Government Killing Jobs Again -- This Law Effects Small Businesses and Thrift Stores (yes, even garage sales)

Some of the Best Cartoons This Week (3-6-10)

Found! Al Gore... the Savior of the Planet

(The Weekly Standard import)

In his op-ed for the New York Times this past weekend, former Vice President Al Gore wrote:

"From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption."

This has to be one of the most egomaniacal sentences ever written.Gore's editorial, of course, was on the topic of global warming/climate change. He urged lawmakers to pass the unpopular cap & trade legislation as part of his effort to save the world from humanity and humanity from itself. Judging by his op-ed, Gore sees himself as a prophet who will guide Congress and America to the promised land. Thus, he sees "the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption."If the American left wants to know why there is such deep skepticism about dire "climate change" predictions, it is because of sentences such as this. Coupled with the mounting evidence that the scientists who have pushed the climate change agenda are not been pure empiricists, the movement's eschatology is reminiscent of a cult, with Al Gore as its savior. 

Jonah Goldberg noted yesterday that Gore really does want to immanentize the eschaton.

Bill Kristol mentions that "redemption comes from God," of course.

Where Art Though Al? Hurricanes Fall from Gore's Grace

Some info gleaned from HotAir... Good Stuff... Where Art Though Gore? 

....Unfortunately for the hysterics, new peer-reviewed research published in Nature Geoscience concludes that hurricane strength has little to do with global warming:

Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms. …

However, the latest research, just published in Nature Geoscience, paints a very different picture.

It suggests that the rise in hurricane frequency since 1995 was just part of a natural cycle, and that several similar previous increases have been recorded, each followed by a decline.

In other words, the weather changes from year to year. That’s not to say that global warming of any kind — man-made or natural — won’t have some impact on storm activity. In fact, it will decrease tropical storms by a third (emphases mine):

Looking to the future, it also draws on computer modelling to predict that the most likely impact of global warming will be to decrease the frequency of tropical storms, by up to 34% by 2100.

What can we conclude from this? Climatology is a very inexact and developing science. Even the researchers agree on that much:

“We have come to substantially different conclusions from the IPCC,” said Chris Landsea, a lead scientist at the American government’s National Hurricane Center, who co-authored the report.

He added: ”There are a lot of legitimate concerns about climate change but, in my opinion, hurricanes are not among them. We are looking at a decrease in frequency and a small increase in severity.” Landsea said he regarded the use of hurricane icons on the cover of Gore’s book as “misleading”.

...(read more)...

"Praise You, Oh Climate"

Eco-Fascism: AccuWeather's Bastardi Warns ~ "...there are a lot of other non-governmental opinions in this debate that have been shut down"

(NewsBusters h/t)

ECO-POLICE (Green is the New Red) -- Not Cute, Not Funny, and Very Real (Audi 2010 Green Car Super Bowl Commercial)

From and older post, "Nancy Pelosi, Carbon Inventory, The Eco-Police = Damaged Beyond Repair"

Save the Planet. Paint the Roof

….The other day, the current Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu was speaking at the "St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium" in London which, if it is not the most pretentiously named meeting on the planet, it must be among the top five, told his laureateal colleagues that we should paint much of the world white to reflect heat back up into space and, thus, cure global warming.

I am not making this up. Ok. I made up the word "laureateal" but the rest of this is true. From the London Times: 

Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs were painted white, and visible tilted roofs could be painted with "cool-coloured" paints that looked normal, but which absorbed much less heat than conventional dark surfaces. Roads could be lightened to a concrete colour so they would not dazzle drivers in bright sunlight…..

Pelosi: Every Part Of Our Lives Must Be “Subjected To An Inventory” To Fight Global Warming

I keep saying it over and over again.  The proponents of big government love global warming hysteria because it gives the justification to regulate every single aspect of our lives.  Pelosi says as much while visiting China:

In answering a question from a student about how Pelosi was going to get Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions, the leading Democratic lawmaker said it was important to educate children on how to conserve energy and for citizens to build more environmentally friendly homes.

“We have so much room for improvement,” she said. “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility.”

And who do you think is going to be doing the inventory?  Obviously this whole “freedom” thing isn’t working out, since we’re driving hummers and running the air conditioning with the doors open and what not, so I guess some bureaucrat is going to have to inventory our lives for us.  The federal government is already regulating everything from what cars we can drive to what light bulbs we use, so why not more?....

The U.N.'s IPCC Caught Using Articles and Information That Isn't Peer Reviewed (Glaciers in the Himalayas)

 

Should products produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) carry the following warning label:

“The findings of the IPCC reports were developed in advance and furthered by a careful selection from whatever material could be found to support them. In some cases, supporting material was developed or fabricated where none could otherwise be located. As such, these findings may not necessarily reflect the true state of scientific understanding. Use at your own risk.”

There is, as usual, shoddy information coming out of the enviro-wackos over at the United Nations. I will first quote a bit from these recent blunder, and then talk about the truth of the Himalayan Mountain Glaciers.


(Telegraph UK) UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article:

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming....

(HotAir) IPCC based claims on a student dissertation and a magazine article:

...The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.


In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.


However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.


The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps....

(Telegraph UK) UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article:

...Professor Richard Tol, one of the report's authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: "These are essentially a collection of anecdotes. 

"Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been. 

"There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense." 

The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government's worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people....

Problems galore, as rightly pointed out, but what about these receding glaciers? Is there any truth to this?

(Discovery News) Himalayan Glaciers Seem to Be Growing:

Perched on the soaring Karakoram mountains in the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend. They're growing.

Throughout much of the Tibetan Plateau, high-altitude glaciers are dwindling in the face of rising temperatures. The situation is potentially dire for the hundreds of millions of people living in China, India and throughout southeast Asia who depend on the glaciers for their water supply.

But in the rugged western corner of the plateau, the story is different, according to a new study. Among legendary peaks of Mt. Everest like K2 and Nanga Parbat, glaciers with a penthouse view of the world are growing, and have been for almost three decades....

(Times Online) World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown:

....When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was "very high". The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%.

The report read: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."


However, glaciologists find such figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are far lower.

Will Vegetarian Humans One Day 'Emit' More Carbon Dioxide & Methane Than Cows? -- "...life cycle fart assessments..." (I Can't Make This Stuff Up!)

Climate Change nuts like Al Gore... listen up

(an article from TreeHugger)

Presumably, many will have resolved to eat less meat during the coming year in the interest of protecting the climate from cattle farts. If this climate-friendly resolution became a growing trend, year by year, increasing proportions of the human population would meet dietary requirements by upping their bean, rice, and squash intakes, for example. Could vegetarianism heroics - billions more going mostly meatless - really scale up to save the climate? Take your minds forward with me into a gas cloud where no man has gone before, propelled by indigestible carbohydrates, as we explore the feasibility of answering that question.

Imagine a half century has passed. It is the year 2060 and world beef consumption has fallen dramatically: a good outcome for climate-sake, according to some. However, life cycle fart assessments have led some to question the wisdom of the transition, as dairy production was shown to have increased greatly to meet growing vegetarian dietary needs, indirectly raising human methane and carbon dioxide contributions. More cow farts from Farmer Brown's dairy.

More important, the relative significance of direct human flatulence to the total carbon dioxide and methane loads was shown to have increased dramatically by a massive human shift to a highly legume- and cabbage-dependent diet. More vegetarian farts, in other words.

 ....[read more]....

Didn't Al Gore Say We Were Near the "No-Turning Back" Point in Anthropogenic Global Warming

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice insummer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this. …

Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.

Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.

‘They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.

Predicted a Long Time Ago -- Sun Drives Climatre... Not Man!

• East Coast Faces Deep Freeze; Florida Oranges Threatened...
• Peru's mountain people 'face extinction because of cold conditions'...
• Beijing -- coldest in 40 years...
• World copes with Arctic weather...
• Winter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA...
• CHILL MAP...
• 3 Deaths Due To Cold in Memphis...
• PAPER: GAS SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT IN UK...
• Elderly burn books for warmth?
• Vermont sets 'all-time record for one snowstorm'...
• Iowa temps 'a solid 30 degrees below normal'...
• Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years...
• Historic ice build-up shuts down NJ nuclear power plant...
• Midwest Sees Near-Record Lows, Snow By The Foot...
• Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade...

Full circle. The first Earth Day there were scientists up on the podium screaming about “global coolong” and that we had to change our habits to avert disaster. Then came “Global Warming”! And now? Again global cooling.

The Sun Also Sets

Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming….

....Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

"Limits Warming To No More Than 2 Degrees" -- Eco-Fascism on Display... Controlling the Weather

"I recalled the plagues that God set down on a disbelieving Pharaoh who thought he was greater than God. Perhaps God sent some messages down to disbelievers in Copenhagen and in Washington D.C. with these early season snow blizzards reminding them that humans are not in charge of mother nature and just are not as almighty as they think they are."

Lets remember what he said about the "stimulas," if it wasn't passed unemployment would reach 9%. So his 2-degree fiction is funny on some level, but scary on another. Government setting global change of weather to 2-degrees? Talk about eco-fascism!

Democrats and Labels - Where is the Debate? Now if You Are Skeptical of Man-Caused Global Warming, There Is a Psychological Reason Why You Are

"Time for talk is OVER," "America WILL continue on this path" ~ Obama

Obama to act with or without agreement - e.g., progressive fascism

This is an interesting article because it attempts to sweep under the rug any debate on anthropogenic global warming (e.g., climate change) by saying "skepticism of global warming is a psychological disorder and here is why." Ridiculous!  It is just another attempt by progressives to not talk, discuss, debate an issue by attaching labels to it. Xenophobic, racist, bigot, religious-nut, and now, climatorophobia. The following is from Dennis Prager:

 

This is easy to demonstrate.  Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:

• Racist
• Sexist
• Homophobic
• Islamophobic
• Imperialist
• Bigoted
• Intolerant

And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:

• Peace
• Fairness
• Tolerance
• The poor
• The disenfranchised
• The environment

These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways. First, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.

Second, these words make it easy to be a liberal -- essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal -- they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.

Third, they make the liberal feel good about himself -- by opposing conservative ideas and policies, he is automatically opposing racism, bigotry, imperialism, etc.

(NewsBusters import)

AP Reporter: Global Warming Skepticism Explained by Psychology

By P.J. Gladnick

Global warming? Case closed. Consensus achieved. There can be no debate about it.ClimateGate? Never happened. I refuse to even acknowledge its existence. Must hang on to the global warming belief at all costs even against evidence to to the contrary.

That dogmatic stance pretty much sums up the attitude of Associated Press writer Malcolm Ritter in his story about how global warming skepticism can be ascribed to psychological faults:

The Copenhagen talks on climate change were convened with a sense of urgency that many ordinary folks don't share. Why is that? One big reason:

It's hard for people to get excited about a threat that seems far away in space and time, psychologists say.

"It's not in people's faces," said psychologist Robert Gifford of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. "It is in the media, but not in their everyday experience. That's quite a different thing."

Oh, I see. Global warming skepticism has nothing to do with the observable evidence or with the recently discovered falsified evidence revealed in the ClimateGate emails and East Anglia University CRU computer source code. No. It can all be ascribed to psychology as presented by global warming dogmatist Ritter:

Gifford said people tend to attach less importance to future problems than more immediate concerns. That may be a holdover from early days of human evolution, when "things far away didn't matter, things in the future didn't matter. It was whether the tiger or the enemy was just around the corner," he said.

In fact, scientists say global warming's influence is already visible and it could get worse within decades if no action is taken. The average number of heat-wave deaths in Chicago could more than double by 2050, and killer heat waves in Europe could also increase by that time, experts say. Arctic summers may be almost free of sea ice by 2030 or sooner, they say.

Could..could...may. This is called reality? It sounds more like speculation. And Ritter picked a really poor example when he stated that heat-wave deaths in Chicago could more than double in 2050. In the actual, not could, world Chicago has just experienced an unusually cold summer. However, this won't stop Gifford in his junior league psychological analysis starting with the "13 dragons."

Even among people who accept global warming as a serious issue, there are additional psychological barriers to getting them to take significant action against it. Gifford, who studies pro-environmental behavior, calls them the 13 dragons.

Among them:

• Environmental numbness: "OK, climate change. I've heard that one before. Been there, done that."
• A feeling of powerlessness: "Anything I do is just a drop in the bucket."
• Conflicting goals: "Yes, I should be changing my behavior, but I've got to look for a job, I've got to go to the gym, I have to take my kids to soccer practice, so I'll do it tomorrow."
• A sense of inequality: "Why should I take the bus when my boss is driving a Cadillac?"
• Loss of freedom: `It's a free country. I can drive a Hummer if I want to."
• Tokenism: "I recycle, so thank you very much, I'm finished."
• Excessive optimism: "It will work out in the end. The scientists will figure it out, so I don't have to do anything."
• And then there's just plain habit. It's "a huge but boring force," Gifford said. "We just tend to do today what we did yesterday."

How about a 14th dragon?

Dogmatically clinging to a "scientific" belief without considering any evidence to the contrary by writing off dissenting views as merely due to psychology.

Perhaps Malcolm Ritter should look to himself in the global warming psychological problem department. 

Going Green Kills -- Yet Another Example of How Enviromentalists Are Trying to Kill People for Gaia

(Are These Obama's Green Jobs?)

HotAir has an interesting "Green" update that has to do with the Enviro-Fascists up north and back east.  They are the LED street lights that apparently do not get warm enough to melt the snow on the street lights, thus, causing accidents -- one death resulting so far.  I hope the family sues:

The effort to change the bulbs traffic lights from high-energy incandescents to low-power LEDs does make sense — in those areas of the country where snow is not a factor.  Unfortunately, just as with the decision of Seattle to stop using salt for clearing roads of snow, the decision to go green has created fatal traffic conditions for no good reason whatsoever.  At least one person has died from the use of LED traffic lights in snowstorms, as the LEDs are not hot enough to melt the snow when it covers them (via Instapundit):

Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don’t burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death.

“I’ve never had to put up with this in the past,” said Duane Kassens, a driver from West Bend who got into a fender-bender recently because he couldn’t see the lights. “The police officer told me the new lights weren’t melting the snow. How is that safe?”

Many communities have switched to LED bulbs in their traffic lights because they use 90 percent less energy than the old incandescent variety, last far longer and save money. Their great advantage is also their drawback: They do not waste energy by producing heat. …

Illinois authorities said that during a storm in April, 34-year-old Lisa Richter could see she had a green light and began making a left turn. A driver coming from the opposite direction did not realize the stoplight was obscured by snow and plowed into Richter’s vehicle, killing her.

“Would the accident have occurred if the lights had been clear? I would be willing to bet not,” Oswego police Detective Rob Sherwood said.

The picture on the front page shows the traffic light in Oswego that caused the death of Lisa Richter earlier this year.  The snow made the traffic light useless.  No driver could possibly have spotted a red light, and even the green would have been difficult to discern at speed, especially during the daytime.  Oswego may just have well turned off its traffic lights and set up four-way stops at every intersection for all the good these systems do in snowstorms — when traffic lights are more necessary than ever.

 ....[read more]....

Inconvenient Question to Al Gore -- Gore Refuses, Again, To Answer Journalists Question

If the UN or the Left were to come into more power (Yes, I refer to the Pelosis,' Reids,' and Obamas' of the world) that would be the normal practice... questioning is descent.

John Stossel's First Fox Show (e.g. debate) -- TOPIC: Anthropogenic Global Warming, Climate-Change, Enviromental Craziness

Al Gore, Schindler's List, and Irena Sendler = Liberal Madness!

With all the news on Climatgate, Global Warming BS and the publishing of ALL data that will inevitably happen due to legal pressures on the scientific community to not lead the rest of us "layman" down a primrose path (wish this could happen in evolutionary thinking as well), I wanted to revisit a topic.  That topic is Al Gore and his Nobel Peace prize.

I just watched again, after many years, Schindler's List.  That movie reminded me of a Catholic gal who saved many Jewish lives from the Nazi regime.  Her name was Irena Sendler (Snopes has a great article on her), and she saved more Jewish lives from the Nazi's than Schindler did, not that that is the point here... what is the point then?  The point is that she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize -- the same year Al Gore was for his PowerPoint presentation entitles An Inconvenient Truth.  Well, there is evidence that his winning the Prize is based on lies (which we have known for some time) via a paper trail.  Can you believe that a "Nobel Peace Prize" was handed to Al Gore and not to Irena Sendler?  It is sickening as well as maddening!  If you do not know who she i,s there is a short video about her immediately below.  Enjoy.

Global Warming BULL, Ice Age Approaching -- Russian TV Interviews Scientist

Special Report Panel Talks About Climate Legislation - "It is a dead parrot" ~ Krauthammer

(*Thud*) That Is the Sound of my Jaw Hitting the Floor -- Apple Computers vs. Smokers

(Imported from: The World According to Kimba)

Apple won't repair Macs if owners are smokers

Apple won't repair Macs if owners are smokers News TechRadar UK: "The reputation a lot of Mac fans have of being smug and holier than thou certainly won't be helped by the news from the US that Apple is apparently refusing to repair computers that show signs of cigarette smoke.

According to reports from Mac owners seeking repairs under warranty, the company claimed evidence of cigarette smoke inside the machines in question constitutes a 'biohazard'.

One, presumably ex-, Mac user was told that 'Apple would not require an employee to repair anything deemed hazardous to their health.'

As the company's Applecare warranty does not specifically exclude machines showing the presence of smoke or nicotine from repair, it's likely that Apple will fall back on its 'extreme environment' clause that lets it off the hook."