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en. John Barrasso delivered a bit of a barn-burner at yesterday’s Committee on Oversight joint hearing on “Scientific Integrity and Transparency Reforms at the Environmental Protection Agency.” He’s been carrying this particular flag for a while, all but ignored by the Dem power structure. Following are excerpts from his statement:

I am concerned about the shadow cabinet position of Energy and Climate Czar. This vague position “coordinates” energy and climate change policy in the cabinet. This person is not confirmed by the Senate. How the EPA Administrator and the Czar work together remains highly ambiguous. The person appointed to this post is Carol Browner. Browner, coincidently, was the EPA Director under President Clinton. By appointing Browner, the Administration now has two EPA Directors, one confirmed by Congress, the other not. One accountable to Congress, the other not.

Obama has now appointed 18 czars – imagine what the Left would have said if “Bushitler” had done the same.  They’re all problematic, but Browner is particulary so, especially given the economy-crushing global warming agenda Obama is pushing.  Barrasso details some of the more nefarious acts Browner undertook while she was Clinton’s Congressionally overseen EPA chief:

She [a Washington Examiner reporter] stated that “Browner ordered Virginia to reduce the amount of ambient nitrogen oxide, not because levels were anywhere near dangerous, but because that was the only pollutant that had not declined in the past 25 years.” She stated that that Browner proposed banning chlorine, used as a disinfectant in 98 percent of municipal water treatment, “in the absence of any evidence that chlorine leads to cancer or birth defects.”  Indeed, the author points out that Peru was suing the United States for classifying chlorine as a possible carcinogen “because then Peru removed chorine from its water supply, and the resulting cholera epidemic killed thousands.” She also cited Browner’s attempt to get the Food and Drug Administration to ban anti-asthma inhalers because the EPA “considered it more important to get rid of devices that release trace amounts of chlorofluorcarbons than to allow 30 million Americans to breathe easily.” She stated “public outcry, not science, caused the EPA to back off.” These are just a few examples in a larger column that cites many more.

Now this woman is operating in Jack Bauer-like fashion, with no hand, save Obama’s, constraining her.  This is not exactly the model of that transparency thing Obama promised during the campaign.

The Czar positions that the Obama Administration has created seem to be designed to not be transparent. We won’t ever know whether or not politics is trumping science because we can’t get the Czar to come here and testify. Everything will be done in secret, behind closed doors, out of the view of the American people.We need not look much farther than Energy and Climate Czar Browner’s actions over the last few months.

Want an example of how untransparent the czar process is? Barrosso provided a gem:

The New York Times ran an article in May entitled “Vow of silence key to White House-California Fuel Economy Talks.” The article stated that there was a simple rule for negotiations between the White House and California on vehicle fuel economy – “Put nothing in writing.” Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, stated that Browner “quietly orchestrated private discussions from the White House with auto industry officials.” The paper said Nichols and Browner “decided to keep their discussions as quiet as possible, holding no group meetings and taking care to not leak updates to the press.” Nichols was quoted as saying “We put nothing in writing, ever.” This is unacceptable Madame Chairman.

How are we, the oversight committee, able to do our job with Administration officials putting nothing in writing, holding secret meetings in the dark of night without other officials present. All of this occurring outside the prying eyes of the people. This is not transparency. This is not good government. This threatens scientific integrity.

I wonder how that Times story would have run if it had occurred during the Bush admin and they caught an uncomfirmed Bush appointee saying “put nothing in writing.” We’ll never know.

The good senator concluded by repeating his longstanding request for committee hearings into Browner’s role as energy czar, a request committee chair Babs Boxer ignored. Fat chance any such hearings will happen any sooner than January 2013, when, hopefully, a new Republican majority will rule the Senate.

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Before immersing myself for the day in water policy at the Association of California Water Agencies spring conference, I sent out three quick tweets this morning about Obama’s new 39 mpg mileage goal for America’s car fleet.  (That’s the prez dancing with Ford CEO Alan Mulally at the announcement, BTW.)

The first:

Someone remind me: Why is it so urgent to have 35 mpg cars if Obama can charm OPEC into loving America?

One of the primary reasons to increase the efficiency of the fleet is national security. The more efficient our cars, the less oil we will have to import. Obama’s considerable (and likely unsuccessful) efforts to win the hearts of the Muslim world notwithstanding, he can hardly tout national security as a reason for his decision to insanely dramatically up the mpg target.

If he were concerned about national security, he wouldn’t be opposed to the exploitation of our domestic oil resources, but his positions on drilling, cagey as they are, are just Obamaspeak for “Just say no to drillin.”  And besides, if he were concerned about national security, he wouldn’t be closing Guantanamo, forcing a withdrawal deadline on our military leaders in Iraq, releasing the mastermind of the Cole bombing, or divulging interrogation memos.

The second:

Someone remind me: Why do we have to give up safety for 35 mpg? Will more greivous injuries make it easier for BHO to get nat’l healthcare?

Hybrids and diesels are going to be an increasing part of the mix, but we’re not going to hit 35 mpg without removing a whole lot of protective armor from our cars. Perhaps the fact that cars will become slower and more boring will offset the spike in mortality rates that will result from the flimisification of America’s fleet, but I doubt it.  People drove Model T’s too fast.

So our morgues will get more bodies, but so will our emergency rooms – broken, but still breathing.  Put together these mileage standards with Obama’s healthcare fantasies, and you will have a very expensive healthcare system indeed.

The third:

Someone remind me: Why is it so urgent to have 35 mpg cars if you can’t quantify an improvement to the climate as a result?

The Obamites have no intention of telling the American people the truth about this.  Oh, they can conjure up tons of greenhouse gas that will be removed from the atmosphere by today’s announcement (and feel free to believe the number if you’re silly enough to choose to), but even if the numbers are right, their impact, if any, on climate change simply can’t be known.  So, Obama decided to expel about a billion tons of carbon dioxide instead:

Think about this. Consider how much has changed all around us. Think of how much faster our computers have become. Think about how much more productive our workers are. Think about how everything has been transformed by our capacity to see the world as it is, but also to imagine a world as it could be.

That’s what’s been missing in this debate for too long, and that’s why this announcement is so important, for it represents not only a change in policy in Washington but the harbinger of a change in the way business is done in Washington. No longer will we accept the notion that our politics are too small, our nation too divided, our people too weary of broken promises and lost opportunities to take up a historic calling. No longer will we accept anything less than a common effort, made in good faith, to solve our toughest problems.

And that is what this agreement seeks to achieve.

Good gosh. You’d think he was announcing a whole new constitution or something, not just a kicking up of mileage standards. Here’s a rule of thumb that will come in handy for the next three and a half years (hopefully no longer): The higher the rhetoric soars, the lower to set your expectations.

What was left unsaid was this:  Now that Obama is de facto CEO of Chrysler and GM, they couldn’t fight him on these goals, and without Chrysler and GM, Ford’s hands were tied as well. Obama’s purchase of the automotive sector with our hard-earned money has changed the balance of power.  Call it a common commitment to fighting climate change if you wish, but it’s really just more evidence of the sweeping scale of Obama’s executive coup.

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n testimony on Capital Hill yesterday, Green Al Gore was confronted by one of his home state Reps, Marsha Blackburn (R, of course), who grilled him on the profit motives behind his efforts to push cap and trade legislation. Here’s The Hill’s transcript: 

BLACKBURN: I’ve got an article from October 8th, the New York Times Magazine about a firm called Kleiner Perkins. A capital firm called Kleiner Perkins. Are you aware of that company?

GORE: (LAUGHS) Well yes, I’m a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

BLACKBURN: So you’re a partner at Kleiner Perkins. OK. Now they have invested about a billion dollars in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap and trade legislation. So is the legislation that we’re discussing here today, is that something you are going to personally benefit from?

GORE: I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us. And I have invested in it. But every penny that I have made, I have put right into a non-profit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness about why we have to take on this challenge. And Congresswoman, if you’re, if you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.

BLACKBURN: I’m not making accusations. I’m asking questions that have been asked of me. And individuals, constituents that were seeking a point of clarity–

GORE: I understand exactly what you’re doing, Congresswoman. Everybody here does.

BLACKBURN: Well, are, you know, are you willing to divest yourself of any profit? Does all of it go to a not-for-profit that is an educational not-for-profit.

GORE: Every penny that I have made has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy. I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there’s something wrong with being active in business in this country?

Read that last paragraph again and check out the verb structures: have made … has gone … been willing. Past tense. Gore carefully made no pledge of what would happen to the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not more) he will make should his lobbying efforts on behalf of cap and trade succeed.

And yes, I do think there’s something wrong with being in business to use your influence to penalize a couple hundred million Americans with a slower economy and more expensive goods all so you can get richer. Gore may be foolish enough to think that all the alternative energy and carbon credit outfits that like him so much like him because he’s smart and charming, but saner minds realize they like him for his considerable political clout.

As for giving all the proceeds to the Alliance for Climate Protection, note first that Green Al doesn’t really need to make a lot of money since we, the taxpayers, are already paying him over $100,000 a year in a federal pension scheme that ultimately will pay him almost $6 million.  It’s so easy to be philanthropic when you’re sucking at the taxpayer’s teat.

I’d rather he keep the money from his movie and book, and return his government pension to us.

If you want to have some fun, go to the Alliance for Climate Protection page on Mukety and start clicking on the boxes the the names of its Board of Directors in them.  Al’s put together a heck of an interconnected group of power-brokers who are all dedicated to leveraging their considerable influence to burden us with cap and trade. 

Of course, he’s got every right to do that, and do it for free if he wants to.  Not to depricate Al’s largesse, but it’s also worth noting that his salary as a partner of Kleiner Perkins is not among the income sources he’s donating to the cause, nor is income from his own investment firm, Generation Investment Management.  Those parts of Al’s life are where the real money is going to come from, should his use of political influence succeed in tying the cap and trade cement block around the ankle of the American economy.  Over you go, Bub!  Think good thoughts about Al as you sink!

Neither firm is public, so Al’s salary from them is not disclosed in SEC filings, and following rigorous reserach (at least two or three minutes) I haven’t been able to find out how much non-donated money he’s making from those positions. Let’s just assume capitalism is paying him considerably more than his pension.

And that too is OK – but it’s not OK to pretend, as Gore did at the House hearing, that he’s all about goodness and selflessness and being a visionary and is not into cap and trade for the huge personal wealth that will likely accrue to him should Congress give him what he wants.  It certainly is OK to turn what you believe in into your business, but it’s not OK to pretend you’re just in it like a hobby or perhaps even a mission, and deny that you are using political influence to make yourself wealthy by forever changing America at a cost of billions of dollars and millions of jobs.

Gore, like all false Messiahs, is a self-centered liar.

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H

ere’s the weather anthropogenic global warming fanatics – including Chief Chicken Little himself, NASA’s James Hansen – will be greeted with when they converge on the Capitol today to convince Congress to pour more money down the CO2 hole.

It appears that God is laughing at you, fellas.

(For more on the Warmie demonstration and Congress’ inability to clean up its own power plant while it mandates similar clean-ups on everyone else’s, scroll down to bottom of yesterday’s Sunday Scan.)

UPDATE

The idiots are live-blogging their freeze-out global warming rally.  Can you believe it?

Hundreds are gathering in Spirit of Justice park. The atmosphere is charged with hope and excitement. People are bundled up in their warmest coats and staying active by chanting. I hear “Coal can never be clean.” There’s a prayer vigil in the south section of the park.

Don’t the know the world is laughing at them as they freeze their buns off and call for an end to coal so we can freeze ours off too?  Check out how ridiculous they look – this is the sum total of what 70 allied environmental groups can turn out to fight global warming in the midst of a major winter storm:

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Who’s To Blame For Mexico Drug Wars? Us!

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iberals’ knees are still jerking. It’s not enough that they blame America for the jihadists’ war on the West and for persistent poverty in post-colonial countries (not even our colonies, mind you!) but now it’s our fault that 6,000 Mexicans have died in the last year in the Mexican drug wars. So says LA Times columnist Tim Rutten:

America’s political decisions to treat drug addiction as a crime rather than a public health problem, and to legalize AK-47s but not pot, fuel an incipient civil war in Mexico. …

Mexico’s drug war could escalate into widespread civil strife with incalculable consequences for the U.S. — and, particularly, the Southwest. And we’re kidding ourselves if we insist that this is a problem that can be wholly solved south of the border, or quarantined there if events spiral out of control. It’s impossible to know how close either the United States or Mexico is to God, but geographically, culturally and economically, they’ve never been closer to one another.

If Americans really are concerned about the horrific toll inflicted by Mexico’s narco-gangsters, we need to ask some tough questions about our own cultural and political delusions.

The “close to God” reference is a reference to the corrupt Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, who famously said Mexico suffered because it was located “so far from God and so near the United States,” and Rutten foolishly chooses to believe the blood-soaked despot than rational thought.

Canada is located just as close to the U.S. as Mexico, yet we don’t see poverty, corruption, a human flood across our border or drug wars on the northern fronteir – so why to we have to assume the mantle of guilt.  The same drug and gun laws exist in Detroit and Minneapolis as exist in San Diego and El Paso.

Does Rutten really think that if we legalized pot tomorrow and banned whatever guns he wants stripped from law-abiding citizens that the violence in Mexico would stop?  Of course not.  But neither does he care. Like other liberals, he is only interested in using whatever excuse he can come up with to recast America in his vision. Continue Reading »

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“I

am a skeptic,” says Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever in a new report on U.S. Senate report. “Global warming has become a new religion.”

So one Nobel Prize winner doesn’t sign onto the Warmie hysteria. Big deal; there’s still the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report with its “thousands” of scientist signers-on. Actually, Sen. James Inhofe’s new Senate Minority Report points out that his list of 650 scientists challenging man-made global warming claims made by the IPCC and former VP Al Gore is now more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The new report is a treasure trove of quotes from eminent scientists and links to peer reviewed papers that question the fundamentals of Warmie “science,” all showing that the debate on global warming is far from over – and that decisions to capitalize huge initiatives to stop it are premature at best.  I’ll intersperse a few of the quotes with a few of the papers here:

Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical…The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.

That’s atmospheric scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” Note the sinister tone of the quote’s lead-in; only now that she is not affiliated or funded can she speak frankly … this is science?

Despite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1° F per decade and 5-6° C (10-11° F) by 2100, which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.

However, records of past climate changes suggest an altogether different scenario for the 21st century. Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5 ° C (1° F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090 (Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, 2006a, b, 2007, 2008a, b); Easterbrook and Kovanen, 2000, 2001). Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling, on a general rising trend from the Little Ice Age.

That’s an excerpt from the article Global Cooling is Here: Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades, by Prof. Don J. Easterbrook of the Department of Geology, Western Washington University, published in Global Research.

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.

That’s Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an IPCC member and an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

Recently published observational and theoretical research suggests that climate sensitivity might be considerably less than that exhibited by all of the climate models taking part in the most recent IPCC summary. It is argued that climate models’ hypersensitivity could be the result of confusion between cause and effect when researchers analyze natural climate variability, which then finds its way into the models through improper cloud parameterizations.

That’s the abstract from Global Warming: Recent Evidence for Reduced Climate Sensitivity by Dr. Roy W. Spencer from the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.

So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.

That’s Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, the author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member.

“The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”

Russian researchers made this discovery while studying ice cores recovered from the depth of 3.5 kilometres in Antarctica. Analysis of ancient ice and air bubbles trapped inside revealed the composition of the atmosphere and air temperature going back as far as 400,000 years.

“We found that the level of CO2 had fluctuated greatly over the period but at any given time increases in air temperature preceded higher concentrations of CO2,” says academician Kapitsa, who worked in Antarctica for many years. Russian studies showed that throughout history, CO2 levels in the air rose 500 to 600 years after the climate warmed up. Therefore, higher concentrations of greenhouse gases registered today are the result, not the cause, of global warming.

That summary is from a news report.

Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.

That’s one of the world’s leading solar physicists, Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo and author of more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth. And speaking of the sun:

The authors looked at 750 years worth of the local ice core, especially the oxygen isotope. They claim to have found a very strong correlation between the concentration of this isotope (i.e. temperature) on one side and the known solar activity in the epoch 1250-1850. Their data seem to be precise enough to determine the lag, about 10-30 years. It takes some time for the climate to respond to the solar changes.

It seems that they also have data to claim that the correlation gets less precise after 1850. They attribute the deviation to CO2 and by comparing the magnitude of the forcings, they conclude that “Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun.”

Well, the word “only” is somewhat cute in comparison with the “mainstream” fashionable ideology. The IPCC said that they saw a 90% probability that “most” of the recent warming was man-made. The present paper would reduce this figure, 90%, to less than 50% because the Sun itself is responsible for 1/2 of the warming and not the whole 50% of the warming could have been caused by CO2 because there are other effects, too.

That’s from a write up of a peer reviewed study, A. Eichler, S. Olivier, K. Henderson, A. Laube, J. Beer, T. Papina, H. W. Gäggeler, and M. Schwikowski: Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing.

And finally:

I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken…Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.

That’s Dr. Will Happer, Princeton physics professor and former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy. He’s published over 200 scientific papers and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. No lightweight, and no mincing of words.

The last time Inhofe issued a report like this, in 2005 with 400 scientists named, critics jumped on the report for various perceived errors or misrepresentations of the scientists included. That’ll be hard to do this time since the report is not a mere list of scientists, but rather, a report that includes full biographies of each scientist and their quotes, bibliographies of their papers and links to their peer reviewed studies, scientific analyses and original source materials as gathered from directly from the scientists or from public statements, news outlets, and Web sites.

Warmie fundamentalists will continue to deny the existence of scientific opposition to anthropogenhic global warming, but their strident denials are merely more evidence of their desperate absolutist position.

Hat-tip: Jim

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W

ooo Wooo Warmie, the global warming psychic, predicts that Mr. Toasty Toes himself, Al (“Is it hot in here or is it just me?”) Gore will be venturing into SoCal to rally the Warmie masses sometimes soon.

Has Wooo Wooo been incinerating the incense while invoking the incantations again?  Nope.  He just read this news item:

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA – December 8, 2008 (OWSweather.com) – With a warm November, Southern California is finally ready for cold storms to make their way in. Resort level snow will be likely next week, and in pretty hefty amounts if things stay on track. OWSweather.com Meteorologist Kevin Martin predicts a 50 year event.

While Martin is usually conservative on these events, the pattern highly favors it. “We are in a pre-1950 type pattern, “said Martin. “We know we are due for a winter storm sometime this year. The type we may be dealing with will be ranked up there with the known years before 1950, which set record low daytime temperatures into the forecast region. With this, may come low elevation snow.”

Wooo Wooo put that tidbit together with his understanding of the Warmie’s propensity to schedule their events to coincide with unseasonable cold snaps (call it God’s little joke on James Hanson), and sent one of his telepathic communications my way.

Pack your overcoat, Al.

hat-tip:  Jim

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A New Level Of Islamist Sub-Humanism

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eports coming out of Mumbai confirm that Islamist terrorists are capable of sinking still lower in the sight of decent humanity, capable of even worse crimes against decency:

“Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing,” a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: “It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim’s body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,” he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,” one doctor said. (Source)

And what of the Jewish “hostages” that had the great misfortune of existing in a world in which Islamists exist?

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,” he said.

This “religion of peace” has become such a scourge on the Earth that we really just can’t allow it to continue in its evil ways. Does Obama see this? Does he have the spine to confront evil? I believe it’s a yes on the first and will prove to be a no on the second. Continue Reading »

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J

ames A. Peden is a likable guy – what’s not to like about a guy who starts his bio, “James A. Peden, better known as “Jim” or “Dad,” ….” He’s also got some good science chops:

[Peden] spent some of his earlier years as an Atmospheric Physicist at the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and Extranuclear Laboratories in Blawnox, Pennsylvania, studying ion-molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere. As a student, he was elected to both the National Physics Honor Society and the National Mathematics Honor Fraternity, and was President of the Student Section of the American Institute of Physics. He was a founding member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His thesis on charge transfer reactions in the upper atmosphere was co-published in part in the prestigious Journal of Chemical Physics. The results obtained by himself and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh remain today as the gold standard in the AstroChemistry Database.

Peden got bugged by insistence that the science on global warming is settled when, in fact, the science of global climate prediction is in its infancy and regularly soils its diapers with false predictions, bad data processing and lack of proper respect for the scientific process. Foiled – understandably so – by the reticence of his local newspaper editors to publish his lengthy attack on anthropogenic global warming arguments, he has published his paper on line.

It’s very long, very thorough and pretty darn elegant. It’s a bit over my head, but I am not particularly proficient in math and science, so you’ll probably enjoy it even more than I did. Here is Peden’s summary – which is not the conclusion of his article:

Summary – Exactly what have we learned here?

1. The “Greenhouse Effect” is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable.

2. Modest Global Warming, at least up until 1998 when a cooling trend began, has been real.

3. CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor.

4. Man’s contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn’t cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it.

5. Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change, accompanied by complex ocean currents which distribute the heat and control local weather systems.

6. CO2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population.

7. CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. The cart is not pulling the donkey, and the future cannot influence the past.

8. Nothing happening in the climate today is particularly unusual, and in fact has happened many times in the past and will likely happen again in the future.

9. The UN IPCC has corrupted the “reporting process” so badly, it makes the oil-for-food scandal look like someone stole some kid’s lunch money. They do not follow the Scientific Method, and modify the science as needed to fit their predetermined conclusions. In empirical science, one does NOT write the conclusion first, then solicit “opinion” on the report, ignoring any opinion which does not fit their predetermined conclusion while falsifying data to support unrealistic models.

10. Polar Bear populations are not endangered, in fact current populations are healthy and at almost historic highs. The push to list them as endangered is an effort to gain political control of their habitat… particularly the North Slope oil fields.

11. There is no demonstrated causal relationship between hurricanes and/or tornadoes and global warming. This is sheer conjecture totally unsupported by any material science.

12. Observed glacial retreats in certain select areas have been going on for hundreds of years, and show no serious correlation to short-term swings in global temperatures.

13. Greenland is shown to be an island completely surrounded by water, not ice, in maps dating to the 14th century. There is active geothermal activity in the currently “melting” sections of Greenland.

14. The Antarctic Ice cover is currently the largest ever observed by satellite, and periodic ice shelf breakups are normal and correlate well with localized tectonic and geothermal activity along the Antarctic Peninsula.

15. The Global Warming Panic was triggered by an artifact of poor mathematics which has been thoroughly disproved. The panic is being deliberately nurtured by those who stand to gain both financially and politically from perpetuation of the hoax.

16. Scientists who “deny” the hoax are often threatened with loss of funding or even their jobs.

17. The correlation between solar activity and climate is now so strong that solar physicists are now seriously discussing the much greater danger of pending global cooling.

18. Biofuel hysteria is already having a disastrous effect on world food supplies and prices, and current technologies for biofuel production consume more energy than the fuels produce.

19. Global Warming Hysteria is potentially linked to a stress-induced mental disorder.

20. In short, there is no “climate crisis” of any kind at work on our planet.

The summary is followed by a lengthy section, “How do we end the panic?” It devotes almost as much space to the politics of global warming as was spent on the science, but concludes with a milquetoast action call: sending the url of the article around. Allayed as we are against a well-funded movement with major momentum and an incoming sympathetic administration, sending around a url, while a valid and hopefully viral action, is not enough.

Recently 100 scientists signed a letter to Ban ki-Moon asking the UN to stop frittering away needed resources on global warming windmill-tilting. The final signature was that of the president of the World Federation of Scientists. A Senate report lists more than 400 scientists who originally bought into the global warming hysteria but now want to be excused. We need more scientists to stand up, more loudly.

We need a good book to counter Al Gore’s. It needs to be written by someone with a good, high-visibility name and be in the same breezy, easily consumed style. We need to sue to get it included in any curricula that includes Gore’s book, and more broadly, we need to sue to remove global warming propaganda from elementary, junior and high school curricula.

We need to shore up the GOP’s good initial read on global warming that has been weakened by John McCain’s candidacy, and we need to add some Blue Dog Democrats to the mix. If anyone will lead the global war on global warming lunacy, it’s America, and we’ll have to put up roadblocks to the Obama admin’s efforts to fight and fund on behalf of the hysteria. The economy is running in our favor now, and we have to seize the opportunity.

And finally, we have to watch the weather. We’re right and the weather is going to prove us right. As it provides proof, it’s our job as the scribes of the new era to share the proof, and use it to rebut the hysterics.

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T

his just in from the AGI (Al Gore International):

At least 200 narwhal whales in Canada’s Arctic, trapped by winter ice and facing starvation or suffocation, must be culled, officials say.

Hunters from the village of Pond Inlet on Baffin Island discovered the animals trapped near Bylot Island, about 17 kilometres from Pond Inlet, on November 15. …

“A couple of weeks ago, when the ice was still moving, there were quite a few narwhal seen out there in the open water,” Jayko Allooloo, chairman of the Pond Inlet hunters and trappers organisation, told public broadcaster CBC.

“About a week later, they’re stuck.”

Community elders and officials feared the whales would die from a lack of oxygen as the ice grew thicker around them, Pelley explained. (source)

Remember, should these whales die, their deaths will be attributed to climate change, the grand Greenie vision of everything being a catastrophe caused by man’s impertenent existance.

hat-tip: Jim

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