Saturday, June 08, 2013

Links

Ken Braun: Global warming doomsayers need to put up or shut up | MLive.com
For subsidies, the government says 2010 federal subsidies for wind were 87 TIMES that of natural gas or coal, while solar subsidies were a mind-blowing 1600 TIMES higher.

So what say you, global warming doomsters?

A lot of us would take you a bit more seriously if you proposed a real, theoretically workable carbon alternative and ditched the nutty notion that pleasant breezes and happy rays of sunshine will really keep our lights on.
Sen. Whitehouse, Tornado Opportunists Wrong on All Counts | Somewhat Reasonable
Studies show that strong to intense tornados have actually decreased markedly over the past 50 years, despite a warming climate. When the period from 1954 to 2003 was analyzed in a 2008 paper published by the American Geophysical Union, it was found that the most damaging tornados were about twice as frequent in the first half of the record than in the second half.

This is not surprising. Contrary to Boxer and Whitehouse’s assertions, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events decrease as the planet warms. It is during cooler periods, not warmer ones, that such phenomena increase. Strong to violent tornadoes actually peaked during the 1970s when concerns about global cooling dominated.
Zombie » Obama in Palo Alto: Fundraising with the Rich Radicals
Yes, Palo Alto is one of those few places in America densely populated by the kind of citizens that don’t fit in to the traditional political framework: Rich radicals. These are not your hardcore Berkeley ideologues nor your violent Oakland revolutionaries nor even your smug San Francisco ironic hipsters. Nor are they top-hat wearing high society cigar-smoking paleo-Republicans. No, these are postmodern hypocritical millionaires motivated by a desire to not feel guilty about living their lives of luxury. And the easiest way to assuage that guilt is Vote and Donate Obama.

These people are not supposed to exist according to any standard model of the American landscape, but in fact they are Obama’s core constituency and what they lack in demographic heft they more than make up for in campaign contributions.
...And remember our cutesy entrepreneurial lemonade stand? Well, just as the anti-carbon progressives try to crush the overall American economy underfoot, on a smaller but poignantly symbolic scale, Palo Alto’s anti-carbon protesters essentially put the lemonade stand out of business as the crowds drove away all the customers by making the retail environment business-unfriendly. Is this our future in miniature?

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