Global Warming kool-aid

(Guest) columnist Clay Evans is apparently worried that with the cold weather the global warming skeptics (and deniers) are finally starting to get some traction. You can read his absolute declarations on global warming here.

First and foremost, global warming is a statistically established fact. With a century’s worth of data under the microscope, we know that global temperatures, atmospheric carbon and other “greenhouse gases” have been rising steadily.

Read our lips: There is no debate.

Isn’t that the liberals way, there is “no debate”! Clay, climate change has been going on since the earth was formed. Could man have a small effect on the climate? Yep, I could believe that. Is less CO2 better than more CO2? Yep, I could believe that. Are drastic actions called for? I seriously doubt it.

Clay concludes…

The Earth’s climate is an incredibly vast, complex and chaotic system. Perhaps we should leave conclusions about warming to scientists who actually understand the phenomenon.


Well, yes it is but I’m far from convinced the scientists that dispurse the information (whatever happened to the predicted runaway temperature depicted by the hockey stick?) really know what’s going on. If they did, their models would work. If they did, they would have predicted the rapid growth of the Arctic ice cap this winter.

The “true believers” like Clay are the fanatics that concern me much more than “climate change”.

One must wonder what it would take to change Clay’s mind. For one who despises organized religion it’s surprising that he can’t see he’s a front man for the Church of Global Warming.

Posted in Boulder is stoopid, global warming | 1 Comment

No more schools

In Britain schools are now a “place for learning“.

Good grief.

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quote of the day…

A wise person once said…

“He who gains a victory over other men is strong;but he who gains a victory over himself is all powerful.”

– Lao Tse

Lifted from the LBR trading site.

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Lady Vols – Wowza

The Tennessee Lady Vols overcame a school record for fewest points in the 1st half and beat Rutgers this afternoon 55-51. I saw the last 8 minutes of the game and had no idea they were down 20 points at half time until about 4 minutes left in the game. Fantastic effort by the lady volunteers.

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Thank you Brandon Darby

Brandon Darby turned police informant to help prevent a firebombing and associated deaths at the Republican convention.

Brandon’s “social justice” friends in Austin are upset at the turncoat…

Still, Darby’s former buddies among those the “social justice” crowd find Darby’s work on behalf of law enforcement hard to accept. “I can only say it’s heartbreaking and it’s shocking,” says one of Darby’s old friends. Those of us in the Twin Cities and those who attended the convention owe Darby a great debt of gratitude for breaking their hearts.

I don’t consider myself a particular ally of law enforcement, but there comes a moment when it’s time to decide. Brandon Darby leaned the right (correct) way when confronted with a moral judgement. He’s a hero and his former friends in Austin need to look in the mirror, at least those that aren’t looking at a jail cell.

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Synonyms

Charlie Rangel and “loser” that is.

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Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979

Say it ain’t so!

Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

The data is being reported by the University of Illinois’s Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.


So we know who to blame. I say we suspend funding of the Arctic Climate Research Center!

Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008. Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. Bill Chapman, a researcher with the UIUC’s Arctic Center, tells DailyTech this was due in part to colder temperatures in the region. Chapman says wind patterns have also been weaker this year. Strong winds can slow ice formation as well as forcing ice into warmer waters where it will melt.

Why were predictions so wrong? Researchers had expected the newer sea ice, which is thinner, to be less resilient and melt easier. Instead, the thinner ice had less snow cover to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, and therefore grew much faster than expected, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.


A model is good when it works in the real world. If we can’t predict sea ice, how can we predict climate change?

And the polar bear is endangered thanks to the global warming, err… climate change, minions.

In May, concerns over disappearing sea ice led the U.S. to officially list the polar bear a threatened species, over objections from experts who claimed the animal’s numbers were increasing.


Climate changes, mans arrogance does not.

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An embarrassment to the EU

That is the President of the Czech Republic and his outspoken views on global warming.

The European Union’s new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.

The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.


I hope President Vaclav Klaus keeps fighting the good fight. The group think that has overtaken the EU and the United States regarding climate change needs to be challenged.

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Happy Holidays

A little late but humorous none the less.

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Drinkers be careful out there…

New laws in Colorado and five other states will force convicted drivers to install breath-monitoring gadgets in their cars.

To read more about DUI penalties visit the DUI Advisor web site.

Me, I’m going to get my own breathalyzer. It’s dangerous out there.

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Slow down Danica

Seems like Danica has a lead foot off the race track!

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Political contributions paying personal fines

Instapundit asks… “How would you feel if you gave money to a candidate for political office and found out that it was being used to pay his/her parking and traffic violations?”

If I was the kind of person who gave money to Charlie Rangel, I can’t imagine this would upset me in the least.

Read the whole article here.

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Progress in Iran?

This seems like progress.

The United States handed over control of the Green Zone and Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace to Iraqi authorities on Thursday in a ceremonial move described by the country’s prime minister as a restoration of Iraq’s sovereignty.

Not to mention major news organizations leaving Iraq.

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Happy New Year everyone!

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Mankind, the root of all evil

Not only is man responsible for our present bout with “global warming” he is responsible for global cooling as well say Investors Business Daily.

Climate Change: The Earth has been warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. But guess what: Researchers say mankind is to blame for that, too.

It’s ALL man’s fault. I feel so guilty.

Apparently 2008 has been quite a cold year. IBD is a bit to quick to jump to conclusions, but I’ll give them that power considering NASA can’t even report temperature data correctly.

As we’ve noted, 2008 has been a year of records for cold and snowfall and may indeed be the coldest year of the 21st century thus far. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October.

Global thermometers stopped rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature drop was not predicted by global climate models. But it was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since 2000.

Bold is mine and is a major point. When do you trust a model? When it works in the real world!

How is Man responsible for global cooling?

The Little Ice Age has been a problem for global warmers because it serves as a reminder of how the earth warms and cools naturally over time. It had to be ignored in the calculations that produced the infamous and since-discredited hockey stick graph that showed a sharp rise in warming alleged to be caused by man.

The answer to this dilemma has supposedly been found by two Stanford researchers, Richard Nevle and Dennis Bird, who announced their “findings” at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. According to them, man not only is causing contemporary warming. He also caused the cooling that preceded it.

According to Bird and Nevle, before Columbus ruined paradise, native Americans had deforested a significant portion of the continent and converted the land to agricultural purposes. Less CO2 was then absorbed from the atmosphere, and the earth was toasty.

Then a bunch of nasty old white guys arrived and depopulated the native populations through war and the diseases they brought with them. This led to the large-scale abandonment of agricultural lands. The subsequent reforestation of the continent caused temperatures to drop enough to bring on the Little Ice Age.

Implicit in this research is that the world would be fine if man wasn’t in the way. We either make the world too cold or too hot, a view held by many in high places.

Another outspoken scientist dares to speak up regarding global warming…

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre of Canada’s Carleton University, says: “I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet.”

Indeed, a look at a graph of solar irradiance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows little solar activity during the Little Ice Age and significant activity during recent times.

Don’t blame Dick and Jane — blame sunspots.

Sunspots you say? I’m waiting for the scientists to explain how mere mortal man is effecting the sunspot cycle! The editorial provides the following correletion evidence between sunspots and climate change…

Global thermometers stopped rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature drop was not predicted by global climate models. But it was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since 2000.

When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop near zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. But this year, the start of a new cycle, the sun has been eerily quiet.

The first seven months averaged a sunspot count of only three and in August there were no sunspots at all — zero — something that has not occurred since 1913.

According to the publication Daily Tech, in the past 1,000 years, three previous such events — what are called the Dalton, Maunder and Sporer Minimums — have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called the Little Ice Age (1500-1750).

The Little Ice Age has been a problem for global warmers because it serves as a reminder of how the earth warms and cools naturally over time. It had to be ignored in the calculations that produced the infamous and since-discredited hockey stick graph that showed a sharp rise in warming alleged to be caused by man.

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Stephen Hawking in global warming camp

Hawking: We must recognise the catastrophic dangers of climate change

“As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces,” Professor Hawking said. “As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth.

“As citizens of the world, we have a duty to share that knowledge. We have a duty, as well, to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change.

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Sammy Wilson is courageous

Environment minister Sammy Wilson: I still think man-made climate change is a con

“I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all. Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well. “

As I post this there are only four comments, all calling into question Sammy Wilson’s competency. Typical of the brainwashed global warming zealots.

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Church of England invests with Al Gore

Crazy!

The Church of England’s Church Commissioners have gone green, investing £150 million with former US Vice-President Al Gore’s environmentally minded investment firm, Generation Investment Management.

On Nov 18 the First Church Estates Commissioner, Andreas Whittam Smith reported that in late September the Commissioners had placed the funds with Gore’s boutique management firm which follows an “environmentally sustainable global equities mandate.” Funding for the investment came from “cash and Treasury bills”, he said, and not from the sale of UK equities as initially planned.

Hopefully this is a small amount of the Church’s investible funds, which seems quite likely and that they aren’t expecting a market return on their investment.

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Global Cooling…

Walter Williams summarizes the current global warming backlash occurring among scientists. I excerpted this one quote as a teaser…

Geologist Dr. David Gee, chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, currently at Uppsala University in Sweden asks, “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?”

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Where is Seagate going?

Disk drive company Seagate has had their debt downgraded to junk status. High quality junk, but still junk. Seagate is known for being management top heavy. Perhaps they need to take a look at the graph below before they start their rumoured 20% downsizing.

Graph blatently stolen from the semi defunt blog Creating Passionate Users.

I’m frankly stunned that STX management has taken so long to size their company to the available business. I’ve never met a disk (not disc Seagate) drive company that was bashful about laying people off before.

A visit to the STX Yahoo message board is good for 30 minutes of entertainment.

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