Duration_Improvate
Posts: 379 
Location: Nearby yet far away
Location: Nearby yet far away
May 4th, 2008, 10:58 AM
Oh dear. The government do control the freedom of speech, however they are suppose to allow some indirect facts and rights. These indirect facts and rights are always suppose to be there. If those facts and rights do not exist, then the government is doomed for eternity. I don't think people should panic. I think they should focus on how to recognize and perserve those indirect facts and rights. Once they perserve those facts and rights, they are able to express their personal rights and opinions. It is like the sarcastic tone of the journalists. Freedom to the sarcasms of journalists or a very bad country image of the world. Sorry about the long leave. I was very, very, very, unwell.
Oh dear. The government do control the freedom of speech, however they are suppose to allow some indirect facts and rights. These indirect facts and rights are always suppose to be there. If those facts and rights do not exist, then the government is doomed for eternity. I don't think people should panic. I think they should focus on how to recognize and perserve those indirect facts and rights. Once they perserve those facts and rights, they are able to express their personal rights and opinions. It is like the sarcastic tone of the journalists. Freedom to the sarcasms of journalists or a very bad country image of the world. Sorry about the long leave. I was very, very, very, unwell.
Clever Clogs
Posts: 519 
May 4th, 2008, 11:36 PM
Ocean currents don't reduce the total amount of energy in the global system, they redistribute it.
The simple fact is CO2 transmits visable light and absorbs infrared. Sunlight that hits the earths surface heats it up and some is reemitted as infrared which the increasing levels of CO2, methane, water vapour and other greenhouse gases capture. The oceans can store a large amount of heat masking the overall warming effect for years but they don't act to retransmit the solar energy back into space.
The billions of tons of extra CO2 gas that human activity puts into the atmosphere every year act as added insulation around the planet. The oil lobby is trying to pull whatever rabbits it can from its hat but it can't change that central SCIENTIFIC fact.
Also keep in mind that water vapour plays a much more significant role in trapping solar radiation than other factors and as we add more CO2 into the atmosphere the rate of evaporation goes up reinforcing the effect.
Also as water heats up it can aborb less CO2 so as the oceans warm they lose some of their ability to act as carbon sinks.
This is a question of common sense versus greed and unfortunately greed is winning out right now.
Ocean currents don't reduce the total amount of energy in the global system, they redistribute it.
The simple fact is CO2 transmits visable light and absorbs infrared. Sunlight that hits the earths surface heats it up and some is reemitted as infrared which the increasing levels of CO2, methane, water vapour and other greenhouse gases capture. The oceans can store a large amount of heat masking the overall warming effect for years but they don't act to retransmit the solar energy back into space.
The billions of tons of extra CO2 gas that human activity puts into the atmosphere every year act as added insulation around the planet. The oil lobby is trying to pull whatever rabbits it can from its hat but it can't change that central SCIENTIFIC fact.
Also keep in mind that water vapour plays a much more significant role in trapping solar radiation than other factors and as we add more CO2 into the atmosphere the rate of evaporation goes up reinforcing the effect.
Also as water heats up it can aborb less CO2 so as the oceans warm they lose some of their ability to act as carbon sinks.
This is a question of common sense versus greed and unfortunately greed is winning out right now.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 6th, 2008, 06:13 AM
The climate change deniers
May 6, 2008
By Shawn Macomber - When heralded Canadian environmentalist Lawrence Solomon first set out two years ago — on a bet, no less — to find credible dissenters to the well-entrenched climate change dogma, he thought he might perhaps unearth enough material for a few National Post columns. Instead, like Alice passing through the looking glass, Mr. Solomon entered a world wherein it soon became clear the much-ballyhooed idea of a "scientific consensus" was as nonsensical as "Jabberwocky."
"I had picked several of the most essential and/or most widely publicized 'building blocks' of the case for catastrophic global warming," Mr. Solomon writes. "In each case, not only was I able to find a truly eminent, world-renowned leader in the field who disputed the point in question, but in each case the denier had more authority, sometimes far more authority, than those who put forward the building block in the first place."
The debate over anthropogenic — that is, human induced — climate change, is, in other words, just a bit more complicated than Al Gore suggested on "Oprah." Few books have captured this cognitive dissonance as well as "The Deniers," Mr. Solomon's essential, engrossing travelogue through the world of climate-change dissent.
In "The Deniers"' deniers are not the usual suspects paraded out by a media eager for Scopes Monkey Trial II: Flat Earthers' Revenge. They aren't blustery, ill-informed television pundits or slash-and-burn polemicists.
Rather, Mr. Solomon introduces us to legendary scientists with impeccable resumes and prestigious appointments at major universities and mainstream research institutes; thoughtful, serious professionals who, at their own professional peril, looked at one or another of the shibboleths of global warming alarmism — from the debunked "hockey stick" graphic and misread ice core samples to the amateurish or incorrect computer models and fear-mongering — and bravely refused to join the herd, profitable as that may be these days.
Likewise, Mr. Solomon's own position as founder and executive director of the well-regarded international environmental group Energy Probe makes it considerably more difficult for opponents to shellac him as a right-wing reactionary moonlighting as an oil company stooge — though, of course, no slander has been proven entirely off limits for demagogues who believe they are the Jack Bauers incarnate in a special environmental doomsday season of 24. ("There's no time for debate, Chloe, we've got to regulate now!") Witness "60 Minutes" reporter Scott Pelly's answer when queried as to why his reports featured no global warming skeptics: "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?"
So who, exactly, has convened the conspiracy of silence Mr. Solomon is now attempting to shatter with "The Deniers?" Well, it's ... complicated. As the author would learn, many highly-qualified scientists who question even some small aspect of the global warming orthodoxy "don't want to be found at all and try very hard not to appear as dissenters. They have no wish to be called names in the press, or to lose their jobs, or to have their funding cut off as many deniers have."
Beyond the disturbing issue of self-censorship, however, stand those for whom the sexy business of saving the world is much too gratifying to bother with any credible contrarianism. Who wants to just live on an ever-changing planet when one could be a mini-Zeus lording over all the elements? Thus, even a balanced scientific report can end up resembling a lost quatrain from the Book of Revelation in the hands of regulation-happy politicians and reporters with small paychecks and large hero complexes.
Never mind that, as Mr. Solomon demonstrates to great effect in the closing pages of "The Deniers," the practical effect of popular climate change regulation schemes will likely be old-growth forests in Third World countries felled to make way for profitable "carbon intensive plantations." ("Every time we buy carbon offsets to salve our consciences at flying in a jet," Mr. Solomon writes, "we are helping to dispossess someone, somewhere, by boosting the carbon credit value of their land.") Forget that bio-fuel fads are pricing the world's poor out of sustenance. Ignore the myriad other environmental problems that could be addressed with the resources eaten up to solve a problem that very well may not exist.
"The Deniers" is a timely, necessary antidote to a political and scientific discussion poisoned by hubristic groupthink and the kind of scorched earth (mis)behavior that inevitably arises when a movement becomes so uncritically wedded to the commandments of a pseudo-religion its adherents would rather destroy their adversaries than risk debating them.
Shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American Spectator.
The climate change deniers
May 6, 2008
By Shawn Macomber - When heralded Canadian environmentalist Lawrence Solomon first set out two years ago — on a bet, no less — to find credible dissenters to the well-entrenched climate change dogma, he thought he might perhaps unearth enough material for a few National Post columns. Instead, like Alice passing through the looking glass, Mr. Solomon entered a world wherein it soon became clear the much-ballyhooed idea of a "scientific consensus" was as nonsensical as "Jabberwocky."
"I had picked several of the most essential and/or most widely publicized 'building blocks' of the case for catastrophic global warming," Mr. Solomon writes. "In each case, not only was I able to find a truly eminent, world-renowned leader in the field who disputed the point in question, but in each case the denier had more authority, sometimes far more authority, than those who put forward the building block in the first place."
The debate over anthropogenic — that is, human induced — climate change, is, in other words, just a bit more complicated than Al Gore suggested on "Oprah." Few books have captured this cognitive dissonance as well as "The Deniers," Mr. Solomon's essential, engrossing travelogue through the world of climate-change dissent.
In "The Deniers"' deniers are not the usual suspects paraded out by a media eager for Scopes Monkey Trial II: Flat Earthers' Revenge. They aren't blustery, ill-informed television pundits or slash-and-burn polemicists.
Rather, Mr. Solomon introduces us to legendary scientists with impeccable resumes and prestigious appointments at major universities and mainstream research institutes; thoughtful, serious professionals who, at their own professional peril, looked at one or another of the shibboleths of global warming alarmism — from the debunked "hockey stick" graphic and misread ice core samples to the amateurish or incorrect computer models and fear-mongering — and bravely refused to join the herd, profitable as that may be these days.
Likewise, Mr. Solomon's own position as founder and executive director of the well-regarded international environmental group Energy Probe makes it considerably more difficult for opponents to shellac him as a right-wing reactionary moonlighting as an oil company stooge — though, of course, no slander has been proven entirely off limits for demagogues who believe they are the Jack Bauers incarnate in a special environmental doomsday season of 24. ("There's no time for debate, Chloe, we've got to regulate now!") Witness "60 Minutes" reporter Scott Pelly's answer when queried as to why his reports featured no global warming skeptics: "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?"
So who, exactly, has convened the conspiracy of silence Mr. Solomon is now attempting to shatter with "The Deniers?" Well, it's ... complicated. As the author would learn, many highly-qualified scientists who question even some small aspect of the global warming orthodoxy "don't want to be found at all and try very hard not to appear as dissenters. They have no wish to be called names in the press, or to lose their jobs, or to have their funding cut off as many deniers have."
Beyond the disturbing issue of self-censorship, however, stand those for whom the sexy business of saving the world is much too gratifying to bother with any credible contrarianism. Who wants to just live on an ever-changing planet when one could be a mini-Zeus lording over all the elements? Thus, even a balanced scientific report can end up resembling a lost quatrain from the Book of Revelation in the hands of regulation-happy politicians and reporters with small paychecks and large hero complexes.
Never mind that, as Mr. Solomon demonstrates to great effect in the closing pages of "The Deniers," the practical effect of popular climate change regulation schemes will likely be old-growth forests in Third World countries felled to make way for profitable "carbon intensive plantations." ("Every time we buy carbon offsets to salve our consciences at flying in a jet," Mr. Solomon writes, "we are helping to dispossess someone, somewhere, by boosting the carbon credit value of their land.") Forget that bio-fuel fads are pricing the world's poor out of sustenance. Ignore the myriad other environmental problems that could be addressed with the resources eaten up to solve a problem that very well may not exist.
"The Deniers" is a timely, necessary antidote to a political and scientific discussion poisoned by hubristic groupthink and the kind of scorched earth (mis)behavior that inevitably arises when a movement becomes so uncritically wedded to the commandments of a pseudo-religion its adherents would rather destroy their adversaries than risk debating them.
Shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American Spectator.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 7th, 2008, 06:00 AM
Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming
Former vice president tells NPR's 'Fresh Air' cyclone is example of 'consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.'
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
5/6/2008 4:04:54 PM
Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming.
Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR’s May 6 “Fresh Air” broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback.
“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”
Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.
“It’s also important to note that the emerging consensus among the climate scientists is although any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming – we’ve always had hurricanes,” Gore said. “Nevertheless, the trend toward more Category 5 storms – the larger ones and trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”
In October 2007, CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano disputed Gore’s claim that there is a strong correlation between intense storms and global warming. He explained that “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we've seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5-percent increase.”
Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a 'Consequence' of Global Warming
Former vice president tells NPR's 'Fresh Air' cyclone is example of 'consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.'
By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
5/6/2008 4:04:54 PM
Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming.
Former Vice President Al Gore in an interview on NPR’s May 6 “Fresh Air” broadcast did just that. He was interviewed by “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross about the release of his book, “The Assault on Reason,” in paperback.
“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”
Gore claimed global warming is forcing ocean temperatures to rise, which is causing storms, including cyclones and hurricanes, to intensify.
“It’s also important to note that the emerging consensus among the climate scientists is although any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming – we’ve always had hurricanes,” Gore said. “Nevertheless, the trend toward more Category 5 storms – the larger ones and trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”
In October 2007, CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano disputed Gore’s claim that there is a strong correlation between intense storms and global warming. He explained that “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we've seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5-percent increase.”
Warming? Really? Look at the toll from major Bay of Bengal cyclones 1961-70, when warming was definitely not on the agenda:
May 9, 1961 - BANGLADESH - About 12,500 people are killed in a cyclone with top wind speed of 161 kph (101 mph).
May 28, 1963 - BANGLADESH - Severe cyclone hits Chittagong coast in the night, destroying about 1 million homes, and killing more than 11,500 people.
Nov. 12, 1970 - BANGLADESH - The country's deadliest cyclone destroys Chittagong and dozens of coastal villages, killing around 500,000 people.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 9th, 2008, 06:18 AM
Burma killed by tyranny
Article from:
</IMG>
Andrew Bolt
May 09, 2008 12:00am
THE vultures are circling over Burma's dead. Hey, isn't that fat one Al Gore?
Sure is. And - flap, flap, plop - there he lands, the first to go picking over carcasses for scraps to feed his great global warming scare campaign.
What the world should be learning from this terrible loss of at least 60,000 people in the cyclone that hit Burma last week is that tyrannies kill more surely than any freak of weather.
But Al Gore, who won a Nobel "Peace" Prize for terrifying people with his error-riddled An Inconvenient Truth, wants you to blame instead his pet bogeyman. Tremble, sinners, before the wrath of a hot planet!
In an interview on America's NPR on Tuesday, Gore claimed Cyclone Nargis was actually part of a pattern.
"Last year a catastrophic storm . . . hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China, and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."
This cyclone that hit Burma is a "consequence" of global warming? Gore should die of shame to peddle such self-serving deceptions.
Fact: The world has not warmed in a decade, says the Hadley Centre and two of the three other institutions that measure its temperature.
Fact: Any link between hurricanes and warming is highly disputed by scientists, with "evidence both for and against", says the American Meteorological Society.
Fact: The data is "insufficiently reliable to detect trends on the frequency of extreme cyclones", says a recent paper in Science by world authority Chris Landsea.
Fact: The cyclone that hit Burma was just a category three storm - not a category five - and less deadly than worse cyclones that struck Bangladesh in 1970 and 1991. What's more, Gore concedes the record breaker was 50 years ago, before the world got this gassy.
So there's no recent warming, no agreed link with cyclones, no trend of worse cyclones, and nothing unusually strong about the one that hit Burma.
Yet there goes Gore - caw, caw, caw - flogging the warming scare that has made him so fantastically rich. The great Profit of Doom.
Par for his course, I know, given a British judge last year ruled that Gore had likewise exaggerated the link between global warming and the category three Hurricane Katrina that helped to breach the crumbling levees of New Orleans.
But what's worse this time is that Gore's blundering attempts to blame global warming for Burma's agony distracts attention from the real causes of this catastrophe - despicable causes we may at least hope to do something about.
If Cyclone Nargis had struck not Rangoon, but Melbourne or Tokyo, it is unlikely more than a few dozen people, if that, would have died. And that's because we are free, and rich - as free people tend to be with capitalism. Even Bangkok would have survived this far, far easier.
But in Burma as many as 100,000 are now feared dead - victims not of global warming, but of a tyranny that has left them poor and defenceless.
Burma killed by tyranny
Article from:
</IMG> Andrew Bolt
May 09, 2008 12:00am
THE vultures are circling over Burma's dead. Hey, isn't that fat one Al Gore?
Sure is. And - flap, flap, plop - there he lands, the first to go picking over carcasses for scraps to feed his great global warming scare campaign.
What the world should be learning from this terrible loss of at least 60,000 people in the cyclone that hit Burma last week is that tyrannies kill more surely than any freak of weather.
But Al Gore, who won a Nobel "Peace" Prize for terrifying people with his error-riddled An Inconvenient Truth, wants you to blame instead his pet bogeyman. Tremble, sinners, before the wrath of a hot planet!
In an interview on America's NPR on Tuesday, Gore claimed Cyclone Nargis was actually part of a pattern.
"Last year a catastrophic storm . . . hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China, and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."
This cyclone that hit Burma is a "consequence" of global warming? Gore should die of shame to peddle such self-serving deceptions.
Fact: The world has not warmed in a decade, says the Hadley Centre and two of the three other institutions that measure its temperature.
Fact: Any link between hurricanes and warming is highly disputed by scientists, with "evidence both for and against", says the American Meteorological Society.
Fact: The data is "insufficiently reliable to detect trends on the frequency of extreme cyclones", says a recent paper in Science by world authority Chris Landsea.
Fact: The cyclone that hit Burma was just a category three storm - not a category five - and less deadly than worse cyclones that struck Bangladesh in 1970 and 1991. What's more, Gore concedes the record breaker was 50 years ago, before the world got this gassy.
So there's no recent warming, no agreed link with cyclones, no trend of worse cyclones, and nothing unusually strong about the one that hit Burma.
Yet there goes Gore - caw, caw, caw - flogging the warming scare that has made him so fantastically rich. The great Profit of Doom.
Par for his course, I know, given a British judge last year ruled that Gore had likewise exaggerated the link between global warming and the category three Hurricane Katrina that helped to breach the crumbling levees of New Orleans.
But what's worse this time is that Gore's blundering attempts to blame global warming for Burma's agony distracts attention from the real causes of this catastrophe - despicable causes we may at least hope to do something about.
If Cyclone Nargis had struck not Rangoon, but Melbourne or Tokyo, it is unlikely more than a few dozen people, if that, would have died. And that's because we are free, and rich - as free people tend to be with capitalism. Even Bangkok would have survived this far, far easier.
But in Burma as many as 100,000 are now feared dead - victims not of global warming, but of a tyranny that has left them poor and defenceless.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 9th, 2008, 06:27 AM
Cyclone 'is a sign of things to come'
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | May 09, 2008
A TOP Indian advocacy group that monitors climate change in south Asia warned last night that the Nargis cyclone that devastated Burma was "a sign of things to come", as climate change caused extreme weather to increase in intensity.
Meanwhile, senior Indian officials confirmed that they had warned officials in Rangoon to prepare for a high-intensity storm two days before it hit.
Indian Meteorological Department director-general Ajit Tyagi said teams in his department had been tracking the cyclone from the day it formed in the last week of April.
"We were almost sure about the direction it was taking and had sent out messages to all the international cyclone warning centres as well as the countries in the region (including Burma)," Mr Tyagi said.
"The cyclone headed towards (Burma) from May 1 and the Met authorities were informed about its high intensity."
Emphasising that Nargis was always headed for Burma, Mr Tyagi said: "There was no danger to the Indian coasts. We had also informed all the coastal states that Cyclone Nargis was not headed towards India and there was no need to panic."
India's influential Centre for Science and Environment yesterday warned that destructive cyclones were likely to occur more often unless nations sped up their efforts to curtail the emission of greenhouse gases.
"Nargis is a sign of things to come. Last year, Bangladesh was devastated by the tropical cyclone Sidr," CSE director Sunita Narain said in a statement.
"The victims of these cyclones are climate change victims and their plight should remind the rich world that it is doing too little to contain its greenhouse gas emissions."
She recalled that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Indian Rajendra Pachauri, in a report last year concluded that cyclones would increase in their intensity as a result of global warming.
Ms Narain said lifestyles in rich nations "are now spelling doom for countries like (Burma) and Bangladesh - and the big polluters of the world, such as the US, cannot escape their responsibility and their role in the 'dance of death' of tropical cyclones like Nargis."
Cyclone 'is a sign of things to come'
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | May 09, 2008
A TOP Indian advocacy group that monitors climate change in south Asia warned last night that the Nargis cyclone that devastated Burma was "a sign of things to come", as climate change caused extreme weather to increase in intensity.
Meanwhile, senior Indian officials confirmed that they had warned officials in Rangoon to prepare for a high-intensity storm two days before it hit.
Indian Meteorological Department director-general Ajit Tyagi said teams in his department had been tracking the cyclone from the day it formed in the last week of April.
"We were almost sure about the direction it was taking and had sent out messages to all the international cyclone warning centres as well as the countries in the region (including Burma)," Mr Tyagi said.
"The cyclone headed towards (Burma) from May 1 and the Met authorities were informed about its high intensity."
Emphasising that Nargis was always headed for Burma, Mr Tyagi said: "There was no danger to the Indian coasts. We had also informed all the coastal states that Cyclone Nargis was not headed towards India and there was no need to panic."
India's influential Centre for Science and Environment yesterday warned that destructive cyclones were likely to occur more often unless nations sped up their efforts to curtail the emission of greenhouse gases.
"Nargis is a sign of things to come. Last year, Bangladesh was devastated by the tropical cyclone Sidr," CSE director Sunita Narain said in a statement.
"The victims of these cyclones are climate change victims and their plight should remind the rich world that it is doing too little to contain its greenhouse gas emissions."
She recalled that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Indian Rajendra Pachauri, in a report last year concluded that cyclones would increase in their intensity as a result of global warming.
Ms Narain said lifestyles in rich nations "are now spelling doom for countries like (Burma) and Bangladesh - and the big polluters of the world, such as the US, cannot escape their responsibility and their role in the 'dance of death' of tropical cyclones like Nargis."
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 13th, 2008, 06:16 AM
Al Gore Feeds on Burma's Tragedy: Foster
Posted: May 12, 2008, 7:08 PM by Peter Foster Peter Foster, Burma, Al Gore
By Peter Foster
With the potential death toll in Burma from Cyclone Nargis rising into the hundreds of thousands, last week’s attempt by Al Gore to use the tragedy to promote his “climate crisis” agenda becomes all the more reprehensible.
Promoting the paperback version of his book, The Assault on Reason, on a U.S. National Public Radio show, Mr. Gore said that “even though any individual storm can't be linked singularly to global warming… nevertheless… the trend toward stronger more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”
Mr. Gore went on to cite the current disaster in Burma, last year’s cyclone in Bangladesh, and the previous year’s storms in China, as evidence for his apocalyptic theories. The problem is that science doesn’t support him.
Violent storms have caused more property damage in recent years, but that is – as experts such as Bjorn Lomborg have pointed out -- because there is more property to damage. The situation in Burma is somewhat different. There, the lower amount of property damage relative to the huge loss of human life is directly linked to the country’s poverty, which in turn is a consequence of the lack of freedoms under the country’s dictatorship.
Burma is evidence of how the main protection against extreme weather is wealth. For climate change activists, however, it is economic growth that is the villain rather than the solution.
Mr. Gore’s book, meanwhile, lurches between paranoia and megalomanic fantasies of a world that falls in step behind his vague “Marshall Plan” to save it from a climate catastrophe whose most turbulent storms lie inside Mr. Gore’s head.
The book’s title is appropriate, since it is filled with fallacies and illogicalities. Its central conceit is that the “climate crisis” will somehow make grand central U.N.-style plans – which have always and everywhere failed in the past – suddenly viable.
“In rising to meet this challenge,” writes Mr. Gore, “we too will find self-renewal and transcendence and a new capacity for vision to see other crises in our time that cry out for solutions: 20 million HIV/AIDS orphans in Africa alone, civil wars fought by children, genocides and famines, the rape and pillage of our oceans and forests, an extinction crisis that threatens the web of life, and tens of millions of our fellow humans dying every year from easily preventable diseases.”
The pretension is stunning. But apparently the only thing preventing the White House from leading such an ambitious programme is that George Bush is in thrall to Exxon Mobil.
In Mr. Gore’s proto-Orwellian world, to oppose him amounts to “censorship.” His attempt to use the tragedy of Burma to promote his woolly/scary political agenda is disgraceful.
Al Gore Feeds on Burma's Tragedy: Foster
Posted: May 12, 2008, 7:08 PM by Peter Foster Peter Foster, Burma, Al Gore
By Peter Foster
With the potential death toll in Burma from Cyclone Nargis rising into the hundreds of thousands, last week’s attempt by Al Gore to use the tragedy to promote his “climate crisis” agenda becomes all the more reprehensible.
Promoting the paperback version of his book, The Assault on Reason, on a U.S. National Public Radio show, Mr. Gore said that “even though any individual storm can't be linked singularly to global warming… nevertheless… the trend toward stronger more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”
Mr. Gore went on to cite the current disaster in Burma, last year’s cyclone in Bangladesh, and the previous year’s storms in China, as evidence for his apocalyptic theories. The problem is that science doesn’t support him.
Violent storms have caused more property damage in recent years, but that is – as experts such as Bjorn Lomborg have pointed out -- because there is more property to damage. The situation in Burma is somewhat different. There, the lower amount of property damage relative to the huge loss of human life is directly linked to the country’s poverty, which in turn is a consequence of the lack of freedoms under the country’s dictatorship.
Burma is evidence of how the main protection against extreme weather is wealth. For climate change activists, however, it is economic growth that is the villain rather than the solution.
Mr. Gore’s book, meanwhile, lurches between paranoia and megalomanic fantasies of a world that falls in step behind his vague “Marshall Plan” to save it from a climate catastrophe whose most turbulent storms lie inside Mr. Gore’s head.
The book’s title is appropriate, since it is filled with fallacies and illogicalities. Its central conceit is that the “climate crisis” will somehow make grand central U.N.-style plans – which have always and everywhere failed in the past – suddenly viable.
“In rising to meet this challenge,” writes Mr. Gore, “we too will find self-renewal and transcendence and a new capacity for vision to see other crises in our time that cry out for solutions: 20 million HIV/AIDS orphans in Africa alone, civil wars fought by children, genocides and famines, the rape and pillage of our oceans and forests, an extinction crisis that threatens the web of life, and tens of millions of our fellow humans dying every year from easily preventable diseases.”
The pretension is stunning. But apparently the only thing preventing the White House from leading such an ambitious programme is that George Bush is in thrall to Exxon Mobil.
In Mr. Gore’s proto-Orwellian world, to oppose him amounts to “censorship.” His attempt to use the tragedy of Burma to promote his woolly/scary political agenda is disgraceful.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 13th, 2008, 06:24 AM
May 12, 2008
Global warming hysteria reaching new heights
Jonathan David Carson, PhD
New Scientist, which revealed last year that obesity causes global warming, now tells us that global warming will make days longer, which has been confirmed by NASA. So not only is at least one global warming hysteric worried that efforts to stop global warming may slow the rotation of the earth, but the hysterical New Scientist reports that global warming itself slows it:
Oops, days already are getting longer, and have been for billions of years before Bill Clinton ate his first Big Mac or scientists had too much time on their hands and too much tax money to spend.
The Left is beyond parody. NASA's next manned mission to the moon is further away than the first mission was when President Kennedy announced the goal of getting there and back within the decade. Iran is building an atomic bomb, North Korea has one, the Russians and Chinese are rapidly increasing the size of their militaries, Islamofascist fanatics are killing people over cartoons, and NASA is busy calculating that a hypothetical half meter increase in sea level brought on by global warming will increase the effective radius of the earth by one part in 20 million, thus slowing its rotation and lengthening the day.
What I find truly evil is not that Belgian scientists are frightening people into worrying that the world will stop rotating; after all, NASA is brave enough about it. No, what is truly evil is that Al Gore and his scientific prostitutes take advantage of people's ignorance. Al Gore must have said a thousand times that we must "stop climate change" on a planet that has had billions of years of climate change. We must preserve the composition of an atmosphere that has never had a stable composition.
Astronomy Today by Eric Chaisson and Steve McMillan says in a passage that too few students seem to have read or remembered that tidal effects are slowing down the rotation of the earth. A half billion years ago, days were only twenty-two hours long. If the rate of slowing in the preceding billion and a half years was the same as it has been in the last half a billion, then two billion years ago, days lasted only sixteen hours.
The rotation of the earth is slowing, the distance of the moon is increasing, the atmosphere of the earth and the radiation of the sun keep changing, continents drift together and break apart, volcanoes erupt unpredictably, asteroids crash intermittently, and Al Gore, the Nobel committee, three presidential candidates, and the United Nations tell us that we have to sacrifice one tenth of our economy to keep it from all happening.
May 12, 2008
Global warming hysteria reaching new heights
Jonathan David Carson, PhD
New Scientist, which revealed last year that obesity causes global warming, now tells us that global warming will make days longer, which has been confirmed by NASA. So not only is at least one global warming hysteric worried that efforts to stop global warming may slow the rotation of the earth, but the hysterical New Scientist reports that global warming itself slows it:
Global warming will make days longer as well as hotter, say Belgian scientists. A team led by Olivier de Viron of the Royal Observatory of Belgium has calculated the impact of global warming from the build-up of greenhouse gases in the air on the angular momentum of the planet.So we might at well get used to longer and longer days. Who needs Daylight Savings Time anymore?
Oops, days already are getting longer, and have been for billions of years before Bill Clinton ate his first Big Mac or scientists had too much time on their hands and too much tax money to spend.
The Left is beyond parody. NASA's next manned mission to the moon is further away than the first mission was when President Kennedy announced the goal of getting there and back within the decade. Iran is building an atomic bomb, North Korea has one, the Russians and Chinese are rapidly increasing the size of their militaries, Islamofascist fanatics are killing people over cartoons, and NASA is busy calculating that a hypothetical half meter increase in sea level brought on by global warming will increase the effective radius of the earth by one part in 20 million, thus slowing its rotation and lengthening the day.
What I find truly evil is not that Belgian scientists are frightening people into worrying that the world will stop rotating; after all, NASA is brave enough about it. No, what is truly evil is that Al Gore and his scientific prostitutes take advantage of people's ignorance. Al Gore must have said a thousand times that we must "stop climate change" on a planet that has had billions of years of climate change. We must preserve the composition of an atmosphere that has never had a stable composition.
Astronomy Today by Eric Chaisson and Steve McMillan says in a passage that too few students seem to have read or remembered that tidal effects are slowing down the rotation of the earth. A half billion years ago, days were only twenty-two hours long. If the rate of slowing in the preceding billion and a half years was the same as it has been in the last half a billion, then two billion years ago, days lasted only sixteen hours.
The rotation of the earth is slowing, the distance of the moon is increasing, the atmosphere of the earth and the radiation of the sun keep changing, continents drift together and break apart, volcanoes erupt unpredictably, asteroids crash intermittently, and Al Gore, the Nobel committee, three presidential candidates, and the United Nations tell us that we have to sacrifice one tenth of our economy to keep it from all happening.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 20th, 2008, 05:48 AM
Cooler Heads
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, May 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: Nearly 32,000 scientists sign a petition that says they reject the claim that humanity is causing global warming. The media, who are heavily invested in the Gore Consensus, yawn.
But a British royal, no scientist he, says we have 18 months to save the rain forests or we will face a climate disaster, and the media are fascinated.
That same royal, Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, has also said that the fight against global warming is much like the war his predecessors fought against the Nazis.
He noted in a cleverly timed May 1 speech at a climate summit that when he served "in the Royal Navy . . . 'mayday, mayday, mayday' was the distress call used in cases of emergencies.
"And this (human-caused global warming) is an emergency that we face."
Al Gore, naturally, gets the same reverential treatment. He's no scientist, but the media dutifully report all the crackpot statements he makes about climate change, including his assertion that the deadly cyclone in Burma was likely due to global warming.
It's bunk, of course. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a newly released study, says that warming will actually cause fewer hurricanes, not more.
Not that Gore will heed the rebuke. He's been told before, by none other than William Gray, professor emeritus of the atmospheric department at Colorado State University who is known as the country's most reliable hurricane forecaster, that such claims are false.
Yet he sticks to his story. And the media stick to him.
Meanwhile, Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine released Monday at the Press Club in Washington a petition signed by 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 with doctorates, who reject the notion that greenhouse gas emissions will cause catastrophic heating of the planet.
Didn't hear about it? Oh, that's right — the media can't be bothered to report on something that challenges their narrative. They're too busy saving the world from imagined risks and ignoring the real threats we all share.
Cooler Heads
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, May 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: Nearly 32,000 scientists sign a petition that says they reject the claim that humanity is causing global warming. The media, who are heavily invested in the Gore Consensus, yawn.
But a British royal, no scientist he, says we have 18 months to save the rain forests or we will face a climate disaster, and the media are fascinated.
That same royal, Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, has also said that the fight against global warming is much like the war his predecessors fought against the Nazis.
He noted in a cleverly timed May 1 speech at a climate summit that when he served "in the Royal Navy . . . 'mayday, mayday, mayday' was the distress call used in cases of emergencies.
"And this (human-caused global warming) is an emergency that we face."
Al Gore, naturally, gets the same reverential treatment. He's no scientist, but the media dutifully report all the crackpot statements he makes about climate change, including his assertion that the deadly cyclone in Burma was likely due to global warming.
It's bunk, of course. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a newly released study, says that warming will actually cause fewer hurricanes, not more.
Not that Gore will heed the rebuke. He's been told before, by none other than William Gray, professor emeritus of the atmospheric department at Colorado State University who is known as the country's most reliable hurricane forecaster, that such claims are false.
Yet he sticks to his story. And the media stick to him.
Meanwhile, Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine released Monday at the Press Club in Washington a petition signed by 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 with doctorates, who reject the notion that greenhouse gas emissions will cause catastrophic heating of the planet.
Didn't hear about it? Oh, that's right — the media can't be bothered to report on something that challenges their narrative. They're too busy saving the world from imagined risks and ignoring the real threats we all share.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
May 20th, 2008, 05:57 AM
Monday, May 19, 2008
Tweaking the Alarm [Henry Payne]
As the Midwest continues its now late May struggle to emerge from one of the coldest winters in two decades; as Grand Rapids, Michigan’s 107 inches of snow sets a record; as southeast Michigan received frost advisories this weekend as temperatures plummeted into the ‘30s; and as global temperatures have shown no warming trend in ten years, the global-warming movement is understandably challenged in keeping its message of fear relevant.
For the most part, that means ignoring the inconvenient facts on the ground.
Michigan media used to routinely trumpet anecdotal warm weather with headlines like “Alaska's summer backs case for global warming; Average increase of 2 degrees found” (The Detroit Free Press, 2005). No more.
Green groups like Environmental Defense once made newspaper rounds carrying charts that showed a lockstep rise in CO2 and temperature readings. No more.
Meteorologists who once trumpeted local warm weather like Alaska Summer 2005 or the U.S. Summer of 1988 (used by Al Gore to trumpet his Senate GW hearings), now tell reporters that “local weather, meteorologists caution, is not the same as global climate” (The Kalamazoo Gazette, 200
.
But the disconnect between the heated howls on TV and the cool weather outside is seeding doubt in the public mind. So the message is changing — from one of “global warming” to the all-encompassing “climate change.” Most prominently, The Goracle himself has made the tactical switch to “climate crisis” in his expensive, national “Alliance for Climate Protection” campaign.
And his disciples — from the press to politicians to academics — are getting the word.
At a recent conference on the auto industry, I had a brief exchange with a fellow panelist — and leading Midwest environmental economist who also advises Washington Democrats — in which I disputed man-made warming.
“You don’t believe in global warming?” she asked in surprise. “You want the world to fry?”
When I pressed her later on the point, I asked if this year’s winter wasn’t evidence that global warming wasn’t as simple as rising CO2 levels. She explained that, in fact, the problem was not global warming, but weather extremes. Climate change, in other words. She explained the Great Lakes would actually see an increase in snow pack (evidenced by Grand Rapids record snowfall) as a result.
In a matter of minutes, then — this academic had made the convenient political leap from fearing the planet was going to “fry” to how we might freeze at the same time.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Tweaking the Alarm [Henry Payne]
As the Midwest continues its now late May struggle to emerge from one of the coldest winters in two decades; as Grand Rapids, Michigan’s 107 inches of snow sets a record; as southeast Michigan received frost advisories this weekend as temperatures plummeted into the ‘30s; and as global temperatures have shown no warming trend in ten years, the global-warming movement is understandably challenged in keeping its message of fear relevant.
For the most part, that means ignoring the inconvenient facts on the ground.
Michigan media used to routinely trumpet anecdotal warm weather with headlines like “Alaska's summer backs case for global warming; Average increase of 2 degrees found” (The Detroit Free Press, 2005). No more.
Green groups like Environmental Defense once made newspaper rounds carrying charts that showed a lockstep rise in CO2 and temperature readings. No more.
Meteorologists who once trumpeted local warm weather like Alaska Summer 2005 or the U.S. Summer of 1988 (used by Al Gore to trumpet his Senate GW hearings), now tell reporters that “local weather, meteorologists caution, is not the same as global climate” (The Kalamazoo Gazette, 200
.But the disconnect between the heated howls on TV and the cool weather outside is seeding doubt in the public mind. So the message is changing — from one of “global warming” to the all-encompassing “climate change.” Most prominently, The Goracle himself has made the tactical switch to “climate crisis” in his expensive, national “Alliance for Climate Protection” campaign.
And his disciples — from the press to politicians to academics — are getting the word.
At a recent conference on the auto industry, I had a brief exchange with a fellow panelist — and leading Midwest environmental economist who also advises Washington Democrats — in which I disputed man-made warming.
“You don’t believe in global warming?” she asked in surprise. “You want the world to fry?”
When I pressed her later on the point, I asked if this year’s winter wasn’t evidence that global warming wasn’t as simple as rising CO2 levels. She explained that, in fact, the problem was not global warming, but weather extremes. Climate change, in other words. She explained the Great Lakes would actually see an increase in snow pack (evidenced by Grand Rapids record snowfall) as a result.
In a matter of minutes, then — this academic had made the convenient political leap from fearing the planet was going to “fry” to how we might freeze at the same time.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
June 7th, 2008, 08:14 AM
Junk Science: Time to Retire 'Denier'
Thursday , June 05, 2008
By Steven Milloy
In Charles Krauthammer's May 30 must-read column, "Carbon Chastity," he rightly lambastes environmentalists as resurrected communists/socialists who have latched on to the environment and climate change as a means to advance their anti-people social agenda.
The specific occasion for his justifiable outrage is a recent proposal by a British parliamentary committee to institute a personal carbon ration card for every citizen.
The plan would place limits on food and energy consumption in the form of credits not to be exceeded — except through the potential for heavy-carbon users, often the wealthy, to purchase credits from lower-carbon users, often the less wealthy. In other words, their answer to global warming is wealth redistribution.
Though I thoroughly endorse Krauthammer's condemnation of the plan, I have to take issue with his adoption of loaded terms straight out of the green lexicon to argue his point.
In trying to position his agnosticism on whether man-made CO2 emissions are actually cause for concern, his column begins: "I am not a global warming believer. I am not a global warming denier."
The term "denier" is the environmentalists' preferred means of tar-and-feathering anyone who dares question climate alarmism — a key tactic in their effort to dupe the nation into consuming the green Kool-Aid.
Environmentalists have convinced many in the mainstream media that skepticism toward the very shaky science behind global warming alarmism is akin to the indescribeably creepy views of anti-Semitics who deny that the Holocaust occurred.
One event is an indisputable historical fact of hideous dimensions; the prophesied specter of catastrophic global warming, however, is just a politically driven fear scenario based on unreliable computer models and the wishful bending of the laws of climate physics.
There is no comparison.
Can anyone reasonably equate, say, the 31,000 U.S. scientists, engineers and physicians who recently signed a petition against global warming alarmism — including Princeton theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson and Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Richard Lindzen — with the likes of neo-Nazis and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who constantly calls for Israel's destruction?
Surely Krauthammer doesn't intend to make any such equation, but his adoption of the greens' most effective word weaponry nonetheless plays into their thought-shaping rhetoric.
Even when embedded in an argument contrary to green policies, the word "denier" still demonizes by summoning the vile immorality of those who would deny crimes against humanity.
One also could build a case against man's "carbon footprint," another fiendishly effective green-sponsored image and a term Krauthammer uses matter-of-factly even as he logically details the possibility that Earth's own massive outpouring of CO2 very well may dwarf man-made carbon output into total irrelevance.
Let's consider a few facts.
CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas in the atmosphere that is measured in parts per million, or ppm. The vast majority of CO2 emissions, about 97 percent, comes from Mother Nature.
CO2 is nowhere near the most important greenhouse gas; water vapor holds that distinction. An astounding 99.9 percent of Earth's greenhouse gas effect has nothing to do with manmade CO2 emissions.
If that's not enough, we can look at graphs of the historical relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature. Ice core data going back 650,000 years show that global temperatures increase before CO2 levels. Data from the 20th century indicate no particular relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperature.
Finally, there is no scientific proof that the current level of atmospheric CO2 or that levels projected by the United Nations — about 700 ppm by 2095 if no greenhouse gas regulations are put in place — has or will cause any harm to the environment.
Alarmist gloom-and-doom forecasts also are based on nothing more than the rankest speculation dressed up as computer models that remain wholly unverifiable.
Yet, despite all this lack of evidence, the solitary term "man's carbon footprint" manages to concretize the notion of mankind producing indelible damage upon the Earth while in the process of stampeding its flora and fauna.
For any effective critique of global warming hysteria, we have to move beyond these powerful yet baseless buzz words that undermine any rational case in which they are found.
Junk Science: Time to Retire 'Denier'
Thursday , June 05, 2008
By Steven Milloy
In Charles Krauthammer's May 30 must-read column, "Carbon Chastity," he rightly lambastes environmentalists as resurrected communists/socialists who have latched on to the environment and climate change as a means to advance their anti-people social agenda.
The specific occasion for his justifiable outrage is a recent proposal by a British parliamentary committee to institute a personal carbon ration card for every citizen.
The plan would place limits on food and energy consumption in the form of credits not to be exceeded — except through the potential for heavy-carbon users, often the wealthy, to purchase credits from lower-carbon users, often the less wealthy. In other words, their answer to global warming is wealth redistribution.
Though I thoroughly endorse Krauthammer's condemnation of the plan, I have to take issue with his adoption of loaded terms straight out of the green lexicon to argue his point.
In trying to position his agnosticism on whether man-made CO2 emissions are actually cause for concern, his column begins: "I am not a global warming believer. I am not a global warming denier."
The term "denier" is the environmentalists' preferred means of tar-and-feathering anyone who dares question climate alarmism — a key tactic in their effort to dupe the nation into consuming the green Kool-Aid.
Environmentalists have convinced many in the mainstream media that skepticism toward the very shaky science behind global warming alarmism is akin to the indescribeably creepy views of anti-Semitics who deny that the Holocaust occurred.
One event is an indisputable historical fact of hideous dimensions; the prophesied specter of catastrophic global warming, however, is just a politically driven fear scenario based on unreliable computer models and the wishful bending of the laws of climate physics.
There is no comparison.
Can anyone reasonably equate, say, the 31,000 U.S. scientists, engineers and physicians who recently signed a petition against global warming alarmism — including Princeton theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson and Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Richard Lindzen — with the likes of neo-Nazis and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who constantly calls for Israel's destruction?
Surely Krauthammer doesn't intend to make any such equation, but his adoption of the greens' most effective word weaponry nonetheless plays into their thought-shaping rhetoric.
Even when embedded in an argument contrary to green policies, the word "denier" still demonizes by summoning the vile immorality of those who would deny crimes against humanity.
One also could build a case against man's "carbon footprint," another fiendishly effective green-sponsored image and a term Krauthammer uses matter-of-factly even as he logically details the possibility that Earth's own massive outpouring of CO2 very well may dwarf man-made carbon output into total irrelevance.
Let's consider a few facts.
CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas in the atmosphere that is measured in parts per million, or ppm. The vast majority of CO2 emissions, about 97 percent, comes from Mother Nature.
CO2 is nowhere near the most important greenhouse gas; water vapor holds that distinction. An astounding 99.9 percent of Earth's greenhouse gas effect has nothing to do with manmade CO2 emissions.
If that's not enough, we can look at graphs of the historical relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature. Ice core data going back 650,000 years show that global temperatures increase before CO2 levels. Data from the 20th century indicate no particular relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperature.
Finally, there is no scientific proof that the current level of atmospheric CO2 or that levels projected by the United Nations — about 700 ppm by 2095 if no greenhouse gas regulations are put in place — has or will cause any harm to the environment.
Alarmist gloom-and-doom forecasts also are based on nothing more than the rankest speculation dressed up as computer models that remain wholly unverifiable.
Yet, despite all this lack of evidence, the solitary term "man's carbon footprint" manages to concretize the notion of mankind producing indelible damage upon the Earth while in the process of stampeding its flora and fauna.
For any effective critique of global warming hysteria, we have to move beyond these powerful yet baseless buzz words that undermine any rational case in which they are found.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
June 14th, 2008, 06:51 AM
Dodging devastation of cap-and-trade
June 13, 2008 - 9:39AM
The Orange County Register
The nation avoided global warming-related devastation last week. The Senate killed a grandiose scheme to clamp down on emissions of CO2, a benign, necessary, natural atmospheric gas. However, something similar, if not worse, will be back next year.
The devastation wouldn't have been the 1- or 2-degree temperature increases that may have occurred over the next century, which may not even be related to CO2. The real devastation would have been gasoline prices increasing $1.40 per gallon by 2050, millions of jobs lost or shipped overseas, an effective $3,700-a-year tax on families, a 33-percent increase in home energy costs by 2020, and, says the Heritage Foundation, the equivalent economic cost of 35 Hurricane Katrinas every year for two decades.
Those would be certain results of the failed Climate Security Act's vastly expanded government controls to extract trillions of dollars from productive companies and redistribute the money to politically favored interests, say the bill's opponents.
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?
“Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream,” MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen said. “If you control carbon, you control life.”
Global warming is the perfect big-government issue. First, it's predicated entirely on predicted disasters based on arbitrary data fed into computers. What's fed changes continuously. That's why a few years ago sea levels were predicted to rise 20 feet, but now only 20 inches or less. Garbage in, garbage out.
Second, global warming is unscientific because it can't be disproved. When temperatures slightly dropped over the past decade, then were predicted even by alarmists to drop more over the next decade despite ever-rising CO2, rather than admit their theory is wrong, the story line changed. Now we're told the entirely unpredicted 20-year cooling is only temporary. If temperatures go up, it proves global warming. If they go down, voila! It proves global warming.
Third, global warming is blamed for what has happened since the beginning of time. Climates always change. This ensures permanent government involvement. Fourth, if government imposes costly, Draconian solutions, and temperatures rise, it only means more Draconian solutions are needed. If temperatures drop, it only means Draconian solutions must continue.
Last week we saw how political support is mustered for such an unintuitive idea. Hundreds of billions of dollars never collected by the government before would be doled out to favored interests, after government pocketed its share. The failed bill would have given $51 billion to so-called energy-efficient manufacturers, $68 billion to automakers making government-smiled-upon cars and $150 billion to owners and operators of favored energy producers.
Disguised as a “cap-and-trade” plan, it would have made CO2 emitters pay to do what they've always done for free. Deceptively passed off as a market-based plan, cap-and-trade is really a hidden tax.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid assured us, “Gas prices will not go up. They will go down.” In the end, the obvious connection to ever-higher gas prices politically killed the Climate Security Act. Next year another version is certain to return with a president inclined to sign it. We had a preview of the future last week. It's grim, costly and authoritarian.
Dodging devastation of cap-and-trade
June 13, 2008 - 9:39AM
The Orange County Register
The nation avoided global warming-related devastation last week. The Senate killed a grandiose scheme to clamp down on emissions of CO2, a benign, necessary, natural atmospheric gas. However, something similar, if not worse, will be back next year.
The devastation wouldn't have been the 1- or 2-degree temperature increases that may have occurred over the next century, which may not even be related to CO2. The real devastation would have been gasoline prices increasing $1.40 per gallon by 2050, millions of jobs lost or shipped overseas, an effective $3,700-a-year tax on families, a 33-percent increase in home energy costs by 2020, and, says the Heritage Foundation, the equivalent economic cost of 35 Hurricane Katrinas every year for two decades.
Those would be certain results of the failed Climate Security Act's vastly expanded government controls to extract trillions of dollars from productive companies and redistribute the money to politically favored interests, say the bill's opponents.
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?
“Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream,” MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen said. “If you control carbon, you control life.”
Global warming is the perfect big-government issue. First, it's predicated entirely on predicted disasters based on arbitrary data fed into computers. What's fed changes continuously. That's why a few years ago sea levels were predicted to rise 20 feet, but now only 20 inches or less. Garbage in, garbage out.
Second, global warming is unscientific because it can't be disproved. When temperatures slightly dropped over the past decade, then were predicted even by alarmists to drop more over the next decade despite ever-rising CO2, rather than admit their theory is wrong, the story line changed. Now we're told the entirely unpredicted 20-year cooling is only temporary. If temperatures go up, it proves global warming. If they go down, voila! It proves global warming.
Third, global warming is blamed for what has happened since the beginning of time. Climates always change. This ensures permanent government involvement. Fourth, if government imposes costly, Draconian solutions, and temperatures rise, it only means more Draconian solutions are needed. If temperatures drop, it only means Draconian solutions must continue.
Last week we saw how political support is mustered for such an unintuitive idea. Hundreds of billions of dollars never collected by the government before would be doled out to favored interests, after government pocketed its share. The failed bill would have given $51 billion to so-called energy-efficient manufacturers, $68 billion to automakers making government-smiled-upon cars and $150 billion to owners and operators of favored energy producers.
Disguised as a “cap-and-trade” plan, it would have made CO2 emitters pay to do what they've always done for free. Deceptively passed off as a market-based plan, cap-and-trade is really a hidden tax.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid assured us, “Gas prices will not go up. They will go down.” In the end, the obvious connection to ever-higher gas prices politically killed the Climate Security Act. Next year another version is certain to return with a president inclined to sign it. We had a preview of the future last week. It's grim, costly and authoritarian.
Mighty Intellect
Posts: 1,603
June 17th, 2008, 05:32 AM
Why Your "Skeptical" Comment on Climate Change Got Deleted
Alex Steffen
June 16, 2008 3:49 PM
Climate "skepticism" is not a morally defensible position. The debate is over, and it's been over for quite some time, especially on this blog.
We will delete comments which deny the absolutely overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, just as we would delete comments which questioned the reality of the Holocaust or the equal mental capacities and worth of human beings of different ethnic groups. Such "debates" are merely the morally indefensible trying to cover itself in the cloth of intellectual tolerance.
So, if you're a climate skeptic, you may be well-intentioned and you're certainly welcome to your opinion, but we're not interested.
Thanks.
Why Your "Skeptical" Comment on Climate Change Got Deleted
Alex Steffen
June 16, 2008 3:49 PM
Climate "skepticism" is not a morally defensible position. The debate is over, and it's been over for quite some time, especially on this blog.
We will delete comments which deny the absolutely overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, just as we would delete comments which questioned the reality of the Holocaust or the equal mental capacities and worth of human beings of different ethnic groups. Such "debates" are merely the morally indefensible trying to cover itself in the cloth of intellectual tolerance.
So, if you're a climate skeptic, you may be well-intentioned and you're certainly welcome to your opinion, but we're not interested.
Thanks.
