political honesty

2010 Award for Political Incorrectness: Global warming lands into the deep freeze

FROM-Daily Caller

By Carey Roberts

During the waning days of December I often find myself desperate for comic relief from the hum-drum routines of life. In recent days I happened upon these mirthful headlines:

– “New Zealand Climate Scientists Admit To Faking Temperatures: The Actual Temps Show Little Warming Over Last 50 Years”

– “What Happened to the ‘Warmest Year on Record’: The Truth is Global Warming has Halted”

But the best headline of all festooned an article that ran in Tuesday’s Time magazine: “The Northeast Blizzard: One More Sign of Global Warming.” (I’m not making this stuff up!)

These headlines came as cold comfort to millions of teeth-chattering Americans, as December temperatures have fallen to near-record cold levels from Minneapolis to Miami.

Notwithstanding the hilarious musings of the Time editors, the fanciful claims surrounding global warming have turned out to be a colossal deception, an artful hoax, and an intellectual fraud.

There is truth in the statement that a glimmer of global warming was evident for a number of years — but not owing to human use of fossil fuels. Then two decades ago the trend suddenly reversed itself.

According to Dr. Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, satellite monitors now reveal global temperatures are dropping at a rate of about 1.3 degrees per 100 years. At this rate, you’ll probably need to adjust your thermostat a couple centuries from now.

Everyone knows Al Gore invented the internet and the global warming myth. But who gets the credit for debunking his brazen chicanery?

More than anyone else, that distinction belongs to Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma. When Inhofe became chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2003, he decided, in his words, “to study whether global warming was real, man-made, and potentially catastrophic, as many were asserting, before passing legislation that would place harsh financial burdens on American families.”

In short order, Sen. Inhofe found himself demonized and vilified by the global warming alarmists who hid behind the green velvet curtain of “scientific consensus.”

But reputable scientists began to take him up on his offer. Four years later Inhofe published a report brandishing the revelation that “Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007.”

Inhofe didn’t stop there. When purloined emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) revealed hypocrisy and fraud among leading climatologists, he rushed to publish “‘Consensus’ Exposed: The CRU Controversy.”

And when the greenies put out a tasteless clip depicting schoolchildren being blown up by an enviro-fascist teacher, Inhofe denounced the stunt as an “outrageous, last-ditch effort…to scare little kids.”

Inhofe has taken particular delight in exposing the pretentious claims of Al Gore. On February 23 he demanded that the former vice-president be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize. A month later Inhofe blasted Al Gore on the Senate floor for “trying to keep global warming alarmism alive,” comparing his mindless emanations to an ostrich with its head in the sand.

But Sen. Inhofe didn’t slay the well-financed Climategate monster alone. Inhofe was aided immeasurably by one Marc Marano, former communications director of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. While Inhofe brought raw political muscle and unflinching determination to the table, Morano, possessed of a rapier-like wit, is the master of parody and satire.

Earlier this week, Morano appeared on Fox News to comment on the recent blizzard that enveloped the Northeast. Here’s Morano at his finest: “There is no way anyone can falsify the global warming theory now because any weather event that happens ‘proves’ their case…Man-made global warming has ceased to be a science, it is now the level of your daily horoscope.”

Pay a visit to Morano’s website — www.climatedepot.com — and you’ll surely be rewarded with a politically incorrect belly-laugh, all at the expense of the hapless warming evangelists.

Ten years ago a research scientist was quoted in the U.K Independent as predicting within a few short years, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”

Today, Sen. James Inhofe and Marc Morano are being honored as recipients of the coveted 2010 Award for Political Incorrectness. Thanks to them, white-dusted children can unabashedly drag out their Radio Flyer sleds, heave a couple snowballs, and restore the faded luster to Frosty’s button nose.

"Notable Quotes"

"As every newspaper reader outside of North Korea should know by now, a warmer world is expected to be a world perhaps with more snow, perhaps with less snow, perhaps with both; perhaps with more floods, perhaps with more droughts, perhaps with both; perhaps with more cold, perhaps with more heat, perhaps with both…That covers more or less every possibility, apart from “no change at all”, hence it is similar to expecting at the roulette table any number between 0 and 14 and between 16 and 36, having seen “15″ come out several times in a row. There is no need of peer-review or statistical analysis to do that. There is not even any need to model the roulette wheel and its pockets. And as any trip to the Casino can show, there is no reward at all in betting upon such an extremely-wide-ranging set of 'projections'. "

Maurizio Morabito.

STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media


FROM-Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Global warming?

EPA power expands as blizzards blow

In modern public relations, half the battle is won if you can get the media to embrace your choice of wording.

For example, take "carbon pollution."

No one supports "carbon pollution." So when the activist pro-regulation group Greenpeace said it welcomed last week's announcement that the "EPA has finally announced the schedule by which it will regulate carbon pollution," the casual listener might have cheered that something was finally being done about nasty, gritty, airborne soot.

But sooty particulate emissions from furnaces and power plants have long been subject to strenuous regulation.

Instead, those who promote vastly greater and more expensive regulation of the energy industry -- those who would love to see America's industrial output decline as our personal electric bills soar, in part to purposely paralyze industrial and economic development in America and Europe until the unregulated Third World can "catch up" -- are purposely using the misleading phrase "carbon pollution" when they really refer to power plants emitting carbon dioxide.

When a single carbon atom has bonded with two oxygen atoms, it forms a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas that is not a pollutant, but is in fact used in the metabolism of plants, vital to the survival of life on earth. To now brand carbon dioxide a "pollutant" is verbal manipulation of the first order.

Environmentalists theorize that the activities of mankind are churning historically unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that this carbon dioxide is acting as a "greenhouse gas," trapping solar heat and thus causing the planet to warm to such an extent that it many endanger life on earth.

There are several problems with this theory. First, while there might have been some minor warming in the late 20th century -- a whistle-blower has revealed much of the supporting data was unreliable or simply faked -- there appears to have been no warming in the past decade, despite the fact that none of the Draconian penalties now proposed has been in effect.

Second, the geological and historical records indicate there have been periods of higher carbon dioxide concentration in the past, and that they lagged rather than preceded solar warming. There is also evidence that earth was once much warmer than it is now -- and that life did just fine.

But the biggest problem with global warming theory as now propounded is that it lacks a vital component of any legitimate scientific theory: deniability. The theory allows any change in weather to be attributed to global warming, while preventing any climate pattern from disproving it. Far from sound science, it is an article of faith.

Global warming theorists predicted a warm, dry winter. Instead, English and Northeast American airports are shut down under unusually heavy snows. It's snowing in Tasmania (where it's now high summer.) The National Weather Service says Nashville and Atlanta could see serious snowfall this week for the first time in 17 years.

So, if there's drought and unusually warm weather, we should attribute it to man-caused global warming. But if the world is seized in a new deep freeze, we can also attribute that to man-caused global warming?

That's quite a theory. It's almost as honest as the term "carbon pollution."

You know what; China also believes in Communism

FROM-Mediaite

STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media


FROM-THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

EPA blows off Congress, voters


After his climate agenda was dealt a major setback by Republican victories in November, President Barack Obama said, "Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way." Now his administration has announced its intention to skin the cat another way, despite questionable underlying science and certain economic harm.

Legislative efforts to impose costly cap-and-trade restrictions on greenhouse gases, ostensibly to curb global warming, already had ground to a halt in the Democratic-controlled Congress before November's balloting. After the election, the president acknowledged his preferred method to reduce emissions would be dead on arrival in the new Congress, where Republicans will have control of the House and have picked up six seats in the Senate.

But last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and oil refineries next year rather than await for enabling law.
Who needs Congress if the administration can accomplish the same thing by fiat?

There's a reason such specific regulations aren't approved by legislative bodies. Their alleged effectiveness and real costs would have to be defended in open debate by representatives answerable to voters. Even in California, where the sweeping and unnecessary Global Warming Solutions Act was passed in 2006, the particulars weren't included in the legislation. Instead, the California Air Resources Board was given broad authority to draft entirely arbitrary and what promise to be economically harmful regulations, nearly invulnerable to a complaining public. The administrative state is beyond voters' reach.

There's also a reason cap-and-trade couldn't pass even the Democratic-controlled Congress this year. As the New York Times recently acknowledged, the Obama administration scaled back its ambitions after climate legislation died in the Senate, challengers "mounted a vigorous assault on the science of climate change" and polls showed the public "more doubtful about the science."
Those are all good reasons to shelve this bad idea, even before considering the economic harm likely to result from the proposed drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

"If the regulations actually force companies to make meaningful emission reductions, they will drive up energy costs and be very expensive," observed Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who headed the EPA's air and radiation office under President George W. Bush and now represents utilities and other greenhouse emitters that would be affected.

But the EPA, much like California's ARB, now intends to fashion de facto taxes and impose strict regulations that will be almost impervious to public criticism. Almost.

Republicans wasted no time last week announcing they will oppose the administrative implementation of what couldn't pass Congress. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, expected to become chairman next month of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said, "There are serious questions about EPA's decision to move forward with these job-killing regulations that will usurp power from states, violating the principles of federalism that are the backbone of the Clean Air Act."

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, foreshadowed the battle. "I think we ought to start with a two-year pause" in upcoming regulations, said Simpson, who is expected to head a House panel controlling the EPA's budget.

We look forward to the open debate, which will be an opportunity to stem the frantic rush to solve the global warming nonproblem, while exposing the shaky science behind climate alarmism and informing the public of its actual costs.

It Never Ends!

FROM-Time

The Northeast Blizzard: One More Sign of Global Warming

It's become as much a winter tradition as eggnog at Christmas and champagne on New Year's Eve — the first major snowstorm of the year bringing out the climate-change skeptics. And the bona fide blizzard that has frozen much of the Northeast just a few days after winter officially began definitely qualifies as major. But while piles of snow blocking your driveway hardly conjure images of a dangerously warming world, it doesn't mean that climate change is a myth. The World Meteorological Organization recently reported that 2010 is almost certainly going to be one of the three warmest years on record, while 2001 to 2010 is already the hottest decade in recorded history. Indeed, according to some scientists, all of these events may actually be connected.

One theory is that a warmer Arctic may actually lead to colder and snowier winters in the northern mid-latitudes. Even as countries like Britain — suffering through the coldest December on record — deal with low temperatures and unusual snow, the Arctic has kept on warming, with Greenland and Arctic Canada experiencing the hottest year on record. Temperatures in that region have been 5.4°F to 7.2°F (3°C to 4°C) above normal in 2010. As a result, the Arctic sea-ice cover has continued to shrink; this September, the minimum summer sea-ice extent was more than 770,000 sq. mi. (2 million sq km) below the long-term average, and the third-smallest on record. Snow may be piling up in midtown Manhattan, but the Arctic is continuing its long-term meltdown....


Read it and Weep

Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts

FROM-Forbes

Larry Bell,

The media owe us better coverage on the climate than alarmism.

As 2010 draws to a close, do you remember hearing any good news from the mainstream media about climate? Like maybe a headline proclaiming "Record Low 2009 and 2010 Cyclonic Activity Reported: Global Warming Theorists Perplexed"? Or "NASA Studies Report Oceans Entering New Cooling Phase: Alarmists Fear Climate Science Budgets in Peril"? Or even anything bad that isn't blamed on anthropogenic (man-made) global warming--of course other than what is attributed to George W. Bush? (Conveniently, the term "AGW" covers both.)

Remember all the media brouhaha about global warming causing hurricanes that commenced following the devastating U.S. 2004 season? Opportunities to capitalize on those disasters were certainly not lost on some U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officials. A special press conference called by IPCC spokesman Kevin Trenberth announced "Experts warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity."

But there was a problem. Christopher Landsea, a top U.S. expert on the subject, repeatedly notified the IPCC that no research had been conducted to support that claim--not in the Atlantic basin, or in any other basin. After receiving no replies, he publicly resigned from all IPCC activities. And while the press conference received tumultuous global media coverage, Mother Nature didn't pay much attention. Subsequent hurricane seasons returned to average patterns noted historically over the past 150 years, before exhibiting recent record lows with no 2010 U.S. landfalls.

Much global warming alarm centers upon concerns that melting glaciers will cause a disastrous sea level rise. A globally viewed December 2005 BBC feature alarmingly reported that two massive glaciers in eastern Greenland, Kangderlugssuaq and Helheim, were melting, with water "racing to the sea." Commentators urgently warned that continued recession would be catastrophic.

Helheim's "erratic" behavior reported then was recently recounted again in a dramatic Nov. 13 New York Times article titled "As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas." Reporters somehow failed to notice that only 18 months later, and despite slightly warmer temperatures, the melting rate of both glaciers not only slowed down and stopped, but actually reversed. Satellite images revealed that by August 2006 Helheim had advanced beyond its 1933 boundary.

According to two separate NASA studies, one conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the other by the Langley Research Center, the oceans now appear to be heading into another natural periodic cooling phase within a typical 55- to 70-year dipolar warm/cool pattern. Although Greenland has recently been experiencing a slight warming trend, satellite measurements show that the ice cap has been accumulating snow growth at a rate of about 2.1 inches per year. Temperatures only recently began to exceed those of the 1930s and 1940s when many glaciers were probably smaller than now. (We can't be certain, because satellites didn't exist to measure them.)

A recent study conducted by U.S. and Dutch scientists that appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience concluded that previous estimates of Greenland and West Antarctica ice melt rate losses may have been exaggerated by double. Earlier projections apparently failed to account for rebounding changes in the Earth's crust following the last Ice Age (referred to as "glacial isostatic adjustment").

Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden, argues that any concerns regarding rising sea levels are unfounded. "So all this talk that sea level rising, this comes from the computer modeling, not from observations. ... The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. ... But they [IPCC] need a rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat ... if you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there 'must' be a focus on global warming. ... That is really bad, because you start asking for the answer you want to get."

Studies by the International Union for Quaternary Research conclude that some ocean levels have even fallen in recent decades. The Indian Ocean, for example, was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since.

Other world climate alarm bells chimed when it was reported in the media that September 2007 satellite images revealed that the Northwest Passage--a sea route between the U.K. and Asia across the top of the Arctic Circle--had opened up for the first time in recorded history. (This "recorded history" dates back only to 1979 when satellite monitoring first began, and it should also be noted that the sea route froze again just a few months later (winter 2007-2008).

The Northwest Passage has certainly opened up before. Diary entries of a sailor named Roald Amundson confirm clear passage in 1903, as do those of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Arctic patrol crew that made regular trips through there in the early 1940s. And in February 2009 it was discovered that scientists had previously been underestimating the re-growth of Arctic sea ice by an area larger than the state of California (twice as large as New Zealand). The errors were attributed to faulty sensors on the ice.

But these aren't the sorts of observations that most people generally receive from the media. Instead, they present sensational statements and dramatic images that leave lasting impressions of calving glaciers, drowning polar bears and all manner of other man-caused climate calamities.

Many intentionally target impressionable young minds and sensitive big hearts with messages of fear and guilt. Take, for example, a children's book called The North Pole Was Here, authored by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin. It warns kids that some day it may be "easier to sail than stand on the North Pole in summer." Imagine such images through their visualization: How warm it must be to melt that pole way up north. Poor Santa! And Rudolph! Of course it's mostly their parents' fault because of the nasty CO2 they produce driving them to school in SUVs.

Lots of grown-ups are sensitive people with big hearts too. Don't we all deserve more from the seemingly infinite media echo chamber of alarmism than those windy speculations, snow jobs and projections established on theoretical thin ice?

Weekly columnist Larry Bell is a professor at the University of Houston and author of Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax, which will be released on Jan. 1, 2011. It can be previewed at: www.climateofcorruption.com..

Global Warming Buries New York Under Snow

FROM-Human Events

The sky gods are angry.

by John Hayward

If you’re having trouble reading this because your computer monitor is vibrating, I’ve got two pieces of bad news for you. First, you’re the one bouncing, not the computer. Second, you’re shivering because you’re buried under two feet of snow. A record-breaking snowstorm is rolling across the Northeast, bringing white Christmases as far south as Atlanta, Georgia – the first time that’s happened in over a hundred years. There was significant Christmas snowfall in Columbia, South Carolina for the first time in recorded history. Air traffic is fouled across the country, trapping thousands of people in airports, where they sleep fitfully in concourses beside fast-food joints that have run out of hamburgers. Late word has it that some snowbound airports will resume flights this evening.

If it makes you feel any better, global warming fanatics assured us snow was a thing of the past as recently as 2000. The senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia told the U.K Independent that “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” These fanciful assurances were based on anecdotal information – England had just gone through a few seasons with abnormally low snowfall – wrapped in the usual pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and fraudulent statistics.

Rest assured the white stuff blocking your windows is also proof of global warming. In fact, that’s the title of global warming high priest George Monbiot’s article in the Guardian UK just last week: “That Snow Outside Is What Global Warming Looks Like.” No, it doesn’t make a lick of sense, but that’s the point: “climate change” is a religion, whose witch doctors blame everything on the angry sky gods only they can appease. If the good people of Columbia had gone another year without a white Christmas, that would have “proved” global warming too.

The primary cause of our monster Northeastern snowstorm is said to be a massive low pressure system off the North Carolina coast. Weather is a fantastically complex system, which not even experts equipped with state-of-the-art technology can accurately predict only a few days into the future. No such predictions can be made on anecdotal data, as the global warmists were fond of doing during hot summers in the 1990s and 2000s. The immediate stuff just gets people’s attention, so the cult can beat them about the head and shoulders with its cooked data and manipulated graphs.

In that spirit, let me take the opportunity of this blizzard to point out that global warming is a hoax, in no small part because its deranged true believers and con-artist leaders offer blizzards as proof it is true. If you’re caught in this one, please be careful, stay safe, and keep warm.

STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media


FROM-The Washington Times

California's 'cap-and-trade' escapade

Golden State pushes climate change over business climate

The fact that the lame-duck Congress balked at endorsing "cap-and-trade" legislation didn't deter California from approving its own version of the extreme green scheme for restricting industrial emissions. The move bolsters the state's reputation as the left coast's home for ideas out of left field. Soon Americans will witness what happens when global-warming hysteria worsens an already sick economy.

California's Air Resources Board approved a cap-and-trade system on Dec. 16 that covers 360 businesses at 600 locations statewide. In its first phase, starting in 2012, electric utilities and other large manufacturers will receive free permits allowing emissions at their current levels. In the second phase, taking effect in 2015, refiners and distributors of gasoline, diesel, natural gas and other fuels will be required to buy emissions permits at auctions or purchase them from other companies. Gradually, the state will reduce the number of permits available, making them more expensive. To avoid exceeding their emissions limits, companies will be forced to develop dubious new methods of doing business.

Two inconvenient truths are getting in the way of the liberals' energy-free utopia. First, cap-and-trade is a solution in need of a problem; it's intended to remedy global warming while the earth is getting cooler. Second, the scheme is transparently a means of wealth redistribution that allows the political class to punish producers and reward the unsuccessful - a sure recipe for social dysfunction.

Global warming was recently rebranded as "climate disruption" to downplay the dearth of evidence correlating purportedly rising temperatures and increases in industrial emissions. In the West, California residents of the Sierras can be excused for joining the ranks of skeptics as they are buried beneath snow measured in yards rather than inches. In the East, Americans as far south as normally balmy Georgia have been shoveling the white stuff. Countless anecdotes back up global temperature readings that reveal a distinct cooling trend since 1998.

Even environmentalists in surfer land admit the economic impact of cap-and-trade is uncertain. The estimated cost of permits purchased by California businesses ranges between $3 billion and $58 billion by 2020. Job "leakage" predictably will result when any new green jobs are offset by existing jobs disappearing as businesses flee the state to escape onerous climate regulations. Enterprises that stay put will incur higher business costs, which will be passed along to consumers, making life in California more expensive than it already is.

Ultimately, families - rich and poor alike - will pay that bill in the form of higher prices at the cash register. Accordingly, the Air Resources Board authorized the creation of a Community Benefits Fund to funnel money back into impoverished communities, or as President Obama would say, "spread the wealth around." This policy reflects classic liberal dogma that encourages dependency rather than independence, all while undermining the American way.

The limping global economy has many nations reconsidering bureaucratic fads concocted when times were good and economic growth allowed for expensive social experiments. Times have changed. With U.S. unemployment around 10 percent and rising, it's time for America's anti-growth ideas to melt away

Global warming explanations made up as they go along

FROM-OC Register


by Mark Landsbaum




You may have heard the fascinating explanation for the cold weather sweeping the globe. Yeah, some say that global warming is making the earth cold. There’s, of course, better explanations, but don’t expect to hear them from the global warming alarmists.


We’ll provide some comments on this canard for you on the warmists’ inability to have predicted, let alone explain, the cold snap, though:


“You can make up any analogy you want, but the fact is that computer models don’t show that change,” Pat Michaels, a climatologist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute told The Daily Caller. It is, said Michaels, the “core problem of climatology:” “It is attempting to explain everything even when everything becomes contradictory.”


And this:


“They make this stuff up as they go along,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.


And this:


“This failure to skillfully predict any of the extreme weather patterns we have seen in the past should be a wake-up call to policymakers and the public that the climate science community is overselling the prediction skill that is possible,"

writes Roger Pielke Sr. “Unfortunately, they also continue to miss the significance that it is the regional circulations that matter much more, not a global average anomaly, as I discussed on my post:

An Example of Why Regional Weather Patterns Are More Important Than A Global-Average Temperature Anomaly

“… Moreover, until and unless they can skillfully predict observationally documented CHANGES in the statistics (probabilities) of the different major circulation patterns, their explanations are necessarily flawed. There is no evidence that the global climate model multi-decadal predictions (and even shorter term runs on a year or less into the future) have the needed skill.”

But what the heck, why not implement a bunch of costly rules and regulations and taxes and penalties to curb greenhouse gas emissions by microscopic margins even though they probably have nothing to do with temperature increases and even if temperature increases aren’t threatening?

What’s the worst that can happen? Wreck the economy?

Told you so

FROM-The Daily Caller

OF COURSE-It's all in the marketing

FROM-The Times of India

IPCC looking for communications manager to tackle crisis situation

WASHINGTON: Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is reportedly looking for its first Communications and Media Relations Programme Manager to help it avoid a mismanaged situation like last year, when it was stated that "most Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035."

The IPCC, which was honoured with the 2007 Nobel peace prize for its work, had a lot of explaining to do after journalists last year exposed errors in its 2007 assessment report.

IPCC officials have also admitted that the group's crisis management was as bad as the now-infamous statement that most Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 (see 'Glacier estimate is on thin ice'). At the time, the IPCC reportedly had no full-time professional communications director who could have dealt with the matter instantly.

The paper quoted Nick Nuttall, spokesperson and head of media with the United Nations Environment Programme that set up the IPCC in 1988 jointly with the World Meteorological Organization, as saying that in a world of rapid communication, "you cannot move at the speed of the slowest."

"The glacier affair didn't need to become the feeding frenzy for the international media that it did, he says. In scientific circles it had been known for months that something was badly wrong with the glacier claim. A skilled public-relations manager with a good network of relevant scientists could have nipped the problem in the bud before it burst on the scene, rather than having journalists claim a scoop," Nuttall added.

The IPCC was later criticised for its claim that 'most Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035' by many scientists who said that the claim was based on a decade-old interview of one climate scientist in a science magazine, The New Scientist, and that hard scientific evidence to support that figure was lacking.

CARB's Carbon Capers

FROM-The American Thinker


S. Fred Singer

In a nearly unanimous vote, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) just approved a statewide cap-and-trade scheme to limit emissions of CO₂ from six hundred major industrial plants, starting in 2012.  Proposition 23 on the California ballot, defeated in November, was an attempt to at least delay the state's Cap-and-Trade law, AB-32, until California's record unemployment eased.  However, the slanted description appearing on both the official Voter Guide and the ballot, written by then-State Attorney General Jerry Brown and his office, the well-funded "No-on-23" campaign, and some very heavy media bias, had Californians believing that Prop. 23 would thwart efforts to curb air pollution -- i.e., smog.  So Prop 23 went down in flames, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs, and perhaps a million.

The "Cooler Heads" blog relates that the adopted regulation is more than three thousand pages long, but most of the details have yet to be worked out.  CARB rushed to meet a December 31 deadline set by the 2006 legislation that authorizes CARB to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.  In order to protect California business from out-of-state competition, CARB will (initially) allocate emissions credits (aka energy-rationing coupons) for free.  The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is the only precedent for free allocation of carbon credits; it resulted in windfall profits for politically connected industries and higher electricity prices for consumers.

Not surprisingly, the New York Times approves of the scheme: "[AB32] will put the state far ahead of the rest of the country in energy reform."

The regulations, if they go into effect, will create the largest market for carbon trading in the country.  (Ten states including New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and the New England states are participating in a less extensive system known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which covers only electric utilities.)

By the time the CARB program takes effect in 2012, California regulators plan to have created a framework for carbon trading with New Mexico, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec -- some of its partners in the Western Climate Initiative.  But as long as Congress and the Obama administration shun cap and trade, California, instead of being the forerunner of a national movement, will remain part of a far-flung archipelago of states and provinces participating in a small carbon market. 

Mary D. Nichols, CARB's chairwoman, said, "We are well aware that we in California are on a different path from many other states in our willingness to be at the front" of the cap-and-trade movement.  An idea of her mindset comes from a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2008, where she mentioned California's efforts on climate change:

We know that the economic crisis we will face from unmitigated climate change could dwarf [sic] anything we have ever seen. That alone is a compelling enough reason to take swift action. But there's another reason also, which is that developing a new clean energy economy that drives and rewards investment and innovation, creates jobs and serves as the engine for sustainable economic growth is exactly what we need at a time like this.

Transportation and utility industry representatives see Nichols' push on climate-change regulation in California as evidence of an ingrained pro-regulatory bias.

I recollect Nichols as a former assistant EPA administrator in the Clinton years, under Carol Browner.  In testimony to Congress in 2000, on phasing out the chemical fumigant methyl bromide (of great economic importance to agriculture but suspected of causing damage to the ozone layer), she claimed benefits of 32 trillion dollars!  And no one questioned how she arrived at this wild number.  A more reasonable value, I argued in my opposing testimony, would be zero benefits: There was no evidence of MeBr, with an atmospheric lifetime of only a few months, reaching the stratosphere; no evidence of a bromine-caused ozone depletion; and no evidence from ground-level monitoring stations of any increase in cancer-causing solar UV.

Among the industries immediately affected by the CARB rules will be producers of cement, which requires an industrial process in which the release of carbon dioxide is an integral part.  Steve Regis, vice president of CalPortland, said in an interview, "We feel like we're really exposed because 60 percent of our direct emissions are from the process -- nothing we can do about them."  The re-engineering of that process, Regis said, would entail major costs, if it is even possible.  He added that some California plants had recently shut down and moved their production out of state.

The midterm elections turned into a sweeping repudiation of the Democrats' failed status quo -- except, that is, in California, says Investor's Business Daily.  With the exception of the governor's office, California has been a virtual one-party state since the 1960s.  Now, thanks to decades of anti-business policies promulgated by a series of left-leaning legislatures, its economy and finances are a mess, and it is hemorrhaging jobs, businesses, and productive entrepreneurs to other states.

How bad has it gotten in the erstwhile Golden State?  Consider:

• Some 2.3 million Californians are without jobs, making for a 12.4-percent unemployment rate -- one of the highest in the country.
• From 2001 to 2010, factory jobs plummeted from 1.87 million to 1.23 million -- a loss of 34 percent of the state's industrial base.
• With just 12 percent of the U.S. population, California has almost a third of the nation's welfare recipients; meanwhile, 15.3 percent of all Californians live in poverty.
• The state budget gap for 2009-2010 was $45.5 billion, or 53 percent of total state spending -- the largest in any state's history.
• Unfunded pension liabilities for California's state and public employees may be as much as $500 billion -- roughly 17 percent of the nation's total $3 trillion at the state and local level.

This disaster has been building for decades.  In the end, only the voters of California could have changed things.  But on Tuesday, November 2, they opted for more of the same governance.  Empowering CARB regulation will only make conditions worse.

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service.  A fellow of the Independent Institute and the Heartland Institute, he has authored books and monographs on energy policy and climate change -- most recently,Unstoppable Global Warming-Every 1500 Years (with Dennis T. Aver

Like a twisted pretzel

For some time now the so called scientific community has gone to some lengths to discredit "The Iris Effect" hypothesized by Richard Lindzen of MIT. "The Iris Effect" is a rather simple explanation of what happens when the Earth's oceans heat up for whatever reason

..increased sea surface temperature in the tropics would result in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth's atmosphere.[1] This suggested infrared radiation leakage was hypothesized to be a negative feedback which would have an overall cooling effect.

Recently so called prestigious climate scientist and institutions joined forces to to repudiate Dr. Lindzen's  most recent published scientific heresy against THE PARTY LINE. This is what the so called "consensus" scientific community does when their ideological induced scientific conclusions are challenged, they gang up and attack the offending person, hypothesis, or thought with a zealotry not seen since the Spanish Inquisitions. Perhaps this phenomena was best explained by Garth Paltridge:

"Basically, the problem is that the research community has gone so far along the path of frightening the life out of the man in the street that to recant publicly even part of the story would massively damage the reputation and political clout of science in general. And so, like corpuscles in the blood, researchers all over the world now rush in overwhelming numbers to repel infection by any idea that threatens the carefully cultivated belief in climatic disaster. "

This strategy has been quite effective over the years, silencing, marginalizing, and demoralizing even the most learned and once respected voices in the scientific community. Stalin would be proud.

But what happens when the alarmist crowd of so called scientist are caught with their pants down? I mean the entire global warming racket is built upon a very simple premise right? The Globe is Warming.

Let us go down memory lane to recount some, shall we?

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

That is a well know portion of a story written in the UK Independent on March 20, 2000 Of course the past three years have been extremely cold and snowy winters for Great Britain and most of Europe, so that few years prediction is not exactly panning out, Lest we be accused of not using the correct time frame, Dr, Viner also said "Heavy snow will return occasionally, but when it does we will be unprepared. We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," Well he certainly was correct on that one now wasn't he? Great Britain certainly has not been prepared for the cold and snow these past couple of years. Primarily due to buying into the predictions of learned scientist like Dr. Viner.

But England is not alone, do you realize that on December 21 Ireland experienced it's coldest day ever recorded

“At all our stations thus far it has been the coldest December on record,” Mr Fleming said. “Those records in some cases go back to the mid-1850s.”


Speaking at a meeting of the Government’s Severe Weather Co-ordination Committee yesterday, Mr Fleming said a daily maximum temperature of -9.4 degrees was recorded at Ballyhaise, Co Cavan on Tuesday.


“That’s the lowest daily maximum ever recorded in Ireland, which makes it the coldest day ever recorded in Ireland.”

This cold and snowy weather is not restricted to our European friends either nor is it a one year event. Last year in Maine we had this:

The coldest temperature ever recorded in Maine, a frigid 50 degrees below zero, was reached when a blast of Arctic air hit New England last month. The record is tied with a thermometer reading from 1933 in Bloomfield, Vermont for the coldest recorded temperature in New England history.

So what is a scientific community to do when they call for less snow and warmer winters that do not come? They twist themselves into pretzels to explain the Earth to fit their preconceived notions. From December 25, 2010 New York Times:

Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming

The author and reputed scientist Judah Cohen then explains much of what I just briefly did, it's been cold and snowy!

..Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

And

Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

Obviously Dr. Cohen has an explanation for all this even if it ignores Dr. Viner's predictions from a few years previous, and here it is:

Annual cycles like El Niño/Southern Oscillation, solar variability and global ocean currents cannot account for recent winter cooling. And though it is well documented that the earth’s frozen areas are in retreat, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world’s major cities are having colder winters.

Of course not, we could not have natural cycles responsible for anything, where would all the grant money come from!

But one phenomenon that may be significant is the way in which seasonal snow cover has continued to increase even as other frozen areas are shrinking. In the past two decades, snow cover has expanded across the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Siberia, just north of a series of exceptionally high mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, the Tien Shan and the Altai.

I am sure that the reason for this increased snow cover has to do with global warming due to increased evaporation, right?

The high topography of Asia influences the atmosphere in profound ways. The jet stream, a river of fast-flowing air five to seven miles above sea level, bends around Asia’s mountains in a wavelike pattern, much as water in a stream flows around a rock or boulder. The energy from these atmospheric waves, like the energy from a sound wave, propagates both horizontally and vertically.

As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow over the continents. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

See I was right! Global warming caused evaporation which causes more snow fall- which causes?

The sun’s energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere, just as a bigger rock in a stream increases the size of the waves of water flowing by.

Boy that all sounds vaguely familiar doesn't it? "See the Iris Effect"  This suggested infrared radiation leakage was hypothesized to be a negative feedback which would have an overall cooling effect.

The increased wave energy in the air spreads both horizontally, around the Northern Hemisphere, and vertically, up into the stratosphere and down toward the earth’s surface. In response, the jet stream, instead of flowing predominantly west to east as usual, meanders more north and south. In winter, this change in flow sends warm air north from the subtropical oceans into Alaska and Greenland, but it also pushes cold air south from the Arctic on the east side of the Rockies. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, cold air from Siberia spills south into East Asia and even southwestward into Europe.

That is why the Eastern United States, Northern Europe and East Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century.

Kind of shoves it to his English peer Dr. Viner doesn't he? But he has succesfully saved the scientific community from embarrassing cold weather. The brilliant Dr.Cohen has hypothesized warm temperatures created a negative feedback which caused  cooling-brilliant, which he himself identifies in himself:

Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. They have ignored the snow in Siberia

Last week, the British government asked its chief science adviser for an explanation. My advice to him is to look to the east.

Oh yes Judah, you are simply brilliant, applause, applause! Negative feedback, what a concept! But the true brilliance of this piece of pretzel twisting is reserved for the final sentence.

It’s all a snow job by nature. The reality is, we’re freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.

So to put it simply Global Warming causes Global Cooling. Well that would imply that the Global Climate system is self correcting now wouldn't it? Or as Judah explains to us less sophisticated:
Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming!

This would all be amusing if the scientific community did not "rush in overwhelming numbers to repel infection by any idea that threatens the carefully cultivated belief in climatic disaster. "


Or rush madly out to explain all the inconsistencies in their narrative of doom. A narrative doomed to ultimate disaster by something modern climate scientist seem to ignore-reality.

Merry Christmas

FROM- Skeptic's Corner

EPA announces it won't wait for Congress on carbon regulation

FROM-Washington Examiner

By: MERRILL HARTSON

Stymied in Congress, the Obama administration is moving unilaterally to clamp down on greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for new power plants and oil refinery emission standards over the next year.

In an announcement posted on the agency's website late Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution contributing to climate change.

"We are following through on our commitment to proceed in a measured and careful way to reduce GHG pollution that threatens the health and welfare of Americans," Jackson said in a statement. She said emissions from power plants and oil refineries constitute about 40 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution in this country.

President Barack Obama had said two days after the midterm elections that he was disappointed Congress hadn't acted on legislation achieving the same end, signaling that other options were under consideration.

Jackson's announcement came on the same day that the administration showed a go-it-alone approach on federal wilderness protection — another major environmental issue. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his agency was repealing the Bush era's policy limiting wilderness protection, which was adopted under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

On climate change, legislation in Congress putting a limit on heat-trapping greenhouse gases and allowing companies to buy and sell pollution permits under that ceiling — a system known as "cap and trade" — stalled in the Senate earlier this year after narrowly clearing the House. Republicans assailed it as "cap and tax," arguing that it would raise energy prices.

But the Senate in late June rejected by a 53-47 vote a challenge brought by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski that would have denied the EPA the authority to move ahead with the rules.

Jackson noted in Thursday's statement that her agency that several state and local governments and environmental groups had sued EPA over the agency's failure to update or publish new standards for fossil fuel plants and petroleum refineries.

Two days after the midterm elections, Obama served notice that he would look for ways to control global warming pollution other than Congress placing a ceiling on it.

"Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way," he said. "I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problem."

The EPA was at the center of the battle in Congress over climate change policy, especially in the wake of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling giving the agency the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases.

"While there will be attacks on (EPA's) authority, it is important that there not be any surrender on EPA's ability to do the job," Trip Van Noppen, president of the environmental group Earthjustice, said earlier this year.

The EPA moved against climate change on another front earlier this year, issuing the first-ever federal guidelines for reducing greenhouse emissions from industrial sources. On Nov. 10, the agency sent new guidelines to states. It suggested that dirty fuel used to power oil refineries be replaced with cleaner sources and it called for more efficient electricity and energy use with existing nuclear power plants.

In Thursday's announcement, Jackson said that under an agreement associated with the court suit, EPA will propose standards for power plants in July 2011 and refineries in December 2011 and will issue final standards in May and November 2012, respectively.

In this time, the agency will schedule "listening sessions" with representatives of business and local governments, ahead of the formal rule-making process.

The Sierra Club's Mission

FROM-American Thinker


By Chuck Rogér

"Don't you care about global warming?" asked a sign carried by a Sierra Club demonstrator. The preachy admonishment packs the same intellectual weightiness as "Free the color purple!"

Well-adjusted people "care" about neither purple nor global warming. Colors and recurring natural climate phenomena fly below the radars of emotionally healthy minds. Earth's atmosphere did indeed heat up a bit from the mid-1800s until 1995. But for the last fifteen years, there has been no "global warming" to "care about."

Considering the downward average temperature trend for Earth's atmosphere so far this century [1], maybe Sierra Clubbers will take to waving signs warning, "Global cooling: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid." Interestingly, rumor has it that some Sierra members are forming a new club. The debut demonstration is expected to include enraged psychogeologists protesting the lack of consideration for the welfare of granite. The poor stone is violently hacked from Mother Earth's bosom to satisfy humanity's vulgar desire for "buildings."

Exactly how do zealots react when confronted with stunning proof of the pointlessness of their zealotry? Zealots double down. America has seen this brand of arrogance stepped up a notch in congressional Democrats since the lefty agenda was shellacked on November 2. Global warmists are doubling down as well. Since Climategate revealed the massive dishonesty that shaped the global warming hoax, "climate change" goons have ratcheted up the gooniness.

During the demonstration featuring the "Don't you care about global warming?" sign, another sign demanded "No More Coal." Under the unproven claim that CO2 released by coal combustion causes global warming, the Sierra Club wants to ban the cheapest form of electricity production and replace it with unreliable and unaffordable "green" power sources. Christopher Horner reports that legal actions initiated by the Sierra Club and other radical "green" groups have caused a wind and solar power facility construction binge. But those projects offer zero promise for meeting increasing electricity demand.

The Sierra Club's coal-killing tactics seriously threaten America. The Wall Street Journal reports that coal plants will constitute only 10 percent of new power generation capacity by 2013, a 44-percent drop since 2009. Natural gas is taking up the slack. But because natural gas is also used to manufacture plastics, fertilizers, and other chemicals, the higher demand will drive up gas and electricity prices.

...Which is what the Sierra Club wants.

Sierra-style global warmists have a firm Capitol Hill lobbying foothold from which to push the "no more coal" objective. Many more Climategates may be needed to loosen the grip that environmental dogmatists have on campaign contribution-hungry politicians. Worse still, unless and until Obama leaves the White House in 2013, there's little hope for reversing the president's ruinous national energy policy. A Wall Street Journal analysis summarizes Obama's approach: "Phase One: Inaugurate the era of ‘green' energy. Phase Two: Overturn the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Phase Three: Carbon neutrality."

The Sierra Club is doing Obama's bidding. The organization sues to block new and shut down existing coal plants. In its zeal to "save the planet," Sierra is demonizing life-giving technology. Horner again:

The truth is that countries that don't have modern coal-fired electric power have terrible air, soil and water quality. They fall victim to outrageous levels of infant respiratory disease. Their young people are sentenced to spending their days cutting down forests for wood and wading through dung to form patties for fuel. If poor countries had the coal-powered electricity that the Sierra Club wants to take away from Americans, their economies would radically improve and, to use President Obama's words, would "fundamentally transform" their people's lives by creating wealth and improving the environment.

Unfortunately, the President and his political party pander to activist environmental groups that would litigate, legislate and regulate central coal-fired electricity out of existence.

Nonexistence is precisely what the Sierra Club wants for coal-fired electricity plants. To Earth-worshiping ideologues, it matters not one iota that today's coal-burning process is amazingly clean. Nasty humanity may wither for want of coal, but holy Mother Earth must thrive.

Since 2001 alone, the Sierra Club claims to have killed two-thirds of the 150 coal-fired power plants originally proposed for construction. The hopes and wishes of green zealots are now also bolstered by backdoor EPA regulatory methods that help the Sierra Club further its anti-progress agenda.

So, then, primitivists are poised to control the lives of 310 million people through legal maneuvering, scientifically baseless regulation, and political coercion. The Earth worshipers pose a clear and present danger to America's energy supply, and therefore to the people's health and wealth. Continued coal-fired power plant shutdowns will also result in insufficient power generation at the worst possible times -- during demand-intensive temperature extremes. But human suffering does not concern the Sierra Club.

Three years ago, I witnessed a cocktail-sipping San Francisco area Sierra Club attorney sit and hold court with enthralled listeners. The attorney described the pleasure that she derives from inflicting economic pain on manufacturers and sending "messages" to consumers of capitalists' products. I wondered aloud if her computer, refrigerator, TV, phones, and air conditioners were powered by electricity. Court spectators chuckled. But the jab flew over the head that sported the up-tilted chin, spittle-flinging lips, and angry eyes peering down a nose with nostrils flaring each time the brain recalled a legal victory over planet-hating wretches.

It Never Ends!

FROM-The Independent

Expect more extreme winters thanks to global warming, say scientists


By Steve Connor, Science Editor


Scientists have established a link between the cold, snowy winters in Britain and melting sea ice in the Arctic and have warned that long periods of freezing weather are likely to become more frequent in years to come.

An analysis of the ice-free regions of the Arctic Ocean has found that the higher temperatures there caused by global warming, which have melted the sea ice in the summer months, have paradoxically increased the chances of colder winters in Britain and the rest of northern Europe.

The findings are being assessed by British climate scientists, who have been asked by ministers for advice on whether the past two cold winters are part of a wider pattern of climate change that will cause further damaging disruption to the nation's creaking transport infrastructure...

Read and weep

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Letters to the Editor and other People Speak


FROM-This is South Devon

Forget global warming, cooling is the problem

THREE winters ago I noted in the Herald letters pages that average temperatures had been dropping sharply and we were likely to be in for some severe winters.

As a result I substantially upgraded the insulation of our house — no fashionable bare floors now remain, they are covered in thick layers of underlay and carpet.

I commented at the time that officialdom had been completely sold on the notion of global warming even though the evidence was, as noted by myself and other correspondents, thin in the extreme.

The serious point about my earlier letters was to point out that we had only a Plan A to combat drastic warming, but none at all for Plan B — cooling.


This country has been cooling dramatically for five years (google 'Hadley CET to 1772' to see the temperatures).

This graph-maintained by the Met office unfortunately cuts off prior to a warming period very similar to today, culminating in the 1730s.

Hundreds of other places all around the world that have been cooling for decades as can be seen by googling for my article 'In search of cooling trends.'

Cool weather has lots of ramifications, whether it is to do with transport infrastructure or growing crops.

However, most serious of all is likely to revolve round heating costs. Successive Governments have been busily engaged in promoting highly expensive and inefficient green renewable at the expense of conventional power stations, many of which are due to close in the next few years in order to meet our absurd carbon emissions targets.

We need more conventional power stations built urgently to provide power at a reasonable cost.

Current projections are that green energy sources will add some 50 per cent to our already exorbitant fuel bills, always assuming they will work, as most wind turbines have not done over the last three weeks.

We also urgently need a Plan B as Plan A is looking increasingly threadbare.

This will necessitate the Government admitting that perhaps the evidence presented to them for warming has not been as robust as claimed. Will that happen? Don't hold your breath.

TONY BROWN

Shaldon

It Never Ends!

FROM-SummitDaily.com



Climate change a possible culprit in elevated Snake River zinc levels
Study: Earlier snow-melt ups acid rock drainage


By Janice Kurbjun

Climate change is suspected as the primary culprit of rising concentrations of zinc in the Snake River, according to a recent study from the University of Colorado.

Higher levels of zinc can affect stream ecology, including harming the survivability of microbes, algae, invertebrates and fish.

The study indicates there's a four-fold increase in dissolved zinc in the Snake River over the last 30 years during the lowest water flow months, said Caitlin Crouch, a master's degree student at CU-Boulder. She said her study focuses on climate change relating to water quality, which is different than most studies focusing on water quantity in the West.

The area's geology has naturally high mineral levels, so it's normal that a phenomenon known as acid rock drainage occurs — to a certain extent. What's unnatural is the amount of water running through the soils with snow melting early, presumably an effect of higher temperatures associated with climate change, said Jim Shaw, a Blue River Watershed Group director and the organization's treasurer. Nearby abandoned mines may also be enhancing the amount of acid rock drainage.

Nearly 2,000 miles of waterways in Colorado are affected by acid rock drainage, said Diane McKnight, who co-authored the study.

“Spring runoff is happening longer,” Shaw said, which means the water runs slowly into the ground instead of along its surface in one spring melt. It passes over mineralized rocks, leeching the minerals into the streamflow as it moves.

Crouch said the earlier snowmelt also means drier streambeds in September and October, which could increase metal concentrations. It's a smaller scale of what was observed during the 2002 drought, in which prolonged dry conditions allowed the harmful chemical reactions to occur in areas where water once was, and will be again.

read and weep

Severe winter weather caused by global warming?

FROM-The Daily Caller


By Amanda Carey

As Colorado braces for epic snowfall, Great Britain literally comes to a halt because of record blizzard, and the whole northern hemisphere enters what is predicted to be an especially harsh winter, some climate change experts are blaming the cold spell on global warming.

Earlier this month, the website reportingclimatescience.com reported that warmer temperatures in the Arctic actually cause colder temperatures everywhere else.

“The Atlantic pressure system that controls the gateway that allows cold northern air to flow south into Europe has been stuck in the same ‘open’ position for a record 14 months, while the Arctic pressure system is amplifying the effect by driving even more cold air south,” the website reported.

According to the theory, as cold air leaves the Arctic and the polar bears scramble to find the few remaining ice caps, that cold air hovers over Europe and the U.S. According to the report, the same phenomenon occurred in 1942, a phenomenon that, coincidentally, helped the Soviet Union repel the Nazi invasion.

The argument is relatively simple: The atmospheric pressure system at the top of the globe, known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), is either positive or negative. When it is positive, the difference between the highness and lowness of the two pressure systems coming from the mid-Atlantic and Iceland is big, causing warmer weather. Colder weather occurs when the difference is smaller and NAO is negative.

Some call this phenomenon the Arctic Paradox: that as the Arctic gets warmer, the cold air doesn’t necessarily disappear, it just shifts south. In other words, there isn’t any weather, hot or cold, that can’t be explained with global warming theory. Unsurprisingly, some are not convinced.

“You can make up any analogy you want, but the fact is that computer models don’t show that change,” Pat Michaels, a climatologist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute told The Daily Caller. “If you can’t model it, you don’t have any evidence for it.”

It is, said Michaels, the “core problem of climatology:” “It is attempting to explain everything even when everything becomes contradictory.”

“They make this stuff up as they go along,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “If this theory is true, a necessary consequence is that there will be less severe winter storms because arctic air masses will not be as cold.”

According to Ebell, if the Arctic was getting warmer, the air rushing south would also be warm. This would reduce the difference between the two meeting pressure systems, leading to less severe winter weather. This hasn’t happened.