Ministry Of Truth At Work In Florida
48 minutes ago
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Wisconsin's "largest environmental advocacy organization" blames human carbon dioxide emissions for recent flooding
Disastrous Flooding Consistent with Global Warming Predictions
Madison, Wis. - The disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions according to a January 2007 Clean Wisconsin report. The report, "Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin," forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall.
"In the year and a half since the release of this report, we have seen a summer of extreme drought end with intense flooding, a winter of record snowfall and now a spring ending with some of the worst flooding in recent memory," said Keith Reopelle, Senior Policy Director at Clean Wisconsin, the state's largest environmental advocacy organization. "Many of the impacts of global warming are occurring much sooner than predicted."
From a review of the Christopher Essex/Ross McKitrick book "Taken By Storm"
Amazon.com: Taken By Storm: Christopher Essex, Ross McKitrick: Books
Mr. Essex and Mr. McKitrick have written a very impressive critique of the faulty science and pseudoscience behind the global warming theory. Particularly impressive is their explanation of the faulty modeling of the climate by the U.N. working committees. The book demonstrates how the collection of average temperatures is no way to model the climate whose relationships are nonlinear and are in constant disequilibrium. The authors demonstrate the uselessness of the U.N. climate models better than anyone else I have read. The authors to their great credit also expose many of the propaganda devices of the establishment and environmentalist proponents of controlling global warming. Way too many of the media, government and establishment information outlets are controlled by people who uncritically support the global warming hypothesis.
Cooler climate for Rudd
Cooler climate for Rudd | The Australian
FREEMAN Dyson is a polymath. His first career was as a Cambridge mathematician.
Then he developed an interest in quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. He's also something of a futurologist, an authority on nuclear non-proliferation issues and a gifted explainer of science to general audiences.
For 40 years his day job was as a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Another claim to fame is that he's one of the most eminent scientists among the growing band of global warming sceptics.
To its credit, The New York Review of Books numbers Dyson among its stable and in its June 12 edition has published a fascinating review by him of two climate science books.
Yep, it's a farce all right
Living on Earth: Lower-Emitting Livestock
GELLERMAN: It's Living on Earth, I'm Bruce Gellerman.
Global warming skeptics argue that people aren't to blame for causing climate change and maybe they have something: sheep, cows, and farmed deer are also doing their part to warm up the planet. It seems the animals emit two of the most powerful greenhouse gases. And in a place like New Zealand, where they raise 40 million sheep, 10 million cows, and a million deer, developing less gassy farm animals is a national priority. There are 25 full-time researchers working at the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium in Wellington. Mark Aspin manages the project. Welcome to Living on Earth.
Teenager fooled by Gore's CO2 scam
ABS-CBN News Online (Beta)
A world map then comes out on the screen and one just has to point the computer mouse at a certain country on this map to see its immediate effects in that country. And these effects are not just the immediate ones but also facts like the reduction of spawning fish due to melting icecaps in the North and South poles.
Caloy said his sources were mostly Web sites but the design was purely his.
He even placed some flowers which he said would surely disappear with global warming, and some scrollwork on one side of the presentation "para manalo kasi Indian."
Some history
This is dated July 2007, near the peak of the current carbon dioxide hysteria:
The Public and Climate Change (1)
The Public and Climate Change (1)
Winnipeg: "Green" buses to fight global warming have problems in cold weather
winnipegsun.com - Winnipeg News - Bendy buses bomb
The source pointed to the performance of electric power in cold weather as among the difficulties with the hybrids' engines.
...
Coun. Russ Wyatt (Transcona) said maintaining heat in the trial bus was also difficult, adding the city has no choice but to back away from the buses if they don't work well.
Minnesota: Lack of global warming tough on bluebirds
Bemidji Pioneer
Bluebirds typically have their first batch of babies early in the spring. Most have two sets of babies that typically add up to nine.
"Last year, the first (babies) were born the third week of April," Meierhofer said. "This year, most didn't have them until the fourth week of May.
"Because of the cold weather and snow, they were too weak to make a nest. Some of them were dying and others did not have enough energy to mate."
The cold weather and snow kept mealworms and other insects from being readily available.
Kaler has been helping bluebirds for 26 years and said that the late arrival of spring this year was bad.
"This is the longest, worst year with cold spells," he said. "There are people who have gotten (bluebird babies) every year and this year they don't."
Why "some of the most prominent" TV meteorologists and weathercasters and state climatologists are skeptics
The Yale Forum - News Note - Oregon Public Broadcasting's 'Forecast Cloudy' Look at Skeptics
The online documentary is here.
A full-length Oregon Public Broadcasting TV documentary, available online, provides an in-depth look at broadcast meteorologists and weathercasters as "skeptics" on the fact and/or causes of climate change over the past several decades.Here's the real reason that the meteorologists are appropriately skeptical--they're constantly looking at actual, real-world data, instead of blindly trusting obviously bogus long-term climate models.
The "Forecast Cloudy" documentary opens up by asking why "some of the most prominent" TV meteorologists and weathercasters and state climatologists are skeptics when much of the debate over warming "is essentially over."
The documentary - certain to raise the angst of the skeptics community - contrasts weather forecasters as providing a seven-day outlook while climatologists are focusing on 70 years.
The online documentary is here.
Idaho: Farmers face difficult spring for sugar beets
Times-News: Magicvalley.com, Twin Falls, ID
BURLEY - Picnics and fishing trips haven't been the only casualties of this spring's less-than-comfortable weather.
Stacey Camp, Mini-Cassia district agriculture manager for Amalgamated Sugar Co., said Thursday cold, windy weather is a contributing factor in reducing by nearly 10 percent the number of acres the company's Paul factory will harvest.
"It's the worst spring I've seen as far as trying to get a crop up and keep it going," Camp said.
Camp said many beet crops were lost this spring when frost and hard winds set in, killing the young plants. Some farmers replanted, only to have the same thing happen again.
"By then it's so late in May that the grower has to make a decision: Is it worth it for me to try to grow beets again, or should I put in another crop?" Camp said.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Crops Planted in Late June Suffer Big Yield Reductions
Wisconsin Ag Connection - National/World News - Study: Crops Planted in Late June Suffer Big Yield Reductions
A costly deadline looms for many growers in the Midwest, as every day of waiting for the weather to cooperate to plant corn and soybeans reduces potential yields. Research indicates that Illinois growers who plant corn or soybeans near the end of June can expect a 50-percent reduction in crop yield, according to a University of Illinois agriculture expert.
The USDA reports that corn and soybean growers in several Midwestern states are behind schedule on their planting. A cooler and wetter-than-average spring has left Illinois and Indiana furthest behind on planted corn and soybeans. Several other states are lagging behind their normal planting schedules, but by a lesser margin.
Ethanol Escapade: Brazil Sugar Producers, Criticized, Seek Sweeter PR
Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Ethanol Escapade: Brazil Sugar Producers, Criticized, Seek Sweeter PR
That will leave just one main PR battle for Unica: convincing Europe it’s not destroying the rainforest to make green fuel.
RIP Reid Bryson
Update: In this story, it looks like Bryson's alarmist colleague Jonathan Foley tried to downplay the true extent of Bryson's AGW skepticism:
Bryson gained fame also as an outspoken skeptic of global warming. He accepted that the climate was changing, but he questioned the prevailing view that human causes are to blame.An actual quote from Bryson from this May 2007 article:
“I’m not convinced he 100% disbelieved the idea of global warming; he just wanted to make sure we were asking the tough questions,” Foley said. “What was great about Reid is you could trust his motives. Reid’s healthy skepticism was one of integrity and honesty.”
You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.To me, that sounds like 100% disbelief.
Regarding Foley's alarmism, here's a related paragraph from an April 2006 article:
The future of a warming world looks bleak, says Foley. After only 0.6 degrees C of warming, we are already seeing major changes in plants, animals, rainfall, ice and sea level. Even the few skeptics of 10 years ago are now silent, and the scientific position is unanimous: "It's pretty much nailed... . You can't read a paper without reading another piece of evidence for global warming. At the edges, there are a few questions, but the scientific score is 1,000 to 0. This is not a big bunch of hooey."
Dodging devastation of cap-and-trade
Opinion: Dodging devastation of cap-and-trade | co2, devastation, year : Victorville Daily Press
What's uncertain is whether the trouble and expense would have bought anything. Even if CO2 emissions are returned to the level of horse-and-buggy days, an increase of 0.013 degree Celsius might be avoided over the next century, says climatologist Patrick Michaels. That's if CO2 increases temperature, which many scientists doubt. So, why go down this path?
Leaves Maintain Temperature, new findings may put dendroclimatology as metric of past temperature into question
Surprise: Leaves Maintain Temperature, new findings may put dendroclimatology as metric of past temperature into question « Watts Up With That?
The new findings not only challenge long-held precepts in plant biology, but could upend climate models that use tree rings to infer or predict past and present temperature changes.
For decades, scientists studying the impact of global warming have measured the oxygen isotope ratio in tree-rings to determine the air temperature and relative humidity of historical climates.
Oxygen atoms within water molecules evaporate more or less quickly depending on the number of neutrons they carry, and the ratio between these differently weighted atoms in tree trunk rings has been used as a measure of year-to-year fluctuations in temperatures and rainfall.
“The assumption in all of these studies was that tree leaf temperatures were equal to ambient temperatures,” lead researcher Brent Helliker told AFP. “It turns out that they are not.”
So what did these students actually achieve?
Evening News 24 - City schools just barely reduce carbon footprint
The Climate Change Champions, run by Norwich Union and Global Action Plan, saw five city schools reduce their collective carbon footprint by an impressive 6.1 tonnes of CO2 within just 12 months.
The five Norwich schools involved in the project were, Hellesdon High School, Old Catton, Thorpe St Andrew, Erpingham Primary and Mulbarton Junior.
Collectively, the five schools involved managed to reduce their CO2 emissions from electricity by 2.6 tonnes, from heating by 0.6 tonnes, and from waste, by sending it to be recycled rather than landfilled, by an impressive 6 tonnes.
The carbon footprint would have been reduced by 9 tonnes overall but the amount of paper used by one of the schools was actually increased.
At the start of the programme, the collective carbon footprint of the five schools involved stood at 280 tonnes a month, enough CO2 to fill 56 hot air balloons.
Nice paragraph from Scienceblogs
Effect Measure : Why the Right Wing attacks science
And in some areas, like climate change, the attack on the science is failing. The major flack for environmental skepticism in the US Senate, Oklahoma's knuckle dragging Far Right homophobic crazy James Imhofe, sat silently in the debate. His arguments now endanger the credibility of the opposition and the Republican leadership chose to fight on economic grounds first, and ultimately, via a filibuster, since the bill looked like it was headed for passage.
Progress falters on 'Bali Roadmap' to new climate deal
ABS-CBN News Online (Beta)
"We're under huge pressure now, there are only 18 months to go to Copenhagen, the agenda has never been bigger and the progress has never been slower," said Bill Hare of Greenpeace International.
During the peak of the annual ice melt, let's send impressionable kids to the Arctic and tell them that this is a sign of human-induced environmental catastrophe!
Exchange Morning Post
Chisomo Mchaina, Grade 10, and Alejandra Henao, Grade 11, will join students from around the world and top scientists, artists and educators on Cape Farewell's [September] 2008 Youth Expedition to the Arctic, from Reykjavik, Iceland to Baffin Island, Canada. Southwood teacher, Christopher Giesler will also be part of the voyage.I suggest an alternate plan: Have all the kids (and "top" scientists, artists, and educators) just stay home and examine the graphs here, then listen to the podcasts here.
The Expedition is an international climate change awareness program that brings together 28 high school students from Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Ireland, India, and Germany, with top scientists, artists, and educators. The project is designed to raise awareness of climate change and to equip young people to be Climate Change Ambassadors at home and abroad.
New Hampshire solves .0002% of a non-problem
Congratulations New Hampshire! | OpenMarket.org
So New Hampshire’s contribution will solve .0002% of global warming. Meanwhile, China busily builds three new coal fired power plants every two weeks.
Weather Channel founder John Coleman on Gore's scam
John Coleman's Comments Before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce | KUSI - News, Weather and Sports - San Diego, CA | Coleman's Corner
Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.
Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?
The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.
Let's all panic
Environmental-Expert.com - Freshwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet will more than double by the end of the century
The Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster than previously calculated according to a recently released scientific paper by University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Sebastian H. Mernild. The study, published in the journal Hydrological Processes, is based on models using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as satellite images and observations from on the ground in Greenland. Mernild and his team found that the total amount of fresh water projected to flow from the Greenland Ice Sheet into the North Atlantic Ocean from 2071 to 2100 will be more than double current levels.
Today, the East Greenland Ice Sheet adds 257 cubic kilometers of fresh water to the ocean per year from both melting and iceberg calving. By 2100, those levels are estimated to reach 456 cubic kilometers per year. With land-based runoff factored in, the total fresh water flowing from Greenland into the ocean is estimated to increase from 438 cubic kilometers to 650 cubic kilometers by 2100. The projected increase means that rather than rising at a rate of 1.1 millimeters per year, sea levels would rise by 1.6 millimeters per year.
Ethanol under fire
Ethanol under fire - TwinCities.com
Floodwaters aren't just damaging corn. They're washing away support for corn-based ethanol.
As corn prices keep setting records — another came Thursday — the beleaguered ethanol industry faces more critics shouting, "Enough!" Investors raced for the exits, too, as analysts Thursday warned of losses and urged dumping shares in ethanol makers.
"In the last 10 days, the world has changed in the corn market with massive flooding causing irreparable damage to this year's corn crop," said Citicorp analyst David Driscoll.
Corporate giants in the food, meat and dairy industries — including Minnesota companies General Mills, Hormel Foods and Land O'Lakes — this week launched a national campaign called Food Before Fuel. Its goal: to reverse government policies that have encouraged ethanol production regardless of consequences to the food system.
That group issued its latest blast Thursday, with an economic study blaming corn-based ethanol for igniting rampaging food-price inflation. Its study predicts that food costs will rise 9 percent this year, even faster than the misery levels of the 1970s.
Rep. Michele Bachmann on those twisty light bulbs
The Shuttle: Rep. Michele Bachmann - Daniel Libit - Politico.com
Politico: What’s your deal with incandescent light bulbs? [Bachmann recently introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act.]
Bachmann: Freedom is the No. 1 reason why I introduced the bill, in order to have choice on light bulbs. But, No. 2, there are some very real health concerns that need to be taken into account. There are people who don’t want to have mercury-laden light bulbs in their homes. These new light bulbs contain between three to six milligrams of mercury, and if one is dropped on the carpet or floor of your home, there is a massive procedure involved to clean it up. . . .
In the public schools, for instance, a public facility, you would have to have everyone exit the building, be out of the building for 15 minutes, open the windows. I remember my high school in Anoka, Minn. The windows didn’t open. So what are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to turn off the central air conditioning or heating? So in Minnesota, when it’s January, and it’s 30 below zero, and you drop a mercury-laden light bulb in a public school, you’re supposed to make the kids go outside for 15 minutes and shut the heating system down?
Demotion for Planet Havering
Romford Recorder - Demotion for Planet Havering
A MONEY crisis has forced the council to merge its major environmental event, Planet Havering, with the August Havering Show - just months after a Residents Association proposal to increase funding was rejected.
Instead of hosting an annual schools day in June that usually sees 2,500 kids take part, and an open day that had 10,000 visitors last year, Planet Havering will now be relegated to a small area within the Havering Show Grounds at Harrow Lodge Park on Sunday August 24 and Monday August 25.
Planet Havering, now in its eighth year, is a popular environmental showcase that teaches youngsters about renewable energy, recycling and climate change, through stalls, workshops and exhibits.
...
The move comes after Planet Havering nearly got the chop last year when sponsors Veolia ES Cleanaway Riverside Trust pulled their funding.
Does America need repairs?
Does America need repairs? (OneNewsNow.com)
Knight says commencement speakers cannot go wrong telling students they must do something about global warming. "That's the liberal mantra," says the media analyst, "because the liberals have discovered that if you can create the idea of a carbon footprint for everyone and say that if we don't curb this through government action, the earth will heat up and explode -- then this justifies virtually any increase in government power over the individual person," Knight contends.
Cool spring delays crops in Eastern Washington
Local News | Cool spring delays crops in Eastern Washington | Seattle Times Newspaper
West of the Cascades, Orting farmer Allen Scholz is worried.
"I don't know an optimistic farmer anywhere," he said. "We are all bummed out by the weather. I've never had this feeling before, nor seen so much suffering going on."
Scholz estimates the late-growing season might cost him 30 percent of his crops - except for rhubarb, which is thriving.
Not a strong endorsement of Al Gore's "We" campaign
The Social Networking Weblog: Help Solve the Global Warming Problem
I'm not going to go into whether global warming is real or not. That sort of thing is up to you to decide. If you believe in global warming, or are not really sure either way, then here's a way you can help...
Carbon zombies attack economy
TorontoSun.com - Lorrie Goldstein - Carbon zombies attack economy
Somewhere on the road to Kyoto, Canada turned into the land of the carbon zombies.
Like the walking undead, blood-sucking politicians of all stripes are howling at each other over discredited ways to reduce carbon emissions that other countries, having tried to implement, are running away from in terror.
In Europe, politicians who boasted they were leading the fight to save Gaia from global warming are now fleeing before enraged mobs of citizens, furious their governments' plans to "save the planet" have turned out to be nothing more than skyrocketing taxes and energy prices.
Global warming theories are damaging
Letter: Global warming theories are damaging : Letters : TCPalm
It is shear folly for a nation to embrace only alternative energy growth policies based on junk science. We humans are a part of nature living on a dynamic planet within a dynamic universe of which we have limited understanding. We do understand that we have available and retrievable natural resources to continue our mobile, productive and prosperous way of life. It is political and economic suicide not to develop native resources using creative human ingenuity in the furtherance of our growth, freedom and independence.
Communist China, with the help of Cuba, is erecting oil drilling platforms 60 miles off the coast of Florida’s Keys. They may be employing slant drilling that can wander into what would be our nation’s own oil fields.
Colorado skiing: It's been thriving for years
Aspen gets highest rise in Colorado skier visits | News |Aspen Times Online News
According to Aspen Skiing Co. spokesman Jeff Hanle, the company’s mountains logged 1,470,997 skier visits for the season, up 1.8 percent from the previous season. (A skier visit represents a person participating in the sport of skiing or snowboarding for any part of one day at a mountain resort.) The increase continues a general growth trend that has lasted for six years or so.
...
On a statewide basis, ski resorts logged their second-best year ever, according to CSCUSA. The best year was 2006-07, when 12,566,299 skiers or snowboarders hit the state’s slopes; the third-best year ever was 2005-06, with 12,533,108 skier visits.
The CSCUSA reports include numbers from Vail Resorts, Inc., which dropped out of the trade group in May. Vail Resorts owns Vail Mountain, Beaver Creek, and the Keystone and Breckenridge ski areas.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Advice for Al Gore
PROVE IT! Global Warming and the Power of Social Proof « Breakthrough Generation
Perhaps, simply, actions speak louder than words. And we haven’t given the right social clues.
Maybe if Al Gore had delivered the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ while screaming or at least inciting a chaotic scene of fainting, crying and panic from his audience, it really would have dramatically affected public opinion.
Imagine seeing the monotone, dry-as-toast former Vice-President emotionally and emphatically calling everyone to battle. I mean, if you are telling us the world might end and we need to save ourselves NOW, then act like it! Then, at least, we would know how we are supposed to react.
Canadian Wheat Board forecasts below-average wheat crop
canadiancattlemen.ca - Cattlemen magazine is Canada¡¯s publication and web site for cattle farmers. - Cattlemen magazine is Canada¡¯s publication and web site for cattle farmers. - 6/12/2008
Wheat, durum and barley crops are currently one to two weeks behind normal due to cold weather so far this spring, with temperatures 3° to 5°C below normal.
"A continuation of cool weather could lead to delayed development and increased risk of frost damage this fall," said Bruce Burnett, the CWB's director of weather and market analysis, in the board's release Thursday.
McCain makes my head hurt (again)
McCain’s Plan to Combat Climate Change : Red, Green, and Blue
Regardless of who is elected next November, both candidates agree that climate change is a fact and not a theory. “I know that climate change is real,” said John McCain. “We can have a debate about how serious it is, but the debate about climate change is over.”
More from Al Gore
Al's Journal : Changing the Map
We already knew the climate crisis was increasing poverty, disease and starvation in Africa, now we see it actually shifting the landscape. These unfortunate events demonstrate the global impact of our addition to fossil fuels, and the need for a global solution now.
"climate change cannot be stopped -- and it isn't even caused by human-created carbon dioxide"
Northern Territory News
THE BOOMING Territory economy is at risk of being "destroyed" by government policy responses to climate change, an academic has said.
There will be winners and losers under the system and reducing carbon dioxide emissions is expected to cost industry a lot of money.
But University of Adelaide mining geology professor Ian Plimer says all the expense will be for nothing, as climate change cannot be stopped -- and it isn't even caused by human-created carbon dioxide.
"There is no relationship between carbon dioxide produced by industry and climate change," he said.
Professor Plimer said the scientific community had not reached any kind of consensus that carbon dioxide causes global warming.
Climate farce in New Zealand
Farmers get soft option on climate change - Greens - New Zealand, world, sport, business & entertainment news on Stuff.co.nz
In return, farmers initially agreed to do their best to voluntarily reduce emissions, mainly methane from animals, by 20 percent below current levels by 2013.
County: Green but not officially ‘cool’
Thisweek Live: Thisweek Newspapers/Dakota County Tribune - County: Green but not officially ‘cool’
Dakota County commissioners have agreed to go green, but decided it’s too controversial to become cool.
In committee June 10, commissioners approved recommending a resolution to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions but against signing the Cool Counties Climate Stabilization Declaration, which states there is no dissent in the scientific community about the causes of global warming.
“I don’t believe that,” said Commissioner Paul Krause, chair of the Physical Development Committee of the Whole, noting that there is disagreement among scientists regarding the theory that human activity causes climate change.
According to www.petitionproject.org , more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition against the theory of manmade global warming and gone on record opposing the move toward world energy rationing.
United Nations International Panel on Climate Change reports state scientists worldwide are convinced human activity causes climate change.
Auckland: Car beats public transport
Car beats public transport - Auckland City Harbour news on Stuff.co.nz
Petrol prices are soaring, the planet is cooking and traffic is gridlocked.
So there’s never been a better time to get on a bus.
Aucklanders are being encouraged to leave their cars behind and find alternative ways of getting to work, both to combat climate change and make the city more liveable.
But for those who live and work in the suburbs, is public transport really viable?
For five days I gave up my easy 20-minute drive to work and tested more sustainable ways of getting around.
It took nearly $40 in bus and train tickets and more than 11 hours in travelling time – an extra eight hours compared to a normal driving week – and the only sensible alternative still involved a car.
The verdict? I’ll have my car keys back please.
It's pretty clear that few voters are impressed by McCain's drinking of the climate change Kool-Aid
Robert Crescenza’s Transverse Process » Blog Archive » Will I Vote for McCain? - Enabling Political Self-Help
Recently, with this talk of “cap and trade” and carbon regulation and taxation, I am getting turned off by McCain almost sufficient to deny him my vote in November. I will not tolerate costly and counter-productive policy in the name of bipartisanship or maverickness. Sure, John McCain is a maverick, but so were Timothy Leary and Tom Cruise. More than just maverickness is needed.
I so strongly object to this environmentalism legislation that I will not vote Republican at all in November if the McCain campaign keeps talking about regulation and legislation to combat climate change. I want a real, honest, complete debate about the science and the proposed legislation before any new laws or rules are put on the books.
Greenpeace director: "We want to create alarm and a call to action"
Estate owners sue Greenpeace for prediction - Expatica
Along with photos of a dried up Ebro River in Zaragoza and a desert in an area of Valencia now filled with lemon and orange groves, the book, Photoclima, shows digitally modified photos of La Manga submerged in water with only the tops of hotels, apartment blocks and palm trees emerging from the blue Mediterranean.
Greenpeace says the book is a graphic portrayal of the conclusions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has predicted that global warming will cause sea levels to rise around the world over the coming decades.
"We want to create alarm and a call to action," Juan López de Uralde, Greenpeace's director in Spain, said when the book was published.
"an amazing role reversal occurred on Capitol Hill last week"
Fuelish Democrats - Yahoo! News
...an amazing role reversal occurred on Capitol Hill last week. Republicans, once fearful of the climate change issue, suddenly demanded more debate in Congress on global warming legislation. Democrats, who had earlier promoted the legislation as a top priority, turned squeamish and quickly dropped the issue before it could do serious political harm.
Both House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid have cast global warming as the greatest threat facing America today. In fact, Pelosi was so concerned about this grave threat that, shortly after taking charge of the House, she vowed to bring a global warming bill to the floor by July 4, 2007. Now, though a bill is ready, she's unlikely to schedule it for debate and a vote in 2008.
...
It wasn't only Democrats who were on the defensive. So was the environmental lobby, which had eagerly anticipated a debate on global warming and possible passage of legislation this year. Instead, environmentalists took a rare beating in Washington and, for the moment anyway, emerged as a liability to Democrats. Their opposition to any effort to slash gas prices make environmentalists an unattractive ally.
If Global Warming were a stock
Blue Skies: Temperature Increase
If Global Warming were a stock, and you bought it in 1979 at zero (par) and decided to sell it this month to buy a house, 29 years later you aren't very happy with your investment. At it's peak in 1998, the temperature only went to a 0.8 increase, and in April it dipped to very nearly unchanged.
"Pius" XII Grade 8 students make scary movie about trace amounts of harmless atmospheric gas
Eyes wide open after youths' global warming flick
Dr. David Pearson of Science North congratulated the students for their months-long endeavour.
“Congratulations, you did something,” he said. “Don’t be afraid, now that you’ve done what you’ve done, to tell people to do other things.”
And then he shared an astounding fact. Since your teacher was born about 30 years ago, he said, the average annual air temperature in Sudbury has gone up by one degree. To put that nugget into perspective, he said the temperature has only gone up by five degrees over the last 10,000 years. “One degree is not to be sneezed at,” he said. “It’s an indication of the rate of change of our planet. By 2050, winter will be 90 days shorter.”
Livin' green with the California elite
Mega-mansions are L.A.'s really big show - Los Angeles Times
Real estate agent Drew Fenton said that no one sets out to build a mega-house; it just happens.
"You keep adding the rooms you think you need. The ballroom. The screening room. Masters with his and hers and a beauty salon and a massage room. And the house keeps growing." Added Fenton: "I can't explain why someone needs a gift-wrapping room or a florist room. That is a question of culture."
Cap-and-trade good biz: Enron
IS THAT ENOUGH TO FRIGHTEN YOU?
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
That Enron's fraudsters, financial backers of many Democrats as well as Republicans, smelled a way early on to cash in on carbon trading and Kyoto doesn't of itself discredit these ideas.
But you'd think it would give our green-happy politicians pause. It does illustrate, as Horner notes,
"that the debate is not greens versus business, but quite often greens and business versus consumers and the economy."
Prometheus: Why Costly Carbon is a House of Cards
Here.
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
So lets take a second to reflect on what you just read. Pacala is claiming that he wrote a paper to serve a political purpose and he admits that history may very well prove its analysis to be “false.” But he judges the paper was successful not because of its analytical soundness, but because it served its political function by severing relationship between a certain group of scientific experts and decision makers whose views he opposed.
Al Gore: Bag Man for Eco-Extremists
Here.
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
“Cynical politics” may be a redundancy, but it is hard to imagine a more cynical political issue than global warming (GW). In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, Al Gore called for a “wrenching transformation of society.” Leftists, with their elitist penchant for social engineering, didn’t need any convincing. The challenge for Gore was the inconvenient truth that, in a democracy, a would-be central planner needs to get the masses on his side, too. To do that, he borrowed a strategy encapsulated in H.L. Mencken’s statement, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Apocalyptic GW became Al Gore’s hobgoblin of choice.
...
Unfortunately, taking rash, costly action may be the eventual outcome. Last week, the Senate considered setting limits on CO2 emissions through the colossally expensive and grandiloquently named “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.” Fortunately, this destructive proposal doesn't have enough support to pass now, but it raises the possibility that Al Gore will get the last laugh after all. What an irony it would be if, even as scientific support for his GW theory crumbles, his years of propagating the “big lie” of the GW hobgoblin were to cause Congress to impose the “wrenching transformation of society” that he has long yearned for.
Australia: Emissions trading may cost more than it's worth
Here.
Excerpt:
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The cost to farming of an emissions trading scheme (ETS) may dwarf the effect of climate change itself.
This is the blunt warning delivered by Australian Farm Institute director Mick Keogh who has urged farming leaders to stand up and play a pro-active role in the rapidly evolving carbon debate.
His figures show that farming gross margins may be reduced by as much as 30pc from their present state as not only will fertiliser, fuel and transport costs go up but paying for carbon emissions from livestock and cropping may also add to farming costs.
Not panicking over global warming
Here.
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
I just don’t get it. The whole global warming panic, and a new attempt to use the Endangered Species Act to try and rule the planet, should defy the wildest imagination of those with a little common sense.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
June 10 snow storm: Global warming? R-i-g-h-t
Update: A reader writes:
Click on the headline for the article. Someone has defiantly hidden a link to Tom Nelson's blog. ROFL!Note that sometime after I linked to the article, the headline changed from "Global warming? R-i-g-h-t" to "Global warming? Not today".
The original page from Google's cache is here.
The Wrong Formula
Here.
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Frustrated at wrangling over the science and exhausted from swimming against the media tide, Jim Manzi and others in conservative circles (Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine is another) are eager to move on to more familiar ground of crafting policy solutions for climate change. But while I admire Jim’s global warming cost-benefit analysis, I profoundly disagree with his misplaced evolution analogy and ultimate surrender on science.
Yeah, right
From this page:
Washington - Rapidly developing countries including China and India will have to be part of any global deal on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change, according to a report released Wednesday by a group of former world and business leaders. The Global Leadership for Climate Action (GLCA) warned that the planet may have already passed the "threshold" for avoiding some of the most dangerous consequences of global warming. Countries around the world will now be forced to adapt to "inevitable" changes weather.I can't help but notice that they failed to tell us specifically what evidence they're talking about.
"Even in the past six months, the scientific evidence is becoming clearer that climate change is occurring at a faster pace than previously thought," read the report, compiled after a February meeting of the influential group in Monaco. "This underscores the urgency of action to reduce emissions."
Lack of Global Warming Decimating Pot Crops in British Columbia
Here.
Excerpt:
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Dying pot crops serves them right since I am certain it was stupid stoners who thunk up the whole global warming myth in the first place.
Inconvenient Facts About Climate Change
Newsmax.com - Inconvenient Facts About Climate Change
"Lord what fools these mortals be," says Puck in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Would that the bard of Avon were around today. He surely would have looked at the global warming fiasco with the same amused view he had Puck express.
NYT 1993: ' Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate'
NYT 1993: ' Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate' | NewsBusters.org
Written by Walter Sullivan, "Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate" addressed findings that suggest "the period of stable climate in which human civilization has flourished might be unusual, and that the current climate may get either warmer or colder much more quickly than had been believed -- in spans of decades or even less."
Colorado: Cottonwood Pass remains closed
Cottonwood Pass remains closed
A cold, stiff breeze and towering piles of dirty snow are all that remain of a "bitter, cold and nasty" winter on Cottonwood Pass, CR 306.
"It was one of the worst snow years I've seen up here in a long time," Gunnison County road and bridge crew member Jim Kent said as he surveyed the area from atop 12,126-foot Cottonwood Pass Tuesday morning.
The pass has been closed to traffic all winter and will remain closed until Thursday morning at the earliest, officials said.
Although the road is clear of snow from the foot of the pass to the summit on the Chaffee and Gunnison county sides, a monumental snow cornice east of the summit is posed above the road possibly in danger of falling, officials said.
Under a sunny sky, a convoy of Colorado Department of Transportation workers and county road and bridge crew members drove CR 306 to below the cornice.
"We blasted the snow attempting to knock it loose, but it's pretty solid and we didn't have much snow come loose and fall," Joe Nelson, Chaffee County road and bridge supervisor, told The Mountain Mail Tuesday after the blasting.
Is global warming support cooling?
The Ely Times - elynews.com :: Opinion: Is global warming support cooling?
Is the earth warming? Is human activity the cause? Is there anything we can do about it?
While many believe there is a consensus in the scientific community that humans are causing the earth to heat and that serious action must be taken immediately, that's not what most Americans believe, according to a Pew Poll taken May 8.
Why the Climate Bill Failed - TIME
Why the Climate Bill Failed - TIME
When Reid's procedural vote finally came, on Friday morning, 48 Senators voted to move ahead with the debate, and 36 voted against. Boxer was happy to claim that a total of 54 were in favor of moving ahead — because six absent Senators, including Obama, McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Kennedy, had written letters saying they would have voted in favor had they been present. Fifty-four would have been significant — the first time a majority of Senators voted for climate action. But 48 is the number in the Congressional Record, and it only got that high because 10 moderate Democrats who would have voted against the bill cut a deal with Reid: nine of them voted for the procedural motion to help their party save face, then they published a letter explaining why they didn't support the bill.
Every Environmental Report Ever...
Global Warming Politics 
Many cranial creatures, from head lice to scalp mites, are at risk from a worldwide loss of follicles, according to a World WorryWatch Institution (WWWI) Report, A Global Map of Follicular Ecosystems, issued yesterday.
Horner: What Would Change?
What Would Change? | cooler heads
U.S. policy didn’t change under George W. Bush, only the rhetoric did: Clinton-Gore swore philsophical fealty to Kyoto but also expressly vowed to not push for ratification until China, India et al came on board. Bush expressed no love for the treaty but had the same position. He never unsigned it, withdrew from it (impossible) or walked away from the table (the latter was done only once, by Clinton-Gore, in The Hague in November 2000).
It is now fairly clear if not yet certain that U.S. policy would not change under Obama or McCain. Yet even a sudden, unprecedented vow to press on with at best some cosmetic promise by China, India et al. would never pass muster in the Senate. Which is where the issue rests today, as it has since the U.S. signed Kyoto on November 12, 1998.
Northwest cherry crop forecast: Down 31 percent from last year due to April frost damage and poor pollination
Wenatchee packers into cherries by weekend
The Yakima-based Washington State Fruit Commission issued its latest Northwest cherry crop forecast Monday. It's predicting a 10-million-box crop, down 31 percent from last year due to April frost damage and poor pollination...Brett Reasor, packing plant manager at Custom, called it "amazing" to have green cherries on the trees in Wenatchee this late.
Environmental Skeptics Are Overwhelmingly Politicized, "Study" Claims
Environmental Skeptics Are Overwhelmingly Politicized, Study Says | Worldwatch Institute
"A lot of skeptics might say they are independent voices, but it's clear there is an organization behind the skeptical discourse," Jacques said. "If not for conservative think tanks, we wouldn't be having this same discussion; we wouldn't be hung up on whether climate change is real."
Missouri Congressman Sam Graves: $3 million was earmarked to promote Al Gore's book?
Former KC Mayor Kay Barnes tries to sell her small-town roots in her run for Congress - News - The Pitch - The Pitch
A wiry man with a deep-lined face and closely cropped dark hair, [Congressman Sam] Graves wears a white shirt and a red tie with Dockers. He defends his votes against several energy bills, which he says were "full of garbage." He says he likes wind-power tax credits, but other earmarks have turned him off.
"There was an earmark in there for electric hybrid police cars for Hollywood, California," Graves says with contempt. "There was an earmark in there for a rainforest — an indoor rainforest — in Iowa. To study the effects of rainforests in Iowa."
The audience laughs.
"This was my favorite," Graves says sarcastically. "There was an earmark in there for $3 million to promote Al Gore's book in our schools. You know, the one about global warming. That was in the energy bill that everybody touted as such a wonderful thing and how evil everyone was who voted against it because it had wind-energy tax credits in it."
Save the Polar Bear Suits for the Afterparty
Save the Polar Bear Suits for the Afterparty « It’s Getting Hot In Here
I think there’s 3 major chain-reaction problems with using street theater as a means to build a movement:
1. We look stupid
2. People feel alienated
3. It says, we’re different from you, therefore we’re against you
Maybe you can come in out of the COLD weather during the midsummer Olympic trials in Oregon?
Showing off the UO during the Olympic Trials | KVAL CBS 13 - News, Weather and Sports - Eugene, OR - Eugene, Oregon | News
"We're expecting that people will take this opportunity to come inside, get out of the hot weather or the cold weather--depending on what's happening," said Ann Craig, museum assistant director for education.
EU Energy Poverty
Planet Gore on National Review Online
The new Sick Man of Europe is . . . Europe!
CCNet's Benny Pieser has an eye-opening rundown of what Kyoto-augmented energy costs have wrought on the continent — which is what the U.S. should expect if Lieberman-Warner ever returns from the grave...
Green cars with a twist of lemon
Green cars with a twist of lemon | The Daily Telegraph
GIVING Japanese car manufacturers millions to build green cars in Australia is the 21st Century equivalent of paying people to paint rocks white.
It is yet another example of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's propensity to make up expensive, meaningless, policy on the run. This stream-of-consciousness decision is the latest in an exponentially expanding list of Ruddelusions that would be marked as harmless except for the fact that they all come with a huge price tag for already suffering Australian consumers.
In this case, the ticket to dream costs $70 million in federal and Victorian government funds - a huge bonus for carmaker Toyota which was planning to build hybrid cars here with or without such a generous subsidy.
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This is by no means the end of the anthropogenic global warming madness inspired by Rudd's friend Al Gore, who also makes it up as he goes along.
Rather than listen to the growing numbers of eminent scientists who challenge the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Rudd Government has bought its line in the face of numerous peer-reviewed scientific reports which find that none of the so-called evidence on which the IPCC's reports were based confirms a relationship between emissions of greenhouse gases and any harmful climate effect.
Google's Brin plans joyride into space in 2011
Only completely "green" power will be used, correct?
The first private space flight to the International Space Station will blast off in 2011 in a deal with the Russian space agency, the US company Space Adventures said Wednesday.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin will occupy one of the two available seats for "private space explorers," the company said, noting they were "offered to not only individual explorers but also to businesses, organizations, and institutions."
Kyoto's Great Carbon Offset Swindle
Kyoto's Great Carbon Offset Swindle
Off-the-record and in the corridors at the many carbon trading conferences, industry insiders will admit that deceitful claims in CDM applications are standard practice. Everyone in the system knows that everyone else is making up stories, and that the system would cease "working" if they didn't.
The lobby group for the carbon trading industry, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), has stated that proving the intent of developers applying for the CDM "is an almost impossible task." Other industry representatives have complained that "good story-tellers" can get a project approved "while bad story-tellers may fail even if the project is really additional."
One glaring signal that many of the projects being approved by the CDM's Executive Board are non-additional is that almost three-quarters of projects were already complete at the time of approval. It would seem clear that a project that is already built cannot need extra income in order to be built.
Patrick Carroll, retired Environment Canada meteorologist: "the IPCC theory of anthropogenic warming is a hoax that is rapidly falling into disfavour among atmospheric scientists"
Grit Leader Dion gullible on carbon tax: one reader - The Hill Times - Newspaper Online.
If Dion had advisers who were keeping up with the latest research and climate data, he would have been informed by now that the IPCC theory of anthropogenic warming is a hoax that is rapidly falling into disfavour among atmospheric scientists. Instead, he continues to blunder along listening to clueless alarmists like Mr. Suzuki.
Climate skeptic appointed as Environment Minister
WILSON 'VERY HAPPY' WITH HIS NEW GREEN ROLE - Newtownabbey Today
THERE has been a mixed reaction to East Antrim representative Sammy Wilson's appointment as Environment Minister, following a reshuffle of the DUP's Stormont team.
Amid the back-slapping over the Assemblyman and MP's elevation to the Executive has come sharp criticism from leading environmentalists over the local politician's "sceptical" views on climate change.
...
The Green Party expressed disappointment at Mr. Wilson's "climate change sceptic views" and urged him to refrain from commenting on the subject until he has acquainted himself with the findings of the Inter-governmental Panel on climate change.
Said Green Party MLA Brian Wilson: "Sammy Wilson has a duty to the people of Northern Ireland and the environment to ensure that his comments are evidence-based and not the uninformed babble of someone who should be spending more time reading his First Day briefs."
He urged the East Antrim politician to attend UN talks on climate change, adding: "No serious scientist has attributed all climate change to human activity.
"Even the school children of Northern Ireland understand the distinction."
Mr. Wilson's appointment also caused raised eyebrows within environmental group, Friends of the Earth.
Describing the move as "a mistake," the organisation's Northern Ireland director, John Woods, commented: "Mr Wilson is well known for his sceptical views on climate change.
"It is difficult to see how a Minister who holds such views in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence could be a credible protector of our environment. But the test will be how Sammy Wilson approaches his new responsibilities.
More June snow hits Western Montana
Montana's News Station - Fair. Accurate. To the Point. -More June snow hits Western Montana
A lot of folks across Western Montana woke up to snow on Wednesday morning, making the month of June feel more like February.
Heavy snow warnings and snow advisories were in effect all across Western Montana on Wednesday morning, and some Missoula residents also were experiencing scattered power outages.
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Meanwhile in the Flathead Valley, most people woke up to a white wonderland on Tuesday and the snow fell once again on Wednesday with reports of fallen trees around the region.
The cold weather and snow is also pounding the cherry crops in the Flathead Valley, and we'll have more on that part of the story during the 5:30 News on Montana's News Station.
Illinois vegetable producer: “Too cold. Too wet. Too windy.”
The Daily Journal
Vegetable producer Larry Munson summed up the spring crop season in six words: “Too cold. Too wet. Too windy.”
Cool weather crops like the lettuce Munson features at the Kankakee County Farmers Market “are OK,” he said at the market last Saturday.
Warm season crops aren’t growing well. “The corn is growing too slow,” he said. “One variety of sweet corn didn’t come up at all ... That’s one of the risks of planting early ...
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Bob Blain. of Riverfront Berry Farm, west of Martinton, said the cool, wet weather has caused some problems with the fungal disease anthracnose in his strawberries, but that fruit and vegetable growers elsewhere have much more serious problems.
Anthracnose causes black spots to develop on the leaves and berries, making them unmarketable.
Freak blizzard on Washington's Mount Rainier
The Associated Press: Hiker dies in freak blizzard on Washington's Mount Rainier
After a winter of heavy snowfall that forced repeated closure of mountain passes, unseasonably cold conditions have continued long into spring in Washington's Cascade Range.
Paradise, the jumping-off point for the trail to Camp Muir, received 2 feet of fresh snow over Monday night, with 5-foot drifts and 70-mph winds at Camp Muir, Bacher said.
"Nobody expects a blizzard in June," he said.
Bravo, MP John Maples
Until a couple of months ago, I was...: 9 Jun 2008: House of Commons debates (TheyWorkForYou.com)
Until a couple of months ago, I was happily riding this consensus and basically accepted the received wisdom. I thought that it was probably being exaggerated a bit, but then people usually do that in making a case. However, I then made the mistake of reading a few books and quite a lot of analysis, particularly of the Stern report. That has led me to a couple of conclusions that trouble me a lot. I do not believe that the science is anything like as settled as the proponents of the Bill are making out...
Cold and wet, winter comes to Cape Town
IOL: Cold and wet, winter comes to Cape Town
Disaster Risk Management has been placed on high alert after weather office predictions of intense cold and wet weather as yet another cold front makes its way toward Cape Town.
According to weather forecaster Lynette van Schalkwyk, Capetonians should brace themselves for generally cold weather conditions.
If it's so enjoyable to use a push reel lawn mower, why do so few Dads buy them for themselves?
Eco Friendly Father's Day Gift: Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower | Really Natural - ReallyNatural.com
With the cost of gasoline skyrocketing and climate change "eminent", a push reel lawn mower offers Dad a chance to use less fuel and make mowing more enjoyable.
World’s Scariest Words: ‘I’m an Environmentalist and I’m Here to Help’
Pajamas Media » World’s Scariest Words: ‘I’m an Environmentalist and I’m Here to Help’
Environmentalism's road to hell is paved with good intentions.
NH resorts celebrate best winter ever
UnionLeader.com - New Hampshire news - NH resorts celebrate best winter ever - Wednesday, Jun. 11, 2008
Nationally, the ski industry also set an all time record of 60.1 million skier visits. A visit is recorded when a skier or snowboarder spends a day or a portion of a day at a ski area.
Cannon Mountain took the overall record this year for snowfall, recording 251 inches; many ski areas reported over 200 inches. Average snowfall for a New Hampshire ski area is about 120 inches a year.
University of Washington prof says it's the coldest spring since 1917
HeraldNet: There's rain on the grill and snow in the passes
There's further proof that this spring has been uncomfortably and depressingly cold -- the coldest in memory, the coldest since 1917.
India: Monsoons will be good this year
DNA - India - Monsoons will be good this year: IMD DG - Daily News & Analysis
The India Meteorological Department forecast a 'good' monsoon this year despite global warming and other factors affecting world weather.
Director General of IMD, Ajit Tyagi said, "I do not think global warming will affect monsoons in India. A thorough study is needed to know the character of global warming and its possible impact on local weather."
The price of pandering to panic
The price of pandering to panic | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
World temperatures have not risen since 1998, but voter temperatures will sure rise by the next election with a scheme like this. If the Liberals have themselves sorted by then, the once-improbable may turn out highly likely instead - Rudd could be out on his ear in just one term.
Science, dogma and dissent: Ross Garnaut’s Heinz Arndt lecture
Peter Gallagher
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
What positive reason does Prof. Garnaut offer for accepting the 'uncertainties' of the IPCC as reasonably indicative of a probability? No scientific reason, as it turns out. This is the most curious argument of all in his address. His reason for accepting the need for elaborate, 'impossible-to-measure' schemes of carbon-emission mitigation (the second two-thirds of his address) is a religious reason.Prof. Garnaut invokes "Pascal's Wager" (p.7)—a sort of bargain struck de profundis in the heart of this brilliant but deeply disturbed 17th century philosophe—to accept the existence of God on the basis of faith alone, rejecting the counsels of reason, out of fear of the (metaphysical) consequences. Pascal resolved to accept the existence of God out of an irrational fear of an eternity of torment in hell should he deny God and happen to be wrong.
Climate fraud allegations
Freeborn John: Climate fraud allegations
Excerpt:
...a paper on what is arguably the world's most important scientific topic (global warming) was published in the world's most prestigious scientific journal with essentially no checking of the work prior to publication.
U.S. Corn Crop Decrease Could Further Fuel Great Ethanol Debate
U.S. Corn Crop Decrease Could Further Fuel Great Ethanol Debate - Seeking Alpha
U.S. farmers will produce 10% less corn this year than they did a year ago, driving demand [?] to a 13-year low and further enflaming global rhetoric aimed at diversion of the staple crop for use in biofuels.
Corn production will fall to 11.735 bushels compared with last year’s crop of 13.074 billion, Bloomberg News reported, citing a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
About 89% of the corn crop had emerged from the ground as of June 8, and only 60% of the crop was in good or excellent condition. At this time last year, 98% of the corn crop was ready for harvest and 77% was found to be in good or excellent condition.
Next year’s harvest is expected to be even worse, as cold, wet weather delayed planting in the Midwest.
“We need sun,” Christian Mayer, a broker and market analyst for Northstar Commodity Investments LLC, told Bloomberg. “The corn needs time to develop a better root system” to improve yields.
Tidal power?
NC Media Watch: Tidal power?
Why is this the only plant after almost 25 years? We learned that tidal power requires a high tide location, such as the Bay of Fundy on a high volume flow river, such as the Annapolis river. It requires the rivers be dammed so it can capture the tidal flow and the run off. Damming rivers is a environmental concern. When I hear the Democrats talking about the need to develop alternatives to oil and gas energy sources they are always short on details. If tidal power was one of the real green power options it seems we would have more tidal power plants. It has been 24 years since the first one went on line.
Misbehaving Models and Missing Mammals
Jennifer Marohasy: Misbehaving Models and Missing Mammals by Jennifer Marohasy
In 2000 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) claimed a species of Cambodian mountain goat, Pseudonovibos sptraits, was endangered with a fragmented population of 2,500 mature individuals. The species was included in the 2003 and 2006 edition of the IUCN Red List of Threatend Species.
But the Pseudonovibos sptrails never existed.
Cambodian artisans had been fooling collectors for years by removing the sheath from the horns of domestic cattle, soaking them in vinegar, heating them in palm sugar and bamboo leaves before moulding and carving the horns and then selling them as wall mounts. There had been no sightings of the goats, and DNA analysis indicated the skull bones to be those of cattle, but the idea of a rare creature that needed saving captured the imagination of the local Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) program manager and he featured the IUCN listing in his fight against land mines and rainforest destruction.
Another nonsensical New York Times editorial
Editorial - Editorial - Another Failure on Climate Change - Editorial - NYTimes.com
The most obvious lesson to be learned from the Senate’s failure to mount any sort of grown-up debate on climate change last week is that the country needs a new occupant in the White House.But if either Obama or McCain would push so hard for climate legislation as president, why did both Senators fail to even show up for the Senate vote on Lieberman-Warner?
...
By that we mean a president who not only understands and cares deeply about the issue — which both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain say they do, and which President Bush clearly does not — but who is willing to invest the time and the political capital necessary to push good legislation through Congress.
Snowstorms in Oregon keep spring at bay
Snowstorms in Oregon keep spring at bay- OregonLive.com
During the morning, chains were required on trucks along 14 miles of Interstate 84 through the Blue Mountains between Pendleton and La Grande. The unincorporated town of Meacham got at least 7 inches of snow, while 10 inches were measured at the Tollgate Store, at 5,000 feet elevation along Oregon 204 between Elgin and Weston.
"This is how an ice age starts," grumbled Jan Ness, 60, of Walla Walla during lunch at the Tollgate Store. "On June 10, usually we are up here camping, and it's usually hot."
She was seeking shelter from the driving snow with grandsons Jacob, 8, and A.J., 6. . The boys live in Charleston, S.C., and Ness chained up her sedan so they could experience snow.
Gordon Clayton, 73, an employee at the store, said it was the worst snowstorm he's seen this late in June in 24 years in the area. Most years, winter's last heavy snowfall comes in March, he said.
"It's not good for business, not at all," Clayton said.
Washington state: Cold weather crushes local produce
Cold weather crushes local produce - MyNorthwest.com
Statewide, the unseasonably cool weather is damaging crops from Whatcom County to the Wenatchee Valley.
"The small grains, wheat, barley and oats, and row crops as well, are developing really slowly because of the cold weather. With the fruit crops such as, sweet cherries, Bartlett pears, any type of adverse conditions, such the frost days in April, were really detrimental to those crops," says Dennis Koontz, Deputy Director of the U.S. Agriculture Department's statistics survey in Olympia.
Koontz says the cherry crop got nailed this spring. "100,000 tons is our forecast at this time. It's down a little over 40-percent from last year's crop. What really hit cherry producers hard was a frost in mid-April during the bloom period."
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Who Do National Science Academies Speak For?
- Prometheus: Who Do National Science Academies Speak For? Archives
Separate from the merit of the policy recommendations advanced by the academies (and for the record I support both CCS and geoengineering research) is the question of who the national science academies speak for and the basis for their endorsement of particular actions.
Cold weather in both hemispheres hits lemon crop hard
Lemon price rise leaves shoppers bitter - Telegraph
The problems have been caused by an exceptional cold snap in Spain earlier this year, which wiped out most of its harvest of the verna variety of lemons – one of the most popular with British supermarkets.
This was followed by problems in the southern hemisphere. In Argentina, the biggest producer of lemons, the crop fell by 28 per cent after cold weather damaged hit the blossoming season.
Near Seattle: Scantily clad barista toughs out cold snap
For a lower carbon footprint, shouldn't she nix the heater and put on some sweatpants?
She said it was freezing when they got busy and needed to open both side windows.
There was a small space heater near her strappy-sandaled feet.
New York maple syrup production up 44 percent
New York maple syrup production up 44 percent | theithacajournal.com | The Ithaca Journal
Producers in the North Country reported a below-average season, with extended cold weather followed by a quick warm-up.
An Animal to Save the World
The Volokh Conspiracy - -
"An Animal to Save the World":
Lawyers at the Center for Biological Diversity spent years looking for "an animal to save the world." Their criteria: A charismatic animal dependent upon arctic ice habitat threatened by global warming that could be listed under the Endangered Species Act. The Kittlitz's murrelet didn't cut it, nor did an arctic spider or Carribean coral species. The polar bear, however, is another story. This year the polar bear joined the nearly 2,000 species listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA, and instantly became the new mascot for global warming policy. The question now is whether the polar bear will be more than just a symbol.
Science academies' strange claim: "the rate and scale of climate change means there is no time for complacency"
The National Academies | News | Science Academies Call for International Action on Climate Change, Global Health
June 10 -- Today the science academies of the G8 countries, as well as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa, issued statements urging leaders worldwide to take action on two pressing global challenges. To mitigate and adapt to climate change, nations must begin a transition to being "low-carbon societies," a shift that will require energy-saving changes in all sectors -- from housing to transportation to industry -- and the development of a range of clean energy sources.So what is the rate of global "warming" these days? If we're going to completely remake the economies of the world based on this rate, shouldn't they at least tell us what it is?
Alarmist professor Jim McCarthy speaks
Ledger-Transcript Article - Sounding a global warning - Your News Source - 03301
RINDGE -- Harvard professor Jim McCarthy says polar bears and Boston's Quincy Market may become martyrs due to rapid global warming.
"You can't rule it out," said McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography who is president of the Association for the Advancement of Science and former co-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. McCarthy addressed more than 80 concerned residents who attended a global warming conference at Cathedral of the Pines Sunday.
...
McCarthy's goal is to make sure the tides are changing in the right direction. He presented a slide show with graphs and images depicting the melting of the polar ice caps.
"If some of these pictures look familiar, it's because I gave them to a guy who used them to make an Academy Award-winning movie with them," said McCarthy.
He also referenced a recent report from the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment that that showed Boston's Quincy Market under water in the next 100 years.
McCarthy presented several images illustrating the plight of polar bears, showing them swimming in ice-free seas and stranded on small rocky islands far from the ice. Polar bears normally feed on seals that come up to breathe at holes in the ice, staking out the holes and pouncing on the seals when they poke their heads up. Without ice, however, the bears, though proficient swimmers, are no match for seals in the water, leaving them increasingly hungry during ice-free months.
University of Pretoria professor: MAN-MADE global warming is not real
allAfrica.com: Namibia: Climate Change a Fallacy - South African Professor (Page 1 of 1)
MAN-MADE global warming is not real, a Professor from the University of Pretoria charged in Windhoek last week.
Professor Will Alexander claimed that claims by environmentalists that climate change was real were not true and if the world was warmer now, it was simply caused by natural climatic variability.
...
He said while environmentalists claim that rainfall will decrease because of climate change, rainfall has in fact increased during the last century.
According to him, it was also not true that the frequency of tropical cyclones, droughts and floods will increase.
"There is no evidence on that," said Alexander.
He claimed that disasters such as this year's floods in the North were caused by natural climatic variability and people were affected because they were now living in areas prone to natural disasters, whereas before they lived in higher-lying areas.
But Dr Omu Kakujaha from the University of Namibia said whether climate change or climate variability was real or not, it has a negative impact on Namibia's economy.
Brian Williams tells grads: "Start with climate."
NBC's Williams Tells Grads U.S. Broken, 'Need You to Fix the Country' | NewsBusters.org
So pick one area: energy, politics, diplomacy, science, education, military, transportation. Start with climate. Something tells me this may be a challenge in the years ahead. Tomorrow's predicted high for Columbus is 220 degrees.
Obama's Oddly Revealing Economic Speech
Obama's Oddly Revealing Economic Speech - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)
1) Obama thinks climate change is gradually becoming a political negative. Obama's climate-change plan would make reducing carbon emissions the fundamental organizing principle of the American economy. But he mentioned it only once in his long speech on economic policy—and merely in passing at that. Can you imagine a Reagan speech in 1980 with only a single, brief mention of tax cuts? But you can't really blame Obama. Do people actually want to hear about why they should be paying even more for energy with gas at $4 a gallon?
EU calls for "health warnings" on car ads
EU calls for "health warnings" on car ads - Autoblog
Potential new rules that are currently in draft form and up for review by the College of Commissioners call for the inclusion of fuel consumption and carbon emission warnings on all vehicle advertisements, just like health warnings are included on packs of cigarettes.
Soot: Calling "Bull" on Global Warming Activists and Politicians
Soot: Calling "Bull" on Global Warming Activists and Politicians | Scientific Blogging
Each of these attempts at subterfuge will only defer the ultimately inconvenient data on soot emissions, that soot-ladened tropospheric brown clouds are far more culpable in climate change and abatement of their effects offer far greater and nearly instant returns on expenditures in terms of environmental quality. With that will come a partially exculpatory review of CO2 as a dangerous greenhouse gas.
Put up with your smelly hubby
Sunday Tribune
Tokyo - Japanese wives are being told to put up with the whiff of their husbands' dirty socks and underwear to save the planet from global warming.
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