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"Science is the belief in the ignorance of
experts." -- Richard Feynman
***************************************
THIS
WEEK
President Obama's inaugural address mentions global warming
only once. He said: "with old friends and former foes, we will work
tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming
planet." The dictionary is clear
that a 'specter' is a "visible, disembodied spirit: Apparition, Ghost,
Phantom." Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.
The President is an educated man. Perhaps he means what he says.
But as anticipated (see “Fearless
Forecast” in TWTW of Dec 27, 2008), the Obama White House is not rushing into
precipitous climate policies. Obama
aides said he still planned to pursue the full agenda that undergirded his
presidential campaign later this year or perhaps later in his term.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President Barack
Obama should be judged by his performance in office the same way any president
would be judged. As political analyst Juan Williams wrote in the January
21, 2009 The Wall Street Journal, "If his presidency is to
represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like
everyone else -- fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and
patriotism -- then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough-and-tumble
of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. "No president of any color should be
given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise."
So, courtesy of Tom Randall
(trandall@winningreen.com), here is a partial list of Mr. Obama's campaign
environmental and energy promises, as published by the National Journal.
Never has any primary candidate made so many promises, let alone a single
president. We honestly believe he would like to keep them all, given his
appointment of Carol Browner to be energy and environment czar. But, he
might serve the country better if he keeps none.
Promise: "First, we'll commit ourselves to
getting one million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid cars on the road within
6 years." 8/6/08, speech,
Promise: "Second, we will double the amount of
energy that comes from renewable resources by the end of my first term."
8/6/08, speech,
Promise: "Third, I will call on businesses, government and
the American people to meet the goal of reducing our demand for electricity by
15 percent by the end of the next decade." 8/6/08, Speech,
Promise: "We'll also take steps to reduce the price of oil and
increase transparency in how prices are set so we can ensure that energy
companies are not bending the rules." 4/25/08, speech,
Promise: ". . . . but I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be
at the table and play a central part in figuring out how we solve [global
warming]. 4/2/08, response to a question,
Comment: In the words of Tiny Tim, "God bless us all." We
wonder why he needs "Big Al" when he has Al's acolyte, Ms. Browner.
Promise: "As president, I will set a hard cap on all carbon
emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming --
an 80 percent reduction by 2050." 10/8/07, speech,
Comment: Those scientists would, we assume, be acolytes of Al Goracle
and James Hansen, rather than actual, objective scientists.
Promise: "I will immediately sign a law that
begins to phase out all incandescent light bulbs." 10/8/07, speech,
Link: We have shown you just a smattering of President Obama's
environment and energy promises. If you would like to see more, go to: http://www.nationaljournal.com/campaigns/2008/wh08/promises.htm
***********************
SEPP Science Editorial #4-09 (1/24/09)
Is Antarctic Warming Real or is it “Mann”-made?
The report of an unexpected Antarctic warming trend [Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell. Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year. Nature 457:459-463, 22 Jan. 2009; doi:10.1038/nature07669] has created a certain amount of skepticism – even among supporters of AGW.
But
in an AP news story, two of its authors (one is ‘hockey-stick’ inventor Michael
Mann from the Real Climate blog) argue that this refutes the skeptics and is
"consistent with" greenhouse warming.
Of course, as Roger Pielke, Jr, points out, not long ago we learned from
Real Climate that a cooling Antarctica was ‘consistent with’ greenhouse warming
and thus the skeptics were wrong: “So a warming Antarctica and a cooling
Antarctica are both ‘consistent with’ model projections of global warming. Our
foray into the tortured logic of ‘consistent with’ in climate science raises
the perennial question, what observations of the climate system would be inconsistent
with the model predictions?”
The results are based on very few isolated data from
weather stations, plus data from research satellites. And here is the rub: these are not data from
microwave sounding units (MSU), such as are regularly published by Christy and
Spencer, but data from infrared sensors that are supposed to measure the
temperature of the surface (rather than of the overlaying atmosphere, as
weather stations do).
But the IR emission depends not only on temperature
of the surface, but also on surface emissivity -- and is further modified by
absorption of clouds and haze.
These are all difficult points. Emissivity of snow depends on its porosity
and size of snow crystals. Blowing snow
likely has a different emissivity than snow that has been tamped down; so
surface winds could have a strong influence.
The emissivity of ice is again different and will depend on whether
there is a thin melt layer of water on top of the ice, temporarily produced by
solar radiation. Finally, we have
temperature inversions that can trap haze which is essentially undetectable by
optical methods from satellites.
The proof of the pudding, of course, is the MSU
data, which show a continuous cooling trend, are little affected by surface
conditions and are unaffected by haze and clouds. They are therefore more reliable.
Bottom
line: As it looks to me right now, the
Antarctic Continent is cooling not warming.
****************************************************************
1. DOE report paints
bleak picture of our electric future
2. Triumph of reality over shabby and fraudulent
scientific theory
3. Green jobs: fact or
fiction?
4. Saying no to oil
revenues? – Paul Driessen
5. Politics has delayed nuclear waste disposal
-- A. David Rossin
6. Questions for Obama's science guy – Jeff
Jacoby
8. Inaugural climate change: a satire
***************************************
NEWS YOU CAN USE
Investor's Business Daily,
20 Jan2009 http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=317348261304816:
Despite years of media bombardment about the imminent dangers of global
warming, the alarmists are losing ground. Fewer Americans are buying
into the myth. According to a Rasmussen poll, 44% of
"We have to get on a new path
within this new administration," he told the British Observer. "We
have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world.
Hansen can't admit it because he
has staked his name and reputation on the notion that man is causing Earth to
warm. But once the raw emotion and partisan bias are stripped, 59% of Democrats
blame global warming on man vs. only 21% of Republicans.
Even the NYTimes admits http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/science/earth/23warm.html Environmental Issues Slide in Poll of Public's Concerns By ANDREW C. REVKIN, Jan 23, 2009.
A new poll suggests that Americans,
preoccupied with the economy, are less worried about rising global temperatures
than they were a year ago, but remain concerned with solving the nation's
energy problems. The findings are somewhat at odds with President Obama, who
has put a high priority on staving off global warming and vowed Tuesday in his
Inaugural Address to "roll back the specter of a warming
planet." In the poll, released
Thursday by the nonpartisan
**********************************
The
tide is turning:
Excerpt: “Mark my words, in ten years, we're
all going to be worried about late spring frosts, and early fall frosts, and
crops dying and we're going to be in some huge climate cooling hysteria. That's
just the way it is with this globe. It warms and it cools. There is nothing the
little State of Connecticut, in rolling back its economy to 1990 standards, or
over-regulating its manufacturing industry or anything like that, is going to
do to stop this huge planet from having fluctuations in its climate.”
http://bristolnews.blogspot.com/2009/01/repeal-global-warming-piscopo-urges.html
******************************************
Global warming theory represents one of the greatest scientific con games in history. The putative intellectual foundations are based on data manipulated to support the desired conclusion, and have been conclusively debunked.
Andrew G. Bostom pulls together a beginning history of the steps by which the theory was sold. Unscientific studies came to be embraced as conclusive, their debunkers targeted for abuse. The remarkable hockey stick graph and the effort to "get rid" of the Medieval Warm Period (whose temperature rise dwarfs anything in the last century) are among the scandalous abuses of science covered here.
Those who want to marshal the evidence to induce skepticism in friends who fall for warmist propaganda should read and save this article. The science is explained lucidly, so that any serious reader can comprehend the issues. It is not a quick and light read, but it repays an investment of a few minutes of serious attention.
http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/12/25/horse-hockey-climate-scientology-%E2%80%9Cgetting-rid%E2%80%9D-of-the-medieval-warming-period/
*************************************
How to talk to alarmists about Inconvenient Truth: Reducing
CO2 Emissions Will NOT Save the Planet! I talk about the fallacy of
man-made Global Warming to whomever will listen. I talk to many groups, large
and small about how AGW is just bad science
http://powerof5weather.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/no-sally-reducing-co2-emissions-will-not-save-the-planet/
****************************************
Tolstoi on refusal to acknowledge evidence. “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
******************
Advocates of human-caused global warming to take increasingly ridiculous positions to defend the indefensible: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/7710
How the world was bullied into silence By Dr. Tim Ball, January 19, 2009 One of the most disturbing aspects of the global warming scam is the number of prominent people and entire segments of society bullied into silence. Consider the case of climate skeptic Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman 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. Then consider her statement. “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….”
******************************************
UNDER THE BOTTOM
LINE
How much does your morning glass of orange juice
contribute to global warming? (NYT, January 22, 2009) PepsiCo, which owns the Tropicana brand,
decided to try to answer that question. It figured that as public concern grows
about the fate of the planet, companies will find themselves under pressure to
perform such calculations. Orange juice seemed like a good case study.
PepsiCo hired experts to do the math,
measuring the emissions from such energy-intensive tasks as running a factory
and transporting heavy juice cartons. But it turned out that the biggest single
source of emissions was simply growing oranges. Citrus groves use a lot of
nitrogen fertilizer, which requires natural gas to make and can turn into a
potent greenhouse gas when it is spread on fields. PepsiCo finally came up with a number: the
equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted to the atmosphere for
each half-gallon carton of orange juice. But the company is still debating how
to use that information.
********************************************
Do
you recall who said this in June 2008, during the presidential campaign? [Hint:
It wasn’t McCain]: "I am
absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and
tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for
the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of
the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.--This was the moment
– this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation." Yes, --and
the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Sun and Moon stood still and tides
ebbed, and there was none afraid ….
###################################
1. DOE REPORT PAINTS
BLEAK PICTURE OF OUR ELECTRIC FUTURE
There's a long tradition of using Fridays to release reports
you'd rather not see attract attention, and the Department of Energy has used
the last Friday of the Bush Administration to release a big one. Its
Electricity Advisory Committee, composed primarily of power industry
executives, has released a series of reports on the future of the
…the main report, entitled Keeping the Lights on in a New World, covers a lot of ground, a great deal of it depressing. It describes a number of issues that have stifled investment and innovation when it comes to the production and delivery of electric power. Most of these are familiar to anyone that has looked into our current situation, but the report's authors present the problems in strikingly clear terms, and back their analysis up with a comprehensive look at the power markets.
…much of the grid that takes power from generating facilities to end-users is nearing the end of its useful lifespan, and many of the major projects designed to improve its performance remain bogged down in regulatory review—a problem that is especially true of the large, intrastate transmission lines needed for distribution of most forms of renewable power. Meanwhile, conservation efforts, which would buy us more time to get our act together and save everyone involved significant cash outlays in the meantime, have remained fragmented and poorly integrated into the electrical production and generation system.
Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the report's narrative is the lack of innovation involved in power production and distribution. Although there appear to be a lot of new approaches in this area within the startup companies that are focusing on renewable power and the smart grid, the financial incentives have been such that most of the deployments continue to be large and conservative. The lack of tangible innovation has combined with the general decline in those entering the science and engineering fields to produce a graying workforce at the utilities; nearly half their existing staff will be eligible for retirement by the end of next year.
That's not a good sign for an industry that needs to replace much of its infrastructure within the next decade. The report contains dozens of recommendations about how to improve our future prospects, but the basic take-home is that we can't afford another 30 years of talk without a coherent plan of action.
*******************************
2. THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED
By Phil Brennan http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=2572
The heated debate about global warming has suddenly cooled
off. It's no longer between the fanatic adherents of global warming (AGWers: Anthropogenic
human-caused - Global Warming adherents) and the more sober-minded so-called
"deniers." It's now between the warmiacs and Mother Nature, and shes
winning handily. If you doubt that take a look a national temperature charts
that show below-zero temperatures as far south as
<http://www.anxietycenter.com/images/iceage.jpg> What we're experiencing now is going to prove mild in comparison to what is waiting in the wings. Before this winter ends - and that won't be until late May or early June, most of the world will be in the deep freezer and under the incredible amounts of snow that record-breaking blizzards will continue to bring us. This is not to say that the-now panicky members of the Gore brigade will throw in the towel - they'll be telling us that the frigid weather is a result of global warming. But by that time nobody will be listening, and even if they were, they wouldn't be able to hear anything through their ear muffs.
What we are now witnessing is the triumph of reality over shabby and fraudulent scientific theory. The only hockey sticks we'll be seeing will be in the frozen hands of NHL players. In my 1997 series I showed how the scientific community was wedded to the possibility that we were approaching the end of the present interglacial period and headed for a new ice age. According to "Understanding Climate Change," published by the National Academy of Sciences in 1975 on page 181 "The present interglacial interval -- which has now lasted for about 10,000 years -- represents a climatic regime that is relatively rare during the past million years, most of which has been occupied by colder, glacial regimes. Only during about 8 percent of the past 700,000 years has the earth experienced climates as warm or warmer than the present.
"The penultimate interglacial age began about 125,000 years ago, and lasted for approximately 10,000 years. Similar interglacial ages -- each lasting 10,000, plus or minus 2000 years, and each followed by a glacial maximum -- have occurred on the average every 100,000 years during at least the past half-million years. During this period, fluctuations of the northern hemisphere ice sheets caused sea level variations of the order of 100 meters."
On page 189 the question was asked: "When will the present interglacial [period] end? Few paleoclimatologists would dispute that the prominent warm periods (interglacial) that have followed each of the terminations of the major glaciations have had durations of 10,000, plus or minus 2000 years. In each case, a period of considerably colder climate has followed immediately after the interglacial interval. Since about 10,000 years have passed since the onset of the present period of prominent warmth, the question naturally arises as to whether we are indeed on the brink of a period of colder climate." "The question remains unsolved. If the end of the interglacial is episodic in character, we are moving toward a rather sudden climatic change of unknown timing ... If on the other hand, these changes are more sinusoidal in character, then the climate should decline gradually over a period of a thousand years."
A study prepared for the 95th Congress in 1978 agreed with the National Academy of Sciences position as explained in the above-quoted study. The document Weather Modification: Programs, Problems, Policy and Potential warned: "In geological prospective, the case for cooling is strong ... If this interglacial age lasts no longer than a dozen earlier ones in the past million years, as recorded in deep sea sediments, we may reasonably suppose the world is about due to slide into the next ice age."
That made sense then, before the global warming gravy train brought billions in research grants to global warming researchers, and it makes sense now. Moreover, Mother Nature has now begun to show her hand by pouring ice water on the AGW hoax. The mere fact that we are overdue for a new ice age itself lends great credence to the idea that the great freeze is upon us. Current increasingly frigid weather enhances it. In a contest between Al Gore and Mother Nature, she holds all the cards. And she's now playing them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist and World War II
Marine who writes for Newsmax.Com. He is editor and publisher of Wednesday on
the Web ( <http://www.pvbr.com/> http://WWW.pvbr.Com)
*************************************
3. GREEN JOBS: FACT OR
FICTION?
Is a "Green Economy" the cure for our current economic ills, global warming and energy security? Proponents claim that this view -- where government at all levels can use fiscal and regulatory measures to spur massive new investments in renewable energies and energy efficiency to create "green jobs" -- will not only rescue the economy, but will also put the country on track to a sustainable, low-carbon energy future. Unfortunately, it is highly questionable whether a government campaign to spur "green jobs" would have net economic benefits.
In their new study, Robert Michaels and Robert P. Murphy of the Institute for Energy Research examined four studies on the alleged benefits of government programs to foster green job creation and found a common characteristic: they all rest on incomplete economic analysis consequently overstating the net benefits of their policy recommendations. Below is a summary of the general problems:
o Mistaking a labor-intensive energy sector as the goal, rather than efficient energy provision.
o Counting job creation but ignoring job destruction.
o Double counting of jobs and overly simplistic treatment of the labor market.
o Ignoring the role of the private sector.
o How much government support of "green" markets is enough?
o Government picking of winners and losers.
o Assuming that potential benefits from new technologies will only occur through government programs.
With no standardized definitions of the renewable and energy efficiency industries, authors of these reports have a wide range of plausible choices. But the larger the percentage of the workforce engaged in producing renewable power and efficiency, the smaller the output of other goods, say Michaels and Murphy.
The fact that building and operating renewable power generators requires more labor time than for conventional generators is a signal that the nation should not rush toward renewable. The public is worse off because it sacrifices the outputs that those workers could have produced had they been employed elsewhere, says Michaels and Murphy.
---------------------------------------------------
Source: Robert Michaels and Robert P. Murphy, "Green Jobs: Fact or Fiction? An Assessment of the Literature," The Institute For Energy Research, January 2009. [H/t NCPA]
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/green-jobs-fact-or-fiction/
*************************************
4. JUST SAY NO TO OIL
REVENUES?
Petroleum production
bans cost us billions that could pay for stimulus plans and renewables. The real lessons of the January 1969
By Paul Driessen
Plummeting stock and
housing prices have triggered a painful recession,
Many states have oil, gas, coal uranium
and other energy and mineral resources, within their borders or off their
coasts. Development would produce critically needed energy, reduce oil and gas
imports, create millions of jobs, buttress our national security, and generate
trillions of dollars in lease bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues, to help
pay these bills.
But environmentalists vigorously oppose
development. Many states increasingly restrict exploration and production. The
US Senate is considering bills that would place more energy prospects off
limits. Many legislators want a permanent lock on billions of barrels of oil
beneath
And it never would have happened, if it
weren’t for the incompetence of a few federal regulators and oil company
officials. The guilty well was being drilled into brittle, highly fractured
rock formations which sit atop a more stable zone that holds billions of
gallons of gooey crude oil, mixed with natural gas under high pressure. It’s
the same oil that’s been seeping out of the shallow formations and washing up
on
Thankfully, dire predictions of permanent
damage were wrong. Bird, crab, lobster, seal and other populations soon rebounded.
Under the platform, the magnificent artificial reef ecosystem returned.
Enormous mussels, scallops and barnacles again cover the huge scaffold that
holds the production platform above the waves. Gorging on shellfish, and having
to move mere inches for their next meal, starfish grow to three feet across.
Oriental carpets of white, pink and lavender sponges and sea anemones create
firework displays of color, while crabs scamper about and thousands of
mackerel, sardines and other fish cruise by. I know this, because I’ve been
there, up close and in person, in scuba gear, beneath that very platform and a
dozen others in the Santa Barbara Channel and
Even more important, the technologies,
regulations and enforcement programs have changed. Today, instruments monitor
temperature and pressure in wells 24/7. Blowout preventers, pipeline shutoff
valves and other devices on or beneath the sea floor control the flow of oil
and gas. Offshore operators conduct regular accident training and safety
exercises. The efforts have paid off. In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
pounded the
Our energy policies should recognize these
facts.
-----------------------
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress
of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and author of
Eco-Imperialism: Green power Black death.
**************************************
5. POLITICS HAS DELAYED
PLANS FOR NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL
By A.
David Rossin
Without
a doubt, nuclear waste disposal is the political Achilles heel of nuclear power
in the
Critics
charge that there is no “approved site” for a national repository to hold waste
from nuclear power plants. In fact, progress on the
The
history of the
Meanwhile,
nuclear power had become a litmus test for environmental activists. Some voiced concern about nuclear waste, but
few, if any, took the time to study the science or listen to the scientists and
engineers who were working on the program.
President
Jimmy Carter, responding to the entreaties of environmental activists, issued a
policy statement less than a hundred days after he had taken office. With it, he killed plans to reprocess used
nuclear fuel, reclaim the plutonium which could be recycled into new fuel, and
package the radioactive waste for permanent disposal. Congress had not even seen it. The Carter Administration demanded that used
fuel assemblies be buried permanently, without recycling the plutonium in
it. A huge supply of nuclear fuel would
be thrown away.
But in
the national debate on nuclear waste, plutonium – called the most toxic
material known to man, though it is not – became a hot-button issue. The reality is that plutonium’s radiation
threat is trivial. Its radiation can be
blocked by a simple sheet of paper. At
no point in the safety design of the repository does either the radiation or
the heat from plutonium have the slightest environmental or safety impact. Nevertheless, the government demanded that
the repository’s safety had to be guaranteed for 10,000 years.
In 1982,
Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, a statute that set the specific
course for nuclear waste management and limited the options for storage.
Over the
years
What’s
important to recognize is that
The
------------------------------------------------------------
Rossin
was: Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, DOE. 1986-87 ; Director of the
Nuclear
*********************************************
6. QUESTIONS FOR OBAMA'S
SCIENCE GUY
By Jeff Jacoby,January 18, 2009
IN NOMINATING John Holdren to be director of the Office of Science and
Technology Policy - the position known informally as White House science
adviser - President-elect Barack Obama has enlisted an undisputed Big Name
among academic environmentalists. Holdren is a physicist, a professor of
environmental policy at Harvard, a former president of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, director of the
He is also a doom-and-gloomer with a
trail of erroneous apocalyptic forecasts dating back nearly 40 years - and a
decided lack of tolerance for environmental opinions that conflict with his.
The position of science adviser
requires Senate confirmation. Holdren's nomination is likely to sail through,
but conscientious senators might wish to ask him some questions. Here are
eight:
1. You were long associated with
population alarmist Paul Ehrlich, and joined him in predicting disasters that
never came to pass. For example, you and Ehrlich wrote in 1969: "If . . .
population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all
the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to
come." In 1971, the two of you were adamant that "some form of
ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us
before the end of the century." In the 1980s, Ehrlich quoted your
expectation that "carbon dioxide-induced famines could kill as many as a
billion people before the year 2020." What have you learned from the
failure of these prophecies to come true?
2. You have advocated the
"long-term desirability of zero population growth" for the
3. You opposed the Reagan
administration's military buildup in the 1980s for fear it might "increase
the belligerency of the Soviet government." You pooh-poohed any notion
that "the strain of an accelerated arms race will do more damage to the
Soviet economy than to our own." But that is exactly what happened, and
President Reagan's defense buildup helped win the Cold War. Did that outcome
alter your thinking?
4. You argued that "a massive
campaign must be launched . . . to de-develop the
5. In Scientific American, you
recently wrote: "The ongoing disruption of the Earth's climate by man-made
greenhouse gases is already well beyond dangerous and is careening toward
completely unmanageable." Given your record with forecasting calamity,
shouldn't policymakers view your alarm with a degree of skepticism?
6. In 2006, according to the London
Times, you suggested that global sea levels could rise 13 feet by the end of
this century. But the latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change is that sea levels are likely to have risen only 13 inches by
2100. Can you explain the discrepancy?
7. "Variability has been the
hallmark of climate over the millennia," you wrote in 1977. "The one
statement about future climate that can be made with complete assurance is that
it will be variable." If true, should we not be wary of ascribing too much
importance to human influence on climate change?
8. You are withering in your contempt
for researchers who are unconvinced that human activity is responsible for
global warming, or that global warming is an onrushing disaster. You have
written that such ideas are "dangerous," that those who hold them
"infest" the public discourse, and that paying any attention to their
views is "a menace." You contributed to a published assault on Bjorn
Lomborg's notable 2001 book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" - an
attack the Economist described as "strong on contempt and sneering, but
weak on substance." In light of President-elect Obama's insistence that
"promoting science" means "protecting free and open
inquiry," will you work to soften your hostility toward scholars who
disagree with you?
****************************
By
Andrew Thomas
Shaman James Hansen has proclaimed that we only have four
years left before the world falls into climate catastrophe. The
oceans will rise, species will die, the gates of hell will open, and general
wailing and gnashing of teeth will prevail over mankind. Dr. Hansen,
director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is the world's leading
witch doctor crusading against manmade global warming. He has taken this
title away from Bigfoot Al, who is increasingly reticent in discussing his own
giant carbon footprint in public.
The question arises as to why the George
Soros-funded scientist has demanded this time-horizon (President Obama's
first term) for decisive action to thwart Armageddon. In the immediate
future, we are going to hear increasingly desperate pleas from the true
believers of Climatotholicism that the end is near. We must act now, or
be lost forever. This is the start of a phenomenon I am calling the
Shaman Shamboozle.
The shaman has been a central part of tribal development in almost every
culture on Earth. From Greek paganism to the Mongol hordes to Native
American tribes, the shaman has been the most influential source of religion
and mysticism throughout history. The shaman also was the conduit between
man and nature, and set up laws and taboos to regulate man's behavior toward
the environment. As Wikipedia
states concerning shaman as ecologist:
As the primary teacher of tribal symbolism, the
shaman may have a leading role in this ecological management, actively
restricting hunting and fishing.
How did the shaman gain this power over the tribe?
Sleight-of-hand, ventriloquism, and other trickery was used to convince the
other members of the tribe that he had the ability to ward off evil
spirits. Through knowledge of astronomy, one of the most popular
techniques was to gain tribal power using a solar eclipse. As the Sun was
overshadowed by the Moon, the shaman proclaimed that it was being devoured by a
sinister force. The Incas called it the Black Jaguar. To others,
the god Rah
was the culprit. Whatever the evil spirit was called, the shaman's act
was essentially the same. The tribe's chief ecologist would scream and
dance, whipping the tribe members into a frenzy. Ultimately, the Sun
would return, and the shaman would revel in the tribe's adulation while sealing
his power.
Dr. Hansen and his fellow witch doctors must act fast. Using the principle of
the Shaman Shamboozle, the evil global warming spirits must be chased away
before it is obvious to the tribal masses that the climate is actually getting cooler.
In doing so, the shaman ecologists can claim that President Obama's "green
initiatives", i.e., taxing anything that emits carbon dioxide, were
successful. At that point, their political power over the tribe will be
complete and irreversible.
Let the dance commence before the eclipse begins to wane!
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/the_warmist_shamans.html Jan 19, 2009
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8. INAUGURAL CLIMATE
CHANGE: A SATIRE
By Addison Gardner The
It’s Inauguration Day, and Obama’s processional to
Last summer’s Obam-oration, This was the moment when the
rise of oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal, is already being
realized, retroactively, by the recovery of Arctic Sea ice and the rescue of
bobbing polar bears. The University of
Illinois Arctic Climate Research Center has tracked the ebb and flow of Arctic
ice since the baseline year of 1979. During the last quarter of 2008 pretty
much concurrent with the Obama ordination Arctic Sea ice made a miraculous
recovery: the mean ice anomaly, (difference between 1979 Arctic Sea ice levels
and todays) now stands at just under zero, a value identical to the one
recorded at the end of 1979, the year satellite record-keeping began.
Cynics may dismiss this as scientific
aberration, attributing it to shifting winds or changing ocean currents but the
faithful know the truth, and the truth is that Obama-induced planetary healing
is well under way.
But (pay close attention here) the
recovery of Arctic ice - and the inconvenient arrival of freakishly cold
winters is proof that global warming is accelerating, not abating. I’m unsure
how this works, but my
Last weeks reports from frigid
American cities shattered temperature records set in the late 1800s. Pollock,
We are also revisiting last winter’s
record cold in the
If there is a silver lining to this
roof-collapsing winter of cold and death, it’s that Google references to global
warming have dropped even faster than world temperatures. Three years ago there
were over 50,000 but just under 20,000 this past year. Al Gore who, in 2007, popped out from behind
a door to accept a golden statuette or medal each time the hour struck has been
locked in his cuckoo clock until climate models can be remodeled.
But frigid weather shouldnt cast a
pall over Inauguration Day; President Obama simply needs to fine-tune his
tweaking of the planetary thermostat to keep sea levels in check, without
turning his flock into popsicles, first.
In other news, last week, Obama made
the cover of Time Magazine for the 13th time in 12 months, and reporters at The
Washington Post gave him a standing ovation when he dropped by the newsroom for
a shoeshine.
My
Especially now during this
Obama-enunciated Worst financial crisis since the Great Depression! press
denunciation of inaugural excesses will be scathing. We know this, because
Obamas inaugural could run as high as $150 million (almost four times the $40
million spent on President Bush’s 05 inaugural) and we remember the presss
outrage when those costs were publicized.
Four years ago, apoplectic AP writer
Will Lester fumed about Bushs lavish celebration; Lester reminded us that American
soldiers were doing without armored Humvees in
Today’s excited media stories about the
road, bridge, business, and school closings in the tri-state periphery of
Epicenter Obama avoid this miserly tone. The Bush descriptive, expensive, has
been replaced by the Obama honorific: Historic.
President Bush declared a State of
As
When one intrepid AP reporter finally posed the indelicate question: Asked
whether this wasn’t a tin-ear display in the midst of taxpayer pain, Obama’s
Inaugural Committee spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, responded, It is not a
celebration of an election. It is a celebration of our common values.
Climate science will continue to be
hotly debated, but political science is clear: The icy tone of media antipathy
has melted, overnight, in
===================================================
Addison Gardner’s column appears every other Tuesday in The
(http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20090120/COLUMN/901199954/1021/NONE&parentprofile=1061&title=Addison%20Gardner%3A%20Always%20Right
