How Much of Your Money Wasted on ‘Climate Change’? Try $10.6 Million a Day

FROM-Pajamas Media

 By Art Horn 

Seems everyone is talking about the massive United States federal deficit and how it has now reached an unfathomable $14 trillion. Is there any way to comprehend such a bloated number? Try this: the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. At that speed a photon of light starts at the surface of the Sun and reaches the Earth in 8 minutes. On Star Trek, the speed of light is warp one — at that speed the Enterprise would travel about 6 trillion miles in one year. If each dollar of the deficit is represented by one mile, it would take the Enterprise more than two years traveling the speed of light to go 14 trillion miles.


So what can we cut out of the federal budget to make any kind of dent in this enormous pile of borrowed money? We could start with the vast sums of cash being wasted on climate change research.


This year, your government will spend in the neighborhood of $4 billion on global warming research, despite the fact that there has been no global warming since 1998, and despite all of the billions that have been spent so far yielding no conclusive evidence that using fossil fuels to make energy has any significant effect on Earth’s temperature.


The human component of carbon dioxide that is injected into the air each year is very small, on the order of 3%. Half the carbon dioxide emitted into the air by human activity each year is immediately absorbed into nature. Carbon dioxide is 8% of the greenhouse effect; water in the air is 90% of the greenhouse effect. By volume, carbon dioxide is currently at about 390 parts per million in the atmosphere, increasing at about 2 parts per million annually. In other words, carbon dioxide is increasing at a rate of .5% per year. Since human activity adds 3% of the carbon dioxide that gets into the air each year, the human component of the increase in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year is 3 % of .5%, or just .015%.


Here is what the federal government thinks is happening with the Earth’s climate due to the burning of fossil fuels — the following quote is from chapter 15 ^[1] of the Advancement of Science’s 2011 budget request:

Past scientific research demonstrates that the Earth’s climate is changing, that humans are very likely responsible for most of the well-documented increase in global average surface temperatures over the last half century, and that further greenhouse gas emissions, particularly of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, will almost certainly contribute to additional widespread climate disruption. This climate disruption poses considerable risk to society because it can be expected to cause major negative consequences for most nations and to a wide range of species.

The first sentence is obvious: of course the Earth’s climate is changing; it always has and always will no matter what we do.


The next statement — “humans are very likely responsible for most of the well-documented increase in global average surface temperatures over the last half century” — is speculation. The statement completely ignores any natural variability in the climate. Apparently all of nature’s power to regulate the Earth’s temperature, which has been going on for millions of years, stopped 50 years ago, and now carbon dioxide is the principal driver of the climate. This is political and social advocacy, not science.


Then, this statement: “further greenhouse gas emissions, particularly of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, will almost certainly contribute to additional widespread climate disruption.” The implication is that there has already been widespread climate disruption — there has not. There is no more extreme weather ^[2] going on now than anytime in the last 2,000 years. Per the complex Orwellian world of government-speak, we have now moved on from “global warming” to “climate change” to “climate disruption.” Climate change wasn’t frightening enough! What’s next? My money’s on “climate disintegration” — that should keep the money flowing so we can figure out who and what will be disintegrated.


The statement then reads: “This climate disruption poses considerable risk to society because it can be expected to cause major negative consequences for most nations and to a wide range of species.” And that is the key to all of this: the fear factor. Pitching rising sea levels and other catastrophic consequences to keep the research money coming.


If you want to know where to save money in the budget, cut the vast sums of redundant funding headed to redundant federal agencies doing redundant climate change research. Four billion dollars to study climate change — and that’s just for this year!


Check the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2011 budget request ^[3], and go to chapter 15 ^[1]: Climate Change in the FY 2011 Budget. The numbers are staggering. In 2011, your government will spend $10.6 million a day to study, combat, and educate about climate change.


The big winner in the climate change money train is the National Science Foundation — they are requesting $1.616 billion. They want $766 million for the Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability ^[4] program, a 15.9% increase from their last budget. They also need another $370 million for the U.S. Global Change Research Program ^[5] (USGCRP), an increase of 16%. They say they also need another $480 million for Atmospheric Sciences ^[6], an increase of 8.1%, and Earth Sciences ^[7], up 8.7%.


Oh, and $955 million for the Geosciences Directorate ^[8], an increase of 7.4%.
The second largest request for money in 2011 comes from the Department of Energy. They say they need $627 million for things like funding for renewable energy. The request represents a whopping 37% increase from last year! They want a 12% increase for energy efficiency programs. They want to eliminate $2.7 billion of subsidies for industries that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide.


Let’s get NASA in on the parade! For 2011, NASA wants $438 million to study climate change, an increase of 14%. NASA’s total Earth Sciences budget request is actually $1.8 billion. Some $809 million of that is for satellites, some of which are specifically put in orbit to study climate change. It is difficult to separate out which ones are for climate monitoring and which ones are not, so I won’t include this number in the overall climate change money train. But make no mistake: a significant percentage of the $809 million is exclusively for climate change satellites.


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for $437 million for climate research. This is an increase of 21.4% from the previous budget. This includes funds for regional and national assessments of climate change, including ocean acidification. Once again, another meaty bag of money to tap into for researchers, who have nice cars and big houses and need to keep up the payments.


The Department of the Interior (DOI) is also interested in robbing the climate change vault — they say they need $244 million in 2011. Of this total, $171 million is for the Climate Change Adaptation initiative ^[9]. This program identifies areas and species that are most vulnerable to climate change, and implements coping strategies. Another $73 million is needed for the New Energy Frontier initiative ^[10]. The goal of this program is to increase solar, wind, and geothermal energy capacity.
Solar and wind power don’t survive without this government funding.


Is that $14 trillion making sense yet?


Of course, there’s more. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants $169 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an increase of 1%. Do you believe that next year greenhouse gases will be reduced by the EPA spending $169 million? I would bet the ranch that greenhouse gases will continue to increase next year, and the year after that, and the year after that despite EPA spending your money.


Is there any government agency that does not get some climate change funding? The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants $338 million for climate change programs. They want $159 million for climate change research, up a whopping 42%. They also want another $179 million for renewable energy, an increase of 41%! The USDA’s climate change efforts are supposed to help farm and land owners adapt to the impacts of climate change. Yes, really.


Redundancy on top of redundancy, piles of money on top of piles of money. All to study climate change, which, according to the theory, should be warming us rapidly, but, according to the data, has stopped. How much of the requested money these government agencies actually get is not yet known. The way they spend money in Washington, you can rest assured they’ll get most of it.


If you’re looking to cut the budget, climate change is a good place to start. If we don’t get a handle on Washington’s spending soon, and I mean very soon, climate change will be the least of our problems.

STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media


FROM-OC Register

Editorial: Reasons to cool it on global warming

A man perhaps as responsible as anyone for debunking global warming hysteria was in town last week to speak to the curious and the converted at Chapman University. Dr. Fred Singer also spoke with us about the state of global warming.

Dr. Singer, chairman of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, concedes that global warming alarmists persist in their efforts to control our lives, fortunes and economies, but he notes that opposition from scientists and others like him have significantly impeded that cause.

Congress and the White House have, at least for now, abandoned plans to adopt a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme that would drive up energy prices and penalize emitters of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases. House Republicans have introduced several bills to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from doing administratively what Congress couldn't muster enough votes to do, curtail carbon emissions, also at great economic harm. When the new Congress convened last week, the House killed the committee devoted solely to climate change and energy issues.

Back-to-back annual international climate conferences resulted in no binding agreements among the attending 190-plus nations to implement carbon trading, carbon taxing or wealth redistribution, all foundational to alarmists' plans to wean the world from fossil fuels to combat global warming.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is in court to force release of documents at the University of Virginia to determine whether a fraud investigation is warranted into tax-funded climate research conducted by global warming proponent Michael Mann. The private American Tradition Institute Environmental Law Center filed a freedom of information request last week seeking similar records concerning Mr. Mann, a leading proponent of global warming theory who now is at Pennsylvania State University.

The new chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee wants to investigate "the quality of climate science." Meanwhile, public sentiment has turned against alarmists as the more immediate press of economic issues have outweighed questionable claims of climate catastrophe predicted for decades in the future.

Dr. Singer contends the science always has been on the side of skeptics. We tend to agree. On close inspection, the much-touted "consensus" that global warming is a manmade threat never was true. Such matters in the scientific community are difficult to document, other than anecdotally. But thousands of scientists, including climatologists, meteorologists and researchers, even some formerly affiliated with the U.N.'s own climate-change panel, have voiced their qualms and complaints with warmist orthodoxy.

Dr. Singer estimated "the number of skeptical qualified scientists has been growing steadily." He estimates "it is about 40 percent now."

Climate computer models that forecast frightening temperature increases over the next century "basically, are unreliable," Dr. Singer said. Nontoxic CO2 is not a pollutant and, contrary to alarmists' claims, is beneficial as a natural plant food. "One of the best things to do is put more CO2 into the atmosphere," he suggested with a smile.

Dr. Singer contends the fanatical drive to subsidize so-called renewable energy sources will only drive up conventional energy prices, while some people will purchase faddish alternative energy devices that will be less reliable and still more expensive, even after their subsidies. Atmospheric temperatures will be unaffected, but special interests' pockets will be lined. All things considered, it's prudent to cool it on the global warming front.

A Bright Idea: Rescue the Incandescents

FROM-American Thinker

By Ken Blackwell

Why is Paris known as the City of Lights ? Is it because the U.S. Congress banned Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulbs, so he had to take his invention offshore?

Well, not actually. Thomas Edison was an honoree at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition and he did go up in the Eiffel Tower. The Italian government conferred a knighthood at that event on the man who gave the world a brighter idea.

No, Congress in the 1880s would not have been so foolish as to extinguish Edison 's light bulb. But the liberal Congress in 2007 was so foolish. They passed (and, regrettably, President George W. Bush signed) the BULB Act. That cutesy acronym stood for the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act. By that act, incandescent light bulbs were to have been phased out by 2014.

The BULB Act was co-sponsored by Calif. Rep. Jane Harmon (D) and Michigan Rep. Fred Upton (R). Back in those halcyon days of green legislation, of cost-free environmentalism, few people noticed that one of America 's greatest inventions was about to be banned by act of Congress.

Liberals were, quite literally, turning lights out on America -- at least the incandescent kind. Edison 's invention was being treated like asbestos and lead paint. But once consumers got wind of the coming ban, they began hoarding "real" light bulbs.

Soon, documented stories began circulating highlighting negative aspects of the new, eco-friendly compact fluorescent light (CFL) light bulbs. It was as if the Congress had tried to insert a CFL -- Canadian Football League -- championship game in place of the Super Bowl.

American Thinker alerted readers that CFLs use highly toxic mercury in April, 2007. They may last longer than real bulbs, but watch out if you break one or discard it. CFLs can cause migraines and aggravate epilepsy! What does this say about forcing them on health care providers?

Even the New York Times conceded that government nannying had failed to persuade consumers to shift from incandescents. The reason: they are cheap.

Many voters last fall were incandescent in their outrage of Congress' meddling with the economy, with people's way of life-and livelihoods. U.S. factories that make incandescent bulbs were shutting down, laying off American workers, only to have China pick up the slack.

Rush Limbaugh took up the conservative cudgels. When Michigan Congressman Upton rode back into office on the Republican tide last fall, Rush pointed to the BULB Act as Exhibit A in the case against Upton's becoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"This would be a tone-deaf disaster if the Republican leadership lets Fred Upton ascend to the chairmanship of the House energy committee," Rush told his millions of listeners. "This is exactly the kind of nannysim, statism...that was voted against and defeated [in the Midterm elections.]"

Three House Republicans -- Joel Barton ( Texas ), Marsha Blackburn ( Tenn. ), and Michael Burgess (Texas) went so far as to introduce legislation to repeal the BULB Act. Fred Upton not only co-sponsored the BULB Act, but he amassed a record of liberalism on social and economic issues. He even messed with Daylight Saving Time! Now, that's really liberal.

Mr. Upton managed to slip into the chairman's seat in the run-up to the 112th Congress, but only by signaling a new openness to changing the BULB Act. "We have heard from the grassroots loud and clear, and will have a hearing early next Congress," Upton said. "The last thing we wanted to do was infringe upon personal liberties -- and this has been a good lesson that Congress does not always know best..." Well, if Mr. Upton didn't see the light, he surely felt the heat.

In banning the incandescent light bulb, Congress substituted its own judgment for the wishes of the American people. They specifically backhanded the American consumer.

They did something else, and this is perhaps the worst thing they did: They spurned the achievement of one of America 's greatest geniuses. In 1914, when "the lights went out all over Europe ," the U.S. Patent Office announced that Thomas Alva Edison had patented a new idea at the rate of one every two weeks for nearly 40 years! No wonder the home-schooled Edison was called "the wizard of Menlo Park ."

Edison left a brilliant legacy -- patenting not only the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture machine -- but also giving Americans a confidence in their own native inventiveness. The world paid Edison an homage it will never pay to Nancy Pelosi.

Edison left some wise words for America , too. They can inspire us to climb out of the hole that many in government are digging for us:

"Be courageous! Whatever setbacks America has encountered, it has always emerged as a stronger and more prosperous nation....Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward"

Scientists Challenged to Become Better Global Warming Propagandists

FROM-American Thinker

By Norman Rogers

Can scientists become "Deadly Ninjas of Science Communication"? That was proposed by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War Against Science," and a member of the board of directors of the American Geophysical Union. Mooney advocated this idea in a presentation at the Union's December 13-17 fall meeting in San Francisco.

Mooney is concerned that global warming skeptics are getting the upper hand in the ongoing debate. Mooney has an unquestioning belief that disaster will overtake the world if we don't mend our CO2-emitting ways. Many other speakers at the meeting, like Mooney, suggested that if scientists improved their communications skills, the skeptics could be defeated.

At the same fall meeting four years ago, Al Gore spoke to ten thousand assembled scientists. The scientists treated him like a rock star. Why would the scientists love Al Gore? His movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was full of scientific errors. But this is about not biting the hand that feeds you. When Al Gore spreads global warming hysteria, financial and political support for climate science increases. Scientists become guests on TV shows instead of lab drones.

But a dark cloud is gathering over climate science. Public fear of global warming is declining. Most of the activist scientists gathered in San Francisco were blind to the possibility that there is any defect in their scary product. It must be that forces of darkness (perhaps Republicans or coal companies) are financing skeptics. Apparently the skeptics, cleverly disguised as grassroots activists, have an uncanny knack for propaganda.


A few years ago, Exxon, a world-class provider of CO2 emissions, would have been top dog among the forces of darkness. But now Exxon is the sole "titanium" sponsor of the meeting, ranked above the platinum, gold, silver, and bronze sponsors. Apparently Exxon gave the Union so much money that they had to create a new category, and the logic of the nobility of the metals in the periodic table be damned. Exxon purchased an indulgence from the church of global warming, probably at a price that is Exxon chump change.

Susan Hassol, a professional climate change communicator, gave the scientists in San Francisco a long list of words that scientists should never use when communicating with the public. For example, to climate scientists, a positive feedback to global warming is bad, because a positive feedback would increase global warming. But to the man in the street, a positive feedback is good, as when your boss gives you positive feedback.

One of the most famous propagandists of global warming, professor Michael Mann, gave a bitter presentation. Mann is famous for creating the hockey stick curve, a graph that purported to show that the climate was stable for a thousand years until CO2 emissions in the 20th century made the temperature shoot up like the blade of a hockey stick. The hockey stick graph went viral and was published everywhere as absolutely positive scientific proof of man-caused global warming. A retired expert on mining, Steve McIntyre, working out of his modest Toronto house, thought the graph was suspicious and decided to investigate. Amateur scientist McIntyre demolished the hockey stick, along with Mann's reputation. Mann's presentation in San Francisco depicted him as a victim of dark forces. Some of his slides included a picture of Sarah Palin in the upper-left corner, probably to galvanize the left-leaning audience.

Steve Easterbrook, a professor and software expert, reported on his investigation of computer climate models. The entire edifice of global warming alarmism rests on a foundation of computer climate models used to make predictions about the future climate. Easterbrook visited four different laboratories where models are created. He basically said that these huge computer programs that have a million lines of computer code are kludges that would have to be completely rewritten to be up to modern software standards. It would take fifty programmers working for twenty years at a cost of $350 million to rewrite one of these software dinosaurs.

However, there is little reason to suppose that if the models were rewritten, they would be much better. As the brilliant and perhaps overly candid government scientist Kevin Trenberth said, "none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time[.]" It is an embarrassing fact that the major models disagree with each other by more than two-to-one about the magnitude of future global warming.

It was apparent that scientists have little experience with propaganda. Rather than trying to do it themselves, they need to take a lesson from Al Gore and bring in the big guns from Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Or maybe they should stick to science and stop trying to convince us that doom is around the corner unless we reconfigure the world economy to their specifications.

The author is a senior policy advisor at the Heartland Institute and maintains a website at www.climateviews.com.

Dusty Books and the New World Order

Here is an interesting article which speaks volumes about the state of the climate change narrative.

Arctic explorers' logs shed light on climate change

U.K. historians to examine logbooks of whaling, navy, Hudson Bay Co. ships

British researchers are hoping to glean new information about Arctic climate change by digging through the historical records of polar explorers.

Historians will be looking for Arctic weather data in the logbooks of whaling ships, British Navy vessels and Hudson Bay Company ships from the 18th and 19th centuries, said Dennis Wheeler, a researcher with the University of Sunderland.

"It's not until you begin to look at these documents that you can really get an appreciation of exactly how much information there actually is," Wheeler told CBC News.

He said the logbooks, most of which are stored in London, contain a wealth of meticulously recorded data about daily weather conditions, wind readings, snow and ice cover. The data could help scientists better understand climate change today, he said.

Of course all these records have been there ready to be studied for the past couple decades as the scientific community has told us how much warmer it is than it was. Meanwhile our meticulous scientific community has basically ignored the best evidence they have on an important component of the debate. But when you know the truth you don't need the facts to back it up, as becomes apparent with the next paragraph.

"We know it was colder then, and we've got to check the temperature records to confirm that, and there isn't any clear evidence that the ice was any more advanced than it is today," Wheeler said.

The wealth of information in that sentence is staggering. Read that again in case the narrative has you blinded to the absurdity "We know it was colder then, and we've got to check the temperature records to confirm that  How can a scientist know what they claim not to have confirmed? Isn't that like "being a real scientist" course 101. So now our scientist are going to confirm what they already know.

 The narrative is so ingrained into their mind set they have absolutely no idea how far from objectivity they have strayed. But it is even better,"there isn't any clear evidence that the ice was any more advanced than it is today" Uh, what? I thought we were losing the ice cap at a perilous rate and he is saying that when it was colder (yet to be confirmed) the ice was not "any more advanced than it is today" Kind of throws that whole melting ice caps due to warming Arctic thingy a bit under the bus doesn't it? Fortunately Dr Wheeler does recognize that his statements are a bit at odds with the hype.

"That raises all sorts of questions about how Arctic ice responds to global temperature changes. So, we do need to know more about this, in both the warming and the cooling point of view, to see how it changes."

Yes I couldn't agree more.....I think. Excuse me professor, I have a question too. Doesn't ice grow when it gets colder and melt when it is warmer? Or maybe I have been listening to climate scientist for too long, Carry on.

Emerging research field

Wheeler said it's amazing how little research has been done on historic weather data, but he said the three-year research project is attracting a lot of interest now.

Yes indeed it is amazing "how little research has been done" since literally trillions of dollars are being spent based on a theory and the records which might prove or disprove have been sitting in a dusty basement in London. Of course when you know something which you don't need to confirm, well you know, you know? Billions of research dollars to fund climate models which can not hind cast climate, and the most accurate past records we have are sitting around ignored, makes sense.

"The only way we know about climate change or environmental change anyway is by knowing the past temperatures, what the past environment was like," said Alan MacEachern, a historian and director of the Network in Canadian History and Environment.

Unless of course you know in which case you do not have to dig around in old records to confirm what you know.

MacEachern said the field of historical climatology is still in its infancy in Canada, despite its obvious relevance in understanding modern climate change.

"Why isn't it happening more? I'm not sure," he said.

"I think the sources are kind of everywhere, and I think it's taking a while for people to figure out exactly where they should start looking or even where they should stop looking."

MacEachern said there is growing support for research into Canada's environmental history, so he is encouraging students to start digging.

I can tell you why it is not happening more, cause it might just disprove some things that you know. Plus they had to spend the last twenty years fudging the records, indoctrinating the population and manipulating the politicians so that when somebody actually looked at the books everybody would already know, you know?

I can tell you when you are going to stop looking too, when you find out something that you know is not confirmed by what you find. Then the books will be put away or burned or discredited. So enjoy the dusty basements because this is probably the most we are going to hear about your little project.

Climate Change Skeptics are Stooges for Big Oil

FROM-Energy Tribune
By Art Horn

As a meteorologist and climate change (what happened to global warming?) investigator I constantly hear the charge that we who do not kneel at the altar of Al Gore are simply hired hacks for “Big Oil.” We are clueless stooges who will say anything for money. This old and tired argument is used over and over again by people who don’t do any research to back up that claim, they simply “know it’s true” because they read it in the New York Times or Newsweek or saw it on some television program. I wonder how many of those making this charge drive a car, use plastics, fly on planes or use virtually any product that we in our hydrocarbon based society enjoy? I’d bet all of them.

But when it comes to climate change they insist that “Big Oil” is pouring billions and billions of dollars into skeptic’s bank accounts. They are not. I have not received one dime of money from any oil company nor do I know anyone who has. But the claim is Big Oil is essentially employing skeptics to do their dirty work for them. If it were true part of that dirty work would be defending the right to use fossil fuels to power the world today and tomorrow despite the UN’s assertion that the developed world has expropriated the future from the developing nations because they “used up all the carbon space in the air.” Part of that dirty work would involve liberating carbon dioxide from its label as pollution by the main stream media and carbon opportunists like Al Gore and large Wall Street investment firms. Part of the dirty work would be exposing hypocrites like film maker James Cameron and billionaire Ted Turner who want you to live with less to “save the planet” while they live with more. Part of the dirty work would be exposing the truth about the benefits of more carbon dioxide in the air, its enhancement of agriculture and all living things and its miniscule role in changing the future climate of the world. Part of that dirty work would be telling the truth about where the real money in climate change is. Here’s the result of some dirty work for you.

If you want to know who is getting the big bucks for climate change research one needs look no farther than our own government. Your government will spend in the neighborhood of 4 billion dollars this year to study climate change. And that’s just this year! You only need to look at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2011 budget request to get the answers. Go down to chapter 15, Climate Change in the FY 2011 Budget. Here you will find out how much money is going to be spent in just one year to save you from climate change. The numbers are staggering. In 2011 your government will spend $10.6 million dollars a day to study, combat and educate people about climate change.

The big winner in the climate change money train is the National Science Foundation. They are requesting $1.616 billion dollars. They want $766 million dollars for the Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Program. This is a 15.9% increase from their last budget. They also need another $370 million for the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) an increase of 16%. The say they also need another $480 million forAtmospheric Sciences an increase of 8.1% and Earth Sciences up 8.7%. Oh, and not to be left out we need $955 million for the Geosciences Directorate, an increase of 7.4%. That’s a mighty hefty sum of money to dig into if you’re doing climate change research.

The second largest request for money in 2011 comes from the Department of Energy. They say they need $627 million dollars for things like funding for renewable energy. The request represents a whopping 37% increase from last year! They want a 12% increase for energy efficiency programs. They want to eliminate $2.7 billion dollars of subsidies for industries that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. A 37% increase? I thought we were broke.

Well apparently there’s plenty of money around! Let’s get NASA in on the parade of open hands. For 2011 NASA wants $438 million dollars to study climate change, an increase of 14%. NASA’s total Earth Sciences budget request is actually $1.8 billion dollars. Some $809 million of that is for satellites, some of which are specifically put in orbit to study climate change. It is difficult to separate out which ones are for climate monitoring and which ones are not so I won’t include this number in the over all climate change money train, but make no mistake about it, a significant percentage of the $809 million is exclusively for climate change satellites.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is looking for $437 million dollars for climate research. This is an increase of 21.4% from the previous budget. This includes funds for regional and national assessments of climate change including ocean acidification. Once again, another meaty bag of money to tap into for researchers who have nice cars and big houses and need to keep up the payments. All aboard the money train!

The Department of the Interior (DOI) is also interested in tapping into the climate change vault. They say they need $244 million in 2011. Of this total, $171 million is for the Climate Change Adaptation Initiative. This program identifies areas and species that are most vulnerable to climate change and implements coping strategies. Another $73 million is needed for The New Energy Frontier Initiative. The goal of this program is to increase solar, wind and geothermal energy capacity. Interesting that solar and wind power don’t actually make any money without this government funding.

Wow! This list just goes on and on, no wonder we have a $14 trillion dollar deficit!

But wait! as the say on TV there’s more. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants there share of the pot of gold. They need $169 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an increase of 1%. Do you really believe that next year greenhouse gases will be reduced by EPA spending $169 million dollars? I would bet the ranch that greenhouse gases will continue to increase next year and the year after that and the year after that despite EPA spending millions of dollars. It’s a complete waste of $169 million dollars.

I’m beginning to wonder if there is any government agency that does not get some climate change funding! The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants $338 million dollars for climate change programs. They want $159 million dollars for climate change research, up a whopping 42%. They also want another $179 million for renewable energy, an increase of 41%! The USDA’s climate change efforts are supposed to help farmer and land owners adapt to the impacts of climate change.

We’ll there you have it. How much of the requested money these government agencies actually get is not yet known. The way they spend money in Washington you can rest assured they’ll get most of it.

So the next time someone says all those climate change deniers are being propped up with money from Big Oil you might want to bring up the nearly 4 billion dollars that is being hand fed to government agencies, Colleges and Universities and private research facilities. 

The icy grip of the politics of fear

FROM-Spiked


The snow crisis of December 2010: what a striking snapshot of the chasm that separates the warming-obsessed elite from the rest of us.

Brendan O’Neill

You couldn’t have asked for a better snapshot of the chasm that divides today’s so-called expert classes from the mass of humanity than the snow crisis of Christmas 2010. They warn us endlessly about the warming of our planet; we struggle through knee-deep snow to visit loved ones. They host million-dollar conferences on how we’ll cope with our Mediterranean future; we sleep for days in airport lounges waiting for runways to be de-iced. They pester the authorities for more funding for global-warming research; we keep an eye on our elderly neighbours who don’t have enough cash to heat their homes.

This isn’t to say that the entire climate-change thesis is wrong. I’m not one of those people who believes snowfall necessarily disproves every claim made by warming-obsessed climatologists. Rather the snow crisis demonstrated, in high definition, the gap between the fear-fuelled thinking of the elite and the struggles of everyday people. It illuminated the million metaphorical miles that now separate the fantasy politics of our so-called betters from the concerns of the rest of us.

Not surprisingly, with snowstorms smothering Western Europe and the East Coast of America, many asked: ‘What happened to global warming?’ On the 20-hour bus-and-boat-and-train-and-car journey I took from London to Galway, surrounded by people forced to make a similar trek because their flights were also cancelled, there was much jocular banter along the lines of: ‘So this is the climate change we’ve been warned about…’ As people made new friends and arranged impromptu carpools for the final legs of their journeys, there was a palpable sense that the world we inhabit is not the same as that inhabited by greens.

That isn’t surprising when you consider that greens have been telling us for the past decade that snow will disappear from our lives. Literally. ‘Snow is starting to disappear from our lives’, reported the Independent in March 2000. It quoted an expert from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (of recent Climategate fame) who said ‘children just aren’t going to know what snow is’. In 2006, the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists said winters had become ‘warmer and less snowy’ thanks to global warming.

Other climate-change campaigners told us to prepare for Saharan weather. A book published as part of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ jamboree in 2007 - The Global Warming Survival Handbook - said there would soon be ‘searing temperatures, killer storms, drought, plague and pestilence’. Award-winning green theorists told us to prepare for life on a ‘hotter planet’ in which ‘the traditional British winter [is] probably gone for good’. Newspapers provided us with a ‘hellish vision of life on a hotter planet’ where deserts would ‘reach into the heart of Europe’ and global warming would ‘reduce humanity to a few struggling groups of embattled survivors clinging to life near the poles’.

Dramatic stuff. And unadulterated nonsense. The thing that occupied people’s minds at the end of 2010 was not how to explain to their sweating children in the deserts of Hampshire why snow disappeared from our lives, but rather how to negotiate actual snow. Again, this isn’t to say that the snow proves there is no planetary warming at all: if it is mad to cite every change in the weather as proof that Earth is doomed, then it’s probably also unwise to dance around in the slushy white stuff in the belief that it proves that all environmental scientists are demented liars. But the world of difference between expert predictions (hot hell) and our real experiences (freezing nightmare) is a powerful symbol of the distance that now exists between the apocalypse-fantasising elites and the public.

What it really shows is the extent to which the politics of global warming is driven by an already existing culture of fear. It doesn’t matter what The Science (as greens always refer to it) does or doesn’t reveal: campaigners will still let their imaginations run riot, biblically fantasising about droughts and plagues, because theirs is a fundamentally moralistic outlook rather than a scientific one. It is their disdain for mankind’s planet-altering arrogance that fuels their global-warming fantasies - and they simply seek out The Science that best seems to back up their perverted thoughts. Those predictions of a snowless future, of a parched Earth, are better understood as elite moral porn rather than sedate risk analysis.

Indeed, The Global Warming Survival Handbook gave the game away when it encouraged people to see the future through ‘carefully crafted “what if?” stories’. Admitting that it is virtually impossible to predict our climatic future - ‘We can’t even forecast if it will rain next week’ - it advised us to host ‘scenario parties’ to ‘pool the imaginations and experiences of your friends’. It’s the closest we’ve had to an admission by the green movement that its warnings of future desert-spread are based on its own feverish teenage imaginings rather than on scientific forecasts. The snow crisis demonstrated this in Technicolor (well, in bright white): that the expert elites have taken leave of the realm of reality, preferring to seek meaning and momentum in the fantasy notion that they are fighting a hot apocalypse.

Anyone with a shred of self-respect who had predicted The End Of Snow would surely now admit that he was wrong. But no. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the snow crisis is that it was held up as evidence, not that the experts were mistaken, but that the public is stupid. Apparently it’s those who ask ‘Whatever happened to global warming?’, rather than those who predicted ‘no more traditional British winters’, who need to have their heads checked. Because what they don’t understand - ignoramuses that they are - is that heavy snow is also proof that our planet is getting hotter, and that industrialised society is to blame, just as surely as the absence of snow was proof of the same thing 10 years ago.

‘The snow outside is what global warming looks like’, said one headline, in a newspaper which 10 years ago said that the lack of snow outside is what global warming looks like. A commentator said that anyone who says ‘what happened to global warming?’ is an ‘idiot’ because nobody ever claimed that global warming would ‘make Britain hotter in the long run’. (Er, yes they did.) Apparently the reason people don’t understand the (new) global-warming-causes-snow thesis is because they are ‘simple, earthy creatures, governed by the senses’: ‘What we see and taste and feel overrides analysis. The cold has reason in a deathly grip.’

This reveals the stinging snobbery at the heart of the politics of global warming. Because what we have here is an updated version of the elitist idea that the better classes have access to a profound and complicated truth that the rest of us cannot grasp. Where we have merely sensory reactions (experience), they have reason and analysis (knowledge). Our critical reaction to the snow actually revealed our failure to understand The Truth, as unveiled by The Science, rather than revealing their wrongheadedness in predicting an ‘end to snow’. We are ‘simple’, they are ‘reasoned’. In 2011, we should take everything that is said by this new doom-mongering expert caste with a large pinch of salt – and then spread that salt on the snow which they claimed had disappeared from our lives.

It Never Ends!

FROM-Yahoo

8,000 Turtle Doves Die in Italy: Linked to Global Warming?

Julia Bodeeb

Weird mass animal deaths are occurring all over the world. Birds and fish are suddenly dying in huge numbers. It is both creepy and alarming that a definitive cause of all the animal deaths has not yet been identified. Could global warming somehow be linked to these incidents? It is believed to be causing abnormal weather patterns all over the world.

About 8,000 turtle doves have died in Faenza, Italy, notes the Daily Mail. The birds had a blue stain on their beaks at the time of death. This is typically from loss of oxygen or poisoning. Is this incident unique or could it have a common cause to other mass bird deaths around the world?

Numerous species of birds and fish have had mass deaths lately. The extreme cold temperature may have something to do with these strange incidents. As temperatures linger in freezing ranges in some parts of the world, more sudden deaths of birds and fish may occur.

If winter temperatures stay very low in future years, will ongoing animal kill off continue to occur? It may take scientists decades to figure out how global warming is impacting the environment, animals and humans.

Melanie Driscoll, Director of Bird Conservation at Audobon, told the Guardian "Far more concerning in the long term are the myriad other threats birds face from widespread habitat destruction and global climate change."

For now odd animal kill offs have occurred in various parts of the United States and also in Sweden, England and Italy. There are many theories about what might be killing the animals. Ideas of the causes of death include ideas that they could be dead due to earthquake tremors, shock from loud noises, or due to the end of the world coming. Other possible causes include poisonings or terrorism activists killing birds with chemicals to test out attacks on humans.

ill there ever be a final answer on what is causing the animal deaths? Perhaps not, science is very mysterious. It often it takes a long time for patterns of events to emerge.If changing climates can be linked to animal deaths will it change the way Americans live? Will people stop driving huge SUVs that put a lot of toxins in the air that contribute to global warming? Will they care more about funding research about global warming? Let's hope the government someday has more clean air regulations and works to protect the environment more vigorously.

Everything you need to know

Everything you need to know about the absolute absurdity of the global warming induced green energy market is in the first two paragraphs of this Bloomberg article "U.K. Solar Power Installations Reach Record in 2010 After Incentive Starts"

The U.K., which had its 12th coldest year on record in 2010, installed more solar power than in any other year, data from the energy regulator Ofgem show.


Solar panels with the capacity to generate more than 42 megawatts of electricity were registered to receive above-market power prices last year, according to data e-mailed from the regulator Ofgem. The facilities were spurred starting in April by a government program offering as much as 12 times the market rate for power from renewable sources....

Considering that this entire "green energy" market is primarily the result of the global warming hyperbole it is more than ironic that the article begins with the reminder of the lack of "robust" proof of the theory. But the painful reality to the depths of insanity that the world has fallen  is the absolute giddiness of the writer at the subsidized lengths governments, in this case the UK, are going in order to promote an unsustainable market in this "green energy" fraud. Twelve times the market rate.

The article is laced with absurd little tid bits of tax payer subsidized economic flights of fantasy. An entire market based totally and completely on government subsidies yet it is treated as if it is the new Microsoft ready to set the world afire due to some entrepreneurial genius. When in fact it is all precariously maintained by the political power of a crumbling statist system desperately groping to maintain control over an ever more skeptical and enlightened world.

Consider this excited comment of one of the participants in this make believe world.

“They’ve been a complete game-changer in the market,” Sowden said. “We’ve seen more than a threefold increase in the number of companies registered as installers. It started 2010 at about 600, and ended at over 2000.”

Well I guess so, it is easy to generate a market for something when you are paying far over the market price for the product and gauranteed with the public's money;

The guaranteed prices were introduced by the Labour government, which in May lost a general election, ceding power to a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The new government, in an October review of spending across all departments, said it would maintain the tariffs for now.


The tariffs are guaranteed for 25 years and vary according to capacity and whether panels are fitted to old buildings or new ones. They’re as high as 41.3 pence per kilowatt-hour, about eight times the current day-ahead U.K. power price and 12 times the power price on April 1 when the system began.

But that is not all there is to our our fantasy marketplace in our make believe world of economics. Consider this next sentence being written in an alleged business journal:

The tariffs are “positive for investors in renewable technologies because it gives much more certainty on the price they can achieve,” Steve Jennings, who leads the utilities consulting practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London said in a telephone interview. “Investment decisions need certainty in order for developers to invest in these installations.”

Yes I guess in a world where your service is guaranteed by other peoples monies and the product is bought for more than twelve times what the rest of the market is, investors would have some certainty in investing, now wouldn't they? So much for the risk/reward factor, it is all reward paid for by an awakening public.

It is only fitting that a make believe economic model ought to be used to fight a make believe threat. The only problem is that like all things built on sand, they are eventually washed away with the tides of reality.

It Never Ends!

FROM-Internal Medicine News


AS VEGAS – Some of the effects of climate change are beginning to appear in dermatologists’ offices, and there may be more to come.

Expanded geographic ranges of tick and parasite vectors due to climate change already are pushing infectious diseases into unfamiliar territory, Dr. Sigfrid A. Muller said at a dermatology seminar sponsored by Skin Disease Education Foundation (SDEF).

Lyme disease has spread well into Canada, and leishmaniasis is moving north from Mexico into Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Ohio. Reports of Chagas disease are increasing in the United States and Central and South America. Peru and Ecuador are seeing more Carrion’s disease, he said.

Extreme heat, drought, and wide-scale fires, storms, and flooding, as well as other manifestations of climate change, will alter the incidence and severity of allergies, atopic dermatitis, and asthma, added Dr. Muller, a dermatologist in Las Vegas and chair of the International Society of Dermatology’s Climate Change Task Force. The society, in 2009, declared climate change to be the defining dermatologic issue of the 21st century..............

Read it and weep

"Notable Quotes"

" In classical sophistic fashion, rhetoric is never far from personal profit. Multimillionaire Al Gore convinced the governments of the Western world that they were facing a global-warming Armageddon, then hired out his services to address the hysteria that he helped create.


How many climate Cassandras have well-funded research positions predicated on grants and subsidies that depend on convincing the pubic and government of impending disasters that they then can be hired to monitor and address? Are there no green antitrust laws? In contrast, how many of our climate theorists run irrigated farms and energy-intensive businesses at the mercy of new regulations that emanate from distant theorizing? "

Victor Davis Hanson

Global Warming conspiring to cool the Earth

There has been much discussion about the recent cold winters particularly in Northern Europe and the Eastern United States. These exceptionally cold, snowy winters have precipitated many in the climate science community to offer after the fact explanations and of course reasons why this cold is in keeping with the entire global warming theory. The old hot causes cold mantra which is gaining much traction in the media of late.

I am a believer that if the public at large truly understood the enhanced global warming theory that this narrative of nonsense is built upon they not only would be more skeptical than they are already, they would be belly laughing at the absurdity of this sham. If people truly understood the thin thread of logic on which this climate change juggernaut of misdirection was built, the public would demand that these people be marched out of their ivory towers and and locked up for either fraud or reckless incompetence. Because despite attempts by dishonest scientist, a complicit media and power grabbing politicians to portray global warming as a reality it is in fact just a theory which is supposed to be based upon a rational scientific principles.

Let's review a bit. As I have often pointed out the entire global warming/climate change theory is based on a very simple and in some ways logical premise.

To summarize, a doubling of CO2 will cause the temperature to increase by 1.2 degC, this increased temperature will then cause more evaporation of water vapor (the primary greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere which will amplify the effect of the CO2 caused warming, got it? This is known as the "enhanced greenhouse effect". 

Although that is my summary, it actually is just a layman's  synopsis of this from the IPCC :

If the amount of carbon dioxide were doubled instantaneously, with everything else remaining the same, the outgoing infrared radiation would be reduced by about 4 Wm-2. In other words, the radiative forcing corresponding to a doubling of the CO2 concentration would be 4 Wm-2. To counteract this imbalance, the temperature of the surface-troposphere system would have to increase by 1.2°C (with an accuracy of ±10%), in the absence of other changes

So as you can see a doubling of CO2 would only account for a 1.2 C of warming-period. This is not in dispute. So why do you hear all these claims that increased CO2 is going to warm the Earth by anywhere from 2-6 degC? The IPCC explains:

In reality, due to feedback, the response of the climate system is much more complex. It is believed that the overall effect of the feedback amplifies the temperature increase to 1.5 to 4.5°C. A significant part of this uncertainty range arises from our limited knowledge of clouds and their interactions with radiation.

So in order to keep the ball rolling they postulate feedback, in this case positive feedback which amplifies the heating caused by the initial heating of increased CO2.

Which brings us back to hot creates cold. If in any way for any reason the heating of the atmosphere  causes it to get cold, that would negate at least some portion of the heating necessary to amplify  the initial temperature increase which the theory depends on. Got it?

Since this hot creating cold has never been postulated by these masters of modeling mayhem, there is no way they could possibly have accounted for it in all their ridiculous theories of what the future will bring. All that they can say is that the heating effect caused by CO2 will overwhelm these negative feedbacks, negative feedbacks which they neither forecast or figured into the calculations of their theory to begin with.

 The warming caused by increased CO2  is a known and little disputed factor in the entire theory: the radiative forcing corresponding to a doubling of the CO2 ...the temperature of the surface-troposphere system would have to increase by 1.2°C , however what occurs as the result of this minor heating caused by CO2 (the amplification factor) is  the very basis for the alarmist view of global warming. If this is not well understood, or misunderstood then the the entire theory is nothing more than conjecture which rather than being scientifically proven is in fact being disproved. 

Yet we are now being lectured  that for whatever reason whether it be snow in the Himalayas or lack of ice in the Hudson Bay, that which was hypothesized to amplify heat in the atmosphere is now in some cases cooling it.  Even if  these explanations are  based on some scientific foundation, which they may be, the very fact that hot may cause cold blows the long term implications of the theory completely out of the water. Where is the tipping point setting off this chain reaction of positive feedbacks when in fact the very catalyst for a runaway climate (warmer temperatures caused by CO2) is instead causing the opposite affect in some cases?

Consider that while I point to a similar  development which has sprung its nasty head into the climate change wacko world of voodoo science. I came upon this little article  which is based on what seems to be sound theoretical science but again is a case of hot creating cold and they even quantify it. With computer modeling of course.

Greener climate prediction shows plants slow warming

NASA computer modeling shows plants could create a cooling effect

A new NASA computer model has found that the additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled carbon dioxide levels would create a cooling effect in the Earth’s climate working to reduce future global warming. The cooling effect would be -0.5°F globally and -1.1°F over land.

Lahouari at Goddard Space Flight Center stressed that while the model’s results showed a cooling effect, it is not a strong enough response to alter the global warming trend that is expected. Bounouao is lead author of a paper, “Quantifying the negative feedback of vegetation to greenhouse warming: A modeling approach”, detailing the results in Geophysical Research Letters. 

The modeling approach also investigated how stimulation of plant growth in a world with doubled carbon dioxide levels would be fueled by warmer temperatures, increased precipitation in some regions and plants’ more efficient use of water due to carbon dioxide being more readily available in the atmosphere.

By: David Kuack

So again we have Global Warming conspiring to cool the Earth. Common sense and real science points to this as being true, increased CO2 , heat and moisture would obviously increase plant growth which  would have an overall cooling affect. Another of those negative feedbacks which the warmist fail to account for in all their hyperbole of global doom. OMG more plant life we are doomed!

All of this does not even take into account the one giant potential negative feedback from global warming which even the IPCC admits it does not have a handle on-clouds. So as we are prodded by the best and the brightest to forsake economic growth for holy Gaia, Gaia is conspiring to make fools of a generation of scientist many of whom, I am convinced, actually have no idea of the theory which they so pathetically defend and foist upon an increasingly skeptical public. Because it doesn't take a climate scientist to conclude that if hot causes cold eventually it is not going to be all that hot.

It Never Ends!

I guess Shimon Wdowinski did not get the memo that there is no scientific proof that so called climate change causes more and stronger hurricanes. Regardless the scientific community has become like the Kevin Bacon and six degrees of separation game. Any idea or hypothesis that is within six connect the dots of global warming is worthy of attribution to, media coverage of and most importantly research funding for the climate change narrative.


FROM-SF Chronicle

Did climate change cause Haiti quake?

At the American Geophysical Union meeting late last month, University of Miami geologist Shimon Wdowinski argued that the devastating earthquake a year ago may have been caused by a combination of deforestation and hurricanes (H/T Treehugger). Climate change is spurring more, stronger hurricanes, which are fueled by warm ocean waters.



It works like this: Deforestation leaves hillsides vulnerable to erosion, which hurricanes deliver in spades. Haiti's hills have waned to a degree, says Wdowinski, that it could affect the stability of the Earth's crust.


The 2010 disaster stemmed from a vertical slippage, not the horizontal movements that most of the region's quakes entail, supporting the hypothesis that the movement was triggered by an imbalance created when eroded land mass was moved from the mountainous epicenter to the Leogane Delta.
Previous earthquakes in Taiwan have followed major storms in mountainous regions.
Just how bad is deforestation in Haiti? In some places 98 percent of the original forest is gone.

Marketing 'Climate Change'

FROM-American Thinker


By Steve McCann

A good indicator that a movement ostensibly based on so-called scientific facts has run out of steam is when that crusade must openly resort to crass marketing techniques to sell a flawed product.  As with so many iconic beliefs of the left, it is not the message that is flawed, but the messaging.

Der Speigel, the paragon of leftist thinking in Germany, just published a lengthy article, entitled "Green Groups try to Sex Up Climate Change," chronicling the movement's efforts to recapture the public's attention, which has severely waned over the past two years.  

Editors at major German newspapers are openly stating that global warming is a "loser" in media terms.  The New York Times quoted one science filmmaker as calling climate research "bo-ho-ho-ring" and "quite possibly, THE most boring subject the science world has ever had to present to the public."

Surveys have shown that in the Netherlands, once the hotbed of global warming hysteria, only one in three Dutch people is concerned about climate change.  The number is half that in the United States.

The loss of credibility is attributed to two factors: 1) the mistakes made public around a year ago on the U.N.'s 2007 climate report and 2) the "Climategate" scandal involving e-mails from the researchers at the University of East Anglia.  Per Der Speigel, "[t]his leaked correspondence revealed trench warfare that caused scientists to withhold some data and defend their results at all costs."

As the primary media strategy up to that time was centered on the credibility of the scientists involved, the PR damage was significant, and it caused the public to begin seriously questioning the validity of the movement.

So now the environmental activists, not willing to give up on an enormous source of money from government grants and extortion, have come up with a myriad of approaches to try to make the climate change argument attractive.  Some ideas are:

1. Greater emphasis on emotional messaging using animals such as polar bears and whales and people suffering the results of weather catastrophes.  An old but tried-and-true PR strategy that has lost its luster, but it is very difficult to give up.
2. Another old but successful tactic: sex sells.  At a recent Global Media Forum working group on climate change, the motto was "Climate change is sexy."  However, there is some argument that the attention would be on the shapely figure of an attractive female researcher standing in front of a glacier rather than on the message.
3. Climate activists have begun funneling millions of dollars into training programs for so-called environmental journalists to encourage even more advocacy journalism.  Apparently all the rest of us were foolish to believe there was nearly nothing but advocacy journalism in the mainstream media throughout the world.
4. Climate change discussion must become less abstract and come down to the level of the average person.  In other words, make it relevant in the day-to-day life of the individual by simplification and promotion along with easily understood solutions.  Whether these are genuine solutions is immaterial as long as they are presented with all the fanfare of being so.
5. Stop being so vocal and causing a commotion about climate change.  Instead, emphasize restraint and the ability to quietly and respectfully listen to opposing views.  A bit of acting talent may be required, but that should not be a problem when reading from a fictional script.
6. The movement needs a new "Messiah."  Al Gore has become yesterday's newspaper in the bottom of the birdcage, so someone has to be found who can arouse the masses -- per Andreas Ernst from Kassel University, "[j]ust as Martin Luther King Jr. awakened the civil rights movement."  Comparing every political crusade to the civil rights movement has become transparent and threadbare, but this is apparently a strategy from which the left cannot emancipate itself.
7. Lastly, climate researchers have started setting up new organizations that will communicate climate data better.  Coordination of messaging will be the order of the day.  The accuracy of the messaging has not been discussed.

So there you have it: soon we who are agnostics when it comes to the religion of global warming (now renamed "climate change") will be subjected to the best marketing strategy the human mind can devise.  As Europe shivers in the coldest winter in over 125 years and we see the wealth of the country squandered in foolish regulations and laws ostensibly geared to save the earth, we can be comforted in knowing the best and brightest are on the job to save the planet from itself.  We were foolish enough to believe that only God could do that.

Why Climate Change Reminds Me of a T.S. Eliot Poem

FROM-The American

By Steven F. Hayward

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past

—T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Many people have commented that climate change has come to be what philosophers and logicians call a “non-falsifiable hypothesis,” that is, a theory or belief that explains everything and is therefore impossible to be contradicted by observations or contrary evidence. At some point, however, advocates of non-falsifiable hypotheses end up sleeping on park benches muttering about how “the Man,” or the CIA chip in his head, or international bankers, or . . . someone, is keeping the truth under wraps. (In fact, there a terrific little website, The Warmlist, that tracks all of the effects attributed to global warming.My favorite was teen acne, but the original link has gone dead, so now my favorite is how global warming will cause a rise in prostitution, though I have to say, the prospect of “sea snot” makes me think of James Joyce as well as Eliot. The Warmlist is up to 839 discrete effects now, ranging from acne to zoonotic diseases.)Sometimes, such people get institutionalized, or medicated. And some become global warming advocates.

The climate campaign establishment increasingly looks like its own self-contained and self-referential lunatic asylum, unable to exercise any self-restraint in finding positive proof of climate change in every weather surprise. Several years back, climate campaigners in Britain, citing the latest warming models, ostentatiously predicted that snowstorms would soon be a thing of the past in Britain, something schoolchildren would read about in history books or hear tales about from their grandparents. Then this fall just past, the British Met Office predicted a 60 to 80 percent change of a warmer-than-average winter this year.

But now Britain is having its second extremely cold winter in a row, with record snowfalls nearly strangling the nation. Oops.

Not to worry. The climateers have swung into action, and have explained why cooling is really warming. Judah Cohen, a private “seasonal forecaster,” took to the pages of the New York Times to explain how the warming arctic led to more snowfall over the Siberian land mass, which in turn cooled the air circulating over the northern hemisphere, and there you have it, big cold weather storms in the United States and Europe. Or, as Mr. Cohen puts it, “the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes.” (Bryan Walsh at Time magazine offers a rundown of similar counterintuitive explanations for why warming causes cooling.)

Cohen might well be correct about this. But if he is it raises a number of troubling questions, starting with how the Met Office missed this factor, and failed to include it in the climate model they use to issue seasonal forecasts. Needless to say, if Cohen is right then a lot of other climate scientists are wrong, which means our grasp of climate dynamics is rather incomplete.

“What might have been and has been / Point to one end, which is always present,” Eliot continues in Burnt Norton. Which reminds me of the climate record (”time future contained in time past”). We don’t understand the climate past with reasonable precision, as the intense debate about the “hockey stick” graph showed, and the computer models predicting a 2 to 5 degree rise in the future are clearly riddled with large uncertainties, given the range of prospective temperatures they spit out. No matter. “What is always present” today is the cocksure certainty that catastrophic global warming is occurring, and damn the weatherman. Think of it as the ultimate modernist free-verse, only without literary allusions “an abstraction / Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation.”

It Never Ends!

From 1994 t0 1999?  Too warm at night? They are throwing everything they can out there to give the narrative meat, but it is nothing more than a cup of rice.

FROM-Borneo Post


Global warming takes its toll on rice production — Association chief

SIBU: Global warming has caused a deceleration in rice production in many regions in Asia.

This is the finding of a recent large scale study.

Chairman of Sibu Rice Wholesalers’ Association (SRWA) Yeo Keng Teck,

in stating this yesterday, said it was feared that the situation would deteriorate, thus aggravating poverty and starvation in Asia.

“According to an analysis done by American economists and scientists from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the Philippines International Rice Research Institute from 1994 to 1999, the main cause of retardation in rice production is the rise in temperature during the night,” he said.

He was speaking during the SRWA annual general meeting held at the local Chinese General Chamber of Commerce and Industry premises here.

Yeo said the research was done in 227 swamp padi fields in six countries — China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

He said the report suggested that there would be an increase in rice production if the day time temperature increased, subjected to certain range of temperature change.

However, he said the effect in day time could probably be off-set if the night time temperature rose higher.

“In other words, with the rising of daily average temperature, night time would become warmer, thus resulting in the decline of rice production.

“The research also discovered that the many major rice production areas in Asia had encountered a drop of 10 to 20 per cent due to the rising temperature in the past 25 years.

“If the global warming situation worsens, rice production could decrease further.

“On the other hand, in October last year, there were a series of heavy downpour and floods that affected 24 provinces in Thailand. About 700,000 acres of agricultural land were affected, the majority of which were padi fields,” he said.

He asked rice wholesalers to have a better understanding of the international scenario pertaining to rice and padi, adding that this was imperative to do their business well.

"Notable Quotes"

" It is not a public relations problem; it is a science problem. They ain’t practicing it. "

Don Surber

Discussion on Global Warming

FROM-The Daily Caller