IBD: Five Decades Of Cooling Ahead

Global warming? A Canadian scientist gives us good reason to question the "CO2 causes global warming" mantra. My favourite line is the quote from Groucho Marx: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?"

A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years.

[...]

Qing Bin-Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at Canada's University of Waterloo, is a believer in the value of drawing conclusions from observable data and not from selective data fed into computer models that are based on false assumptions and include "fudge factors."

In a peer-reviewed paper published in the prestigious online journal Physics Reports, Lu, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Newcastle, reports that CFCs, the compounds once widely used as refrigerants, and cosmic rays, which are energy particles originating in outer space, are mostly to blame for climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Global Warming or a lot of hot air?

Video of Sunday Night's special: Global warming or a lot of hot air with host Bret Baier of Fox News. Here's part 1:



Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
Watch these while you can. I suspect that YouTube may pull them.

The new carbon currency

Some insight into how the new environmentalism and carbon trading in particular fits in to the new world order. From a post called "The credit crisis is not over" by Bob Chapman at GlobalResearch.ca

The Chicago Climate Exchange is 10% owned by Goldman’s Hank Paulson and former Treasury Secretary, 10% by Generation Investment Management, owned by Al Gore and 10% by Goldman Sachs. The exchange has been operating for several years.

Generation Investment was founded in 2004 by Al Gore and David Blood of London. GIM’s investment approach is based on the idea that sustainability factors, economic, environmental, and social and governance criteria will drive a company’s returns over the long term.

The focus of GIM is on the key drivers of global change, including climate change and environmental degradation, macroeconomics, poverty and development; water and natural resource scarcity; pandemics and healthcare and demographics, migration and urbanization.

It is our belief that this vehicle could be used in the future for a new carbon currency, as envisioned at Copenhagen by the UN and the World Bank. This is what we think they are shooting for. We know this sounds unusual, but this is where we believe the Illuminists are headed.

Blood and Gore. And Paulson. Well, thanks in no small part to "climategate", these scoundrels are having a bit of trouble getting their new carbon currency to float.
h/t: sda

Fox News: Global Warming or a lot of Hot Air?

Fox News Reporting: Global Warming or a lot of Hot Air?

Trillions at stake, global power on the line & allegations of faked research! What's the truth about climate change? Hosted by Bret Baier.


Fox News channel will take a look at global warming at 9:00 pm tonight. It should be worth tuning in. Expect to see Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts interviewed.

Conflict of Interest?

Say it isn't so! The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write in the Telegraph.

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

Read it all here.

Copenhagen in a nutshell

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Copenhagen and reproduced here in its entirety from SPPI.

The mountains shall labor, and what will be born? A stupid little mouse. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of US citizens who contacted their elected representatives to protest about the unelected, communistic world government with near-infinite powers of taxation, regulation and intervention that was proposed in early drafts of the Copenhagen Treaty, there is no Copenhagen Treaty. There is not even a Copenhagen Agreement. There is a “Copenhagen Accord”.

The White House spinmeisters spun, and their official press release proclaimed, with more than usual fatuity, that President Obama had “salvaged” a deal at Copenhagen in bilateral talks with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, which had established a negotiating bloc.

The plainly-declared common position of these four developing nations had been the one beacon of clarity and common sense at the foggy fortnight of posturing and gibbering in the ghastly Copenhagen conference center.

This is what the Forthright Four asked for:

Point 1. No compulsory limits on carbon emissions.

Point 2. No emissions reductions at all unless the West paid for them.

Point 3. No international monitoring of any emissions reductions not paid for by the West.

Point 4. No use of “global warming” as an excuse to impose protectionist trade restrictions on countries that did not cut their carbon emissions.

After President Obama’s dramatic intervention to save the deal, this is what the Forthright Four got:

Point 1. No compulsory limits on carbon emissions.

Point 2. No emissions reductions at all unless the West paid for them.

Point 3. No international monitoring of any emissions reductions not paid for by the West.

Point 4. No use of “global warming” as an excuse to impose protectionist trade restrictions on countries that did not cut their carbon emissions.

Here, in a nutshell – for fortunately nothing larger is needed – are the main points of the ”Copenhagen Accord”:

Main points: In the Copenhagen Accord, which is operational immediately, the parties“underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time”; emphasize their “strong political will to urgently combat climate change”; recognize “the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 C°” and perhaps below 1.5 C°; aspire to “cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible”; acknowledge that eradicating poverty is the “overriding priority of developing countries”; and accept the need to help vulnerable countries – especially the least developed nations, small-island states, and Africa – to adapt to climate change.

Self-imposed emissions targets: All parties will set for themselves, and comply with, emissions targets for 2020, to be submitted to the secretariat by 31 January 2010. Where developing countries are paid to cut their emissions, their compliance will be monitored. Developed countries will financially support less-developed countries to prevent deforestation. Carbon trading may be used.

New bureaucracies and funding: Under the supervision of a “High-Level Panel”, developed countries will give up to $30 billion for 2010-12, aiming for $100 billion by 2020, in “scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding” to developing countries via a “Copenhagen Green Fund”. A “Technology Mechanism” will “accelerate technology development and transfer” to developing countries.

And that’s it. Expensive, yes. Unnecessary, yes. But earth-shaking? No.

The disconnect between the gaseous halations of various grandstanding “world leaders” about the supposedly urgent need to “Save The Planet Now” and the puny outcome of the Copenhagen Non-Event is dazzling. And it is welcome.

For all the rhetoric – or the flatulence that passes for rhetoric these days – it has begun to dawn on the “leaders” of those nations that subject them to regular recall and re-election that the people no longer believe the mad scientists are telling them the truth. And the people are right.

What is more, after the failure of the mainstream news media to report what the malevolent and unpleasant scientists involved in the Climategate affair had written to one another about those with whom they disagreed, or about what they had done to invent, fabricate, contrive, fiddle, tweak, alter, massage, conceal, hide or even destroy scientific data for the sake of protecting and peddling the pseudo-science in which environment correspondents had so readily and so ignorantly believed, the people no longer trust the media.

And that is bad news for a governing class that has come to develop a far-too-cosy relationship with the mainstream media. It is also very bad news for the mainstream media themselves, which are now rapidly losing circulation and ad revenue as the people rightly desert them for the Internet, where - notwithstanding various expensive attempts by the over-funded international Left to interfere with Google and Yahoo searches - the truth is still available if you know where to look.

Copenhagen was the last-chance saloon not for the planet, which does not need saving, but for the UN’s world-government wannabes. They blew it, big-time, by believing their own overspun propaganda about planetary peril and thinking they had “world leaders” where they wanted them. They overreached themselves, and have paid the price.

Even though next year is an el Nino year accompanied by fast-recovering solar activity, 2010 may not, after all, set a new global-temperature record to overtop that which was set in 1998, the year of the Great el Nino. By the time the next yackfest takes place in Mexico City in December 2010, the steam will have gone out of the “global warming” scare. We should not let our guard down, but Copenhagen is more than the end of the beginning for Green fascism: it is the beginning of the end. The eco-Nazis’ attempt at global bureaucratic coup d’etat has failed, and no such attempt is likely to succeed again. Too many of you are watching.

The hoards of protesters at the gates in Copenhagen

Via Peter Foster in the National Post on James Hansen, Maurice Strong, the IPCC and the "mob rule" strategy employed by global warm-mongers.

Like Mr. Gore, Mr. Hansen recommends direct action. In his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren, he writes: "As in other struggles for justice against powerful forces, it may be necessary to take to the streets to draw attention to injustice. Civil resistance may be our best hope. It is crucial for all of us, especially young people, to get involved. This will be the most urgent fight of our lives."

[...]

Mr. Strong himself hasn't been so prominent since the Iraqi oil-for-food fiasco, but he is involved in something called The Global Observatory, GO, an organization designed to act as "a catalyst, bridging the gap between those responsible for making the decisions at [Copenhagen] and the public."

GO was set up by Jose Maria Figueres, a former President of Costa Rica. Exactly what Mr. Figueres has in mind when he talks about "bringing the public into negotiations" is clear from a clip available on YouTube, in which he frankly admits that the key to getting the "right" decisions is using NGOs to assemble mobs to pressure politicians. Mr. Figueres says that he's not willing to leave the future of his children in the hands of the 1,500 negotiators at Copenhagen, so his plan was to set up a "tent" at the meeting in which there would be scientific experts (He mentions Mr. Hansen). If such scientists declared that, say, Costa Rica was "backtracking," then GO would get on the phone to select NGOs, who could have a mob outside the presidential palace in 45 minutes.

Be sure to watch the video at the link above. You'll better understand how the hoards of protesters wound up at the gates in Copenhagen.

The IPCC meets Lord Moncton

Lord Monckton reports on the Copenhagen presentation by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC.

Pachauri was just a couple of seats away, so I gave him a letter from me and Senator Fielding of Australia, pointing out that the headline graph in the IPCC’s 2007 report, purporting to show that the rate of warming over the past 150 years had itself accelerated, was fraudulent.

Would he use the bogus graph in his lecture? I had seen him do so when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales. I watched and waited.

Sure enough, he used the bogus graph. I decided to wait until he had finished, and ask a question then.

Pachauri then produced the now wearisome list of lies, fibs, fabrications and exaggerations that comprise the entire case for alarm about “global warming”. He delivered it in a tired, unenthusiastic voice, knowing that a growing majority of the world’s peoples – particularly in those countries where comment is free – no longer believe a word the IPCC says.

I would score this one Moncton 18, IPCC 0. Read the whole thing at Watts Up With That?

It's not obvious what it's doing and why it's doing it

What you won't see reported in the Canadian media. A professional programmer is interviewed by the BBC on the Climategate computer code.



h/t: Kate.

The Hockey Stick over time

The IPCC has made much of Professor Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph. It's been a staple of the warm-mongers. Well, I invite you to take a look at this short video produced by Doc over at the Autopsy.



This kinda puts thing into perspective. And even if Mann's hockey stick graph was was true, I think it shows that we have more to worry about from cooling than we do from warming.

h/t to Anthony and Kate.

Update: this animation is from Watts Up With That? and includes a comparison to Mann's hockey stick.

Hide the decline

Via David Rose at the Daily Mail:

The claim was both simple and terrifying: that temperatures on planet Earth are now ‘likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years’.

As its authors from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) must have expected, it made headlines around the world.

Yet some of the scientists who helped to draft it, The Mail on Sunday can reveal, harboured uncomfortable doubts.

But when the ‘warmest for 1,300 years’ claim was published in 2007 in the IPCC’s fourth report, the doubters kept silent.

It is only now that their concerns have started to emerge from the thousands of pages of ‘Warmergate’ emails leaked last month from the CRU’s computers, along with references to performing a ‘trick’ to ‘hide’ temperature decline and instructions to resist all efforts by the CRU’s critics to use the Freedom of Information Act to check the unit’s data and conclusions.

Which reminds me of that old adage that all that's required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Here, courtesy of the Daily Mail, is a closer look at the IPCC's hockey stick chart and how the green line mysteriously "disappears" just as it's about to show a sharp decline.

Be sure to read the whole article by David Rose. It's one of the best investigative reports on climategate to appear in mainstream media.

h/t: ClimateAudit

Climategate

http://www.nocapandtrade.com/climategate/

Lawrence Solomon

In truth, if you throw CRU out, you’ve eviscerated the findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, the most recent and most definite opus from the UN. This is the report, received with universal acclaim in 2007, which scarily stated: “The warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

The argument over global warming requires evidence that the globe is warming in dangerous ways. This evidence the IPCC presents forcefully in its third chapter on surface and atmospheric warming, which rests overwhelmingly on the official global temperature record of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization, called the HADCRUT3 temperature dataset.

And who produced the HADCRUT3 dataset for the World Meteorological Organization? The Hadley Centre of the UK government’s meteorological office (the HAD of HADCRUT3) and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (the CRU).

Read more...

Climate petition

Here is a link to a petition which asks Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to establish a Royal Commission to determine the cause and extent of global warming. Such a commission would go a long way to bring transparency to issues related to climate change.

You may want to consider signing. http://www.gopetition.com/online/32485.html

The Scientists Involved in Deliberately Deceiving the World on Climate

Dr. Tim Ball at Canada Free Press:

Tentacles of Climategate will reach far as information is divulged. People will rush to get on or off the bandwagon depending on their involvement. As a first hand observer, I must outline the history, identify the people involved and provide context.

more...

Update:


Got it from http://www.bokbluster.com/

Letter to PM Stephen Harper re: Climategate

Although I have not been posting here lately, I have been following the "Climategate" events keenly over the past week. Rather than attempt to recap all the breaking news that has been so well covered by others like Anthony Watts and Kate McMillan, I thought I would just share with you this letter that I just sent off to Stephen Harper, Canada's Prime Minister.

You can send him your own message at pm@pm.gc.ca

November 29, 2009

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa K1A 0A2

Dear Mr. Harper;

Like many Canadians, I have been reading with great interest about a recent event, which has become known as "Climategate". This is nothing less than a revelation which will fundamentally change our accepted view of the science of climate change.

I am sure that you are aware of Climategate, because it has been the hottest news story of the past week. It began with the leaking (or alleged hacking) of hundreds of emails between prominent scientists at the Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, one of the foremost sources for the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their counterparts. The emails released are damning and indicate that there were conscious efforts amongst a number of the world's leading scientists to manipulate the data, hide their source data - possibly even destroy it - and to discredit their opposition and critics. In one example, the scientists refer to using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures which cannot be explained by the global warming theory. In others, they discuss ways to avoid complying with Freedom of Information requests and the deletion of emails.

Also leaked along with the emails was a file named HARRY_READ_ME.TXT which contains the data, the code and the calculations used to produce the results along with comments from the programmers. Experts analyzing this file are quickly concluding that there are enormous gaps in the base data and that it was commonly "manipulated" to give the desired result.

These are not the methods of reputable scientists. These are the methods of scoundrels. There is understandable outrage in the scientific community. Climate science as we know it - as presented to us by the IPCC - turns out to be a complete and total fraud.

I am disgusted that the mainstream media in Canada have done their best to ignore the story of Climategate. But it is not going to go away. Fortunately, Climategate is being covered by other reputable sources easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection of a television that receives Fox News. The Telegraph in the UK has described Climategate as "the worst scientific scandal of our generation". I think they understate it.

I have long been skeptical about the accepted "consensus" of climate change science and the whole theory of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. I am no scientist, but I have long been reading the opinions of those who are, including Canadians like Steve McIntyre, Dr. Ross McKittrick, Tom Harris and Dr. Timothy Ball, one of Canada's most senior climatologists. Lawrence Solomon at the National Post has published an excellent series called "The Deniers" which should be read by anyone who wants to understand the truth about climate change.

In the United States Senate, Senator James Inhofe has initiated an investigation into Climategate. Penn State University has announced an investigation of Michael Mann, director of their Earth Sciences Centre and author of the discredited "hockey stick" graph. The University of East Anglia is, of course conducting its own investigation. In Australia, a number of MPs have resigned their portfolios in opposition to a proposes Energy (carbon) Trading Scheme.

You were once quoted as saying, "Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth producing countries". I believe that quote was essentially correct then and still today. Clearly the goal is redistribution of wealth on a world scale. The UN, the IPCC and these now discredited scientists have attempted to perpetrate the greatest fraud in history on the world. If successful, it could cost the world trillions of dollars. These are dollars that will be taken out of our economy. For no good reason. More importantly, these are dollars that could be otherwise spent fighting real pollution or returned to us to make all of our lives better.

But the UN and the IPCC are desperately trying to push forward with their scheme and develop a new global agreement on climate change to succeed Kyoto. Any such agreement would certainly be punishingly costly for Canada. Now that the science underlying the IPCC reports has been exposed as "junk science" at best and a fraud at worst, I urge you to keep Canada out of any foolishness such as a "Kyoto II" treaty or any form of "cap and tax" legislation. Thank you.

Your sincerely,

Illegal curve?

Looks like an illegitimate the hockey stick has been exposed. But will it receive anything more an a 2 minute minor penalty?

(Big) Government is not the solution to the problem...

(Big) government IS the problem. I know, I'm paraphrasing the greatest President of our lifetimes. These videos illustrate that point. From where else, BigGovernment.com

Big Brother Obama is watching....

...your computer. Cars.gov

Health Care costs

"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care?"

Got it here.

Health Care

Ball: Controlling the (Over) Population in More Ways Than One

I have not had much time to blog recently. But this article by Dr. Tim Ball caught my eye at Canada Free Press today.

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.

Read the whole thing.

Global cooling marches on

Global cooling is chilling the summer of 2009 says Deroy Murdock at National Review Online. Let the cold times roll.

As cap-and-trade advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called “global warming,” Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth’s temperatures continue a chilling trend that began eleven years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream, and push their pet theory — just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Consider how the globe cooled last month:

June in Manhattan averaged 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees below normal — the coldest average since 1958. The National Weather Service stated on July 1: “The last time that Central Park hit 85 in May . . . but not in June was back in 1903.”

In Phoenix, June’s high temperatures were below 100 degrees for 15 days straight, the first such June since 1913. In California’s desert, Yucca Valley’s June average was 83.5, 8.5 degrees below normal. Not far away, downtown Los Angeles averaged 74.5 degrees, five below normal.

There's more at the link above.

But of course, you wouldn't know this from the main stream media who, despite the evidence in front of our faces, would like us to believe the earth is heating up at an unprecedented rate and the only solution is more big government interference in the form of a "Cap & Tax" on carbon emissions.

the great climate change con trick

Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at Adelaide University, has recently published the landmark book Heaven And Earth, which may change forever the way we think about climate change. Via the Spectator.CO.UK

‘The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology,’ says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority. Where fellow sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg or Lord Lawson of Blaby are prepared cautiously to endorse the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) more modest predictions, Plimer will cede no ground whatsoever. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, he argues, is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history.

h/t: ICECAP

Update: UN IPCC Scientist Says Global Warming Big Deception

"Warming fears are the worst scientific scandal in history...When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist

"It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming." - U.S. Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

Newsmax: Congress badly misinformed about Global Warming

An interview with William Happer, physics professor at Princeton University:

Heartland Institute ads

On June 16, 17, and 18, The Heartland Institute is running three full-page ads in the Washington Post calling for an open debate over the science of global warming.

We are placing these ads because the mainstream media refuse to report the views of many scientists – by some accounts, most scientists – who believe global warming is not a crisis. The media also fail to accurately report the enormous cost to workers and consumers of legislation that would limit greenhouse gas emissions and the extensive public opposition to “cap and tax” legislation.

Waxman-Markey bill includes a cap on job losses

Via Investors.com

Democrats failed to create jobs with their unnecessary, pork-laden stimulus bill. Now they want to kill even more of them with an equally unnecessary global warming bill.

The party that cares so much about jobs for "working families" sure has a funny way of saving them.

Amid pre-summer frosts and hailstorms, the White House this week released a sky-is-falling report on global warming that outdoes even Al Gore in predicting doomsday scenarios.

"Heat waves will become more frequent and intense," the report warns, unleashing an apocalypse of "major insect outbreaks" and herbicide-resistant, garden-choking ... "weeds" (horrors!).

"Heat waves" in the Midwest and "extreme heat" in the Northeast will lead to "increases in heat-related deaths."

Really? Tell that to berry farmers in Michigan, whose crops have been delayed by a cold snap for the second spring in a row.

Or New Englanders, who have seen temperatures drop four degrees below normal.

It's all a set-up for a painful government fix. The public duly alarmed, the White House embraces a House bill to control industrial carbon emissions through a punishing cap-and-trade scheme.

The Democrats' energy bill would have the effect of de-industrializing America and cost millions of jobs — something its authors, Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, indirectly acknowledge. Buried in the fine print of their jobs-killing bill is a provision to provide relief against massive dislocations.

"The Democrats' bill has an unemployment provision that provides 70% of your job benefit for at least three years — in addition to any other unemployment benefits — if you lose your job because of that bill," Rep. Joe Barton, D-Texas, said. "They, at least tacitly, recognize that their bill is going to cost millions and millions of jobs."

In other words, the cap on emissions requires a cap on job losses.

Pielke: Systematic Misrepresentation of the Science of Disasters and Climate Change

From Roger J. Pielke Jr.'s blog:

This post summarizes and reviews the systematic misrepresentation of the science of disasters and climate change in major science assessments, partly for my own purposes, but also to explain that there is a pattern of behavior taking place in this community that should be of concern to anyone who cares about the integrity of science, regardless of their position on climate policies and politics.

What I document below includes the following:

1. Reliance on non-peer reviewed, unsupportable studies rather than the relevant peer reviewed literature.
2. Reliance on and featuring non-peer reviewed work conducted by the authors of the assessment reports.
3. Repeated reliance on a small number of secondary of tertiary sources, repeatedly cited such that intellectual provenance is lost.

The questions that I have are, does anyone in the mainstream scientific or media communities actually care? Or is climate change politics so important that we cannot simultaneously worry about standards of scientific integrity?

Read the whole thing.

Chicago: June's chill is one for the records

Via the WGN Weather Center Blog

The cloudy, chilly and rainy open to June here has been the talk of the town. So far this June is running more than 12 degrees cooler than last year, and the clouds, rain and chilly lake winds have been persistent. The average temperature at O'Hare International Airport through Friday has been only 59.5 degrees: nearly 7 degrees below normal and the coldest since records there began 50 years ago.

More bad weather is on the way Saturday with a cold rain expected to linger through the bulk of the morning. Rainfall could be heavy -- especially north of the city, which would be a reversal of Thursday's deluge that targeted the southern suburbs.

Canada frosts the most widespread in recent memory

More evidence of global cooling via Reuters, Tue Jun 9, 2009 1:54pm EDT:

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - The multiple frosts that have blanketed Western Canada in the last week are the most widespread in the top canola-growing province of Saskatchewan in at least five years, the Canola Council of Canada said on Tuesday.

and...

In Manitoba, the frost is the worst in memory for its frequency and area covered, said Derwyn Hammond, the province's senior agronomy specialist for the Canola Council.

Despite what you might hear from the global warming alarmists, 2009 is shaping up to be one of the coolest years in quite a while. More from Joe Bastardi's European blog. Note that Bastardi's previous forecast has now been "updated" at Accuweather but has been preserved for posterity by Anthony Watt.

According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the northern Plains into the Northeast will have a “year without a summer.” The jet stream, which is suppressed abnormally south this spring, is also suppressing the number of thunderstorms that can form.

Yikes indeed!

June 6th, 1944

Sign of the day

Burger King:

Recession woes for "not self-sustaining" Crown Corps?

Hey, maybe every cloud really does have a silver lining.

The wonders of carbon

Beyond all this alarmism about global warming or ocean acidification, we need to see that on a deeper level it is a debate about carbon, and when we dig into that level of the debate we will finally see that behind the demonization of carbon and CO2, it is all about an attack on humanity itself.

Global warming alarmism is not a science, but a religio/political movement. This paper will show why it is a dangerous totalitarian ideology and a more serious threat to human freedom than Communism or Nazism. It is also like a bad joke, because carbon just happens to be the most wonderful of all the elements in the periodic table because of its ability to make so many organic compounds that are fundamental to the formation of life.

Read The Vindication of Carbon by Robert D. Brinsmead.

Waxman-Markey hot air

"Are you asking me?", Rep. Henry Waxman admits that he hasn't read the massive climate change bill that he's pushing through Congress.



Rep. Waxman says he "trusts the scientists". Of course, he's actually referring to the 51 government appointed authors of the IPCC "summary for policy makers", not the 650 international scientists who dissent over Man-Made Global Warming claims and certainly not the 32,000 scientists who last year went on the record as being opposed to the IPCC's claims of human induced global warming. No, not those scientists.

Then there's the video below from the Heritage Foundation shows how the global warming tax will kill jobs and the economy while doing nothing for the environment.

Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax: The cap-and-trade tax proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) is disguised as environmental legislation when it would have little impact on global temperatures. In fact, it is a massive energy tax that promises soaring household energy bills, major job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.

Climate Change "consensus"

Mark W. Hendrickson writes about the myth of climate change consensus at Townhall.com

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely regarded in the media as the ultimate authority on climate change.

[...]

Clearly, the IPCC does not speak as one voice when leading scientists on its panel contradict its official position. The solution to this apparent riddle lies in the structure of the IPCC itself. What the media report are the policymakers’ summaries, not the far lengthier reports prepared by scientists. The policymakers’ summaries are produced by a committee of 51 government appointees, many of whom are not scientists.

The policymakers’ summaries are presented as the “consensus” of 2,500 scientists who have contributed input to the IPCC’s scientific reports. “Consensus” does NOT mean that all of the scientists endorse the policymakers’ summaries. In fact, some of the 2,500 scientists have resigned in protest against those summaries. Other contributing scientists, such as the individuals quoted above, publicly contradict the assertions of the policymakers’ summaries.

The sponsors of the IPCC, the United Nations, and liberal American politicians all share the goal of reducing Americans’ wealth by capping our consumption of energy with a binding international climate change treaty. They are willing to resort to scientific fraud to further their goal.

Well worth reading the whole thing (link above).

Economic Strangulation

President Obama continues to implement the most radical socialist agenda in American history. He has already nationalized large segments of the banking, insurance and automobile industries, while managing to quadruple the national deficit with his record government spending spree. All this under the guise of "economic stimulus" intended to kick start the struggling economy.

The left's "green" agenda will soon be bringing a "cap & trade" carbon tax to a neighbourhood near you. Just what the economy needs - more taxes and higher energy costs.

But the One has also managed to put a stranglehold on America's ability to free itself of it's energy dependence on foreign oil, says Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson:

The Green Left must be thrilled with the new Obama/Pelosi/Reid (OPR) troika in charge of the federal government. Three times already, the troika has blocked the development of domestic oil resources.

During his first week in office, President Obama rescinded his predecessor’s executive order permitting drilling on the continental shelf and in the Green River Formation. Both areas contain abundant oil—especially Green River (under Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah), which has recoverable shale-oil reserves three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Several weeks later, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar unilaterally canceled 77 oil and gas leases in Utah, on the grounds that (I kid you not) someone might catch a glimpse of temporary drilling equipment from the national park that sits more than a mile away.

[...]

In addition to increasing American dependence on foreign oil by thwarting such domestic development, the OPR/green alliance desires the imposition of expensive cap-and-trade rules to discourage utilities from using coal, which currently provides nearly half of America’s electricity.

Read the rest at FrontPage Magazine.

Corcoran: Capped, traded and scammed by fake markets

Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post:

Not that we needed proof that the ideology of market mechanisms and carbon taxes as a cure to environmental problems is a total sham. We now have enough evidence to convict the perpetrators for first degree economic policy fraud. The evidence mounts around the world, but now mostly in the United States of America, where President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are on the brink of burying real markets in energy and automobiles under the biggest command-and-control economic experiments since the great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

RTWT.

AGW Alarmists "out in the cold"

So sayeth Andrew Bolt in Australia's Herald Sun:

IT'S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.

And that's just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours - and all over our global warming alarmists.

Time's up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.

Doubt it? Then here's a test.

Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your "proofs" are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.

And if your "proofs" indeed turn out to be false, don't get angry with me.

Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?

So let's see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.

Be sure to check out Andrew's list of top 10 myths about global warming.

h/t: Watts Up With That?

Dem admits Cap & Trade is a Big Tax

"Cap and Trade is a tax... a great big one."



And that means BIG GOVERNMENT is coming to a neighbourhood near you. h/t FoxNation.

The nationalization of General Motors

Unthinkable? Not really.

GM’s restructuring plan would lower its debt by $44bn to an estimated $23bn, leaving the government and a healthcare trust managed by the United Auto Workers union with 89 per cent of the equity.

That sounds a lot like socialism to this old dog. Problem is, most (young) folk these days don't even understand what socialism is or what an abject failure it has been where ever and when ever it has been implemented.

Methinks Atlas just shrugged.

Don't tread on me, pirates.

Ted Nugent says,

"Keep your little terrorist dinghy at home, boys, or I will turn you into shark food".

Captain Nuge reporting for duty. I think he means it.

Related.

Rasmussen: Only 34% Now Blame Humans for Global Warming

Encouraging news from Rasmussen.

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.

These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.

Maybe it's because of reports like this.

CNN "reporter" confronted by Tea Partiers

Allahpundit has an update on that CNN "reporter" who described yesterday's Tea Party protests as "anti-government" and "anti-CNN" as if those two terms were one and the same.

A seamless conclusion to the smear job heard ’round the world, thanks to some amazingly fortuitous timing by Founding Bloggers. On a day when the grassroots came out to protest the establishment, it’s fitting that a small indie outfit like FB would end up putting the screws to CNN this way.

More video at Hot Air.

Update: Chicago wasn't the only place where CNN got their butts kicked yesterday.

Upperdate: Oops, looks like CNN has pressured YouTube to remove the above video. But you can still see it because the one below still works (for now).

DeWeese on radical environmental policy

Tom Deweese the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and is the President of the American Policy Center, a grassroots, activist think tank headquartered in Warrenton, Virginia. These are excerpts from a speech he delivered in Kalispell, Montana and Spokane, Washington to County Republican Lincoln Day dinners in late March. It's called The Wrenching Transformation of America and was reported by Canada Free Press.

I believe the American people, and their every action, are being ruled, regulated, restricted, licensed, registered, directed, checked, inspected, measured, numbered, counted, rated, stamped, censured, authorized, admonished, refused, prevented, drilled, indoctrinated, monopolized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed, disarmed, dishonored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point of suffocation and desperation.

America is drowning in a sea of rules and regulations, particularly under the guise of “saving the environment.”

(...)

Tonight, I’m going to try to give you at least a peek at the all-encompassing, gut wrenching national transformation that we face—and, hopefully, help to lift the veil of confusion.

To put things in perspective, here are some questions every American should ask their elected officials – especially those supporting “climate change” legislation.

If it is proven that climate change is not man-made, but natural, will you be relieved and excited to know that man is off the hook?

We’ve been terrorized into accepting that human society was on the brink of extinction because of man-made global warming. We’ve been warned that, unless we take drastic action to reverse it – then islands will disappear, whole cities will be destroyed and polar bears will drown.

So, if it’s not true, will you now help to remove all of the draconian regulations passed during the global warming hysteria? Will you help to restore our Republic with common sense and sound economics?

Their answers to these questions should be very illuminating as to the true agenda they seek to impose.

I will let you read the rest at Canada Free Press.

Glenn Beck at the Alamo

Tea Party Day, April 15, 2009. Glenn Beck criticizes runaway government spending by both Democrats and Republicans.



Fox News provided extensive coverage of today's Tea Party events - and rightly so because of the significant story that they represent. Other news networks tried to downplay the significance of them, like this CNN reporter who portrayed them as "anti-government" and "anti-CNN". Hmmm, perhaps they don't see the difference between the two.


Poor thing, after she failed to interrupt this guy who she tried to interview/argue with, she had to cut off her report because she couldn't hear herself think with the noisy crowd behind her.

Update: Michelle says, "I just have one word: Wow. More than 800 tea parties across the country."

It's a party!

A National Tea Party! Here's just some of the events happening today as the "silent majority" mobilizes to protest high taxes and out of control government spending.

Washington: Olympia: The national Tax Day Tea Party brought the largest rally of the year to the Washington Capitol. The State Patrol estimates the noon crowd at more than 5,000. There are a number of signs in the crowd: “Socialism never succeeds,” “Nazis were socialists too,” and “I am not your ATM.”

Florida: Ocala: Crowd estimated at 1,000 - Many in attendance waved “Don’t Tread on Me” flags or signs that read messages like “Enough is Enough,” “Encourage capitalism, not socialism,” and “Let them eat pork.”

Wisconsin: Madison: Over 5,000 protest - the Democrats in charge don’t care about the concerns of taxpayers - they just want people to “pay up and shut up.”

South Dakota: Sioux Falls: 3,000 protest - The re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party carried a modern-day twist with boxes labeled “Tarp,” “Bailout” and “`Higher taxes.” The crowd chanted “`Dump that tea” as two men in colonist garb threw the boxes out of a replica of a sailboat from the nation’s earliest days.

Tennessee: Knoxville: Ampitheater overflows with 1,200 - Another sign said: “We the people, not we the GOVERNMENT” “Impeach them all - ASAP” “Attention Washington: You have run out of our money”

Click the link above for more. Or check out TeaPartyDay.com

Meanwhile, at the Washington Post Grover Norquist gives credit where credit is due:

The rallies were organized by three folks. Obama, Reid and Pelosi. The massive stimulus bill (NB: Stimulus is a french word for 'spending') has angered and scared a great number of Americans.

Just how many Tea Parties are there today? Click here for an incredible map.

Be sure to check in with Glenn Reynolds and Kate at SDA and of course Michelle is all over this - with a nice history of this grass roots movement too.

Pajamas Media has live video coverage here.

And don't forget about the mainstream media. Oops, it looks like Fox News has the scoop on the rest of the MSM. How odd! Here's links to Sean Hannity outside the CNN headquarters in Atlanta and Glenn Beck, who's at the Alamo.

Let's hope the folks in Washington are paying attention.

Update: Ted Nugent just played the national anthem at the Tea Party at the Alamo. It was carried live on Fox. Awesome. Glenn Beck is interviewing Pen Jillette right now.

The green economy takes it's toll

...on Al Gore.

Heaven and Earth

An Australian's passion for global warming cools in the face of evidence:

Former believer Paul Sheehan, in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, develops a new respect for informed dissent

WHAT I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. The subject of this column is a book entitled Heaven and Earth, written by one of Australia's foremost earth scientists, Ian Plimer.

Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive".

Plimer does not dispute the dramatic flux of climate change but he fundamentally disputes most of the assumptions and projections being made about the current causes, mostly led by atmospheric scientists.

"To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science."

(He argues that) the hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archeology and geology.

"But evidence no longer matters. And any contrary work published in peer-reviewed journals is just ignored. We are told that the science on human-induced global warming is settled. Yet the claim by some scientists that the threat of human-induced global warming is 90 per cent certain (or even 99 per cent) is a figure of speech. It has no mathematical or evidential basis."

Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.

Heaven and Earth

Doom and Gloom from Copenhagen

The following video was produced by CO2 Science:

"At a recent meeting of climate alarmists in Copenhagen, Denmark, one of the event's co-chairs -- Katherine Richardson -- stated that "the worst-case IPCC projections, or even worse, are being realized." According to the report of the meeting published in Science, she said that "emissions are soaring, projections of sea level rise are higher than expected, and climate impacts around the world are appearing with increasing frequency." These are powerful headline-grabbing contentions. But are they correct?

H/t to Icecap, where Dr. Brian R. Prattwrites:

Global Warming: An Alternative View

By Brian R. Pratt, P.Geo., Ph.D.

FACT AND FICTION

Even though I consider myself a dedicated environmentalist I cannot accept the claims of anthropogenic - human caused - global warming. My research involves deducing climate back in what we call ‘Deep Time’ - geological eras of millions and billions of years ago - so I think I have enough background to understand the evidence. I know that the factors controlling climate work as an extremely complex, integrated system that cannot be resolved by debate and exchange of opinion.

Therefore the suspicions of any scientist should be aroused by glib assertions like “the science is settled” or “there is a consensus,” because this is not how scientists and engineers operate. Al Gore’s movie and books are so appallingly riddled with mistakes and outlandish exaggerations that they would be laughable if they weren’t taken so seriously by so many. Legislators have even passed laws declaring CO2 to be a pollutant, seemingly unaware of photosynthesis, respiration and biodegradation. Should I feel guilty that my beer gave off CO2 during fermentation and when I opened it? I need something to cry into when I hear of the measures planned to reduce “carbon emissions”, because of the threat these pose to our already economically fragile society.

Here are the facts, as I understand them: solar heat varies cyclically at different frequencies, from the decades to the hundreds of thousands of years. Atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature are linked, but rather than the former driving the latter, it is the other way around and there is a nearly thousand-year lag in the response. The oceans are the great sink for CO2.

Atmospheric CO2 concentration is not uniform around the globe and regional variations are tied to sea-surface temperature because CO2 dissolves in colder sea water while it degasses from warmer sea water. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, yes, but it absorbs only a very small portion of the infrared spectrum and its capacity to do so declines exponentially with concentration. It’s a fact of physics that the CO2 molecule radiates almost none of the heat it can absorb. Moreover, it is such a trace gas that this effect is negligible, and even less so at the low pressures and cold temperatures high in the atmosphere.

All of this explains why, when CO2 concentration is thought to have been much higher in Deep Time such as during the Paleozoic, the surface of the globe did not overheat and the polar regions were still cold.Water vapour is what insulates the Earth and CO2 concentration has nothing to do with cloud generation. Why, then, have anthropogenic global warming promoters seized upon CO2 as the culprit?

BEYOND THE SCIENCE

Climate change has now become so highly politicized that one wonders whom or what to trust. It turns out that the legitimate science in the successive UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports was laundered to such a degree by a very small and select group of experts and bureaucrats charged with preparing the “summaries for policymakers” that they are often contradictory - indeed, some of the scientific contributors have since distanced themselves from these reports.

There has grown a whole industry of taxpayer-funded climate modellers whose equations can�t reproduce last week’s weather let alone past climate change at all, but whose crystal balls universally forecast impending disaster (and of course the urgent need for more research money). Why haven’t physicists pointed out the basic mistakes in the science? Read more here.

The Copenhagen Cabal: Doom and gloom pervaded an international meeting of climate alarmists in this famed city. Click on the image below (or larger image here) to watch a CO2 Science produced video presentation of this editorial.

Foster: An Inconvenient Film

Peter Foster via the National Post:

Al Gore is about to feature in a new movie, but he’s not going to like it very much. Titled Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria, the film presents a devastating account of the shaky foundations and hefty price of Mr. Gore’s brand of self-interested and hypocritical alarmism.

Created by the Irish film making duo of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney — who made another excellent documentary about the “dark side of environmentalism” called Mine Your Own Business — Not Evil provides the perfect rebuttal to Mr. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Despite being chock-a-block with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, Mr. Gore’s movie has frightened schoolchildren all over the world, driven the public policy debate, and garnered both an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize for its star.

Not Evil — which is due to be released later this year — will appear at a crucial time. The world’s crisis-beset nations are due to meet in Copenhagen in November to concoct a new policy straitjacket to succeed the meddlesome but utterly failed Kyoto Accord. If global warming's U.N.-based ringmasters have their way, this will lead to a slashing of industrial production in developed countries and to a huge extension of boondoggle redistributionist schemes to fund “green” technologies in developing countries.

Higher taxes, closed factories. Otherwise known as the "green" economy.
More about Not Evil Just Wrong here.



Update: Thanks to Magnus in the comments, here is another video with Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney being interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Climate Depot

Marc Morano no longer works for Senator James Inhofe. But Morano has expanded his campaign to bring reality to the climate change debate with his new website.

Bookmark it now.

NASA links arctic ice melt to human activity

But not because of those those CO2 emissions that the alarmists like the Goreacle and kooky Suzuki would have you believe. Noooo. This study reaches a rather surprising conclusion.

New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain.

Dr Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s - particularly in the Arctic - may have resulted from changes in levels of solid "aerosol" particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2.

Shindell's research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.

Meanwhile, levels of black-carbon aerosols (soot, in other words) have been rising, largely driven by greater industrialisation in Asia. Soot, rather than reflecting heat as sulphates do, traps solar energy in the atmosphere and warms things up.

More info at the NASA website.

h/t: Captain Ed.

Obama to save the planet

with Geoengineering:

WASHINGTON – The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."

You can't make this stuff up. The lunatics are now officially in charge of the asylum - (no disrespect to lunatics intended).

So how do you like our green world?

Those who have been lobbying for a "green economy" no longer need to look very far to see an example of what they wish for.

We are now experiencing it first hand.

The always eloquent (and it would seem, the lone voice of sanity at our state owned broadcaster) Rex Murphy looks at our current economic situation and asks,

"Is there no light amid all this gloom?"

Well, if you are among the great tribe of global warming catastrophists, surely there is. If the industrial economies of the world are in a forced slowdown, if auto companies - the manufacturers of those demonic gas-guzzling SUVs - are facing ruin, if long-standing business are cutting their work forces by 20 per cent and 30 per cent and 40 per cent, if people are buying less and, consequently, business is making less, then surely the entire world's carbon emissions are, per necessitatem, going down. The world is burning less oil, because the world is doing less.

(...)

Thus, though it may be cruel and ironic, what the preachments of Al Gore and David Suzuki have failed to achieve, the crisis of the world's banking systems and consequent recession will accomplish.

All this should come as no surprise. At least not to those of us who have been following the radical environmental movement and the global warming fear mongers. After all, it's not like they've kept their plans a secret:

From an interview with Council of the World Economic Forum co-chairman Maurice Strong, in which he outlines the plot of a novel "he would love to compose if only he could write":

"Each year, [Strong] explains as background to... the novel's plot, the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over 1,000 CEO's, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set economic agendas for the year ahead. With this as a setting, he then says: 'What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? ...In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?'

"'This group of world leaders,' he continues, 'forms a secret society to bring about an economic collapse. It's February. They're all at Davos. These aren't terrorists. They're world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world's commodities and stock markets. They've engineered, using their access to stock markets and computers and gold supplies, a panic. Then, they prevent the world's stock markets from closing. They jam the gears. They hire mercenaries who hold the rest of the world leaders at Davos as hostage. The markets can't close...' This is Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it. 'I probably shouldn't be saying things like this.'"

It's not unfolding exactly the way that Chairman Mo envisioned it back in 1998.
But it's way too similar.

Green energy destroys 2 jobs for every 1 created, study finds

via Bloomberg:

Job Losses From Obama Green Stimulus Foreseen in Spanish Study

By Gianluca Baratti

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.

For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal contains about $20 billion in tax incentives for clean-energy programs. In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels.

The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power - - which are charged to consumers in their bills -- translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.

“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.

h/t: FoxNation

The automakers need customers, not bailouts

While Obama gleefully spends a trillion or so dollars in a futile attempt to spend the US out of recession, here's surprising news about one country doing something sensible.

China February Auto Sales Rise 25% After Tax Cuts

The Commies are acting like capitalists and our Capitalist leaders are spending like commies. Tell me how screwed up the world is right now!

The Failure of Obamanomics

Obama Fiddles While Wall Street Burns by Jed Babbin

But President Obama -- having first claimed that only government can solve the economic problems -- is failing to provide any solutions Wall Street can believe in.

RTWT.

McClintock: An Inconvenient Question

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York on the contradictions of green policies:



Via Reason.com

Goldenberg: AGW = Al Gore Warming

NOAA Meteorologist Claims 'Gross, Blatant Censorship' for Speaking Out Against Climate Change Alarmism

Stanley Goldenberg of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division tells ICCC audience global warming has no measurable impact on hurricane activity.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
3/9/2009 8:06:09 PM

You often hear scientists who promote the theory of man-made global warming allege they are victims of censorship. But when it is the other way around – that scientists who dispute that claim are victims of the same thing, you never hear a peep.

That’s what Stanley Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) Hurricane Research Division, told an audience at the The Heartland Institute’s 2009 International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in New York on March 9. Voices that counter global warming alarmism are often subject to censorship, he said.

“The debate, as you also know, is masked by media censorship, bias and distortion,” Goldenberg said. “I’m interviewed quite bit on many, many levels and thankfully most of our interviews are benign. They’re trying to get out to the public.”



Goldenberg explained that as a skeptic of the anthropogenic global warming theory, he had firsthand experience, and he challenged the media to give a positive spin to the ICCC event.

“[I]’ve seen gross, gross blatant censorship,” Goldenberg said. “If you’re here from the media I’d be glad to argue with you from firsthand experience. I challenge anybody from a mainstream media source to take or print a positive report on this conference. They won’t get it past the editor. If they do, miracles do happen.”

Goldenberg is known for his research on how hurricane activity variability can be influenced on anything from intraseasonal to multi-decadal time scales. He disputes the theory hurricanes are significantly impacted by global warming. And he claimed his colleagues at other hurricane research institutions dispute it as well.

“Not a single, to my knowledge – not a single scientist at the National Hurricane Center, the Hurricane Research Division, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center – I’m trying to find out about the Central Pacific Hurricane Center – believe that hurricanes – numbers, activity – that there’s any measurable impact from any so-called global warming.”

Goldenberg explained there were differences between the terms anthropogenic global warming (AGW), referred to as “Al Gore warming” and global warming or climate change when used. He also alluded to the media’s willingness to use natural catastrophe to propagate this alarmism.

“Just because climate change has happened doesn’t mean AGW,” Goldenberg said. “Just because weather disasters happen doesn’t mean AGW. And an inconvenient truth that most of the media are speaking of, CAGW – that’s very important. They’re not just talking about AGW, but catastrophic [anthropogenic global warming]. If we just have a little bit of warming from manmade causes, nobody really cares, but they’re talking about it’s going to be catastrophic.”

A recent Business & Media Institute analysis discovered global warming alarmists often link weather phenomena like tornadoes, hurricanes, ice melt, droughts and wildfires with global warming and the media embrace the stories. However, when wintry weather hits places that aren’t accustomed to it – like recent snows in Las Vegas and New Orleans – the news coverage isn’t as quick to point their finger at the possibility of global cooling.

More links to news stories about the ICCC.

Vaclav Klaus

The President of a former Communist country has some good advice for the president of the country known so far as the world's bastion of capitalism.

Massive government spending and tighter regulation would prolong recession, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday, as he urged U.S. President Barack Obama not to endanger the free market economy in his response to the financial crisis.

PM Harper makes the TV circuit in the US

Following the visit on President Obama to Canada, our PM Stephen Harper is staying in the limelight by speaking out on the US networks.




With Larry Kudlow on CNBC.






And also with Alexis Glick on Fox Business Network


click images to play videos




Harper's comments on oil production, the Oil Sands and carbon emissions are interesting. His position seems to be that Canada will move to reduce carbon emissions and he welcomes the fact that the US under Obama will do the same, thus leveling the playing field.

The rest of the conversations center on the economy and economic stimulus.