He then talks about how COLD weather caused 1000 deaths in Afghanistan.
Even before President-elect Barack Obama takes office, the United States has been forced to follow the left’s energy efficiency gamble. A network of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council have coordinated to stop construction on 65 coal plants and 13 natural gas plants nationwide.Prometheus » Blog Archive » Holdren on Clean Coal and $7/Ton Carbon (see the post for links)
Obama is going to have a compliant Congress to implement all the energy efficiency measures he wants. If the blackouts still come in 2010 we will know exactly who to blame.
As co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, John Holdren (President-elect Obama’s choice for science advisor) testified before Congress in 2005 (PDF) in support of “clean coal” technologies and putting an initial price on carbon of $7/ton while expanding the use of coal for electricity generation.. These views would appear to place Holdren strongly at odds with the more vocal wing of the climate apocolyptosphere which often calls for a much higher price on carbon and the bulldozing of coal plants. Both ideas may offer some cathartic relief to those espousing them but in reality are politically impossible. Holdren thus displays far more political realism than some of his supporters, setting the stage for some dashed expectations.
It will be interesting to see what views Holdren (and the rest of the climate/energy team) ultimately present, and how these views are received. My guess is that the honeymoon won’t last long.
Recently I attended Gov. Schwarzenegger's Global Climate Summit. It was great to see so much national and international attention to global warming, but there were a few low points that scratched at my pride as an Alaskan."saudi arabia of wind" - Google Search
I had to listen while Florida was singled out as being the state most impacted by climate change. They even used our tag line -- "ground zero for global warming." Then I had to watch Gov. Sebelius claim that Kansas, with far less high class wind density than Alaska, is the "Saudi Arabia of wind." The place applauded in agreement. Just like that another Alaska claim was snatched up by another leadership state.
Results 1 - 10 of about 12,800 for "saudi arabia of wind""ground zero" "global warming" - Google Search
Results 1 - 10 of about 306,000 for "ground zero" "global warming""front lines" "global warming" - Google Search
Results 1 - 10 of about 81,700 for "front lines" "global warming"
The only real heat was that surrounding the buzz words of the year: “climate change” and “global warming”. Bulgaria greeted them like one welcomes a pop quiz – with a show of acquiescence yet little desire.
At the December 11 and 12 European Council meeting in Brussels on the topic, Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev “tried” to convince the other countries that Bulgaria had no need of being included in the Europe-wide plan until the year 2020 to fight climate change, because Bulgaria had “already done enough and thus deserved to receive leeway on heating gas emissions because of its furiously developing economy”.
Yet despite the regular snowfalls, most cities along the southern coast of British Columbia are ill-equipped to handle even a few centimetres of the white stuff. They call it the British California syndrome or zonal denial. I call it just plain stupid and I'm mighty frustrated with having to live through it every year.
Take for example the most recent bout of winter that Metro Vancouver was hit with in the last couple of weeks. Admittedly, even by Canadian standards we did receive a lot of snow. However, does that excuse the fact that not a single street in my whole neighbourhood was plowed five days after the snow began to fall?
I’m beginning to think that the City of New Westminster (my hometown) doesn’t even own a plow. What else would explain how the act of a simple snowfall transformed our quaint streets into something reminiscent of an end-of-the-world Hollywood film?
For heavens sake, days after the storm, there were still cars abandoned everywhere. And I mean literally everywhere. Sidewalks were impassable while back alleys were complete no-go-zones unless you owned a Hummer or a snowmobile.
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I tuned in to a few hours of talk radio and dozens of callers were phoning in outraged at how they were losing a day of pay, missing a critical medical appointment or had their vehicle damaged due to bad road conditions.
But leap seconds are added strictly on a case-by-case basis, depending on need. This year's will be the 24th bonus second since the practice was initiated in 1972.
The sleight-of-clock is necessary to reconcile two different time scales.
One is established by the atomic time pieces, which are accurate to billionth of a second per day.
The other is based on Earth's imperfect rotation on its own axis.
The two get out of sync because the planet's spin is affected by a host of slightly fluctuating variables, including solar and lunar gravity, the movement of the tides, solar wind, space dust and magnetic storms.
Even global warming has gotten into the act because melting ice caps have an impact too.
North American cities had better start adapting to a future characterized by climate change and depleting oil. Fewer parking lots. More condominiums. No more big highway upgrades. No further airport expansion. Emergency response and health care systems that can respond to the potential impacts of global warming and energy shocks.Dec '08: Notice to Vancouver Sun subscribers
Over the past week the near-record snowfall has caused newspaper delivery challenges throughout British Columbia.
The Sun's distribution companies and their contractors are doing their best to get you a newspaper daily.
Unfortunately, the majority of side roads have not been cleared, making it very difficult to get newspapers delivered in the early morning hours.
Two words played a big role in politics in 2008 -- carbon tax.But predicting "extreme weather on Earth this year" is always a lock: Monica Green: Was I right?
While the words may be environmentally correct, in an age of political correctness they are politically incorrect and dangerous.
Ask Stephane Dion.
The federal Liberal leader told Canadians he'd introduce a carbon tax, and they told him where to go -- away.
Prediction 4: Extreme weather will be a factor for most of the world as weathermen report the coldest, driest, wettest, hottest weather in history. This causes Americans to become more aware of global warming.Nanga Parbat Winter Expedition Over : The Adventurist
While the types of weather weren’t exactly accurate in this prediction, the “extreme weather” part was right on the money. Flooding all over the world killed tens of thousands and three major hurricanes hit the U.S. Hurricane Ike was the fifth most damaging on record, causing $16.2 billion in damages.
In addition to the difficult conditions on the route, the climbers had to endure bitter cold and loads of snow without part of their gear and supplies – the LO officer (carrying a goat for fresh meat) had been blocked by fresh snow on the way to BC.
I’m a global warming agnostic. I’m perfectly willing to accept man made global warming as fact if the science is ever proven and equally willing to accept the possibility that global warming is a tempest in a teapot like the Y2K bug that drove billions in IT spending in the late ‘90s and had me stockpiling toilet paper and buying gold coins. It seems silly in 20/20 hindsight, but the fear was real at the time. It also taught me an important lesson: Investment advisors and politicians are not the only ones who spurn the vulgar exigencies of objective truth in an effort to enhance their reputations and fortunes. Evangelical environmentalists do it too!If you read this carefully, you might think it's no warmer in the Florida panhandle today than it was a century ago
By 1911, roughly 1 million "Owari" satsuma trees had been imported from Japan and planted throughout the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas.
According to industry historians, Jackson County was known as the "Satsuma Capital of the World" in the early 1900s. Satsuma, Ala., just north of Mobile, was named after the fruit in 1915. At the industry's peak, there were about 3,000 acres of satsumas in the Panhandle alone. Freezes, including a bad one in 1935, wiped out the business.
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The decision to add citrus was based in part on its history in the area, and new techniques in freeze prevention developed by UF and Auburn University. Glass has installed wells and an irrigation system that actually sprays water on the trees as the temperature falls. The resulting ice insulates the tree from the damaging colder temperatures.
In the Upper Midwest, the animals are dying off in startling numbers. Biologists blame global warming.Tom Nelson: Search results for moose
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The primary culprit, scientists say, is climate change, which has systematically reduced the Midwest's already dwindling moose population and provoked alarm in Minnesota, where wildlife specialists gathered for a "moose summit" this month in Duluth.
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Temperatures tell much of the story. Over the last 40 years in northwest Minnesota, the average winter temperature has risen significantly -- 12 degrees -- and summers are 4 degrees warmer.
Solitary and grumpy, moose have made it clear in their estimated 13,000 years in North America that they hate warm weather.
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Although northeastern Minnesota is comparatively more moose-friendly -- greater shade, more opportunities to cool off -- the population is declining about 10% a year. Lenarz said the pregnancy rate was a little more than half the norm for moose, and mortality rates are two to three times the average.
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"I don't see the temperature change we're seeing as cyclical. The trend is definitely in one direction," Peterson said.
1. Note that the warming blanket of CO2 was so powerful in 1996 that a "vicious winter" and "deep snow" only resulted in a population fall from 2400 to 500.
2. Note that CO2 caused the summer of 2007 to be so hot that moose estimates only increased from 385 to 650.
3. Note that CO2 emissions so devastated the Scandinavian moose population that their numbers only grew 30-fold in the 20th century.
Now, I can understand how they might think that cyclones (an extreme low pressure on water) and extreme low pressure on land could conceivably be due to climate warming, but it totally escapes any known logic trail that earthquakes (that caused nearly one-third of the deaths) are also caused by “Global Warming”.ND braces for another winter storm
Meteorologist Janine Vining, at the weather service office in Bismarck, says most of the snow probably will fall in an area from Watford City to Dickinson. She says the Bismarck area could get about 6 inches.Madison, Wisconsin: It's official: Snowfall record for single month tumbles
Bismarck already has a record snowfall in December with more than 28 inches, breaking the mark set in 1916.
The record snowfall in December is now at 38.6 inches, breaking the previous December mark of 35 inches set in 2000 as well as the previous monthly mark of 37 inches that fell in February 1994.
Scientists have reported a rapid recovery in some of the coral reefs that were damaged by the Indian Ocean tsunami four years ago.Competition, not climate, killed Neanderthals: study
Neanderthal people died off mainly because they lost in a competition for resources with the ancestors of modern humans—not because of climate change, researchers say in a new study.CTV British Columbia- Gardeners take stock following cold snap and snow
"I have a plant under here, a Mexican Hat plant," he said, digging carefully in one spot. "Look at the weight of snow that's on these plants. It's going to be extremely devastating."Big Dogs House » Blog Archive » Natural Disaster Deaths Increase, Blame Global Warming
First the cold, and now the heavy, wet snow will have an impact.
There's a lot of plant material that we grow that is marginal [in terms of weather]. They can handle our temperatures but not when we stay below freezing for a lengthy period of time for two weeks like we've had," said Vanderzalm.
Many scientists point out that sunspot activity influences the temperatures and the sun has not had sunspot activity for weeks. Thus, temperatures are colder.
This has not stopped the global warming zealots who claim that the colder temperatures are a sign of global warming which would mean that when it is warmer the temperatures are leading to global cooling. No sane person would think that and certainly the global warming adherents do not. They blame everything, hot or cold, on global warming.
Al Gore has gotten very rich by perpetrating fraud on the American public and the world.
Fortunately, people are seeing through this myth and are beginning to buck the trend. That is good news because we cannot afford the measures the warming crowd wants to impose especially since they will not help.
Seattle seems to shine in theory, but as the response (or lack of it) during our December snow storm, the city often can't be counted on when it comes to the nitty gritty details. Mayor Greg Nickels has received recognition for his maverick diplomacy preaching the gospel of the Kyoto climate accords, but few are happy with his hometown leadership. The mayor gave himself a "B" grade in snow storm response, but when KING-5 TV asked viewers to weigh in, 37 percent gave the city a "D" and 40 percent gave an "F." That means nearly 80 prcent of citizens rated the city's performance a complete fiasco, as close as you ever get to consensus in this town. Finally, Greg Nickels brings us together in 2008.The Reference Frame: La Niña conditions are back
According to the newest, today's weekly ENSO status report, La Niña conditions are back and they are likely to continue at least for a few months.Australian Climate Madness: Canberra Times journo can't think of a decent argument . . .
... so resorts to petulant ad hominems instead. Always the last chance saloon for someone unable to counter the substantive arguments of "skeptics", Rosslyn Beeby attempts the impossible: portraying alarmists as reasonable chaps, always open for debate and discussion (like Al Gore, I suppose, who refuses to debate AGW with anyone who might ask a half-intelligent question, which of course rules out most journalists), and skeptics as the hysterics of the piece...A self-described "Boulder tree-hugging hippie" throws in the towel on global warming
I am one of the Boulder tree-hugging hippies (to a certain extent), but even I have made that joke: “Where is Global Warming when my drive needs to be shoveled?” It’s simply perplexing that the globe could be heating up yet 2008 is shaping up to be one of the coldest years in… years.
I’m no scientist—I’ve never even played one on TV—but the use of the term global warming has outstayed its welcome. That doesn’t mean I think An Inconvenient Truth is a load of bull, nor does it mean that effects the Kyoto Protocol and other political measures are trying to counteract aren’t real. What it means is that we need to shift our terminology. We need to forget global warming and start thinking about it as climate change.
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Rising temperatures isn’t the only worry of climate change. If it were, I wouldn’t be able to argue that climate change is helping things get colder in the winters.
HARBIN, China - China's freezing northern city of Harbin is building what organizers say is the world's largest Santa Claus ice sculpture.Note that in the pictures at the link above, the people are dressed for cold weather and the sculptures show no sign of melting.
The giant Father Christmas, 160 meters (525 ft) long and 24 meters high, centers on an enormous face of Father Christmas, complete with flowing beard and hat.
Its huge size and unseasonably warm temperatures have made the job especially challenging, said Tang Guangjun, one of the sculptors.
"It is even bigger and higher than last year's, and more difficult. The weather swings between warm and cold, so it becomes very wet and slippery on the ice. It is very dangerous for us," he told Reuters Television.
When the weather outside is frightful, it can take a heavy toll on elderly members of the community, according to an expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.Romania: Temperatures plunge 10 degrees Celsius below season average
The temperatures recorded across Romania on Monday (Dec 29) morning were much lower than the multi-annual average, namely by some 8 to 10 degrees Celsius lower than such average, a forecaster at the National Meteorology Administration told Agerpres on Monday.UK on cold weather health alert as temperatures tumble
A "red alert" was triggered by the Met Office and the Department of Health today amid fears that plunging temperatures could threaten older people, families with young children and the long-term ill and the disabled.Australia: Public exhibits little fear of carbon dioxide as music festival results in 7-kilometer fossil-fueled traffic jam
Police yesterday said they were mystified as to why the 7km traffic jam that snaked along the Great Ocean was so bad compared to previous years.
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Ms Daly said the organisers' main concern was people not being adequately rugged up for expected cold weather.
"Last year it was so hot, but the main message this year is to pack a coat - although it is quiet perfect at the moment with a bit of blue skies," she said.
The effect is spectacular — and scary. “It will explode those blades, and they’ll throw chunks of blade several hundred feet,” Mr. Brokaw, a member of his local fire department, told me over the telephone.Wind Watch: Environmentally friendly, ain't
As the chunks fall, the firefighters douse them with water. Otherwise, “There’s really not much you can do with a turbine that’s 200 foot tall and on fire,” he said.
Mr. Brokaw said that in the past five years he has been called to help put out two or three turbine fires. He said that “there’s oil and gearboxes and a tremendous amount of wiring” in the generator — so even though the turbines are very well-grounded, they can sometimes light up.
...I will build them on this mountain, which is the windiest place I have found. Who cares about the wildlife, the beautiful vistas of Pilot Butte and the unimaginable sunsets? We will tell the locals how good this will be for them, with no emissions (no jobs), more power for the local consumers (we don’t need more). We will reduce the cost of power to locals, well maybe (wink, wink). It will give Sweetwater County $59,000,000 in taxes over 25 years (which is $2,360,000 per year, not very much when you lose White Mountain forever).
The Bureau of Land Management needs to step up and say no to this intrusion on the environment and the Western lore of Pilot Butte. What happened to them protecting the environment?
The original scam was for 36 wind turbines. Now it is 240 and probably going up from there. Damage to White Mountain will be enormous, with roads, turbine sites and traffic on the roads.
Imagine if you can, going to White Mountain on a windy day on a dusty road, looking out at Pilot Butte (if you can see it between the wind turbines). Most likely with no wildlife left, dust being blown up from the roads everywhere, and you may, if the dust doesn’t hide it, see the sunset or sunrise.
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Each turbine costs $2.5 million, multiplied by 240.
The county commissioners of Sweetwater County made a bad decision to allow 36 turbines on White Mountain, but they were told that they wouldn’t be visible from Rock Springs or Green River. Now the man says, “With the full build out, it is what it is and I can’t hide them.” So it proves they have no regard for the residents of Sweetwater County, their beautiful vistas, wildlife and overall environment. Is it all about greed and money?
1. (By a country mile. Which makes me wonder, just what is a country mile? Is it longer than a regular mile?): Lorne Gunter debunks, yet again, the apocalyptic claims related to global warming:Does increased per-cow milk production improve the world's climate?
Read the story
But then the press release takes a sudden turn and dives into the real issue it is trying to attack -- global warming.
I didn't see it coming, personally. I thought the whole release was a celebration of technology and its impact.
But after touting the improved numbers of the cows and their input, the press release started to stack up another set of statistics -- what this decreased number of cows did in the way of helping the environment.
Original link to eBook:Regardless of what the thermometers say: German Fool/Fraud Warns Climate Change Accelerating
The Fraud of Global Warming
"The earth is heating up faster than many realize"Arizona: Winter weather stirs up Valley kids' coughs
Climate change is happening more rapidly than anyone though possible, the German government's expert, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, warned in an interview.
The string of winter storms that blasted the Valley in recent weeks is bringing more children into local emergency rooms with respiratory issues.Pakistan - Fog, cold weather fuelling increase in crime across city
"The most common complaint is a cough getting worse and difficulty breathing," said Dr. Onyemeze Azuogu, a pediatric emergency room doctor at Mesa's Banner Desert Medical Center.
The cold weather can exacerbate lung conditions in children and adults who already have asthma. Viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, thrive when temperatures drop, said Dr. Jeff Kirkpatrick, medical director at the Catholic Healthcare West's Gilbert Urgent Care.
A resident of Iqbal Town, Rana Imran Akram, said robbers had gotten bolder in winter, and were looting people on most dark roads. He said that over the last four days, he and three of his friends had been robbed because police officials could not see them in the fog.Björk Gets Her Own Sustainable Investment Fund : TreeHugger
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One strike: A reformed snatcher, who has recently been released from jail, told Daily Times that criminal elements considered winter season as the most appropriate for robberies and snatching as police officials remained inside their patrol cars. He also said that winter season was full of marriages and most ceremonies lasted late into the night, adding that it allowed robbers to deprive people returning from weddings of jewellery, cash and mobile phones worth thousands of rupees in a single strike.
Björk gave her name, her image, and an undisclosed sum of money to a new venture capital fund dedicated to getting money to the best and brightest local businesses.Bulgaria Astronomer Forecasts Global Cool-off - Standart
An article by Bulgarian astronomer Dr. Boris and his Russian colleague Boris Kaftan is among the most read ones in the e-edition of Cambridge University Press in 2008. It was published as early as 2004, but this year the interest to the hypothesis presented in the study has been very high, Komitov comments. The article ranks fourth among the most popular publications.
Contrary to the widespread theory of global warming Komitov and Kaftan prognosticate a minimum level of solar activity that will be followed by a cold period. "This for sure will be a cycle of the lowest solar activity in the last 100 years," Komitov maintains. In his opinion, it will be a phenomenon similar to the 11-year solar cycle of the beginning of the 19th century, characterized by a gradual decrease in solar activity and the ensuing impact on global climate.
[MIT study] Penalties for emissions may have little effect on use of renewables.CO2-phobic Californians Shape Up as Force on Environmental Policy - washingtonpost.com
California Democrats will assume pivotal roles in the new Congress and White House, giving the state an outsize influence over federal policy and increasing the likelihood that its culture of activist regulation will be imported to Washington.One of Fortune's "21 [Allegedly] Dumbest Moments in Business 2008" was actually quite smart
In Congress, Democrats from the Golden State are in key positions to write laws to mitigate global warming, promote "green" industries and alternative energy, and crack down on toxic chemicals.
The General Motors exec behind the Chevrolet Volt electric car hands environmentalists another twig to beat GM with when he reportedly calls global warming "a crock of sh-t."Record December snow at Grand Forks, North Dakota
Grand Forks has a record for December snowfall with more snow expected before the month is over.When the thermometers say the UK has seen its coldest start to winter in 30 years, is an anecdotal story about one bat highly significant?
The old record was 27.6 inches set in December 1918. Today, the record is 29.4 inches after 1.9 inches overnight.
WILDLIFE experts expect more unusual animals to be seen in the Lothians after finding one of Britain's largest bat species roosting in a bat box for the first time.
Members of the Lothian Bat Group were amazed to find the noctule bat in the box in Roslin Glen, Midlothian. It is the first time they have found the species roosting in 15 years of monitoring the area.
Dr Stuart Smith said its appearance could be a sign of global warming. He said: "Finding a single female noctule bat in a bat box in Midlothian is unprecedented.
There isn't much doubt that Congress and incoming President Barack Obama will try to impose some kind of limits on carbon emissions. The Republicans, girding in opposition, are denouncing global warming as a fraud, and claiming that either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system will impose an unacceptable burden on the economy.
Their strategy of stonewalling cedes the game in what will be the most dangerous aspect of carbon legislation -- the effort to use the proceeds of an emissions tax to subsidize a dead-end expedition into "renewable" energy.
Whether global warming is real will probably not be known for another 50 years. There are signs, in the melting of the Arctic ice cap and warming in Alaska, that something unusual is happening to the climate. But skeptics note that world temperatures haven't risen since 1998 and that, if anything, recent weather has been unseasonably cold. Still, that doesn't mean we can dump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year without eventual consequences.
A $50 per ton carbon tax would raise gasoline prices about 25 cents per gallon -- nothing we haven't experienced in the last two years -- and accelerate a move toward electric hybrids, weaning us away from foreign oil. Nothing catastrophic there. The same levy would raise electric rates about 10%, which would encourage conservation while pushing us away from fossil fuels.
The weather is unhinged. It is no longer a question of global warming. It is a question of what in the hell is happening? I do not have to rehearse for you the details of this horrible American autumn, and a winter not yet half over. The tornadoes, the hurricanes, the floods, the blizzards, the wild fires, the heat waves, the water shortages, the power blackouts. The White House declares "a state of emergency" and the federal government sends money. How many states of emergency are we still in? How much more money is there?Isn't this exactly the kind of "thinking" that used to inspire people to throw virgins into volcanoes?
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I dreamed, we all dreamed, for years that the future held vague visions of progress and prosperity, and that our problems would be "solved" by science. How many of us are so sure about that now? I wonder if we are living in the End of Days. I do not mean that in a biblical sense. I mean that we seem to be irrevocably screwing things up. In the case of the global warming problem, we may have already done so. Please, please, don't tell me global warming is Al Gore's fantasy. I am reminded of a great line by Saul Bellow. A dying man tells his brother: "Look for me in the weather reports."
Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Typhoons. Volcanoes. Melting icecaps. Dead zones in the sea. Barack Obama's family and everyone else on Oahu was trapped in a power blackout, after ferocious lightning storms struck the power grid. I googled "power blackout Oahu" and found only 17,000 hits. If you know anything about Google, you know this was a freak weather occurrence. But the sun came up the next morning, and in less than a month Obama will be President.
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What a daunting situation he will face. How well can he possibly "succeed" when so many of the problems, starting with the climate, cannot be cured by the actions of man?
A South Dakota State University specialist offered tips on dealing with the stress that severe winter weather places on diesel engines and their fuel systems.When will the global warming take effect? | newsleader.com | The News Leader
SDSU Extension farm safety specialist Dick Nicolai said engine shutdown occurs when fuel gels, fuel lines freeze, or fuel filters plug.
Your Dec. 26 front page headline (Report: Faster climate change feared for U.S.) makes no sense. We can all feel how much colder the Earth has gotten in the past two years, and cooling is the opposite of the earth-ending warming you've warned about.This looks like a reprehensible attempt by Munich Re justify higher insurance premiums via CO2 hysteria
Is this new "study" just another effort to distract us from the reality that temperatures are defying the Greenhouse Theory — again?
CO2 didn't predict the strong warming from 1915-1940, or the moderate cooling from 1940-1975. Nor the non-warming from 1998-2006. Nor the sharp 0.6 degree C cooling since early 2007 that has taken our temperatures back to the level of 1940.
Sunspots, not CO2, started predicting the current cooling in 2000...
Munich Re said that 2008 continued the long-term trend of increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes which will result in greater and greater losses.Natural disasters 'kill 220,000 in 2008'
"In the international debate, we as a company press for effective and binding rules on CO2 emissions, so that climate change is curbed and future generations do not have to live with weather scenarios that are difficult to control," Munich Re Board member Torsten Jeworrek said in a statement.
Natural disasters killed more than 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record and confirming that a global climate deal is badly needed, the world's number two reinsurer says.
Although the number of natural disasters was lower than in 2007, the catastrophes in 2008 were more destructive in terms of the number of victims and the financial cost of the damage caused, Germany-based Munich Re said in its annual assessment on Monday.
The problem with most discussions about clean energy is that they take place in an ahistorical, highly naive vacuum. The next big breakthrough is always said to be just around the corner.
Investors are too shortsighted to see it, but if government would just pitch in, why, we'd all be driving a fleet of Prius-like vehicles by 2020 — powered by nothing but our own self-esteem, with emissions that will actually reverse global warming.
Where's the downside?
The downside is in falling for it. America's real history of investing in non-nuclear clean energy is a story of waste and harm on a massive scale. Government has demonstrated time and again that it's a sucker for a good pitch and therefore awful at picking winners in future energy technologies.
The consequences are far greater than just more taxpayer funds flushed down the drain, though in this time of rotten economic circumstances, let's take a moment to remember that we're talking about real money.
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