June 2009 Archives

When I heard this on the radio I thought I had turned into a religious station, cause it sounds just like a Sunday morning sermon. I posted it to show that for some people Global Warming is a religion.

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of "Hot, Flat and Crowded." (Nancy Ostertag/Getty Images for AFI)

DarthDubious's blog

Despite heated objections by some Republicans, the unread 1,200-page Waxman-Markey climate bill was passed 219-212 in the House on Friday.

During Boehner's brief attempt at filibuster, he reads passages related to the usage of "qualified youth corps" to regulate energy efficiency in regards to "the sustainability of low-end income communities." "I wonder if ACORN qualifies for these grants," Boehner quipped.

By Elmer Beauregard

After successfully taxing CO2 and deeming it a pollutant, what's next for Al Gore and his chronies? I'm afraid they might go after the other life giving gas... Oxygen.

Yesterday, Cap and Trade Legislation narrowly passed the House and I assume will sail through the Senate (unless they get struck by a bolt of intelligence). So when it does, will Al Gore and the Sierra club finally be satisfied? I doubt it, if you're the Sierra Club and you accomplish all that you set out to do, do you just pack up your tent and move on? There has to be something else, the next big thing, and I'm going to give it to them... Oxygen.

Taxing CO2 and not Oxygen is like taxing Abbott but not Costello, Dean but not Martin. Plants, through photosynthesis take CO2 and turn it into Oxygen, and conversely animals take that Oxygen and turn it back into CO2. Now one might think that God came up with a pretty good design, a symbiotic relationship between animals and plants where the more of either of these gasses produces more life.

But these days you don't hear much about God and his design anymore, now man is in control of nature, not God. We cause the sun to shine and the clouds to come, we are responsible for droughts and floods, not God. We are the ones that are causing the Oceans to rise and the Poles to melt. Yes, it is mankind in ever increasing numbers that is causing the destruction of the planet, so let's get to the root of the problem... Oxygen.

No fire can burn without Oxygen, no factory or coal powered plant can pump out CO2 if it doesn't have Oxygen to burn. No SUV can pull a boat to the cabin without Oxygen. Gasoline is only half of what is being burned inside those giant cylinders, the other half is Oxygen. That is what a carburetor or a fuel injector does, it mixes liquid Gasoline with Oxygen before it is burned.

I leave you with this thought: two thirds of every CO2 molecule pumped into our atmosphere is... Oxygen.

Anthony Watts - wattsupwiththat.com

OK folks, time to engage in our rights of citizenship. You know what to do. Phones and email contact info at the bottom. - Anthony

UPDATE2: test vote passes narrowly, 7 votes needed to defeat this bill - Anthony

UPDATE: C-SPAN1 is covering this live, there is a live media streaming page which you can access here:

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN_wm.aspx

CSPAN also has live phone in. Phone in your comments: (202)585-3885 , -3886, -3887

Waxman and Markey

Dan Spencer, The Examiner

A focus group tells Ben Lieberman, the Heritage Foundation's Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment, what they think about global warming and cap and trade. Lieberman points out some key misconceptions that might change their minds about this new energy tax.

Watch the video:

Written by Larry Greenley, jbs.org

"[U]nder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." -- Barack Obama (click on photo to see video of this statement) 

An expensive new "tax" bill will be considered on the floor of the
House as early as this Friday, June 26. This bill is known as the
"American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009," H.R. 2454, also known
as the Waxman-Markey climate change bill.

Most Americans know this bill as a "cap-and-trade" bill for the purpose
of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming by creating a
system of pollution permits that energy companies must buy before
releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Washington Post, Letters to the Editor

The June 9 Business article "Toyota Wants New Prius to Be America's Next Top Model" called the Prius an "eco-icon" and said that it has allowed Americans to "advertise their eco-correctness." A Toyota spokesman was quoted as saying that many Prius buyers want to "make an environmental statement."

The Prius's reputation as a "green" car is completely undeserved. The culprit is its nickel metal hydride battery.

By Chris Irvine, Telegraph

Polar bears are not dying out and Turkey Twizzlers are fine, according to a new book from scientists wishing to challenge science "scare stories"

Contrary to widely held belief, polar bear populations are rising, according to the scientists

It is widely thought that the polar ice caps will melt, causing sea levels to rise, resulting in the loss of cities along the coast, as well as a the majority of polar bears.

And if global warming does not kill us, then obesity or heart disease will thanks to an addiction to junk food and salt.

But a new book, compiled by Stanley Feldman, a professor of anaesthetics at London University, and Vincent Marks, a former professor of clinical biochemistry and dean of medicine at the University of Surrey, are questioning the end of the world...

Thanks For All The Hits Rush!

Jurriaan Maessen, Infowars

The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature.

It has been elaborately pointed out how the device of environmentalism is especially favoured by tyrants as a means of controlling their subjects. The current 'green' movement, as we know, is no exception. It has been nurtured from its very conception as a systematic eugenics operation by the deep pockets of the Rockefeller- and Ford Foundations. Throughout the 20th century there have been multiple examples of tyrants implementing a very strict environmental policy to which their subjects had to conform, sometimes through the collection of taxes, sometimes at the barrel of a gun; usually a subtle mixture of the two. It is a well documented though seldom highlighted fact that the Nazis were very much into environmentalism- not for environmentalism's sake of course, but rather as a means of oppression and control. As it turns out, environmentalism fits the form of tyranny like a well tailored suit.

Climate Depot

Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Chris Walcek, a professor at the University at Albany in NY and a Senior Research Associate at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center is joining many other scientists in critiquing President Obama's new global warming report.

Dr. Walcek: The authors of the latest US climate change report would make Pravda editors and reporters blush with envy on how they can misconstrue and mis-report truths for a propaganda angle.

In the climate report's EXECUTIVE SUMMARY there is statement that WINTER temperatures across the northern great plains have increased MORE THAN 7 degrees over the past 30 years. Whenever I see ABSURD claims like these, I delve into archived temperatures (Global Historical Climate Network) archived at our National Climate Data Center and wade through the analysis to see the "truth". Attached are two figures showing actual thermometer measurements (I doubt that actual thermometer measurements are shown ANYWHERE in this report...) This was the first site I looked at.... but I am confident that the conclusions are robust and more general.

By Marc Morano - Climate Depot

Below is a guest post by Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, who has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles.

1. The new scare report issued by the Obama administration refers to the work of Stephen H. Schneider six times. You will recall that Schneider is infamous for telling Discover magazine (October, 1989, p. 45-48) that "we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have...each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

2. There has been no sea level rise for the past three years.

3. Hurricane, typhoon, and tropical cyclone activity is at a 30-year low.

4. The satellite data (UAH MSU) currently show that mean global temperature is about the same as it was in June of 1979...no, if anything, it is LOWER.

5. Mean global sea ice is at the 20-year mean level, and the same as it was in 1979 when monitoring began.

6. Global "warming" is based almost entirely on the record from meteorological stations. Anthony Watt's survey of 1221 weather stations is now 70 percent complete, and shows that an astonishing 69 percent of these stations are likely to have serious errors, due to their being located near heat sources such as asphalt paving, air conditioning vents, etc.

After following this subject now since the mid 1980s, I become more skeptical every year. I am now beginning to conclude that global warming simply does not exist.

Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian

Climate impacts report warns of flooding, heat waves, drought and loss of wildlife that will occur if Americans fail to act on global warming

The Obama administration is poised for its most forceful confrontation with the American public on the sweeping and life-altering consequences of a failure to act on global warming with the release today of a long-awaited scientific report on climate change.

The report, produced by more than 30 scientists at 13 government agencies dealing with climate change, provides the most detailed picture to date of the worst case scenarios of rising sea levels and extreme weather events: floods in lower Manhattan; a quadrupling of heat waves deaths in Chicago; withering on the vineyards of California; the disappearance of wildflowers from the slopes of the Rockies; and the extinction of Alaska's wild polar bears in the next 75 years.

By BILL McAULIFFE, Star Tribune

"A year without summer" - that's how one forecaster is looking at the next 2 1/2 months in Minnesota. But there isn't consensus.

Summer's coming. Grab a sweater.

Sunday and Monday may be in the 80s, but some forecasters say don't be fooled.

Across Minnesota and the Dakotas, temperatures could be below normal through the end of August, according to the federal Climate Prediction Center. The outlook for "meteorological summer" -- June, July and August -- prompted one Accuweather forecaster to predict a "year without summer."

Reformer.com

The investment banks taking bailout money from the federal government -- such as Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase -- are the ones that are actively manipulating the energy markets to doubly rip off the American people.

Last year, financial speculators caused massive swings in oil prices. In the 12-month period that ended in July 2008, oil prices rose from $70 a barrel to a record $147, then collapsed below $40 by last fall amid the global financial crisis.

Why? These wild fluctuations weren't purely a matter of supply and demand, although that was a factor. When the speculative bubble burst, energy prices also fell. This year, oil prices have rebounded by 85 percent, and the McLatchy News Service has reported that the investment bank Goldman Sachs recently forecast them to go to $85 a barrel this year.

After gasoline prices in southern Vermont stabilized at about $1.85 a gallon in March and April, the price shot up more than 60 cents a gallon in a matter of a few weeks. Why? Because speculators like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase & Co. are able to control refineries, pipelines and storage facilities to manipulate prices.

By Christopher Booker, telegraph.co.uk

Our politicians haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, observes Christopher Booker.

Waterworld: Floodwater surrounding a farm near Fargo, North Dakota, in March 2009 Photo: Reuters

For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.

There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.

By Elmer Beauregard

Like Don Quixote before them, people who chase windmills are destined for ruin.

A new study says that Global Warming is causing the wind to slow down, and it has been slowing down since the 70's. Which is bad news for the wind industry because a 10% loss in wind speed turns into a 30% loss of electricity produced.

This causes a sort of catch 22 for the "Greeny Weenies". They want to use windmills to prevent Global Warming, but Global Warming is causing less wind. They could use this study to create a sense of urgency and build more windmills right now to prevent global warming and keep the wind blowing (oops, I hope I'm not giving them any ideas). But on the other hand they are basing their whole energy policy on an ever shrinking commodity just like oil and coal? Have we already reached Peak Wind?

You might think that the GWs will dump wind and just go with solar instead, but there might be a problem there too. Obama wants to spray the skies with a giant sun screen to prevent Global Warming and this will cut back on solar energy as well, and lets not forget that the Sun has been cooling down as of late. So it looks like the renewable energies we were planning to build our future on are not so renewable after all.

Of course you and I and Burger King know that "Global Warming Is Baloney", in fact the earth is in a cooling period right now, and as the earth cools maybe the winds will pick up again. And in another decade or so a new study will come along and say that wind goes up and down in cycles just like temperature and CO2, and its all caused by the sun not people.

You know if we just finished 3 days of above normal temperatures, they'd be crying "The Globe Warming!" from the rooftops. Yet when the opposite happens they just report it as the weather.

WCCO

The State Climatology Office says the temperatures in St. Paul and Minneapolis stayed below for 60 for three straight days. That hasn't happened in June since June 1-3, 1951.

The office says the only other years with three days in a row of high temperatures below 60 in June are 1917, 1935, and 1937. There are no such four-day cold snaps on record.

The Twin Cities streak went from Saturday to Monday. It's expected to end on Tuesday as the National Weather Service forecast highs in the middle 60s.

The high temperature of 52 degrees on Saturday set a record as the lowest high temperature for that date.

By Max Schulz, National Review

The secret economics of the Democrats' environmental plan.

Proponents of a cap-and-trade program to combat global warming face an uphill fight. For all their attempts to spin it as a solely environmental issue about saving the planet from extinction, the reality is that it's a political question that ultimately comes down to economic tradeoffs.

That reality explains why a cap-and-trade proposal similar to the one presently being considered crashed and burned in Washington last year, despite Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Voters got a sense that a new regulatory regime to limit carbon-dioxide emissions would impose huge costs across the economy, and they let their representatives know that was unacceptable.

The irony is that the Democrats beating the drums for a global-warming bill understand -- and even embrace -- the economics of carbon-dioxide regulation. In an exceptionally candid interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board last year, then-senator Barack Obama talked about bankrupting the coal industry and said, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Raise the price of coal- and petroleum-based energy so people use less, or force consumers to employ energy technologies that cost vastly more. Either way, higher prices are inherent to cutting emissions.

Michael Andrews, DailyTech

Report indicates solar cycle has been impacting Earth since the Industrial Revolution

Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data.  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Some researchers believe that the solar cycle influences global climate changes. They attribute recent warming trends to cyclic variation. Skeptics, though, argue that there's little hard evidence of a solar hand in recent climate changes.

Now, a new research report from a surprising source may help to lay this skepticism to rest. A study from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.

wattsupwiththat.com

Backyard Snow in Dickinson, ND - Photo courtesy WUWT reader Daryl Ritchison

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) Snow has fallen in Dickinson in June, the first time in nearly 60 years the city has seen snow past May.

National Weather Service meteorologist Janine Vining in Bismarck says there were unofficial reports of a couple of inches of snow in Dickinson on Saturday.

Vining says snow in North Dakota in June is uncommon, though it's not unheard of. She says other parts of the state have seen June snow within the past 10 years.

Williston and Bismarck had received only rain as of mid-Saturday, but Vining said snow was possible in those cities later in the day.

By Christopher Booker, Telegraph UK

Kofi Annan claims that global warming is already "killing 300,000 people a year". The situation looks a little different in the real world, says Christopher Booker.

This supposedly super-heated century has seen some extraordinary snowfalls, such as this in Greece last year Photo: AP

It might well be called "the tale of two planets". On one planet live all the Great and Good who have recently been trying to whip up an ever greater panic over global warming, as the clock ticks down to next December's UN conference in Copenhagen when they plan a new treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

There was, for instance, the three-day gathering organised by Prince Charles at St James's Palace, at which 20 Nobel laureates (including two African winners of the Peace and Literature prizes) listened to speeches from Lord Stern and Prince Charles, before issuing a declaration which compared the threat of global warming to that of all-out nuclear war. They also heard President Obama's Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu, solemnly telling them that if all buildings and pavements were painted white, to reflect the sun's rays back into space, this would be equivalent to taking all vehicles off the world's roads for 11 years.

http://www.nipccreport.org/

As Congress debates global warming legislation that would raise energy costs to consumers by hundreds of billions of dollars, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.

In "Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)," coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

Announcing a great new report, website, and powerpoint presentation by Anthony Watts

Tahoe City, CA (burn barrel, close by parking, tennis court surface 25 feet away built in early 1980's)

Executive Summary

Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise in temperature during the past century was "unprecedented" and proof that immediate action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin. Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made.

The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can't know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can't trust the data. The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.

Network spends two hours predicting future, promoting Obama and left-wing climate ideas or mankind doomed to new 'dark ages.'

By Dan Gainor, Business & Media Institute

ABC's "Earth 2100" tried to tell the story of the future but ended up a documentary about the present. The global warming Armageddon-fest tried to scold and scare Americans into changing habits to prevent the deadly end. Instead, it told a tale of just how far journalism has descended from neutrality to bias to outright propaganda. That's what host Bob Woodruff called "a different kind of journalism."

The program focused most on the fictional character "Lucy" who he used to tell his equally fictional tale of the future. Immediately after viewers met Lucy, the first real human they saw other than Woodruff was John Podesta, president and CEO of the lefty-wing think tank Center for American Progress. Podesta also headed up the Obama transition team.

The Burger King Corporation (BKC) is fighting back by telling its customers that Global Warming Is Baloney on their store signs. At least the stores owned by Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC), a Memphis-based management company with more then 40 Burger King locations across the Mid-South.

BKC is trying to distance itself from the message last week, which is confusing because Burger King is a big target for the Global Warming Crowd. The beef industry in general is a frequent target for criticism by environmentalists. Climatecounts.org, a not-for-profit organization rates companies based on attitudes toward global warming as "a choice to avoid for the climate-conscious shopper."

I for one will be eating at Burger King more often, showing my support for Free Speech.

Unfortunately John Chidsey, the company's CEO recently described climate change as "an overriding issue of importance for the global community." And MIC was told to take the signs down.

By Melani Phillips, The Spectator

Every so often, a book is published which, it is instantly clear, is the definitive last word on the subject. Such a book has just appeared on the global lunacy of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In his devastating study Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science (Quartet) Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and previously Professor of Earth Sciences at the Universities of Melbourne and, in the UK, Newcastle systematically shreds the theory and the hallucinatory propaganda industry it has spawned. There is simply nothing left of it when he has finished - and he does so from the perspective of real science which the theory has so shockingly betrayed.

By Elmer Beauregard

It's true, all of us will die (some sooner than others) but instead of dying from things like old age, cancer or heart failure, in the near future all deaths will be blamed on, you guessed it, "Global Warming".

Remember 2 years ago in Minnesota when the 35W bridge collapsed, it was later reported that global warming made that bridge collapse because it was 90º that day. A new study put out says that today if you die from Malaria for instance you were actually killed by "Global Warming" (even though mosquitoes thrive in arctic regions and most of these deaths could have been avoided with the use of DDT).

Let's say you died from a flood or starvation, now because of this report you were actually killed by "Global Warming" or people who drive SUVs. If you were struck by an SUV while crossing the street, they would probably blame that on Global Warming as well.

This study blamed "Global Warming" for 300,000 deaths last year, but they think in 20 years they will be able to blame over 500,000 deaths annually on "Global Warming". I wonder if the 20 people in Minnesota that died from the extreme cold weather last winter were included on the list because they were "Climate Caused" deaths.

The writers do admit that:

the numbers were rough estimates. The report appeared aimed at world leaders, who will meet in Copenhagen in December to negotiate a new international climate treaty."

And as you and I know "World Leaders" are far to busy to do any research themselves so they depend on these "simplified" reports to form public policy.

Related Article: I Wish the Earth Were Warming - It Would Save a Lot of Lives

by Vin Suprynowicz, LewRockwel.com

First, if the earth was warming at a rate of about 1 or even 2 degree per century in recent decades, there are reasons to believe that's slowed or stopped. One of those reasons is that the "global warming" fanatics have abruptly shifted their rhetoric, adopting instead the new nonsense euphemism "climate change." This is a clear attempt at inoculation: If it turns out the globe is indeed cooling again, they will merely take their same pre-set, ulterior agenda - huge energy tax hikes to finance bigger government, cripple capitalism, and destroy the freedom-giving automobile, instead forcing everyone to pile like lemmings into "mass transit" - and declare that an identical agenda is now needed to fight "global cooling" ... and that we dare not waste any time in debate! Hee-haw!

Furthermore, even if the earth did warm a bit in recent decades, there's no reason to believe man's activities played a substantial role. Carbon dioxide is not a particularly effective greenhouse gas, nor the most prevalent. (Water vapor is.) Furthermore, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide generated by man's activities is infinitesimal. Astronomers tell us that when the earth undergoes modest global warming, Mars does, too. It's unlikely Mars gets warmer because anyone there is burning coal or driving SUVS. The more likely culprit for the parallel warming of the two planets is solar activity.