skip to main |
skip to sidebar
NYT: Olbermann to join … Al Gore’s Current TV « Hot AirWhy would Olby settle for a rinky-dink operation like Current after being MSNBC’s 8 p.m. go-to guy for years on end? Could be that they outbid for him, but a big payday seems unlikely considering that the network was struggling so badly last year that it had to remake its whole operation. (Besides, who else would be bidding? CNN?) The key, I’d bet, is the equity provision, i.e. control. MSNBC’s overall leftward tilt was partly Olbermann’s doing; presumably he’ll have an even bigger influence over the programming at the “new” Current TV. In fact, per the Reuters story at the last link, the early buzz about Current when Gore got involved in 2004 was that it would be a left-wing alternative to Fox News. Having tried and semi-succeeded to build precisely that at MSNBC, Olby may be thinking of this as a second shot but with even greater leverage. Plus, if even one-tenth of the stories are true about what it’s like to work with him, he’ll need some equity to ensure that he doesn’t eventually get shoved out here too.
Wanna lower grocery bill? Think climate-change solutions, researcher says"The changes we are seeing are profound and severe and all of this is the direct result of us, humans," Pedersen said from Vancouver Monday, while waiting to board an eastbound plane. "The price of food is at an all-time high and why is this happening? Extreme weather is impacting harvests."
RealClimate: The Starship vs. Spaceship EarthDyson espouses a generic disdain for climate models and climate modellers: ” Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.” Like most of us, he has little confidence in the modelling of clouds. But with great ignorance of the nature of the modelling enterprise, he declares: “It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds”
...
In short, it’s not so simple as the ‘self delusion’ Brower talks about. Dyson is not doing science, but he is deluding others under the guise of science.
Oldie but a goodie: John Holdren crams a staggering amount of misinformation into one quoteI just ran across this gem again on page 124 of Tom Friedman's completely insane book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded":Last, consider this strong statement that Friedman quotes from John Holdren, professor of environmental policy at Harvard, director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: “The most important conclusions about global climatic disruption–that it’s real, that it’s accelerating, that it’s already doing significant harm, that human activities are responsible for most of it, that tipping points into really catastrophic disruption likely lurk along the ‘business as usual’ trajectory, and that there is much that could be done to reduce the danger at affordable cost if only we would get started–have not been concocted by the Sierra Club or the enemies of capitalism. They are based on an immense edifice of painstaking studies published in the world’s leading peer-reviewed scientific journals. They have been vetted and documented in excruciating detail by the largest, longest, costliest, most international, most interdisciplinary, and most thorough formal review of a scientific topic ever conducted.”
Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years? [2007] This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."
UPDATE 1-El Paso warns of cold weather effect on pipeline | ReutersNEW YORK, Feb 7 (Reuters) - El Paso Corp (EP.N) said on
Monday more cold weather in the U.S. Southwest could interrupt
operations on its Colorado Interstate Gas Co pipeline system if
customers fail to maintain adequate supplies.
...
In the next 48 hours there is a chance New Mexico will see
4 or more inches of snow from Albuquerque southward, Downs
added.
Last Thursday, the governor of New Mexico declared a state
of emergency as gas supplies were cut off to thousands of
residents.
How ice beat electricity - Inside El Paso Electric’s cold blackoutsThe damage at El Paso Electric’s Newman power plant was substantial. Columns of thick icicles hung from cooling towers. Water valves were cracked in two, rendered useless. Workers used torches to thaw the pipes.
...
So how can a heat-producing power plant freeze? And how did it get so bad that the company was forced to cut service?
On Friday afternoon, Andy Ramirez, EPE’s vice president of power generation, said the plant was simply not designed for single-digit, subzero temperatures.
With up to 3 inches of snow in forecast, roof collapses continue - Dedham - Your Town - Boston.comProblems with roofs overloaded by heavy layers of snow continued today around the region, as public safety officials raced to sagging or collapsed structures reported in Boston, Bellingham, Littleton, Dedham, and Norwood. Meanwhile, a relatively small storm for this unusually snowy season was expected to dump up to 3 inches on some areas of the state.
Montana wildlife populations on the decline with harsh winterWildlife across Montana Fish, Wildlife and parks Region 6 are dropping dead due to harsh winter conditions. Mostly affected are the pronghorn antelope and deer.
big picture agriculture: Debunking Krugman: NYT's "Soaring Food Prices - Blame the Weather"Weather always causes fluctuations in agricultural production. Writing that sentence just made me feel stupid, but I had to when the purpose of this article was to rebut Krugman's weekend writing. We do not know if we are in the middle of another food crisis. We can't yet conclude with certainty how climate change is affecting agricultural production. What we do know is that the good news related to agricultural weather and production is always dismissed while the bad news is always over-dramatized and chosen as the means of predicting the current trend. And that only fuels panic and speculation.
Is severe [ie cold] winter weather related to global warming? - Washington Post Weather isn't that simple, as it turns out. On average, the world is indeed getting warmer. (Even those skeptical about the human effect on Earth's climate don't dispute that fact, which is well established from year after year of upward-trending thermometer readings around the planet.) But global warming doesn't necessarily translate into warming everywhere, all the time.
...
In other words, some melting ice and a moat of warmish water in the Arctic may be spawning the blasts of frigid air that keep pummeling us. How's that for a cold irony?
Record Hemispheric snow but moisture content BELOW normalDecember and January have seen the greatest snowcover for the Northern Hemisphere in the record (back to 1966). It beats out 2009/10 in second and 1977/78 in third place and 2007/08 in fourth place (source: Rutgers snow lab). Notice the UPWARD trend over the period of record.
Alarmists and their enablers in the media want to blame excess moisture due to global warming. As the Goracle himself puts it “Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”
But cold air hold LESS moisture not more and indeed the average anomaly of precipitable water from the surface to 18,000 feet (500mb) from December 1, 2010 to February 3, 2011 is below the long term average (blues and purples) in the region where the snow has been anomalously heavy - northern Europe and central and eastern United States.
Gingrich: Professor Cornpone - WSJ.comSome pandering is inevitable in presidential politics, but, befitting a college professor, Mr. Gingrich insists on portraying his low vote-buying as high "intellectual" policy. This doesn't bode well for his judgment as a president. Even Al Gore now admits that the only reason he supported ethanol in 2000 was to goose his presidential prospects, and the only difference now between Al and Newt is that Al admits he was wrong.
Gore’s Generation Invests in AsiaThe investment will be separate from Generation’s venture capital arm, which funds renewable-energy firms and companies that open up markets for trading carbon emissions.
Capital Weather Gang - The winter the Arctic shifted southLast week, Chicagoans were treated to one of that city's worst blizzards of all time. Featuring several rounds of thundersnow - a relatively rare phenomena that has been in abundant supply this winter, making appearances in D.C., New York, Boston, and now Chicago - winds gusting to between 50 and 70 miles per hour, and upwards of 20 inches of snowfall, the storm paralyzed one of the most battle tested cities for dealing with wintry onslaughts.
The eerie sight of hundreds of stranded and abandoned cars along Lakeshore Drive, a scene straight out of the global warming disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow," must've made New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose administration was roundly criticized for botching cleanup efforts after the "Boxing Day Blizzard" in December, feel satisfied that it's not just the Big Apple that can be snarled by a snowstorm.
Climate change may cool Napa Valley, says study The Napa Valley may be set to become cooler as a consequence of climate change, according to a new in-depth study carried out for the local vintners’ association.
Napa Valley Vintners (NVV) was prompted to commission the study – Climate and Phenology in Napa Valley: A Compilation and Analysis of Historical Data – by 2006 research which suggested the area would soon become too warm to produce fine wine.
Al Gore Explains The Snow | Real ScienceElaborating on his comments - warm, moist -30C air sweeps down from the Arctic and hits the much colder 0C air in Texas. This causes record snow to fall in locations that used to be warm before global warming made them cold.
A Cherry-Picker’s Guide to Temperature Trends Update: Warming Crisis Not — MasterResourceNew Statement: For most of the past 17 years, global warming has been occurring at a rate that is below the average climate model expected warming.
» The (Non) Producers: Obama’s Bialystock and Bloom - Big GovernmentObama’s wind and solar boondoggle so far includes – according to his own Council on Economic Advisors – $90 billion in ‘green energy’ stimulus spending for 190,000 inherently temporary jobs (think: census job, as each lasts only so long as the state support, meaning it is yet another state-created bubble). That is $450,000 per job. The pledge to create’ millions of such jobs at your expense is a vow to seal our bankruptcy.
Renewables are the most expensive way for all of its constantly shifting excuses, including a) to produce energy, b) to create jobs and c) to reduce emissions. And pouring money into centuries old technology as state-picked ‘winners’ delays rather than expedites tech development and advancement.
Such wasteful adventurism is utterly boneheaded; these products are alive solely for political reasons — both totemic and to satisfy big lobbies. Their vendors and cheerleaders premise their movement and their industry on a crusade against waste. And yet nothing is more wasteful than their scheme.
Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Krugman Loses PerspectivePaul Krugman joins the crowd who think that they can see the signal of greenhouse emissions in noisy, short-term data on food prices, and then construct a chain of causality to the ongoing unrest in the Middle East. Such tenuous claims of attribution have about as much scientific standing as Pat Robertson saying that Hurricane Katrina was the result of the vengeful wrath of God.
Oil has joined the Past… NG is the Future!Shale gas is quite simply changing the whole energy paradigm in real time. The unlocking of source rock, has altered the future history of mankind. The world has discovered and unlocked its newest true world changing source of stored energy.
Wind stalled in Ontario « The Daily BayonetSimply put, the government cannot sustain subsidies for wind and solar that reward renewable developers with guaranteed rates of up to 20 times the market rate for electricity. Spain, Italy and France learned the hard way but McGuinty has his head in the sand when it comes to green energy. The subsidies are pushing up the price of energy across the province, increasing costs for businesses and suppressing demand and job growth across the economy.
[Healing the planet]: Green-energy plant sucks up subsidies, then goes bust | Timothy P. Carney | Politics | Washington ExaminerTo turn wood chips into ethanol fuel, George W. Bush's Department of Energy in February 2007 announced a $76 million grant to Range Fuels for a cutting-edge refinery. A few months later, the refinery opened in the piney woods of Treutlen County, Ga., as the taxpayers of Georgia piled on another $6 million. In 2008, the ethanol plant was the first beneficiary of the Biorefinery Assistance Program, pocketing a loan for $80 million guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayers.
Last month, the refinery closed down, having failed to squeeze even a drop of ethanol out of its pine chips.
California's landmark climate law tentatively voided by San Francisco judge | CAIVNIn perhaps a startling decision from a court generally known for being liberal, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith has tentatively ruled that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) violated state law in enacting plans for reducing greenhouse gases and implementing cap-and-trade.
...
You might think the plaintiffs would be right-wing organizations that believe climate change is fiction. Instead, many of them are environmental groups who advocate for the disadvantaged and are concerned about the effect of AB32 upon those communities.
If Obama Triggers Blackouts, GOP Triggers Apocalypse | Death and TaxesInfowars’ argument is all backwards: In reality, the energy policy that has allowed coal energy to spew ungodly amounts of emissiosn into the environment without any oversight has led to climate change, which led to this year’s brutal blizzard, which turn led to the blackouts.
The accusation that Obama triggers blackouts may be unfounded—but the climate deniers may well trigger a climate apocalypse.
US won't halt climate action: CombetGlobal efforts to tackle climate change can progress even if the United States lacks the political will, the Gillard government believes.
The Winter of Al Gore's Discontent - HUMAN EVENTS
In Utah, Questar Gas set a single-day high mark for natural gas delivery to chilly customers. The weather kept the print edition of the Tulsa World from reaching the public for the first time in a century. More snow fell upon Chicago during February’s first two days than normally falls the entire month. A combination of unusually heavy snowfall and the frigid cold stubbornly holding off a melt has unleashed a wave of roof collapses in Massachusetts. Tucson’s mercury broke local records by dipping below 20 last week.
...
For all the talk of “science,” the primitive divinations of today’s weather have proved to be the Holy Church of Global Warming’s most persuasive means of proselytizing. A spree of especially hot summers did more to convert the heathens than any Paul Ehrlich holy book or televised Al Gore sermon. It would be fitting should mere cold spell anecdotes erode faith in the pseudo-scientific fad.
More than five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus used meteorological phenomenon to induce the natives to do his bidding. Wanting food and labor, Columbus threatened the indigenous Jamaicans that his god would make the moon disappear if they didn’t do what he wanted. They balked. He awaited the scheduled eclipse. Frightened, they pledged themselves to him in exchange for getting the moon back.
Schumer Wants Investigation of Road Salt Sellers - WETM 18 OnlineKingston, N.Y. (AP) - Sen. Charles Schumer wants the Federal Trade Commission to investigate possible collusion and price gouging in the road salt market.
Shortly before noon Monday, Schumer will be at Kingston's salt storage facility to talk about the issue. He says towns and counties throughout New York State have had to set aside larger portions of their budgets for road salting and snow removal in response to record snowfall and skyrocketing prices.
Charles Schumer - Energy and the EnvironmentSenator Schumer believes in man-made global-warming. He supports cap-and-trade legislation and has voted to use reconciliation to achieve this goal.
Northern Mexico cold snap paralyzes Ciudad Juarez | Reuters(Reuters) - Freezing weather and snow paralyzed the border city of Ciudad Juarez on Friday, knocking out electricity and water in thousands of homes and closing roads and factories.
Record low temperatures hit the city, across from El Paso, Texas, from Tuesday, which is already suffering from some of the worst violence in Mexico's drug war, fluctuating between -0.4 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 and -10 degrees Celsius).
"There have been cold temperatures in the past, but nothing that has lasted for so many days. It's been 40 years since the city has seen an emergency like this," said Efren Matamoros, head of the city's civil protection service.
Quadrant Online - Garnaut fails AustraliaIndeed, his first Update and associated comments present a blatantly political perspective in portraying all developments since the Review as supporting the need for emission reducing action by government and dismissing or ignoring the reality that those developments have clearly heightened the uncertainties about the so-called science and whether there will be any agreed international political action.
Mexico’s frost could damage 270 hectares of melon crops | Fresh Fruit PortalFrost has damaged around 60% of melon farms in the northern Mexican municipalities of Matamaros and Viesca, according to news website Milenio.com.
...
He said extremely cold temperatures had been recorded for the last three years, in addition to the hail and strong winds that have affected farms, the story reported.
Cold weather affects cattle | Sri LankaMore than four hundred bulls and cows have died due to the cold weather in the flood hit Kekirawa area, Provincial Secretary for Kekirawa said.
A large number of deaths were reported from Ganewelpola and Horapola, the Provincial Secretary added.
Further he said that due to the number of deaths not reported to the authorities the number of Cattle deaths could be even higher.
Tompkins: Marine life hit hard by cold weather | Outdoors | Chron.com - Houston ChronicleFewer fish are alive in Texas bays today than were swimming in them just a week ago.
...
The siege of freezing temperatures that fell over the Texas coast Wednesday and continued into this weekend dropped water temperatures low enough and long enough to prove fatal to some of the marine life in our bays.
As early as Thursday, scattered reports of dead or cold-stunned marine life — green sea turtles, speckled trout, hardhead catfish, gray snapper, striped mullet, snook, menhaden, silversides — came from bays along the length of the Texas coast.
...
Severe freezes in the 1980s killed almost 40 million inshore marine fish and devastated inshore recreational fishing for most of a decade. A record-setting freeze in December 1983, killed an estimated 20 million fish in Texas bays. A February 1989, freeze killed an estimated 11 million, and a freeze that December took another 6 million fish.
The money is leaving the room « JoNovaThere is still billions invested in research, billions circling in carbon markets, and billions tossed as government subsidies. But there are a few less billion available now than there was before Christmas. Reality bites and Green Energy is left to face the music.
[I hate it when they do that]: Cyclones also fell rainforests of the oceanTROPICAL cyclone Yasi not only felled vast numbers of trees in some of Australia's most spectacular and precious rainforest, but its might will have been felt underwater, too.
Yasi will almost certainly have left a trail of destruction across a section of the Great Barrier Reef, hundreds of kilometres long.
...
The Great Barrier Reef has adapted to deal with the effects of cyclones and fierce storms - along its entire 2300 kilometres length there have always been areas recovering from some kind of disturbance or another, creating a mosaic of healthy and damaged reef.
But scientists fear that as the grip of climate change tightens, the frequency and intensity of the disturbances will increase, leaving the reef too little time to recuperate between disasters.
Not only do these kinds of storms affect coral and the entire marine environment, but there are also indirect disastrous consequences that scientists are only just beginning to understand.
Climate change becoming real in Uganda - eTurboNews.comUGANDA (eTN) - Recently-published studies revealed that over the past 50 years, the Eastern African region has experienced an average increase in temperatures by 1 degree Celsius, and suggestions were made that this may, together with other factors, have contributed to the accelerated cycles of drought and floodings and the sharply-risen needs to import food and depend on crisis intervention by the international community.
The forecast for this year, especially in the region’s economic powerhouse Kenya, again proposes an almost failure of the rains between April and June, which could have a devastating effect on the pastures for livestock and also for the farmers across the country.
The Many Benefits of Atmostpheric CO2 Enrichment | OtherSPPI has published a new Book, The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment.
...
Global warming alarmists tell us the horrors of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration. Skeptics tell us that it's not all that bad. Finally, there is a non-apologetic treatise that tells us of the benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment in an alphabetical format. This extensively referenced 360-page color book by Drs. Idso and Idso tells us of fifty-five benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, and belongs in the library of all who study CO2 and climate.
...
The benefits are not squeezed out of computer models, but are based on real data. CO2, after all, is plant food, absolutely necessary for all of the biosphere.
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : More Stupid Environmentalist TricksThis gem from Spain -- Madrid's mayor proclaimed massive air pollution reductions except, ah, "The state prosecutor's office found that in 2009 the Madrid municipality had quietly moved nearly half its pollution sensors from traffic-clogged streets in the city centre to parks and gardens" -- reminds us of the cheapest way to cool the planet:
Reopen the Canadian and Siberian temperature stations closed ca. 1990, prompting 'the hottest decade on record'.
Skeptic's Corner: What a difference a year makesOne 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
CU lab worker decided fighting global warming was more important - The Denver PostIn 2004, Leslie Glustrom was working in a biochemistry laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder when she became increasingly concerned about global warming.
"I had thought this was something that was going to affect us mid-century," she said. "But research was showing that the impacts were already here."
As a mother of two — both young adults — Glustrom, 56, decided advocacy was more important than lab work.
Autopsy: Cold weather claims Oak Forest man - chicagotribune.comA 79-year-old Oak Forest man who was found on his front porch died as a result of the cold weather, an autopsy determined today.
...
Officials were also awaiting an autopsy to determine the cause of death for a 74-year-old woman who was found dead in her home on the 5800 block of West Walton Street, the spokesman said.
The body of Daisy Scott was found frozen in her home Friday evening, officials said. Without conducting an autopsy, officials were not able to say if Scott died as a result of the cold or another underlying medical condition, the spokesman said.
Helena Christensen Drained By Jet Lag Helena Christensen has confessed her jet-set lifestyle leaves her feeling drained and like she has taken drugs.
Helena Christensen says being jet-lagged feels like taking drugs.
The 42-year-old supermodel has travelled the world with her work - including a recent trip to Nepal on behalf of Oxfam to highlight the impact of climate change - and admits the realities of crossing several time zones in short spaces of time leaves her feeling out of sorts.
Nov. 2010: Helena Christensen campaigns for climate action | Environment | MiNDFOODAhead of the next round of UN climate change talks on November 29 in Cancun, Mexico, Christensen is calling on world leaders to commit to a climate treaty.
...
Supermodel Helena Christensen has spent three days in villages in southern Nepal as part of her Oxfam-supported campaign to highlight the effect of global warming on poor and rural communities.
James E. Overland Going To The Tabloids To Be Heard: “Things Are Going To Get A Lot Worse”It used to be that scientists communicated their knowledge through reliable professional journals, which then communicated to the media.
Apparently climate scientists are getting increasingly desperate, and so they are now going directly to the very bottom of the media chain and giving interviews to the mass-market, most sensationalist of the tabloids. Such is the latest with James E. Overland and Germany’s no. 1 tabloid Bild in a story titled:
Climatologist: Deadly Weather Chaos Will Be A Permanent Condition
Who would have ever thought it? Scientists from (once) one of the the world’s most prestigious scientific organisations, now have to go to the yellowist of tabloids to be heard.
Greens, miners hit carbon bid from both sides | The AustralianJULIA Gillard and the Greens are on a collision course over the assistance levels for big greenhouse gas emitters in the government's proposed new carbon pricing regime, as mine companies prepare to combat suggestions Australia is a "laggard" in international efforts to combat climate change.
Swept up by climate change tedium | The Daily TelegraphAVAST and destructive force slammed into Australia last week. People ran for cover, but there was no avoiding it. And there's worse, far worse, to come. Professor Ross Garnaut's initial update of his 630-page 2008 climate change review is just the first of eight such exhausting, smothering new instalments. This category five snore-a-thon kicked off last Friday in Melbourne.
Possibly aware he was presenting the dullest, most pointless document in Australian history, Garnaut attempted to sex things up a bit. "If we are seeing an intensification of extreme weather events now," said the Rudd-appointed academic, "you ain't seen nothing yet."
Last week's extreme cold devastated plants - Las Cruces Sun-NewsBut experts said the impact to landscaping vegetation, especially nonnative plants, can be summed up in a single word: devastating. Even native plants, such as prickly pears, are likely to take a hit, they said, mostly because this kind of prolonged freeze is a rarity.
The last time the mercury came close to hitting minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit was in 1976. And one Hatch area farmer said the last prolonged, bitter cold spell occurred there in 1962.
UNISEY And TERI Join Forces For Education And Research“This partnership with TERI University will further strengthen cooperation in research among developing countries. We need good science to address climate and a partnership with UniSey will help us to look at island issues as well, said Dr Pachauri following the signing.
The Irish film-maker who's stirring up a green hornet's nest in Hollywood - Lifestyle, Frontpage - Independent.ieMany celebrities may spout green, but are they really cleaner than clean? Apparently not, according to an Irishman intent on exposing Hollywood superstars as 'eco-hypocrites'.
Robert Redford is the latest to have his green credentials flame-grilled by filmmaker Phelim McAleer. His new hostile, and to the point, short film, entitled Robert Redford: Hypocrite, accuses the Hollywood legend of failing to practise the environmentalism he so passionately preaches.
Released to coincide with the final days of Redford's Sundance Film Festival, McAleer's two-minute film took a hatchet to the actor who once featured on Time magazine's list of environmental superheroes.
Harsh winter triggers New York City manhole explosions | Reuters(Reuters) - Record snowfall is turning the city's mean streets even meaner, with 65 manholes exploding or catching fire since New Years, a utility spokesman said on Friday.
With snow piled six feet high for the past month, huge ice chunks raining down on congested intersections and street corners turned into frigid wading pools, flying manhole covers are yet another symptom of winter's wrath.
In the most recent serious case, a fireball erupting from a manhole in Brooklyn this week engulfed an SUV that had been parked over the opening only moments before.
The history of snow in South FloridaIt has only snowed TWICE as far south as West Palm Beach in recorded history, and both were in this century. Records of snow events in Florida date back as far as 1774 when snow fell from the Florida skies and residents called it "extraordinary while rain".
The Migrant Mind: Failed Predictions of the AlarmistsTo close this up, we need to ask why we should believe their incredibly apocalyptic predictions when their last set of apocalyptic predictions failed. Like the Millerites, they constantly revise their predictions when the proclaimed event doesn't happen on their time schedule. How are we to trust their predictions about 2100 when their predictions about the past 20 years have been so false? Remember we will not be here in 2100 to check out how false they are. We will all be dead. But then, that is part of the scam. Make scary predictions so far out that one can never be proven wrong. Make those predictions dire so that the grant money can continue to flow. In my opinion, the who thing is nothing but a political agenda to keep the tax dollars flowing for the greedy researchers.
UN : Bulgaria Allowed To Trade Worthless Gas Again | Real ScienceIt is like Monty Python skit.
Why Do They Think Very Cold Air Is Warm? | Real ScienceThis is a nice theory, but the air is unusually cold, not unusually warm. Temperatures are far below normal. Are warmists actually as ignorant (and clueless) as they pretend to be? Extensive snow cover comes during cold winters, not warm ones. It doesn’t snow in Texas during warm winters.
Recent freeze one for history books - Portales News-TribuneThe deep freeze of February, 2011, is definitely one for the books. Young people should write a note in their diaries to embellish the hardships and retell the story to their grandkids 30 or 40 years from now.
“How cold was it grandpa?”
...
“It was so cold the Internet stopped flowing for three days in eastern New Mexico.”
Yuma crops hit by freezing temperaturesYUMA - Prices for lettuce and other winter vegetables grown in southwest Arizona will likely rise because of damage caused by freezing weather.
Yuma County's cooperative extension director says most if not all the growing areas in the county were affected by a hard freeze in recent days.
Farmers Watch Harsh Winter Crush Their Livelihoods : NPRFor Northeastern farmers long used to coping with all sorts of cold-weather problems, this winter presents a new one: snow and ice that's bringing down outbuildings, requiring costly repairs, killing livestock and destroying supplies.
Farmers in Connecticut alone have lost at least 136 barns, greenhouses, sheds and other structures as snow measured in feet, not inches, accumulated while January passed without a thaw.
The Associated Press: 35 zoo animals freeze to death in northern MexicoCIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Thirty-five animals at a zoo in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua have frozen to death during the region's coldest weather in six decades.
Serengeti Zoo owner Alberto Hernandez says 14 parrots, 13 serpents, five iguanas, two crocodiles and a capuchin monkey died. He said Saturday that power failures cut off electrical heating at the zoo in the town of Aldama.
Temperatures have dropped to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 Celsius) in the area, the coldest weather in 60 years.
Morano on 'Your World'Climate Depot's Marc Morano explains how ethanol production fueled by global warming hysteria may have contributed to the Egyptian situation:
How Does the IPCC Safeguard Against Bias? « NoFrakkingConsensusIn short, there appears to be an alarming lack of checks and balances regarding the way the IPCC makes what some people view as its most important set of decisions. Which means we now have our answer to the question: How does the IPCC safeguard against bias?
It does not.
GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE: Bizarre Weather, Destroyed Crops, And No More Right Whales [Warmist fund manager Jeremy Grantham] Weather-induced disappointment in crop yield seems to be becoming commonplace. This pattern of weather extremes is exactly what is predicted by the scientific establishment. Snow on Capitol Hill, although cannon fodder for some truly dopey and ill-informed Congressmen, is also perfectly compatible. Weather instability will always be the most immediately obvious side effect of global warming.
Global warming? Not 'end of the world' - The Orange County Register"It's not the end of the world," Patzert said. "It's a warmer world, and it's a melting world. We're adapting to it already. And we'll adapt to it no matter what. But it'll put tremendous demands on water and power."
Patzert started his hour-long talk, complete with detailed graphics, by making no secret of his own political views, or his perception of those of his audience in a meeting room at Orange County Water District headquarters.
"Even though most of you all are Republicans, it's still one of the best-run water district in California," he said.
He said climate change is "the real deal," not "the musings of idiot, leftist scientists and Democrats, like me."
» Judge Halts Implementation of California Cap and Tax - Big GovernmentThanks to Ronald Reagan’s legacy and a legal miscalculation by leftist environmentalists, this week a California judge stopped the implementation of California’s Cap and Trade law: better known as Cap and Tax. This is the same type of carbon trading that Al Gore has hawked for years, but failed to get through the most radical Democrat Congress in generations. That’s how bad it was. Of course, that didn’t stop whacked out California from passing a Draconian version of the same job killing scheme.
National media not thrilled with North Texas weather - Sports - Wire - BradentonHerald.comSuper Bowl organizers believe that a memorable game and the theme-park appeal of JerryWorld will save the day and make more than 5,500 media members forget the freezing rain, sleet, snow, more snow, and zero-degree wind chills that engulfed the region during a less-than-Super week.
Friday's snowstorm, which dumped five inches on Dallas, where the media hotel is located, was the last straw for Peter King of Sports Illustrated, who Tweeted that this year's event is "officially a debacle."
NASA's Johnson Space Center to Remain Closed Friday - Texas/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Due to the continuing cold weather conditions, NASA's Johnson Space Center will remain closed to all non-essential personnel for all of Friday, rather than reopening at noon CST as planned.
Although the site is in good condition, a delay in the arrival of the latest cold front has kept roads icy longer than anticipated, and the commute would likely be unsafe for many employees.
OpEdNews - Article: Global Climate Change: Missing in ActionIn the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll respondents overwhelmingly (43 percent) saw Congress' top priority as Job Creation, followed by Healthcare (18 percent), the Federal budget deficit (14 percent), Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (12 percent), and Illegal Immigration (7 percent), Something else (3 percent), and Unsure (3 percent). There was no mention of Global Climate Change in this and similar polls.
Given the seriousness of the problem it's curious that the American voting public has lost interest in Global Climate Change.
Fury builds over blackouts caused by de-industrialization of America | News-Worthy InformationFury is building over rolling nationwide blackouts triggered by the Obama administration’s deliberate agenda to block the construction of new coal-fired plants, as local energy companies struggle to meet Americans’ power demands amidst some of the coldest weather seen in decades.
- As reported yesterday, four hospitals in Texas reacted furiously after they were hit with planned outages despite being promised they would be spared even as power to Super Bowl venues remains uninterrupted.
Survey of EUEC Attendees Finds More than Half Are Not Measuring Carbon -- Environmental ProtectionEmissions Systems: 58 percent of the professionals surveyed responded that they have no system in place to record carbon emissions; an almost identical figure to the 61 percent of respondents to the 2010 survey who claimed their companies had no emissions recording systems in place.
....
Water Emissions: 55 percent of respondents identified water emissions as an equal priority to carbon emissions. Only 15 percent responded that carbon emissions are of greater priority than water emissions.
Blizzard spreads snowy shroud over nearly half USCHICAGO (AP) — A fearsome storm spread a smothering shroud of white over nearly half the nation Wednesday, snarling transportation from Oklahoma to New England, burying parts of the Midwest under 2 feet of snow and laying down dangerously heavy ice in the Northeast that was too much for some buildings to bear.
Tens of millions of people stayed home. The hardy few who ventured out faced howling winds that turned snowflakes into face–stinging needles. Chicago's 20.2 inches of snow was the city's third–largest amount on record. In New York's Central Park, the pathways resembled skating rinks.
For the love of God, stop having babies, says U.N. | GristOne solution: Act more like a Judd Apatow character. Prolonging our adultescence may help reduce fertility to below replacement level (i.e. one birth for each death), as more adult children discover that, by the time they’re ready to move out, they’ve gone through menopause.
Cracks noticed before roof collapse at Apple Valley church - TwinCities.comOfficials were investigating possible causes of the collapse, including heavy snow and ice, said Apple Valley Fire Chief Nealon Thompson. In western Minnesota, snow buildup caused the roof of a hardware store in Glenwood to cave in Tuesday, authorities say. No one was hurt in that incident.
Freeze leaves sea turtles stunned | stunned, friday, turtles - Brownsville HeraldAn estimated 500 cold-stunned sea turtles had been rescued in the lower Laguna Madre area by Friday, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department official said, as cold temperatures took marine wildlife by surprise this week.
- Bishop Hill blog - The big cutoffFred Pearce is on the receiving end of the full fury of the warmosphere for his article about the Lisbon conference in New Scientist.
Some interesting thoughts on Antarctic peninsula warming | Watts Up With That?Due to the southward shift of the storm track, a high SAM index is associated with anomalously dry conditions over southern South America, New Zealand and Tasmania and wet conditions over much of Australia and South Africa. The stronger westerlies above the Southern Ocean also increase the insulation of the Antarctica. As a result, there is less heat exchange between the tropics and the poles, leading to a cooling of the Antarctica and the surrounding seas. However, the Antarctic Peninsula warms due to a western wind anomaly bringing maritime air onto the Peninsula (Fig. 5.9). Indeed, the ocean surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula is in general warmer than the Peninsula itself and stronger westerly winds mean more heat transport onto the Peninsula. Over the ocean, the stronger westerly winds tend to generate stronger eastward currents. Furthermore, the divergence of the currents at the ocean surface around 60oS is enhanced because of a larger wind-induced Ekman transport. This results in a stronger oceanic upwelling there.
Krauthammer, Thomas spar over global warming as the cause of this year’s extreme winter weather Look, if Godzilla were on the Mall this afternoon, Al Gore would say it’s global warming because the spores in the south Atlantic Ocean were – you know, look everything is, it’s a religion,” Krauthammer said. “In a religion everything is explicable. In science, you can actually deny or falsify a proposition with evidence. You find me a single piece of evidence that Al Gore would ever admit that would contradict global warming and I’ll be surprised.”
85,000 Chickens Killed In Collapse Of Bozrah Coop « CBS Hartford – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of HartfordHARTFORD, Conn. (AP) _ Connecticut’s agriculture commissioner says the collapse of a chicken coop due to heavy snow has killed 85,000 chickens.
Greyhound passengers stranded in Denver - KWGNDENVER -- They're far from a monster storm terrorizing the Midwest, the east, and even the south. Yet, they have become victims of it in Denver.
Greyhound Bus Service says 110 people got stranded at its downtown Denver terminal, and many of them have been there since Monday.
Sen. Inhofe, environmental groups spar over whether carbon emissions actually pose health risk | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and EntertainmentIn an interview with TheDC, Joe D’Aleo, a meteorologist and executive director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP), called the public health argument “nonsense” and “absolutely ludicrous.”
“Since we emit 2.7 pounds of CO2 per person per day from respiration, it is clearly not harmful,” said D’Aleo.
He also pointed out that in classrooms, auditoriums, and especially submarines, carbon dioxide levels are always higher than they are in the open air. “And they don’t die in submarines from carbon dioxide,” said D’Aleo.
“The EPA has admitted that its cap-and-trade agenda won’t have any meaningful impact on climate,” said Matt Dempsey, spokesperson for Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation. “One wonders, then: how could stopping something with no impact have any impact on public health?”
“This has nothing to do with public health, and everything to do with saving jobs, protecting consumers, and keeping our manufacturing base here in America,” he added.
Scientific Illiteracy is on the March.In the case of Upton and Inhofe, I am cynically amazed by their willingness to put their heads on the chopping block --- as a cautious but literate scientist I suspect that they have a close to 90% chance of going into the history books as the most ignorant and thoughtless legislators in our history as the data comes in in the next FIVE to twenty years. They do have the courage of their convictions. These convictions apparently come from thin air. And probably polluted air.
Or likely from their fossil fuel burning donors.
If you're still on the fence, read Hansen's "Storms of my Grandchildren" for a cautious prediction.
Halfway to doomsday! | The Daily CallerBelow-freezing temperatures, icy streets, and blinding blizzards have plagued the country for two weeks now. Buried in all that snow is the five year anniversary of the Sundance premiere of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”
It was at Sundance in 2006 that we first heard Gore’s most profitable hypothesis: The world had ten years or less to avert imminent destruction. That same year, Rush Limbaugh began his “Algore (sic) Doomsday Countdown.”
Cancun was disappointing, don`t expect much at Durban: Ramesh New Delhi, Feb 4 (IANS) Terming the climate change talks at Cancun last year as 'disappointing', Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh Friday said the world should not expect much from the UN climate conference in Durban scheduled later this year.
Fatal I-44 Crash Survivors Treated in Joplin - OzarksFirst.comLieutenant George Brown with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol says that the fatalities were two men and one woman. The cause of death was hypothermia.
...
Several of the divers and other rescuers had to be treated for hypothermia and exposure. Six divers were treated for hypothermia and exposure.
Finnish Railways punctuality plummets to record low"Last spring there was frost damage of a completely extraordinary scale that lasted well into the summer," Pertti Saarela, a VR division chief, told the Finnish News Agency
New record low temperature set in Sierra Vista as the mercury dips to 3 degrees | The Sierra Vista HeraldThe official reading from the National Weather Service marked Thursday’s low a tad higher, but at 3 degrees it was still the lowest temperature ever recorded in Sierra Vista. The previous low, according to the weather service, was 7 degrees on Feb. 26, 1912.
The record temperature was the result of a strong low-pressure system moving across the Southwest that by Thursday afternoon had centered itself over New Mexico, according to the weather service.
Gore's Unending Blizzard Of Lies - Investors.comHoaxes: As the nation digs itself out, the grand wizard of global warming comes out of hiding and blames it all on that SUV stuck in your driveway. A blizzard is a terrible thing to waste.
What has been dubbed the Groundhog Day Blizzard has caused Al Gore to poke his head out of his massive carbon-generating mansion in Nashville, Tenn., to blame the 2,000-mile storm on our alleged obsession with fossil fuels.
Sorry, Al, but in Chicago the solar panels were buried under upward of two feet of snow as citizens cranked up those polluting snow blowers, a scene repeated in much of the country. In the middle of blowing snow, blowing smoke does not help. Get our drift?
CapitalClimate: Midwest Groundhog Day Blizzard Update: Wisconsin Records SetThe National Weather Service has reported that several Wisconsin locations observed top-5 snowfall amounts for 24, 48, or 72 hours in the blizzard ending yesterday:
SOUTHERN WISCONSIN WAS RECENTLY BOMBARDED WITH MULTIPLE STORMS THAT
PRODUCED BETWEEN 15 TO 28 INCHES DURING A 72 HOUR PERIOD. MANY SITES
SAW SNOWFALL RECORDS BROKEN DURING THIS PERIOD...FOR 24 HOUR...48
HOUR...AND 72 HOUR INCREMENTS.
State wastes a bundle trying to be ‘green’ - Port Orchard Independent...as part of developing a strategy on climate change, the state hired the Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) to organize Washington’s Climate Advisory Team and analyze the costs and benefits of a wide range of potential strategies.
...
For this service, Washington paid $200,000 to CCS.
...
What’s more, the proposals developed by the Climate Action Team were never acted upon, and a bill incorporating their ideas never even received a vote in committee.
Washington paid more than other states — and all for nothing.
Russian geography students rescued from drifting ice floe; lots of fossil fuel burnedWith their helicopter grounded by blizzard conditions, the rescuers set off by road, towing a small amphibious boat. Because of poor road conditions, they did not expect to reach the students before midnight. At the same time, the icebreaker Dixon, itself 100km away, set sail course for the students, but found that it could not navigate the shallow waters of the bay for fear of running aground.
Finally, at 9pm, the weather lifted and a Mi-8 naval helicopter left Vaskovo airport.
Global Weirding: [Remember the good old days, before George Bush caused all these temperature swings?]We have all seen examples of global weirding when it comes to weather, with more and more examples of severe weather, ranging from tornadoes to floods to swings in temperature, including the historic snow storms that much of the nation is experiencing this week. Nature's toll is seen on both land and in our oceans.
Reliable forecast under the weather - BostonHerald.comMeet the global weirdos. They’re the ones telling you that all the snow outside is proof that it’s getting warmer. Only, they don’t call it “warming” anymore.
No, that was back in the “Earth has a fever” days. Back when Al Gore was predicting that the ice caps were melting, the polar bears were drowning and Manhattan would sink beneath 20 feet of water “in the near future.”
But then something happened. Since 1998, temperatures have been relatively flat. We’ve got more polar bears than ever, and Manhattan is buried under snow. For a planet-roasting crisis that threatened the human race with extinction, there doesn’t seem to be much actual warming.
So then the mantra became “climate change.”
Ernest Istook: "Green Jobs" Cronyism and CannibalismSimply put, the green jobs agenda spends billions of taxpayer dollars to destroy existing jobs and replace them with jobs in politically-favored businesses, raising the costs of energy along the way.
The politically-connected win. Existing job-holders and companies lose. Home electric bills go up. Power also costs more for companies, making it more expensive to go into business or to stay in business.
It's cronyism that is building a political power structure based on false claims about clean green jobs.
It's cannibalism because creating the green jobs requires killing off existing jobs.
Global Warming Believers Propose Tax on Meat... | Gather“This tax is not at all a matter of forcing people to become vegetarians, but merely moving towards a slightly more climate-smart diet,” says Stefan Wirsenius of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Porky Pearce : StoatBut "the science is settled" has been one of the mantras used almost exclusively by climate denialists as a term of insult for those actually doing science (Pearce is fully aware of all this back story, of course. He isn't using the phrase accidentally or carelessly). It is a feeble attempt at a double bind: is the science settled? ha ha, then you can't be a scientist because real science is never settled. Is the science not settled? Oh great, then we don't need to do anything until it is. The answer, of course, is that we know now (and indeed have for years) enough about the science to know that the world is warming now due to human activity, and will be warming more into the future from more anthro stuff.
They call this a consensus?"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."
So said Al Gore ... in 1992.
Kyoto Report [Robert Watson, newly elected President of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] was asked in a press briefing about the growing number of climate scientists who challenge the conclusions of the UN that man-induced global warming is real and promises cataclysmic consequences. Watson responded by denigrating all dissenting scientists as pawns of the fossil fuel industry. "The science is settled" he said, and "we're not going to reopen it here."
Report: Flatulent cows a major cause of climate change - Kingsport Times-News OnlineWASHINGTON -- U.S. beef cattle are responsible for 160 million metric tons of global warming emissions every year -- equivalent to the annual emissions from 24 million cars and light trucks. But unlike American drivers, farmers who raise beef on pasture can reduce global warming emissions by storing, or sequestering, carbon in pasture soils, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
Mayor Addresses Gas Shortage - Albuquerque News StoryAlbuquerque Mayor Richard Berry is asking residents to turn their thermostats down to help the state curb its current natural gas shortage.
Berry is asking residents to turn their thermostats down 10 degrees and wear heavier clothing to ease the state’s gas problems.
FoxNews.com - Al Gore Explains 'Snowmageddon'“The last 2,000 years is full of incredible weather events that dwarf what we see today,” said Horn. “Nature isn't cooperating with the global warming camp and theory.”
Blackouts Anger Dallas Hospitals « CBS Dallas / Fort WorthDALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – They are the critical care safety nets for North Texas: Parkland, Baylor, Methodist and Presbyterian Dallas. So, during Wednesday’s rolling outages, why was the power cut to these vital hospitals?
Where's Mayor Daley? | NBC ChicagoThe mayor, who has in the past called himself "the most accessible public official you've ever met," has been strangely absent since Mother Nature unleashed her winter fury over Chicagoland.
Video: Koch protests include calls to lynch Clarence Thomas « Hot AirWill the media cover the violence inherent on the Left with the same passion they pursued those non-existent connections between the Tucson shooter and Sarah Palin? Will the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the “Rage on the Left” and label Common Cause a racist hate group?
The Reference Frame: Do the causes of temperature changes matter?There is absolutely no way to honestly introduce double standards here. If one decides to claim that the temperature that happens to deviate from the average of some random era is a bad thing, it must inevitably be true that whoever helped to increase this deviation has done a bad thing. You can't use two different temperatures - the real temperature measured by thermometers and an "adjusted one" from which some "speculative noise" was subtracted - and you can't choose the "more convenient one" depending on what you find more convenient for your claims.
Such an attitude is a flagrant case of dishonesty. However, this is exactly what alarmists - including softcore alarmists - are doing pretty much all the time. The only possible conclusion is that they don't want the policies to depend on the actual temperatures measured by thermometers - or any honest data, for that matter: they want the policies to depend on whatever fabricated data that are good enough to justify the pre-decided policies.
- Bishop Hill blog - Jones in LincsOne interesting snippet from the article is this quote by Jones:
I received a lot of nasty emails from November to March/April last year from people threatening to kill me among other things. I passed them on to Norfolk police who said they didn’t fulfil the criteria for death threats.
I'm slightly bemused by this - a death threat that doesn't meet the police's criteria for death threats./b>
Posts
