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Showing posts with label Hypocrisy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hypocrisy. Show all posts

January 15, 2013

Al Gore’s Payday

FROM-NRO



Whatever his intentions, the former veep has benefited America’s enemies.

By Robert Zubrin

Recently, it was reported that former vice president Al Gore had managed to sell his financially troubled Current TV network to the Al Jazeera company, owned by the Qatar government, for $500 million, netting himself about $100 million in the process.

There is something unsettling about this transaction. I own a small aerospace company that does some business with the U.S. government. If I were to take a NASA middle manager out to dinner and pick up the tab, the inspector general would be all over both of us in a heartbeat. Yet here is Al Gore, a former congressman, senator, and vice president of the United States, receiving $100 million from a foreign government — and not just any foreign government, but one involved in extremely damaging economic warfare against the United States and the promotion of terrorism worldwide — and yet the attorney general takes no action. What gives?

To be sure, Al Gore is not the first high-level U.S.-government official, or even the first in his family, to obtain a payoff from a foreign government opposed to the United States. For example, his father, then-congressman Al Gore Sr., received a herd of prize cattle from Armand Hammer, which he was able to sell repeatedly at grossly inflated prices to lobbyists who never bothered to pick them up. When Gore retired from the Senate, he took up a $500,000-per-year (in 1970s money) position as CEO of the American coal subsidiary of Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum. Edward Jay Epstein extensively documented in his book Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, based on KGB files that became public after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Hammer was in fact — as had been widely suspected before the release of said documents — a top-level paymaster of the Soviet foreign-intelligence services from 1922 onward. According to Epstein, Gore Sr. received his payoff in return for his help in preventing prosecution of Hammer by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as for his key role in encouraging King Idris of Libya to transfer control of his country’s oilfields to Occidental — a move that no doubt facilitated the subsequent transfer of control of Libya itself to the Soviet camp.

So there is no doubt that Al Gore Sr. deserved his payoff from Armand Hammer. But what has Al Gore Jr. ever done for Qatar? Isn’t he, after all, the foremost champion of the worldwide environmentalist movement, which is bitterly opposed to oil production, the very lifeblood of the Qatari regime? Yes, he is, but there is a little catch, because while opposed in principle to oil production everywhere, the environmentalist movement has been effective in reality only in impeding it in the United States.

Read entire article

May 17, 2011

An Inconvient Truth: A Fifth Anniversary Tribute



FROM-The American Spectator

By Mark Hyman

This month is the fifth anniversary of the release of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The documentary film became a sensation among the political left, the easily impressionable segments of the public and a majority in Congress that was all too eager to enact legislation to solve the global crisis.

The film won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and the audio version received a Grammy. For his efforts to save the planet, Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a very good haul for a film that grossed a rather paltry $23 million in domestic box office receipts.

There is no denying that Gore and his film deserve the lion's share of the credit (or blame) for launching the wild hysteria to combat "manmade global warming" that swept the nation in 2006.

The U.S. House of Representatives created an entirely new committee "The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming" because "global warming is an urgent problem that requires action now" such as hastening the nation's "transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy."

Congress passed legislation banning incandescent light bulbs by 2014. Americans will soon exclusively use CFL (curly-fry light) bulbs that will keep a home as dimly light as a Third World hospital room.

On several occasions Congress was unsuccessful in enacting "cap and trade" legislation that would be a financial windfall for some groups but would also kill thousands of American jobs. Common sense prevailed as the legislation failed to move in Congress but, the Environmental Protection Agency has threatened to implement the legislation via regulatory edict.

After the film was released, a number of strange bedfellows jumped onto the manmade global warming bandwagon. In one public service announcement, Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, who sat together on a sofa like a pair of love-struck lab partners before they were to head off to the senior prom, demanded a solution to global warming.

A year later the always-evolving Gingrich would abandon his newfound fossil-fuels-are-evil buddies and publish a book titled Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less in which he advocates pumping as much oil from the ground as is humanly possible.

Going Green became the catch phrase. There was a rush to purchase hybrid vehicles such as the two-seat Honda Insight, the impractical compact that is not much larger than a circus clown car, and the overpriced Toyota Prius that has been plagued with numerous battery and service problems.

The Discovery cable network launched Planet Green channel whose star celebrity is Ed Begley, Jr. That's right, who? That came on the heels of NBC Universal airing "green" theme programming on its stable of cable and broadcast channels during the month of April. Even Time magazine offered a "Going Green" column. Green expos, exhibits, conventions and bazaars popped up around the country. Green was in.

Not content with his role as Chicken Little, Gore went on to co-found a "carbon credit" company that has made him millions. He even used the carbon credit service for himself. He deems his extravagant, high-energy use home as being "carbon neutral" because he purchases "carbon offsets." From himself.

This review comes five years after the film's original release but, I confess the timing is only a mere coincidence. My primary goal in watching the film was to determine if I was correct in what I remembered of my 2006 viewing. I began to have doubts.....

Read entire article here

May 5, 2011

Top Green Admits: “We Are Lost!

FROM-The American Interest

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

George Monbiot of the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian has a must-read column in which he admits that because of a whole series of intellectual mistakes, the global green movement’s policy prescriptions are hopelessly flawed.

Read the whole piece for a thoughtful and brutally clear expose of the intellectual bankruptcy of the green movement from one of the smartest people in it. This is what I’ve been getting at for more than a year here: regardless of what is happening to Planet Earth, the green movement does not have coherent and workable solutions.

Greens like to have it both ways. They warn darkly about “peak oil” and global resource shortages that will destroy our industrial economy in its tracks — but also warn that runaway economic growth will destroy the planet through the uncontrolled effects of mass industrial productions. Both doomsday scenarios cannot be true; one cannot simultaneously die of both starvation and gluttony.

Monbiot gets it, and furthermore concedes one of the main arguments of the anti-green case. The ‘problem’ is not a shortage of carbon rich non-renewable futures. The problem is the abundance of these fuels. We are not running out of hydrocarbons; shale natural gas, tar sands and coal offer enormous reserves that can cover our needs for the foreseeable future. We have an abundance of fossil fuel. Moreover, it seems likely that for a very long time to come, fossil fuels will be substantially cheaper and more abundant that expensive renewables. (One should also note that these new fuel sources are found in places like Canada and the United States rather than Saudi Arabia and Iran.)

More, Monbiot also acknowledges the contradictory and inconsistent nature of the green solutions. He acknowledges that there is no prospect for democratic politics to impose the draconian limits on consumption and economic activity that green dogma requires. Every ‘solution’ the greens have come up with has a fatal flaw of some kind; none of it works, none of it makes any sense. As Monbiot concludes,

“All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.”

This is an awesome admission of categorical intellectual, political and moral failure. For two decades greens have arrogated to themselves the authority of science and wrapped themselves in the arrogant certainty of self-righteous contempt for those who oppose them. They have equated skepticism about their incoherent and contradictory policy proposals with hatred of science and attacked their critics as the soulless hired shills of the oil companies, happy to ruin humanity for the sake of some corporate largesse.

Monbiot has worked his way through to a cogent description of the dead end the global green movement has reached, but he has not yet diagnosed the cause. In particular, he remains a staunch Malthusian. In his view, humanity is good at creating new ways to destroy itself, but not at finding solutions to the problems we create. Our ingenuity is magically good at finding new fossil fuels, but we have no skill whatsoever at managing the consequences of our discoveries. The unknown technologies of the future will create horrible new disasters, but they will offer no new ways to contain or manage the disruption they cause.

Economic growth is a cancer, in this view. Its bad effects are permanent and cumulative, its blessings are evanescent and ultimately trivial.

Malthusianism is a religious conviction that desperately needs to think of itself as a science. From Thomas Malthus and his mathematical certainties to Paul Ehrlich with his famine timetables and the Club of Rome with its ‘scientific’ predictions of resource exhaustion, Malthusians have made confident predictions about the future and claimed scientific authority for statements that turned out to be contemptibly silly. That is the brutal fate that often awaits people who can’t keep the boundaries between science and religion straight.

It is happening on a massive and humiliating scale to the world’s greens today. Monbiot’s sober assessment of the consequences is dead on; when the greens digest his analysis and go a bit further to ask how they got into this mess, they will be ready to join something that the world truly and urgently needs: a serious and grownup conversation about how to conserve the beauty and viability of our glorious home as the human race continues to develop the extraordinary intelligence Mother Nature has seen fit to give us.

April 30, 2011

"Stupid is as stupid does"

FROM-American Thinker

Dear Southern Storm Victims: You are dead because you didn't believe in global warming

Rick Moran

Liberal hate site Think Progress ("When you Think Progress - think stupid") has a jaw dropping blog post that is beyond "I told ya so" with regards to the dubious connection between climate change and severe weather. The headline says it all:

Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers

Note the slavish devotion to the cockamamie administration idea that CO2 is pollution. Someone should tell them that licking the boots of politicians in cases where even the administration knows they themselves are full of bull only makes the boot lickers look pathetic.

But what is up with that headline?

"Given that global warming is unequivocal," climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, "the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.'"
The congressional delegations of these states - Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky - overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.
Kevin Trenberth is one of the lead authors of the UN IPCC Reports which failed to incorporate skeptical analysis from responsible opponents and predicted such events as Himalayan glaciers melting based on unproved research. It is a flawed document that climate change religionists treat as their Bible.

The problem with Trenberth's statement is that it is laughably false. If we are to take the position that all weather events are the result of global warming, then how about non-events? How about a less than predicted number of hurricanes as we had last year? If bad hurricane season prove global warming, then few hurricanes must prove it's a crock.

Neither is true. Trenberth knows better but he also knows where his bread is buttered; grants and position due to his unwavering support for warming and vicious attacks against critics. Imagine him coming out tomorrow in opposition to the IPCC. How long do you think he'd have a job?

Scientists who have so much vested in the global warming industry are as suspect as those who receive grants from industry. They are both shilling for a master other than scientific truth.
Think Progress exhibits the empathy of a marmoset. To try and blame the victims of the storm for their own deaths because they didn't "believe" in global warming (scientists - real ones - neither "believe" or "deny" warming. They examine the evidence and either agree or disagree with the hypothesis) and had no "faith" that charlatans pushing this theory for their own nefarious agenda were correct.

Next time a storm kills someone from a blue state, I'll be eager to see what Think Progress has to say about that.

April 12, 2011

Just another hitch in the get along


When I originally posted a synopsis of Dr. Richard Muller's presentation I focused on and much was made of his comment:

"if you believe we can get a favor from God by praying, I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in because if my evaluation is right when I show you what the problem is and if the global warming models are right, and I think they are very likely right, then we are going to have global warming."
Although it is true that the reason I focused on the quote was to draw attention to the fact that Dr Muller had  expressed a belief in the "consensus"  view of global warming and ought not be championed by the "realist" community as some sort of redeemer, I failed to point out a more important issue in regards to his statement. It is not as if Dr Muller is alone in a complete lack of objectivity, it is just that his is so blatantly obvious.

To make the point I will post a bit longer section of  the video containing the the above quote.


It is obvious that Dr Muller is well aware of the serious problem that the science of global warming has with the "cloud cover uncertainty" and its potential impact on the theory itself. Which I briefly pointed out:
Consider that for a moment. Immediately after explaining the great uncertainty in the hypothesis behind global warming he says he believes the global warming models are right.
It is also obvious that Dr Muller has a very good grasp of the theory of global warming  He even mentions but fails to explain the significance of the "enhanced greenhouse effect" of water vapor.  He also appears to be conversant on the IPCC literature, he even mentions where you can find a reference to the "cloud cover uncertainty" in the report.  I presume he is referring to the following from AR 4 (all emphasis mine)
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.
 Although discussions on the "cloud cover uncertainty" is found throughout AR 4 such as:
The response of cloud cover to increasing greenhouse gases currently represents the largest uncertainty in model predictions of climate sensitivity
 or these
Moreover, the spread of climate sensitivity estimates among current models arises primarily from inter-model differences in cloud feedback Colman, 2003a; Soden and Held, 2006; Webb et al., 2006; Section 8.6.2, Figure 8.14). Therefore, cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty in climate sensitivity estimates...

...The sign of the climate change radiative feedback associated with the combined effects of dynamical and temperature changes on extratropical clouds is still unknown.

The role of polar cloud feedbacks in climate sensitivity has been emphasized by Holland and Bitz (2003) and Vavrus (2004). However, these feedbacks remain poorly understood.
There are dozens of such references to the "cloud cover uncertainty" issue but then again the science of global warming is rife with uncertainties on numerous issues so this is by no means unique. What I do find unique or at least very troubling is how scientist such as the esteemed Dr Muller can be aware of all these uncertainties and yet "think they (the models) are very likely right." 

This has become the normal operating method in the climate science field, even when it does not involve climate scientist. For all his dramatic outrage at the scientist involved in the "climategate" scandal, Dr Muller seems  totally willing to ignore inconvenient truths in his own analysis on the state of the science underpinning  global warming. He is not alone as  the vast majority of the rest of the scientific community seems to accept the theory on it's face without the least bit of critical thinking.

Consider the "enhanced greenhouse effect" which Dr Muller briefly explains in the above clip. The importance of this can not be ignored, yet the scientific community including Dr Muller seem more than willing to do just that. In the same section of AR4 synthesis report that Dr Muller alludes to actually just a couple of paragraphs later, we find this:
The so-called water vapour feedback, caused by an increase in atmospheric water vapour due to a temperature increase, is the most important feedback responsible for the amplification of the temperature increase.
As I have pointed out in the past  this is why the historical temperature record is vital to proping up the theory:
The importance of whether or not the MWP was warmer than today really has little to do with precedented or unprecedented as if it was some sort of sports record, the real importance has to do with the "enhanced" greenhouse theory itself. If a period of time measured in centuries not decades were more than 1.2 degrees warmer on average than is projected to occur due to increased CO2, what happened to the famous tipping point ?
Yet the problems with the enhanced greenhouse effect which is the theory of global warming is just ignored.  As I posted recently there is no proof that there is any enhanced greenhouse effect and just like the "cloud cover uncertainty" not only is there no way to prove the effect there is not even a way to measure it. From NOAA
Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which is why it is addressed here first. However, changes in its concentration is also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization. The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood.
and
...The future monitoring of atmospheric processes involving water vapor will be critical to fully understand the feedbacks in the climate system leading to global climate change. As yet, though the basics of the hydrological cycle are fairly well understood, we have very little comprehension of the complexity of the feedback loops. Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by how much atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries,
Almost all aspects of climate science show a similar lack of concern for actual proof for the theory of man made global warming but these two issues are beyond just small inconveniences, they are the very foundation of the theory itself. Still the scientific community goes merrily along their way hiding their collective eyes from the fact that there is no proof backing up their mega-billion dollar assertions.

The theory is all the proof that is needed. It does not even matter that the two most important elements to that theory can not even be measured. They somehow are able to convince themselves that they can input values representing unmeasurable data into their
computer models and come up with a projection of a future world when they are incapable of measuring the one that they actually live in.

 For the scientific community little distractions like this are not meant to be thoroughly examined and explained, at least  as to why their theory still holds true. No, minor foundational questions like this are just another hitch in the get along to greater prestige and rewards.


And they still call this science.

The New Weathermen


Climatologists mount a terror campaign

FROM-Pajamas Media

Recently, pretty much on a whim, I decided to monitor the accuracy of radio and TV weather reports, since these affect our daily behavior in all sorts of different ways: what we wear, whether we go in to work or not, look to the repair of the shutters, go up on the ladder to check the rain gutters, don’t forget the sunglasses, etc. I gave the weather experts one week to prove their credentials and began keeping careful score.

The TV reports were terribly impressive. They were also impressively terrible. For all the intricate color charts, the high pressure areas and low pressure areas marked in bold, the sweeping curvilinear lines, the little puffy clouds extruding rain drops, the smiley-face suns, the luminous chromatics of competing “systems,” and all the rest of it, it turned out that the cocksure prognostications were as just wrong as they were right.

After the week had passed, my scorecard showed that the weather person had blundered grievously on three days, had been correct on three days, and was partially correct on one day when the rainfall forecast for the morning arrived only in the evening. A 50% success rate hardly qualifies as confidence-inspiring, seeing that it approximates nothing more convincing than the results of a coin toss.

It’s tempting to extrapolate from the quotidian to the planetary, from the small tomorrow to the big tomorrow, and inquire into the competence of our “official” climatologists, who have assured us that we are heading for meteoric catastrophe, noncompliant weather notwithstanding. Climate warm-mongers naturally try to rescue their hypothesis by dishing up vain distinctions, like the climate “expert” interviewed on CBC Radio’s As it Happens who, confronted with the fact of colder winters, claimed there is a difference between climate and weather!

The game works like this. If the weather is warmer than usual, it is an infallible sign of global warming. If the weather is colder than usual, it is an equally infallible sign — owing to some ludicrous formula straight out of an alchemist’s notebook — that the climate is heating up alarmingly and we must all go green, pass cap and trade, drive Volts, turn down our thermostats, and set up phalanxes of unsightly, bird-shredding, budget-breaking, and neurosis-inducing windmills that may, on good days, produce enough electricity to power a 40-watt bulb. A massive snowfall climbing over the window ledge indicates the approach of desert-like winters when parents will recount nostalgic tales of snowball fights of yore to their wondering children. The predictions, though, need not always be counter-intuitive. A dry season means the baking inferno is nigh. A wet season signals the onset of Noahide floods, rising sea levels, and the submerging of Pacific islands. An ordinary day is merely the ominous quiet before the impending storm. It makes no difference what the data may be, they always point in the same direction.

Quite frankly, we have, most or at least many of us, gone stark raving mad. Experience counts for nothing. Theory is everything. One thinks of the old joke: It’s fine in practice, but will it work in theory? Only it’s not fine in practice, in defiance of which the theory must be patched together and upheld at all costs.

Thus, increasingly unable to rely on the accuracy of their findings, which had the annoying habit of turning into fables, mainstream climatologists, like their colleagues in the political arena, were compelled to fall back on their next best option. If reality refused to cooperate, then all that needed to be done was to change the terminology. First it was global warming. When the earth decided not to play along and pummeled us with a series of colder winters and major snow storms, we suddenly discovered we were the victims of climate change. When it became evident that there were fewer rather than more hurricane events, as confidently predicted by Al Gore, we were now subject to global weirding, whatever that was supposed to be. When the latest substitution didn’t catch on, it became global climate disruption, an umbrella term big enough to shelter climatologists from the facts pelting down on them.

The technique of blatantly merchandising outright lies as uncontested facts was evident in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report claiming that the period 2002-2009 was “the warmest on record worldwide,” when something very close to the opposite was the truth (AP, February 8, 2010). Not content with passing off one whopper, the NOAA, which derives its evidence from the dubious NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, claimed that June 2010 was the warmest month on record and that Arctic temperatures had risen by close to four degrees from average. The problem here is that Goddard has no thermometers north of eighty degrees latitude and so projected their readings from their more southerly apparatus. “Really,” comments meteorologist Art Horn, who has closely tracked these facets of the climate fantasy, “they make it up.”
And that’s the truth. They make it up. Of course, making things up turns out to be a profitable business, generating all manner of perks, titles, offices, grants, and funds, an appanage without limit. Take UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman Rajendra Pachauri, who has recently been implicated in a conflict of interest, as he sits on the boards of companies poised to profit from the “climate change” industry. And when it comes to pure invention, let us recall that he was also the chief backer of the great “Himalaya melt” scare, which has now been shown to be based on an undocumented, unchecked, and unproven “speculation” of a single Indian scientist, Syed Hasnain, who was then recruited by Pachauri to his The Energy Research Institute (TERI). The IPCC’s 2007 report, vetted by Pachauri, said there was a 90% chance that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. This claim has now been decisively refuted. The Pachauri gang also had to admit that its 2007 statement that 55% of the Netherlands lies below sea level was in error — it is 26% (Big Journalism, February 13, 2010).

The plot thickened — or thinned — in late November 2009 when the Hadley Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was hacked, releasing thousands of files suggesting a covert mega-operation to propagate an anthropogenic global warming myth. This is an excellent instance of the Groves of Hackademe doing what they do best — misconceiving the world and then misleading it. “Warmist scientists,” wrote James Delingpole about the Hadley contretemps, “have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause” (Telegraph.co.uk, November 21, 2009). The CRU was clearly practicing counterfeit science. It had become undeniable that measurements were tampered with to paint the desired canvas, that counter-evidence was deliberately squelched, that character assassination against climate skeptics was an accepted tactic, and that experimental results were falsely replicated.

The notorious Wikileaks cable dump made it even clearer that the climate “consensus” was more of a political and fiscal gambit than a scientific project (guardian.co.uk, December 3, 2010). Mark Levin’s chapter “On Enviro-Statism” in his Liberty and Tyranny provides a compendious summary of the various stages of the global warming hoax and how it functions as an instrument of statist control of civil society. Similarly, Ottmar Edenhofer, former co-chair of the IPCC’s Working Group III, admitted in an interview with Germany’s NZZ Online on November 14, 2010, that “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

There are many “big names” associated with what has become perhaps the greatest scam of our times. Aside from Pachauri, there is, for example, James Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute and has been prophesying climate apocalypse for years now, looking more like a carnival fortune teller on meth than a serious scientist. Indeed, he makes Nostradamus sound like a comparatively sober futurologist. Hansen warns that if we don’t get our act together soon, New York City will be under fifty feet of water by the end of the century. Interestingly, Hansen was forced to revise his figures showing that the warmest decade of the 20th century was the 1990s — the warmest decade was the 1930s. He has now been outed by his former NASA supervisor John Theon, who told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that Hansen “violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it)…” (Inhofe EPW Press Blog, January 27, 2009). And Christopher Horner reports that Hansen may well be in violation of waiver requirements from NASA for private and lucrative “outside employment.” As of this writing, NASA has not yet released its “ethics-related records” pertaining to Hansen’s case. All that one can say at this juncture is “Hmmm,” a skeptical intonation that appears to be merited.

Then there is Canada’s own poster geezer David Suzuki, who predicted some 20 years ago that we had only 10 years to go before suffering environmental collapse. Seems we’re still around, if only to judge from Suzuki’s obstreperous presence. Addressing a McGill University Business Conference on Sustainability on January 31, 2008, Suzuki stated: “What I would challenge you to do is put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail” for not acting more quickly on environmental issues. (Hansen echoed the same totalitarian sentiment in an article in The Guardian for June 23, 2008, in which he urged that CEOs of fossil energy companies “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”) According to Suzuki, the world is falling apart, carbon-driven global warming will do us all in pronto, despite the fact that CO2 comprises a mere 380 parts per million of the earth’s atmosphere, not all of it anthropogenic, and even worse, polar bear colonies are on the verge of extinction. Actually, as biologist Mitchell Taylor, who works with the Nunavut Territorial Government of Canada, states categorically, their numbers in the Canadian north have increased by a factor of 25% (National Center for Policy Analysis, January 25, 2007; The Independent, February 10, 2009). This is only the tip of Suzuki’s melting iceberg. He appeals mainly to the vast cohort of the naïve and impressionable, that is to say, CBC television and the majority of Canadians.

And who can forget the illustrious Goracle, the Twelfth Imam of climate Armageddon? Until his recent embarrassment in a hotel room and subsequent marital problems reaching the Tipper point, Al Gore was well on his way to becoming the world’s first carbonaire. Gore has been making stuff up for as long as we can remember and doing quite handsomely in the process. He has been guilty of so many lapses and misdemeanors that one barely knows where to begin. A UK court ruled that his film An Inconvenient Truth contained at least nine salient falsehoods, that the film was scientifically unsound and little more than a form of “political indoctrination.” In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, he blames the Antarctic ozone hole for causing blindness in animal populations. Unfortunately, Chilean scientists investigating the phenomenon had already accounted for it as owing to an epidemic of pink eye disease (NewScientist, August 21, 1993).

As is becoming plain by now, Gore is not noted for practicing what he preaches but for urging what he breaches. Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, points out that Gore “uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year” (Townhall.com, July 29, 2009). He enjoys the lifestyle of a pampered plutocrat, jetting about the world, purchasing and equipping lavish mansions, keeping his limousine idling, while demanding austerity on the part of others in order to save the planet he methodically exploits. He has, for example, no compunction buying carbon offsets from the company he co-owns and chairs, Generation Investment Management (Canada Free Press, March 13, 2007; The Citizens Journal online; WorldNetDaily.com, etc.). He is a partner in the capital investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which floated a $500 million special fund for “green investments” — the same firm, incidentally, that is behind Terralliance, an oil wildcatter that is about as nongreen as one can get (Fortune magazine, Brainstorm 2008 and VentureBeat Clean Tech, July 16, 2008). He draws royalties from Pasminco’s highly toxic zinc mine (The Tennessean, March 17, 2000, The Wall Street Journal for June 29, 2000 and March 19, 2007, USA Today, March 18, 2007, and many others). The list goes on, but space precludes.

Time to get real. Geologist David Dee, chair of the 2008 International Geological Congress science committee, asks: “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?” (WorldNetDaily, December 11, 2008). This brute fact does not disturb Al Gore’s ally, former Under-Secretary of State Tim Wirth, who has gone on record justifying the kind of scientific fraud perpetrated by the IPCC. “Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,” he said, “we will be doing the right thing.” For Wirth and his mates, the means justify the end, and the end justifies nothing — except, of course, their own orgasmic sense of importance and righteousness and the emoluments flowing into their coffers.

March 24, 2011

Energy Fantasyland

FROM-RCP

By Victor Davis Hanson

Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California -- and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad?

That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not when the Obama administration has stopped new domestic offshore oil exploration in many American waters, curbed oil leases in the West, and keeps oil-rich areas of Alaska exempt from drilling. Last week, President Obama went to Brazil and declared of that country's new offshore finds: "With the new oil finds off Brazil, President (Dilma) Rousseff has said that Brazil wants to be a major supplier of new stable sources of energy, and I've told her that the United States wants to be a major customer, which would be a win-win for both our countries."

Consider the logic of the president's Orwellian declaration: The United States in the last two years has restricted oil exploration of the sort Brazil is now rushing to embrace. We have run up more than $4 trillion in consecutive budget deficits during the Obama administration and are near federal insolvency. Therefore, the United States should be happy to borrow more money to purchase the sort of "new stable sources of energy" from Brazil's offshore wells that we most certainly will not develop off our own coasts.

It seems as if paying lots more for electricity and gas, in European fashion, was originally part of the president's new green agenda. He helped push cap-and-trade legislation through the House of Representatives in 2009. Had such Byzantine regulations become law, a recessionary economy would have sunk into depression. Obama appointed the incompetent Van Jones as "green jobs czar" -- until Jones' wild rantings confirmed that he knew nothing about his job description "to advance the administration's climate and energy initiatives."

At a time of trillion-dollar deficits, the administration is borrowing billions to promote high-speed rail, and is heavily invested in the federally subsidized $42,000 Government Motors Chevy Volt. Apparently the common denominator here is a deductive view that high energy prices will force Americans to emulate European centrally planned and state-run transportation.

That conclusion is not wild conspiracy theory, but simply the logical manifestation of many of the Obama administration's earlier campaign promises. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu -- now responsible for the formulation of American energy policy -- summed up his visions to the Wall Street Journal in 2008: "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." I think Chu is finally figuring out the "somehow."

A year earlier, Chu was more explicit in his general contempt for the sort of fuels that now keep Americans warm and on the road: "Coal is my worst nightmare. ... We have lots of fossil fuel. That's really both good and bad news. We won't run out of energy but there's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us."

In fairness to Chu, he was only amplifying what Obama himself outlined during the 2008 campaign. Today's soaring energy prices are exactly what candidate Obama once dreamed about: "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Obama, like Chu, made that dream even more explicit in the case of coal "So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can -- it's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

There are lots of ironies to these Alice-in-Wonderland energy fantasies. As the public become outraged over gas prices, a panicked Obama pivots to brag that we are pumping more oil than ever before -- but only for a time, and only because his predecessors approved the type of drilling he has stopped.

The entire climate-change movement, fairly or not, is now in shambles, thanks to serial scandals about faked research, consecutive record cold and wet winters in much of Europe and the United States, and the conflict-of-interest, get-rich schemes of prominent global-warming preachers such as Al Gore.

The administration's energy visions are formulated by academics and government bureaucrats who live mostly in cities with short commutes and have worked largely for public agencies. These utopians have no idea that without reasonably priced fuel and power, the self-employed farmer cannot produce food. The private plant operator cannot create plastics. And the trucker cannot bring goods to the consumer -- all the basics like lettuce, iPads and Levis that a highly educated, urbanized elite both enjoys and yet has no idea of how a distant someone else made their unbridled consumption possible

March 19, 2011

CYBER WAG Eating Maple Bars!



It has come to this! When CYBER WAG (computer generated Wild Ass Guess) went after the Polar Bears, or Tweety Bird, or even when CYBER WAG brought out the stochastic weather generator to kill crops in California I held out hope that these modelers of mayhem could be stopped.

Perhaps I have naively assumed reasonable scientist would step forward and unplug these....these...these fantasy world demons of darkness and destruction who lurk amongst us. These scientific panderers of flim flammery who appear to be normal  human beings, but who in fact live in a Matrix world of computer games and are hell bent on pulling the few sane amongst us into their apocalyptic world of never ending crisis and disaster. Not to be confused with the MSM.

Since childhood I have loved these simple but delicious delicacies, perhaps even more, yes indeed even more, than the salmon which the CYBER WAG is attempting to devour, but now CYBER WAG has set it's covetous eyes upon my Maple Bars.

Snuck away in the pages of a local rag newspaper we find this:

Sugar maples and climate change


Michael J. Caduto

Unlike the Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, real trees can’t walk away from danger or fight their own battles. When climate becomes inhospitable, forests can only shift ranges over long periods of time. This isn’t a problem when natural climate change occurs slowly. At the end of the recent post-glacial period, it took 4,300 years for the ice sheet to melt back from Middletown, Conn., to St. Johnsbury -- averaging 245 feet a year. Forest communities in front of the glacier gradually migrated northward in its wake.

Starting about 9,000 years ago and stretching for the next 4,000 to 5,000 years, the average temperature in the New England area became nearly 4°F warmer than it is today, and the climate was similar to modern-day Virginia. Hemlock and white pine grew 1,300 feet higher up the mountain slopes. Evidence now shows that the engines of the industrial age are taking today’s climate forward, into the past. U.S. Climatological Network Data reveals that the mean annual temperature has increased by 3.8 degrees F since 1835, but 70 percent of this rise in temperature has occurred since 1970.
 Being the trusting soul that I am I will allow that the facts presented thus far are correct, although it is a bit disconcerting being as they are intertwined with the Ents from the fantasy world of JRR Tolkien. Perhaps that is appropriate both from  the fantasy aspect and that Lord Of The Rings was a metaphor for the struggle against oppressive centralized statism.

Please do remember however that according to this article temperatures in New England have already increased 3.8 degrees F since 1835, but also according to this article that  temperatures were 4 degrees F warmer than today, just 4 to 5 thousand years ago. This means that during the time that the Pharaoh's of Egypt were building the pyramids, Stonehenge was built, the calender was invented by the Mesopotamians, glass was invented, the first library was built, the first civilization in India was established, paper was invented, and a host of other accomplishments occurred , temperature were considerably warmer than today. If in fact the temperatures were that much warmer 4 thousand years ago, how are today's temperatures unprecedented? And more importantly how is it we did not tip the all important tipping point?


Onto the devouring of my maple bars:
Barry Rock, Professor of Natural Resources at the University of New Hampshire in Durham predicts that, based on two climate models in a New England regional climate assessment study, "Within the next 100 years, Boston could have a climate similar to either Richmond, Virginia, or Atlanta, Georgia." These computer models project that the average regional temperature will rise from between 6 degrees and 10 degrees over the next century.
 Here we see the introduction of CYBER WAG into the article "based on two climate models" in a New England regional climate assessment study." You also see how these people are constantly putting themselves in a pickle.

Let's do the math.

* In 1835 it was 3.8 deg F colder than today

* From 2000-3000 BC it was 4 deg F warmer than today.

* This means that in 1835 it was 7.8 deg F colder than when the Egyptians built the pyramids. Quite a difference isn't it? So much for the sensitivity of our eco-systems not to mention mankind to drastic climate change

Back to the maple bars, yum. In order to wipe out this delicacy, temperatures must be unprecedented in the future, they've already admitted that they are not now. So our CYBER WAG industrial Complex fires up the computer models and decides that it will be more than 4 degrees F warmer by 2100 than it is now. Why? Perhaps this may explain:

You will note that neither Richmond Virginia or Atlanta Georgia are know for their sugar maples. But you will also notice that climates far and wide are capable of nurturing the goddess of the golden nectar. From the same Cornell paper:
Climate
Average temperatures within the geographic range of sugar maple have average January temperatures from 0 to 50° F and average July temperatures from 60 to 80° F. Maximum temperatures in the summer months range from 90 to 100° F, while winter minima vary from -40 to +20° F. Annual precipitation throughout the geographical range averages 20 to 50 inches of rain, plus from 1 to 150 inches of snow. In unusually wet years in the southern reaches of this broad range total annual rain in excess of 80 inches has been recorded.
The first killing frost usually occurs between September 1 and November 10 and the last from March 20 to June 15, depending on latitude and elevation. Thus average growing seasons are from 80 to 260 days.

It is also important for the narrative that drastic change in temperatures  be swift as Dr Rock explains:

If the models prove accurate, Rock says that, "In 100 years, New England’s cooler regions will no longer promote the growth of sugar maples, which are well adapted to the region’s current climate. This climate will support species that now grow to the south and in lower elevations, especially oaks and southern pines. On average, trees can only move their range from 10 to 25 kilometers over a 100-year period, and the current rate of climate change will not allow enough time for trees to ‘migrate’ northward in a smooth transition."

Always the big "If the models prove accurate", yes indeedy that really is the question of our times isn't it?

In order for the CYBER WAG to have its way with the trees, the warming must be fast and furious. Interesting that they are not only predicting  that this heat monster will wipe out our sweet maple in the next 100 years, but that we will be left with a barren wasteland, "This [new] climate will support species that now grow to the south and in lower elevations, especially oaks and southern pines.... But "... the current rate of climate change will not allow enough time for trees to ‘migrate’ northward in a smooth transition."

It's a CBER WAG twofer! A double apocalypse with one fell swoop, or more accurately a well placed entry on the keyboard. I guess this also means we will be growing oranges in Nashville soon?


Now it's time for the caveats. You know where the scientist and their lackeys in the media scare the bejezzuz out of everyone then say "well we did say this was just a possibility, I don't know why people take us so seriously"


Ultimately, under this scenario, the optimal range for sugar maples in New England could retreat up the high mountain slopes and to northern Maine. (Sugar maple’s current range extends as far south as Virginia and Tennessee, though only in the higher mountains.) Of the five computer models created by the U.S. Forest Service to predict the geographic shift in the ranges of forest species, only one foretells that global warming will cause sugar maples to disappear completely from parts of New England. Even if the climate warms considerably, our forests will still support the growth of some sugar maples, especially in higher terrains.

Although the range of sugar maples changes slowly, the flow of sap in a sugarbush is dynamic and depends on fine temperature variations that occur daily throughout late winter and early spring. Sap flows best when nighttime temperatures drop into the mid-20s and when daytime highs reach around 38-40 degrees.

From here the effects of climate change are harder to predict. If the daily cycling between freeze and thaw occurs less frequently, sugaring will suffer, as it will if the season is shortened by several weeks. But if sugaring as we now know it is simply shifted earlier into the year, the effect could be less pronounced. Making predictions about sugaring season has always been an uncertain but popular pastime, even before the dawn of climate change.
Ah yes the scenario gambit. Take the worst possible scenario, based upon computer projections whose output was derived from input entered by people who make a living by keeping everyone else on edge over the destruction of the planet. Then going to journalist 
who make their living  by keeping everyone else on edge over the destruction of the planet, or any other crisis for that matter. This sounds like a perfectly common sense way for science and the dissemination of science to be conducted, don't you think?

But they can not quite let it go. They know they must conclude with the dire threats they have unleashed upon humanity. So that there may be no doubt that temperatures returning to where they were at the cradle of human civilization is a bad thing.
The maple sugar industry can compensate somewhat for the uncertainties of the shifting climate. According to Dr. Timothy Perkins, director of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center, "The best equipment in the sugar house isn’t going to make you any more money. It’s how you manage the sugarbush that counts."

Producers need to tap their trees earlier, before the sap starts to flow, so they can gather the best quality sap of the season. Old tubing must be replaced with new, which is made of superior material and is more efficient. Getting rid of leaks in the system will help, as well as using a vacuum system for collecting sap. Collectively, these steps can help mitigate the problem.

No matter what steps are taken, the wheels have been set in motion. The question is: How far down the road will sugar maples have to travel before we put the brakes on climate change?

To view maps that predict shifts in the ranges of trees that will be brought on by global warming, visit www.fs.fed.us/ne/delaware/atlas/index.html.

Yes how far must the sugar maples travel?

Do you find it strange, or is it just me, that so called moderate scientist, you know those that are not "deniers" or "alarmist" do not see all the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the scientific community when it comes to climate science? Here is one of literally hundreds of stories done to warn of the dire consequences of global warming which within the story itself states unequivocally that the very foundation of man made global warming "it is unprecedented!" states that it is not unprecedented at all.

It is not as if Mr Caduto made this all up out of thin air, he quotes scientist who one must assume have read the article in which they are quoted. If they thought that anything was inaccurate one would assume they would have corrected it or asked for a correction.

Do you see a mad rush to the cameras by these so called "moderate" scientist to correct or clarify the glaring inconsistencies constantly being foisted upon the general public? Does it not concern these scientist that if the very foundations on which the science of global warming is built is being shown to be a sham that the entire enterprise is probably a sham as well? Do they not care? Or as was written when temperatures were about 4 degrees F warmer than they are now.

"When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath."

You can keep your shekels, just quit messing with my maple bars

March 11, 2011

The debate is over

Over at Climate Etc. there is currently a post titled "Talking Past Each Other?" It is a discussion on a recent study about the dynamics of the climate change debate. To put it simply "Can't we all just get along"

Whenever I read these types of discussion it inevitably is about somehow bringing the sides together in order to discuss the science or the policies relative to the science. In other words "How can we debate the science like adults" or some such thing.

There is a very simple answer to this, you can't really debate the science, because it never has been a scientific debate, it's a political debate and always has been. The science part of global warming has always just been a means to an end for the political agenda behind it.

Scientist who are not heavily vested in the politics of global warming like to hide their heads in the sand and pretend that it is all about the science. However their actions or lack of actions show that they are no more  than "useful idiots" to those who have manipulated the climate science community into a political agenda. As long as they can keep the arguments on some sort of pseudo-intellectual plain they can ignore the cancerous puss which controls their profession. Or more likely they suffer from what Upton Sinclair so aptly observed:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
The climate science community is very good at not understanding that politics, not science is the driving force behind their field. If they really were worried about the scientific debate they would put a stop to the obvious propaganda that is so much a part of their science discipline. But they don't, more often than not they promote it without actual scientific evidence to support it, they just advance a narrative.

In the past week alone we have two very good examples of why this isn't science, it is an agenda.

From Grist today 3/11/11 at 11;00 AM

Today’s tsunami: This is what climate change looks like


As the tragedy in Japan is unfolding, global warming propagandist are writing articles tying it to global warming. From the above article:

So far, today's tsunami has mainly affected Japan -- there are reports of up to 300 dead in the coastal city of Sendai -- but future tsunamis could strike the U.S. and virtually any other coastal area of the world with equal or greater force, say scientists. In a little-heeded warning issued at a 2009 conference on the subject, experts outlined a range of mechanisms by which climate change could already be causing more earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity.

"When the ice is lost, the earth's crust bounces back up again and that triggers earthquakes, which trigger submarine landslides, which cause tsunamis," Bill McGuire, professor at University College London, told Reuters.

Melting ice masses change the pressures on the underlying earth, which can lead to earthquakes and tsunamis, but that's just the beginning. Rising seas also change the balance of mass across earth's surface, putting new strain on old earthquake faults, and may have been partly to blame for the devastating 2004 tsunami that struck Southeast Asia, according to experts from the China Meteorological Administration.

Even a simple change in the weather can dramatically affect the earth beneath our feet:

Putting aside the typically sick opportunism, is that really science? I guess so the writer is quoting a scientist who actually promotes such nonsense. Does the so called consensus scientific community ever condemn such unscientific speculative crap? On occasion a scientist might decry such overblown outlandish claims, but on the whole they go pretty much unchallenged by the consensus community. They allow this sort of science (?) to be promoted in the name of climate change science because it serves their purpose, in swaying public opinion, so they think. That is not science, that is politics. If they seriously wanted to stop this kind of reporting, they could, but they don't.

The other day NOAA scientist came out and reported:

Natural Causes Drove Russian Heat Wave, Study Finds


However back last year as the event was going on it was reported this way:

 Aug. 12, 2010

Climate experts agree: Global warming caused Russian heat wave


Did scientist come forward to squelch this speculation? On the contrary, from the story itself:

Russia’s heat wave simply would not have happened without the influence of fossil fuel pollution on our atmosphere. University of Texas climate scientist Michael Tobis is “hazarding a guess” that “the Russian heat wave of 2010 is the first disaster unequivocally attributable to anthropogenic climate change”:
But right now I feel like hazarding a guess. As far as I understand, nothing like this has happened before in Moscow ... The formerly remarkable heat wave of 2001, then, is “the sort of thing we’ll see more of” with global warming. But it may turn out reasonable, in the end, to say “the Russian heat wave of 2010 is the first disaster unequivocally attributable to anthropogenic climate change.”
Meteorologist Rob Carver, the Research and Development Scientist for Weather Underground, agrees. Using a statistical analysis of historical temperature records, Dr. Carver estimates that the likelihood of Moscow’s 100-degree record on July 29 is on the order of once per 1,000 years, or even less than once every 15,000 years -- in other words, a vanishingly small probability. However, those tiny odds are based on the assumption that the long-term climate is stable, an assumption that is no longer true.

Like Dr. Tobis, Carver believes that manmade global warming has fundamentally altered weather patterns to produce the killer Russian heat wave. “Without contributions from anthropogenic climate change,” Carver said in an email interview with the Wonk Room, “I don’t think this event would have reached such extremes or even happened at all”:

So, not only did Dr. Carver or Dr. Tobis attempt to squelch speculation without scientific proof, they promoted it. The so called consensus community seldom acts scientifically at all. How do you have a scientific debate with people who do not operate as scientist?

Since even before the infamous day in June of 1988 when a US Senator left the windows of a Senate Hearing Room open  in order to make James Hanson's testimony "hotter", the global warming debate has been nothing but politics, For the deluded to believe that this has anything to with science only goes to show how successful the progressives have been.

The  IPCC has been shown without a doubt to be an agenda driven entity with predetermined outcomes to their science, fully willing to use unscientific methods and studies to promote their agendas. And intelligent people are still talking about debating the science?

The debate is over, the political movement behind global warming is what needs to be debated...and destroyed, for the good of mankind.

February 15, 2011

"With emphasis on the 'likely'".


I was reading this article about the recently released  study on ancient Arctic climate. It is a very interesting article well worth the read, but the pertinent information is contained in these paragraphs (emphasis mine):
Based on reconstructions of Arctic climate variability in the greenhouse world of the Late Cretaceous, Southampton scientists have concluded that man-made global warming probably would not greatly change the climatic influence associated with natural modes of inter-annual climate variability such as the El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the Arctic Oscillation/ North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/ NAO).

"Even in the warm Cretaceous period, the patterns of these climatic oscillations changed over longer decadal timescales," explained Professor Alan Kemp of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. "It is therefore difficult to predict whether anthropogenically driven warming will lead to systematic changes such as persistently milder European winters (a positive AO/ NAO) as some have suggested."
The first thing that came to mind was this from AR-4 Synthesis Report
Europe
*Climate change is expected to magnify regional differences in Europe’s natural resources and assets. Negative impacts will include increased risk of inland flash floods and more frequent coastal flooding and increased erosion (due to storminess and sea level rise).

*Mountainous areas will face glacier retreat, reduced snow cover and winter tourism, and extensive species losses (in some areas up to 60% under high emissions scenarios by 2080).

*In southern Europe, climate change is projected to worsen conditions (high temperatures and drought) in a region already vulnerable to climate variability, and to reduce water availability, hydropower potential, summer tourism and, in general, crop productivity.

*Climate change is also projected to increase the health risks due to heat waves and the frequency of wildfires.
What I found interesting was the Late Cretaceous period which the researchers of the new study used to compare the coming climate Apocalypse to was not exactly known for its lack of bio-diversity.
Dramatic changes occurred in plant life during the Cretaceous. Pollinating insects such as bees and butterflies allowed the emerging flowering plants—the angiosperms —an advantage over seed-bearing plants that relied on the wind or a chance encounter with an animal to disperse their seeds. Today, nearly 90 percent of plants on Earth are angiosperms, signifying a remarkable evolutionary success story. Forests of oak and willow, cypress, magnolia, palms, and sycamore slowly replaced the cycad forests—palm-like plants with a barrel shaped trunk and many long leaves growing from the top. These new plant communities provided new sources of food and habitat for many kinds of animals.

During the Cretaceous, the dinosaurs reached the height of their evolutionary success....
Interesting isn't it that the very climate they are projecting for the future is the climate that allowed us to have the plant life we now enjoy. Which also begs the question, if our biosphere is so sensitive to climate change, why is it that all these plant species that evolved during a time when it is warmer than it is now and which they compare our future to, survived the cooler climate that the warmist seem to believe is the natural order? If  "forests of oak and willow, cypress, magnolia, palms, and sycamore" evolved and thrived due to pollinating insects which also evolved during this warmer period how bad could it have been?  Or more importantly, how bad will it be when we return to the past? If that is our unfortunate (?) fate.

But I digress.

What caught my attention in the article was this line "It is therefore difficult to predict whether anthropogenically driven warming will lead to systematic changes such as persistently milder European winters (a positive AO/ NAO) as some have suggested." Well who suggested it?

Among others where's the heat Kevin Trenberth of NCAR in this article from 1997
As a record El Niño event changes temperature and precipitation patterns over a large part of the globe, it's natural to ask whether these changes have anything to do with the warming air and changing precipitation caused by human beings. According to Kevin Trenberth (NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Division, or CGD), the answer is a likely yes--with emphasis on the "likely." But the link is quite complicated, and some questions remain unanswered
Well it appears that "likely" is not likely at all. Like almost everything to do with climate science in the alarmist epoch, theories are advanced as "likely" with much fanfare and alarm, building a psychological Mountain of Doom in society. Later when the "likely" is diproven it hardly matters since the profits prophets of disaster have already planted another seed into the psyche of  the people whom they have deceived for their own purposes and gain.

Some may say that they do not do this intentionally to deceive the pubic, that new research has proven that their original analysis wrong. A point which I would gladly grant  had not this swamp  of unscrupulous vipers not proven by their actions again and again that they will hide and distort their own research in order to maintain the theory, else why would it take leaked   Emails to learn the truth of their own doubts :
...The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate...
Kevin Trenberth

How many of these "likely" predictions must be proven wrong before these scientist  begin to shoot straight with the public? I would say about as likely as they will explain that if a warmer Arctic causes a colder Northern Hemisphere how did the Dinosaurs roam in Canada- "not likely".

February 6, 2011

What a difference a year makes



One of the reasons the climate change/global warming community has no credibility is that even if people have terrible memories, they now have Google.

I was looking for articles about scientist comments on the current explanation for the relationship between all the recent Northern Hemisphere snow events and climate change. One of the articles that came up was this:

Climate change blamed for Olympic snow shortage
Winter snow season has been slowly shrinkng in past 50 years, says researcher

The David Suzuki Foundation says global warming and climate change are in part responsible for what's happening to a key Olympic venue.

Olympic organizers are working around the clock to ensure there's enough snow on Cypress Mountain, home to freestyle ski and snowboard events for the Games.

Record warm temperatures and heavy rains this winter have forced VANOC to use bales of hay and to truck in snow to create the courses for the events.

The Games are a perfect catalyst for Canada to take climate change seriously in the long term, according to Ian Bruce, the lead climate change researcher at the Suzuki Foundation.

"It's crucial, as far as our economy goes here in Canada [and] it's crucial to protect winter sports as far as our culture goes," Bruce said.

I had totally forgotten about all the hysterics regarding last years Olympics in Canada. It is also ironic that David Suzuki, Canada's version of Al Gore, is the one who is making the connection in light of his counterparts recent comments attempting to make a counter argument.

The article goes on to explain the reason for the problem last year:

Snow season shrinking

If we fail to act, we will also lose a big part of the economy for the many communities in the country that depend on winter sports and winter sports tourism, said Bruce.

"These are really important issues that I think should be integrated into hosting the Winter Olympics. We should be calling for leadership on climate change and putting in solutions."

Research gathered over a 50-year period showed that the snow season in winters in B.C. are getting shorter by between four and five weeks, with warmer temperatures overall, Bruce said.

Efforts like those underway on Cypress Mountain to create a snow pack for the Olympics are not viable strategies for the long term, he said.

Of course last years attempt to blame the Winter Olympics lack of snow was as disingenuous as most of the alarmist hyperbole is. As British Columbia was struggling to find enough snow for snow boarding, Washington DC was experiencing another bout of Snowbegeddon.

All the more galling for the organisers is the fact that it is an entirely different experience on the east coast of America, which is experiencing its snowiest winter on record.

Cities from Washington to New York were hit today by the second serious whiteout in days, with 40mph winds and snow falling at a rate of 5cm (2in) an hour. The United Nations in New York and the federal government in Washington were dark, schools were closed, and flights grounded

So as scientist and ALGORE go to extreme lengths to explain the Northern Hemispheres cold and snowy winter in spite of their previous assertions, this is but another example of the warmist having it both ways. When it snows it is global warming, when it doesn't it is global warming.

Oh by the way, if you are in the area, great skiing conditions on Cypress Mountain today!

Date of Update: February 6, 2011 at 6:00am
Alpine Area Update: 

Cypress Mountain will be open today from 9am until 10pm for another GREAT DAY of skiing and riding!!


Weather Conditions - Observed at Base
Weather Conditions: Snowing
Base Temperature: -2 C
Visibility: Unlimited
Winds: Light
Snow Conditions (Mid Mtn.)
New Snow - Mid Mtn. (Over Night): 3 cm
New Snow - Mid Mtn. (24 hrs): 3 cm
New Snow - Mid Mtn. (7 days): 13 cm
Total Snow Fall (Season): 674 cm
Alpine Snow Conditions: Machine Groomed
Snow Depth - Mid Mtn.: 297 cm

Enjoy the Snow, we will either have more or less of it in the years to come, I guarantee it.

January 31, 2011

Little Children sacrificed on the alter of Climate Change

I should be used to it. but it never ceases to amaze me how the alarmist community will totally ignore truth and facts in order to promote their cause. The most recent example comes from the Tree Hugger site and an article titled Global Warming Uncovers Corpses Frozen in Time.

As usual this, like most alarmist sites, never misses an opportunity to frame a story around their agenda, facts be damned. In this case it really is a shame as the story is a fascinating one in and of itself and the author, Stephen Messenger, soils not only the story but the real scientific accomplishments behind the story. The first paragraph gives you a flavor of where the author is going:
Five hundred years ago, three Inca children were left to freeze high in the cold Argentinian Andes as a religious sacrifice. In time, their bodies mummified, having been swallowed in snow and entombed within the glacier, lost to time. But centuries later, in a warmer world, their perfectly-preserved corpses were discovered beneath the melting snow -- an increasingly common sight. Experts say that as glaciers continue to recede throughout the world, more of their long-guarded secrets will be revealed in the warm grip of a changing climate
.
As you can tell the writer is not so much interested in the mummified children as he is "the warm grip of a changing climate". The truth is that the story of the mummified children or their discovery has nothing to do with global warming. Even if it did, it would only be further proof that the past climate was as warm as it is today.

The first important detail left out of the Tree Hugger story is when the children were discovered. Reading the story (be my guest) you would be left with the impression that these children were recently found, that the "warm grip" which caused the "melting snow" in which the children were "entombed" is a new event. In fact it happened over a decade ago, in 1999. Even more telling to the propaganda aspect to the article is that the only link to a story about the children so prominently featured in the headline and the pictures is to a blog which reposts a New York Times article about the opening of the museum that was built to house the amazing archeological find. The museum opened in 2007 as was the NYT article linked by Mr. Messenger about it. So to summarize, in January 2011 Mr. Messenger writes an article referencing a museum opening in 2007 to commemorate an event which occurred in 1999, yet fails to mention any of these pertinent facts in his article but rather leads the reader to believe that this is all a current event.

You will also notice the common tactic of appealing to authority "Experts say that as glaciers continue to recede throughout the world" Of course the article he references has nothing to do with any glaciers pertinent to the mummified children rather the link is to another Tree Hugger narrative article about  Himalayan glaciers and the impact on China and India.  I know what you are thinking, surely Mr Messenger would not reference an article based on repudiated research.....you would be wrong:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that Himalayan glaciers are receding rapidly and that many could melt entirely by 2035. If the giant Gangotri Glacier that supplies 70 percent of the Ganges flow during the dry season disappears, the Ganges could become a seasonal river, flowing during the rainy season but not during the summer dry season when irrigation water needs are greatest.

Yes the experts he references not only have nothing to do with the location of his main story, it is about the discredited IPCC report on the Himalayan glaciers.

Let's get back to the mummified children who were discovered in 1999. I have gone back and read many of the articles written at the time of the discovery. I have found none that reference global warming or even anything about glaciers. Most are typical of this Washington Post article which far from talking about "melting snow" describe the discovery like this:
The discovery team braved three days of driving snow and 70 mph winds at the world's highest archaeological site – the 22,000-foot peak of Argentina's Mount Llullaillaco – before they finally discovered the burial platform, which lay under five feet of rock and earth.

"At one point, we had to lower one of our workers into the pit by his ankles so he could pull the mummy out with his hands," Reinhard said.

We shall put aside the "driving snow" in the midst of "the warm grip of a changing climate" for the moment and focus on the location of the sacrificed children (in more ways than one). Far from being discovered beneath the melting snow of a receding glacier they  in fact  were "finally discovered the burial platform, which lay under five feet of rock and earth.

Had there once been a glacier which covered the burial platform? If so then it was not there when the children were placed there,... now was it?  But it is doubtful that the children were ever covered by a here again -gone again glacier. Consider this information from the April 1999 Washington Post article:
Drawn to icy mountain peaks in part because of their potential for preserving relics, Reinhard had visited the site in the 1980s and always planned to return, he said.
Far from stumbling upon some defrosting corps in the midst of a melting glacier, real scientist had spent years investigating sites then returned over a decade later to search for them.

Probably the most telling article on the initial discovery of the children which flies in the face of the narrative foisted on the readers of Tree Hugger comes from an article in US News and World Report from April 1999:
Gasping for breath in the oxygen-poor atmosphere 22,057 feet above sea level, nine archaeologists, workers, and guides spent nearly two weeks battling adverse conditions, including ferocious blizzards and 70-mph winds. For three days the team members were trapped in their tents under about 3 feet of snow, with the temperature at times 20 degrees below zero. "Even taking off my gloves to write notes was a major ordeal," expedition co-director Maria Constanza Ceruti recalled from Argentina. The altitude of the summit--only 6,971 feet lower than that of Mount Everest--can cause the brain to swell and the lungs to fill with fluid.

Johan Reinhard, primary organizer of the American-Argentine-Peruvian expedition sponsored by the National Geographic Society, had been scouting out this mountain peak since 1983 and had already brought 16 ice mummies down from other Andean summits. He knew the Incas were inclined to offer human sacrifices on the highest possible spots. "You feel like you're on the top of the world there," he said, after bringing the mummies down last week.

The weight of history. After using picks and shovels to dig through 5 feet of rock and frozen earth, the crew had to lower a graduate student into the pit by his ankles to lift the mummies out of their sanctuary.....

I know, I know, three feet of snow and 20 degrees below zero is just weather and has nothing to do with "the warm grip of a changing climate" unless of course you're in it. Regardless the fact that the children were found in a pit only confirms the fact that they were never frozen inside a glacier, at least not one that was there when they died. Further on in the article is the most telling comment on the discovery since it destroys the various narratives in the Tree Hugger story.
"Accidental" mummies have survived when nature served as an embalmer instead. The Ice Maiden Juanita--whom President Bill Clinton once jokingly said he might be tempted to ask out on a date--and the famous 5,300-year-old "Ice Man" discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991 were desiccated by exposure or repeated cycles of thawing and refreezing. The 1,000-year-old Bog People found at various sites in Northern Europe were turned to leather by the tannic acid of the peat into which they'd been cast. The newly discovered ice mummies, however, were saved from dehydration by the perpetual cold of their high-altitude burial site.(emphasis mine)

If the mummies were saved from dehydration by the "perpetual cold" the narrative of defrosting in the melting snow, is pretty much melted by the facts.

As with most alarmist narratives they are not only bad journalism, they are easily disproved by a quick search into the facts. But for the progressive mind facts are not the issue, driving the ideological narrative forward is the only goal. Giving cover for the talking points of a lie is a pretty simple task if you have "useful idiots" willing to parrot them and no conscious to restrain you, Mr. Messenger seems to have all the tools necessary in order to advance in his chosen field.


If you wish to read more about the Inca mummies and a real scientist check this out High-altitude anthropologist 

January 8, 2011

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.