posted February 09, 2007 02:01 PM            

Snow keeps coming in upstate New York
Some areas top 100 inches, up to four more feet possible
Heather Bragman

Shoveling snow this week in upstate New York, including this scene Thursday in the town of Pulaski, is no easy task. Lake effect snow has buried the area under as much as three inches of snow an hour.

• Blowin' snow
Feb. 9: Up to 3-4 feet of new snow is expected in upstate New York through next week. NBC's Peter Alexander reports on how locals are trying to cope.

OSWEGO, N.Y. - With some areas of upstate New York already topping 100 inches of snow since last Sunday, forecasters on Friday told the region to expect more — up to four feet more — as well as a longer blast lasting into next week.

Friday was another snow day for school children across Oswego County. Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Thursday declared a state disaster emergency in the county.

Spitzer's declaration authorized all state agencies to help assist municipalities and residents in the storm-wracked region along eastern Lake Ontario.

Earlier Thursday, the county, as well as the city of Oswego and village of Mexico, declared their own states of emergency and restricted all nonessential travel. No snow-related deaths were reported Thursday evening.

The heavy lake-spawned snow started late Sunday and has pounded a small swath of Oswego County almost relentlessly, seemingly stalling over Oswego, Mexico and Parish and nearby communities.

"Oswego is like right in the middle, so every time it goes by us, we get a little bit of snow — actually, a lot of snow," said Oswego Mayor Randy Bateman. "At certain periods of the day, the wind just keeps it right over us. Dumping and dumping.

'Getting old now'
"You know, it was neat when it started because we hadn't gotten any snow in December or January," Bateman added. "It's getting old now."

The area received another short reprieve Thursday as the squalls shifted south into Syracuse, where between 4 and 8 inches fell. The lake-effect bands moved back north in the evening.

Lake effect snow forms when cold air passes over a relatively warmer body of water. When this week's arctic blast passed over the still unfrozen Great Lakes — including New York's Erie and Ontario — it created a recipe for monstrous snow totals. In the Great Lakes Region, cold air generally "spills" southward from the high latitudes of North America.

Late Thursday the northern parts of Oswego County were accumulating as much as 3 inches per hour, said Dave Sage, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Buffalo. At times, the snow has fallen at a rate of as much as 5 inches an hour.

"I'm sure before morning there's going to be three or four areas that have up to 100 inches (in Oswego County)," Sage said.

The snowfall was accompanied by high winds, creating whiteouts and other problems around the state.

'Same through the weekend'
"Unfortunately, the forecast is for the same through the weekend. Hopefully, it won't be as intense. But if it is, we'll just clear it as the snow stops and wait for it to start again," said Bateman, trying to keep a good humor about events.

posted February 09, 2007 02:14 PM            

Well you know jwhop, the snow is just an illusion created by the right wing conspiracy. Didn't you get the memo?

posted February 09, 2007 02:21 PM            

The other shoe has dropped concerning global warming. Fasten your seat belts: an "international authortity" to act as enforcer has been demanded. Concurrent with the release of the International Panel on Climate Control's "report" (actually a twenty-page "summary for policy makers" with the report itself to be released eventually, maybe in April, maybe in May), we have a demand for an international authority to be set up to police compliance, voiced by none other than Jacques Chirac and seconded by no less than 45 countries. As yet no goals or specific regulations have been designated. But rest assured that "experts" will be consulted to spare us from the menace of carbon dioxide.

International authorities of this type, with full police powers and answerable to no one, are a venerable daydream of the UN bureaucracy and, not coincidentally, of the left at large. Kofi Annan's calls for taxation power and an independent army for the UN are other examples. Another, more subtle episode involved the UN's late-90s attempt to emplace international media rules derived from the censorship practices of third-world dictatorships. More recently we have heard rumblings concerning international gun control. What all these have had in common was their transparent goal of enabling the UN to horn in on the policies of independent states, and the fact that they went absolutely nowhere.

This style of internationalism - establishing a "global government" to act as a schoolmarm for recalcitrant nation-states -- has long been an ideal of the left, derived in large part from the supposed solidarity of the international proletariat, whose "class interests" were held to pull them together more than national and cultural differences pushed them apart. It's one of those left-wing ideas that fail to stand the test of reality. At the outbreak of WW I, every last European socialist party voted to support its country's war effort, something that nearly drove Lenin - then in exile in neutral Switzerland - out of his mind. The same division endured, despite decades of efforts by assorted Cominterns and Cominforms. But a form of internationalism survives as a kind of nucleus for a new, transnational revolutionary class.

At the dawn of the 50s, with all things Soviet beginning to look more than a little shabby, left-wingers transferred their allegiance to the UN, which (they hoped) would form the basis of a truly humane and progressive global government. This attitude was personified by Gary Davis, a misfit who carried out a sit-in at the UN's Turtle Bay construction site, demanding to be given a passport as a "world citizen". Despite every conceivable discouragement, this idea remains fixed in many minds as something of an ultimate goal for an enlightened international system.

It's also proven a recurring nightmare to the more unrestrained American paleocons, who repeatedly found evidence of UN encroachment in places where, to put it kindly, little was discernable to calmer eyes. The last panic afflicting this group was the entertaining "black helicopter" scare of the mid-90s, in which talk radio and the infant Internet blazed with tales of hordes of UN troops about to descend on the United States to enforce some sort of undescribed but horrible UN despotism. (If the standard run of UN blue helmet is any indication, they'd have probably have needed help getting off the choppers.) You'd almost think that these proposals were deliberately put forward to send the troglodytes raging.

But in fact, they're serious, though not in the sense offered. If UN efforts had anything to actually do with global warming, they would not consistently overlook China and India. Attempting to address a problem as vast as climatic change without accounting for the world's two most populous countries - both engaged in breakneck efforts at industrial modernization - is well beyond simply asinine. Particularly since China stands in a class by itself as far as pollution goes, messing up rivers, ecosystems, and entire orbital zones with equal abandon. There are, to choose only one example, evidently several hundred abandoned, blazing coal mines in the Chinese interior that have been left to burn themselves out. What effect this has to the carbon dioxide balance can only be imagined, since nobody has dared question the Chinese about it.

As far as climate change goes, what this translates into is (as Dr. Robert Giegengack puts it) that the battle is over. Every last SUV on every American highway wouldn't account for a drop in the bucket representing Chinese and Indian plans. So in the unlikely event that global warming is the case, we will simply have to learn to live with it, as the Vikings and everybody else did at the end of the last millennium

But of course, that's not the point. Apart from providing Chirac with something to step up to after leaving the helm of le Republique Grande, the aim of all these schemes, from Annan's tax plans to the Kyoto Treaty to the climate change authority, is simply to bridle the United States. If not to bring it under complete UN suzerainty, then to exercise some form of bureaucratic restraint over what the UN hierarchy has long viewed as an out-of-control colossus. The UN effectively controls many derelict third-world states (and even the occasional European example, such as Kosovo). Why not the U.S.?
The simple answer - and one we don't need to look past - is that the day the UN seriously attempts any such thing is the day it gets evicted. Nothing pulls together the irreconcilable elements of the American polity more completely than a threat to U.S. sovereignty. The 1997 vote on the Kyoto Treaty, 95-0, makes that clear. Many of those who voted against the protocol (including Kerry, Boxer, and Schumer) share global warming fears and even the internationalist impulse. But not to the extent of placing themselves under UN oversight. The transnational dream comes in many varied and dissimilar forms, depending on who's doing the dreaming.

posted February 09, 2007 02:34 PM            

The problem with the "consensus brigade" is they think if everyone on earth believed the sun would stand still in the sky for the next month, that consensus would make it a scientific fact.

But, there is no consensus on so called man made global warming. There's a lot of idiots running around saying there is and a completely brain dead press eager to spread the consensus bullsh*t.

posted February 10, 2007 12:15 PM            

MEXICO, N.Y. (AP) - Ray DeLong took advantage of a break from the snow to use a blower to forge a path to his driveway as two contractors pushed streams of snow from the roof of his home. The brief reprieve Friday ended early Saturday as snow fell at a rate of 2 to 3 inches per hour, further burying a region already tested by nearly record snowfalls.

"Have to move fast. Want to at least get it off my roof," DeLong said, just hours before more flakes began to fall.

More than a week of bitter cold and slippery roads have contributed to at least 20 deaths across the northern quarter of the nation - five in Ohio, four in Illinois, four in Indiana, two in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one each in Wisconsin, New York and Maryland, authorities said. No deaths were reported in Oswego County, where Mexico is located, however.

By 9 p.m. Friday a heavy lake effect band started to intensify over the county, said Tony Ansuini, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

Officials expected up to 14 inches of snow overnight, a trend that would push the seven day total beyond 100 inches and continue through the weekend.

For DeLong and most of this village's 5,400 citizens, it has been exhausting.

"This is right up there with the best of them, almost as bad as the Blizzard of '66. But there ain't nothing good about this much snow," he grumbled as his snowblower clogged and stalled.

Located in upstate New York's snowbelt, Mexico residents every two or three years see a 5- or 6-foot snowfall. But even hardened locals are amazed at the scenes before them now, such as the site of parked SUVs noticeable only because their antennas or roof racks crack the snow's surface.

Persistent squalls have pounded Mexico and other Oswego County communities along eastern Lake Ontario since Sunday, leading Gov. Eliot Spitzer to declare a state disaster emergency in the county.

Unofficially, the snow measured 123 inches in Orwell and 122 inches in North Redfield, small hamlets in the county's eastern half.

Parish received 94 inches and Scriba reported 92 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Mexico Mayor Terry Grimshaw said his village was blanketed by seven feet.

Overnight, the lake effect band walloping Oswego was expected to move on to Lewis and Jefferson Counties.

Down the village's main street, 6-foot high snowbanks make the sidewalks look like mini-canyons.

With a day's reprieve, most of the village roads were cleared Friday, although schools were canceled for a fifth straight day.

The state transportation department has loaned several pieces of equipment to local municipalities as they work round the clock to remove snow from streets and sidewalks. The state was also expected to send workers to help in the removal effort.

Although authorities have reported few problems because of the snow, in Oswego, Fire Chief Ed Geers said his firefighters have had to help three ambulances that got stuck in the snow.

posted February 10, 2007 12:16 PM            

"It's global warming Little Johnny."

"But mommy, the snow is almost 10 feet deep."

"It's global warming Little Johnny."

"But mommy, they say global warming means winter temperatures are supposed to be warmer at the north pole and the ice caps are supposed to be melting."

"It's global warming Little Johnny."

"But mommy, if it's supposed to be warmer at the north pole where is all this snow and freeeeezing weather coming from?"

"Don't argue Little Johnny, it's global warming. The scientists say so and they know what they're doing."

"But mommy, just a few years ago they were warning about a new ice age and this looks more like an ice age than global warming."

"Shush Little Johnny, they say you just have to trust them."

"But mommy, when it's hot they say it's global warming and when it's just right, they say it's global warming and when it's freeeezing cold and there's toooo much snow they say it's global warming."

posted February 12, 2007 01:41 PM            

President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity
Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•

A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

• Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...•

A: ...I am right...•

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•

A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

posted February 12, 2007 01:52 PM            

Every time Algore opens his mouth to spout his global warming nonsense, something freezes over.

New York Town May Have Hit Snow Record
Feb 12 12:01 PM US/Eastern
By WILLIAM KATES
Associated Press Writer

REDFIELD, N.Y. (AP) -- The snow just won't stop. Intense lake-effect snow squalls that buried communities along eastern Lake Ontario for nine straight days diminished Sunday _ then started up again early Monday.
Unofficially, the squalls have dumped 12 feet, 2 inches of snow at Redfield. If accurate, that would break the state record of 10 feet, 7 inches of snow that fell in nearby Montague over seven days ending Jan. 1, 2002, said Steve McLaughlin, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

A weather service representative was being sent to Redfield on Monday to verify the total.

Residents of this hardy upstate New York village seem unfazed. Redfield, whose economy thrives on snowmobilers and cross-country skiers, receives an annual average of 270 inches _ more than 22 feet.

"It's snow. We get a lot of it. So what?" said Allan Babcock, a lifelong resident who owns Shar's Country Diner, a popular eatery in this village of 650 people.

However, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has declared a state disaster emergency in Oswego County. The county's community of Parish had recorded 115 inches by early Sunday. Mexico had 103 inches, North Osceola had 99 and Scriba 94. The city of Oswego had 85 inches.

The persistent snow bands that have wracked the county for a week were expected to finally end later Monday.

"We have a sharp front coming in Monday that's going to kick all this out. We may get one more burst of snow. But then it's over. Finally, some mercy," McLaughlin said.

However, the forecaster noted that a coastal winter storm expected midweek could bring another 6 to 12 inches to areas of upstate New York.

As the bands shifted north into Jefferson County most of Sunday, residents continued recovering from the heavy snow. Roads were mostly cleared as workers turned their attention to removing the snow and trimming down 10- and 12-foot-high snow banks that continued to make driving dangerous.

The snow led to surreal scenes. One house appeared to be in a cocoon. Drifting snow in the front had swallowed the front door and blocked the windows.

posted February 14, 2007 03:24 PM            

It's still winter! Even if there's overall warming we still have winter in northern latitudes! Moreover, precipitation is often a product of WARMER air meeting colder air. Snow is definitely not indicative of cold, this winter has been really warm on average in the US.

I think Jwhop is trying to convince himelf there is no global warming. Or perhaps this is simply a deranged persons cry for help?

---------------------------------------------
Warm winter wreaks havoc
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
Bill Weigle's tree service in Lyndeborough, N.H., usually delivers five to 10 cords of firewood a day this time of year. He's sold only one in the past two weeks.

Business is "dead," Weigle says. "I've never seen it like this … I feel like the Maytag man."

This winter's curiously warm weather across the Northeast and much of the Midwest has played havoc with more than seasonal businesses. In Washington, D.C., springlike temperatures have faked out flora, causing dogwoods and daffodils to bloom.

PREDICTION: El Nińo, greenhouse gases making '07 hot

"There's been weird weather all across the United States," says Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, which was walloped by two major snowstorms last month. He blames an El Nińo warming pattern in the Pacific for dry and warm conditions elsewhere.

"Another big player is what we call the 'long-term trend,' " said Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel. "That's a euphemism for global warming."

The combination of El Nińo and global warming prompted Britain's Meteorological Office to say Thursday that 2007 could become the hottest year ever recorded. It said there is a 60% chance to break the record set in 1998, when global temperatures were 1.2 degrees warmer than the long-term average.

The balmy temperatures have smashed records. International Falls, Minn., which averages a high of 13 degrees this time of year, hit record highs of 41 degrees Wednesday and 37 Thursday. Buffalo has had more than three weeks of above-average temperatures, and all-time highs are likely Saturday in New York City and Richmond, Va.

The warm wave has had a silver lining for consumers and taxpayers. Electric heating bills were down 7.35% for Pepco customers in Washington and its Maryland suburbs. In Syracuse, N.Y., acting Public Works Commissioner Jeff Wright says the city could shave as much as $1 million off the annual $3.2 million snow-removal budget.

The picture is more mixed for sportsmen. Golfers in some areas are enjoying more time on the links.

In Michigan, two dozen people took advantage of late Octoberlike temperatures at the Traverse City Golf & Country Club on Thursday. "Normally we're closed," says Roger Bliss, the club's golf pro. "It's the first time anyone can remember playing golf in January."

Thin ice in Minnesota's lakes, however, has canceled ice fishing tournaments and put organizers of the annual St. Paul Winter Carnival, which starts Jan. 26, in a bind. Carnival spokeswoman Mary Huss says officials will decide next week whether to haul 56 flatbed truckloads of 300-pound ice blocks from northern Minnesota lakes or use plastic blocks to build a giant ice maze.

The tepid temperatures have been more than a nuisance, though. In Maine, it proved deadly Sunday when a college professor drowned after falling through thin ice on usually frozen Rangeley Lake.

Contributing: The Associated Press

posted February 15, 2007 06:49 AM            

Green groups such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and Earth First are using their influence to persuade people that an environmental disaster of historic proportions is just around the corner. As Barbara Mass of the Pan African Conservation Group succinctly puts it: "I think we're going to drown in our own muck."

Environmentalist thinking is now widely accepted in the West. However, many scientists argue that what the Greens say about global warming and pollution is wrong. Professor Wilfred Beckerman, a former member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, was himself an enthusiastic environmentalist until he started examining the facts. He told Against Nature: "Within a few months of looking at the statistical data, I realised that most of my concerns about the environment were based on false information and scare stories."

According to Piers Corbyn, Director of Weather Action, many scientists do not accept the idea that pollution is causing global warming. Environmentalists claim that world temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but Corbyn points out that the period they take as their starting point — around 1880 — was colder than average. What's more, the timing of temperature changes does not appear to support the theory of global warming. Most of the rise came before 1940 —before human-caused emissions of 'greenhouse' gases became significant.

According to the Greens, during the post-war boom global warming should have pushed temperatures up. But the opposite happened. "As a matter of the fact, the decrease in temperature, which was very noticeable in the 60s and 70s, led many people to fear that we would be going into another ice age," remembers Fred Singer, former Chief Scientist with the US Weather Program.

Even in recent times, the temperature has not behaved as it should according to global warming theory. Over the last eight years, temperature in the southern hemisphere has actually been falling. Moreover, says Piers Corbyn, "When proper satellite measurements are done of world temperatures, they do not show any increase whatsoever over the last 20 years."

But Greens refuse to accept they have could have been proved wrong. Now they say global warming can involve temperature going both up and down.

"Global warming is above all global climatic destabilisation," says Edward Goldsmith, editor of the Ecologist, "with extremes of cold and heat when you don't expect it. You can't predict climate any more. You get terrible droughts in certain cases; sometimes you get downpours. In Egypt, I think, they had a rainfall for the first time in history — they suddenly had an incredible downpour. Water pouring down in places where it's never rained before. And then you get droughts in another area. So it's going to be extremely unpredictable."

Scientists also point out that nature produces far more greenhouse gases than we do. For example, when the Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted, within just a few hours it had thrown into the atmosphere 30 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide— almost twice as much as all the factories, power plants and cars in the United States do in a whole year. Oceans emit 90 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, every year. Decaying plants throw up another 90 billion tonnes, compared to just six billion tonnes a year from humans.

What's more, 100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate.

Although many environmentalists have been forced to accept much of the scientific evidence against global warming, they still argue that it is better to be safe than sorry. So they continue to use global warming as a reason to oppose industrialisation and economic growth. ( Further Reading )" http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/prog1.htm#suspend

*******

For the record, I've been concerned about Global Warming for most of my life and have supported/support numerous environmentalist groups, as well. Just putting that out there before I get blasted with "love" for posting an article that challenges the idea of global warming. I prefer to reserach as many sides of an issue before I commit myself to one of them and, even so, I am quite willing to admit if I've made an error. I'm just on the fence about Global Warming, nowadays.
I'd post a for-Global-Warming article but I hardly think that opinion is lacking representation in this camp.

posted February 21, 2007 05:30 PM            

First, there's the initial propaganda stage. As skepticism increases to the point the hoax may be foiled, desperation sets in. The second stage begins by attacking the skeptics.

America is entering the second stage, and it's not very pretty.

A review of the most recent hoaxes is important.

One Hot Hoax: The Ice Age Cometh

The "ice age" hoax of the late 1970s took advantage of the general population's unfamiliarity with climate. A massive climatic change, like an ice age, normally taking centuries to develop, can be encapsulated in seconds by computers into a form that may be interpreted as short term as weather. The marketing ploy is based on fear — not the type of fear generated by such incidents as 9/11, but a distant fear of "We're all going to die."

The ice age hoax was melted away with warmer weather. However, the perpetrators were not.

The devil's workshop was still intact.

Very cleverly, the great deceivers of the "ice age" hoax turned up the thermostats on their computers and developed models which revealed a greater threat to mankind than an ice age.

It was global warming.

Unlike the ice age hoax, where there was no real identifiable cause, they found one for global warming. It was man himself and the use of the love of his life, his automobile, particularly his SUV.

And what did his automobile do for the global warming hoax? It produced carbon dioxide in its exhaust, an atmospheric gas that constitutes 378 thousandths of one percent (0.00378) or 378 parts per million. It is a trace. One part per million has been equated to one bogey in 3,500 golf tournaments.

Not seeming to get traction in the early 90s, the global warming hoax was relegated to the back burner.

The Dreaded Y2K

The hoaxers saw a bigger fish. The 20th century was soon to fade into history, a monumental event. And they identified for this hoax a cause, the computer itself.

The issue selected was the changing of the date on the computer from Dec. 31, 1999 to Jan. 1, 2000. That simple change was going to prove disastrous to the nation and its economy. Present computers would confuse the "00" date identification as being the year 1900. The computers would become confused and "crash," losing all their information. Upgrades of old computers or purchase of new computers would be necessary.

Banks would be forced to close (translation: horde cash), power plants would cease to operate (buy electrical generators), aircraft would be unable to land (don't fly) were just a few of the dire predictions. Other nations of the world had done nothing to prepare for the great catastrophe of Y2K. It turned out to be a non-event, the greatest hoax of the 20th century.

Global warming is back once again on the front burner.

The global warming hoax has passed through the "We're-all-going-to-die" phase and is now entering the next phase: "Attack the skeptics." The global warming debate degenerated several notches when Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goldman equated those who question the present dominant media hype on climate change with Holocaust deniers.

Holocaust denial is the belief that the genocide of Jews during World War II, either did not occur, or did not occur to the extent described.

Shameful Holocaust Deniers

A resolution co-sponsored by more than 100 countries was adopted by consensus in the United Nations on Jan. 26, 2007, which "rejects efforts to deny the Holocaust."

This resolution elevates the issue to a level of criminalization within the nations which endorsed the resolution, including the United States.

Holocaust denial had already been criminalized in Israel, France, Germany, and Austria. Prosecutions under racial defamation and hate laws have occurred in Canada, with resulting prison sentences. David Roberts, staff writer for Grist Magazine, wrote on Sept. 19, 2006, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and when we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for those ******** — some sort of climate Nuremberg."

The Weather Channel's communication director, Heidi Cullen, who hosts a weekly global warming program, "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society revoke the "seal of approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

This is vicious. It could cost weathermen the loss of their careers.

Within the past several weeks, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, threatened to fire State Climatologist George Taylor for speaking out against the issue of global warming.

Dan Webster, an Ohio TV meteorologist, claims that 95 percent of the nation's weathermen are skeptical of man-made global warming fears. Scores of global warming skeptics seem to be coming out of the woodwork.

Of note is U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, former chairman, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and at present the ranking minority member of the committee. Sen. Inhofe is a long-time skeptic of the present global warming hype which he describes as the "hoax of the century."

Sen. Inhofe congratulated Czech President Vaclav Klaus for calling man-made global warming a "myth."

posted February 21, 2007 05:49 PM            

Folks at University of Minnesota are considering bestowing a doctorate on Algore...for his work in "climatology".

Algore the scientist? Seems only yesterday Algore was withdrawing from Law School...and...flunking out of Divinity School, a difficult intellectual feat indeed.

Of course, Algore restored my faith when he was touring Monticello with Commander Corruption...and gazing at a bust, exclaimed, "who is that"? Imagine that, Algore, Vice President of the United States...headquartered in Washington DC didn't recognize George Washington. Duh and double Duh

Dr. Algore?

February 19, 2007
Gore may get doctorate
The U is in the confidential stages of considering an honorary degree for Al Gore.
By Elena Rozwadowski

Former Vice President Al Gore could pay a visit to the University in the near future to receive an honorary degree for his work in climatology.
University President Bob Bruininks spilled the beans at the February Board of Regents meeting, saying that "two of our colleges are working with Vice President Gore to provide, we hope, an honorary doctorate."

Gore has been in the news lately for his 2006 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," about global warming. University spokesperson Daniel Wolter said since Gore is an expert in the subject, several colleges at the University have expressed interest in inviting Gore to speak on campus.

"He's in the news and is a legitimate expert on a pressing issue of global concern, climate change, so this level of interest is understandable," Wolter said. "However, no plans have been set and it's unlikely that would occur this spring."

Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider said she did not believe Gore has received information about an honorary doctorate from the University and wouldn't comment further.

Wolter said the University is still interested in hosting Gore and will "continue to look into the matter."

One way to lure him to campus would be with an honorary doctorate, which he would likely receive in person.

The University gives out several honorary degrees each year in three categories: humane letters, laws and sciences. Candidates cannot be University employees and must be nominated by a current faculty or staff member or a University alumnus or alumna.

University Senate Administrator Vicky Courtney said the honorary degree process is supposed to be totally confidential. In fact, the announcement of an honorary doctorate is not usually made until after the candidate accepts, she said.

"If somebody turns us down, it's an embarrassment to the University," Courtney said.

Courtney, who is in charge of coordinating honorary degrees, would not comment on the possibility of the Gore doctorate, but did say the "process is in the most absolute confidential stages."

Media relations employees at the College of Biological Sciences, the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences and the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs said they were unaware of the honorary doctorate, although Wolter said faculty at the Humphrey Institute might be involved.

Some students at the University are in support of the doctorate for Gore, including University DFL President Shannon Mitchell.

The bipartisan work he did after he ran for office, she said, including his documentary, is deserving of the award.

"He's a leader in an area we all need to be very concerned with," she said.

Ingrid Scantlebury, a first-year political science student, agrees with Gore's work but doesn't feel the University should award him a degree for it.

"It's mainly a publicity thing," she said.

Scantlebury said if anyone else had made the same documentary, the University probably wouldn't recognize him or her.

"People will pay more attention because of who he is."

The University has given 223 honorary degrees to date. Past recipients include Yanni, Charles Schultz, Sandra Day O'Connor and Hillary Clinton.

posted February 22, 2007 12:42 AM            

When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.

Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.

During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.

Many things are contributing to such global temperature changes. Solar radiation is one. Sunspot activity has reached a thousand-year high, according to European astronomy institutions. Solar radiation is reducing Mars's southern icecap, which has been shrinking for three summers despite the absence of SUVS and coal-fired electrical plants anywhere on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, a NASA study reports that solar radiation has increased in each of the past two decades, and environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg, citing a 1997 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, observes that "the increase in direct solar irradiation over the past 30 years is responsible for about 40 percent of the observed global warming."

Statistics suggest that while there has indeed been a slight warming in the past century, much of it was neither human-induced nor geographically uniform. Half of the past century's warming occurred before 1940, when the human population and its industrial base were far smaller than now. And while global temperatures are now slightly up, in some areas they are dramatically down.

According to "Climate Change and Its Impacts," a study published last spring by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the ice mass in Greenland has grown, and "average summer temperatures at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet have decreased 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the late 1980s." British environmental analyst Lord Christopher Monckton says that from 1993 through 2003 the Greenland ice sheet "grew an average extra thickness of 2 inches a year," and that in the past 30 years the mass of the Antarctic ice sheet has grown as well.

Earlier this month the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its fourth five-year report. Although the full report won't be out until May, the summary has reinvigorated the global warming discussion.
While global warming alarmism has become a daily American press feature, the IPCC, in its new report, is backtracking on its warming predictions. While Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" warns of up to 20 feet of sea-level increase, the IPCC has halved its estimate of the rise in sea level by the end of this century, to 17 inches from 36. It has reduced its estimate of the impact of global greenhouse-gas emissions on global climate by more than one-third, because, it says, pollutant particles reflect sunlight back into space and this has a cooling effect.

The IPCC confirms its 2001 conclusion that global warming will have little effect on the number of typhoons or hurricanes the world will experience, but it does not note that there has been a steady decrease in the number of global hurricane days since 1970--from 600 to 400 days, according to Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Peter Webster.

The IPCC does not explain why from 1940 to 1975, while carbon dioxide emissions were rising, global temperatures were falling, nor does it admit that its 2001 "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic temperature increase beginning in 1970s had omitted the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming temperature changes, apparently in order to make the new global warming increases appear more dramatic.

Sometimes the consequences of bad science can be serious. In a 2000 issue of Nature Medicine magazine, four international scientists observed that "in less than two decades, spraying of houses with DDT reduced Sri Lanka's malaria burden from 2.8 million cases and 7,000 deaths [in 1948] to 17 cases and no deaths" in 1963. Then came Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," invigorating environmentalism and leading to outright bans of DDT in some countries. When Sri Lanka ended the use of DDT in 1968, instead of 17 malaria cases it had 480,000.
Yet the Sierra Club in 1971 demanded "a ban, not just a curb," on the use of DDT "even in the tropical countries where DDT has kept malaria under control." International environmental controls were more important than the lives of human beings. For more than three decades this view prevailed, until the restrictions were finally lifted last September.

posted February 27, 2007 12:40 PM            

Nashville Electric Service/Gore House

2006

High 22619 kWh Aug – Sept
Low 12541 kWh Jan - Feb
Average: 18,414 kWh per month

2005

High 20532 Sept - October
Low 12955 Feb - March
Average: 16,200 kWh per month

Bill amounts

2006 – $895.60 (low) $1738.52 (high) $1359 (average)
2005 – $853.91 (low) $1461 (high)

Nashville Gas Company

Main House
2006 – $990(high) $170 (low) $536 (average)
2005 – $1080 (high) $200 (low) $640 (average)

Guest House/Pool House

2006 – $820 (high) $70 (low) $544 (average)
2005 – $1025 (high) $25 (low) $525 (average)

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization, issued a press release late Monday:

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

posted February 27, 2007 12:57 PM              

I was flabbergasted, at the audacity of Gore, and the Oscar's, I think it went too far!

but, that's just my opinion....

posted April 08, 2007 01:01 AM            

It's notable that every time the crackpot scientists or Algore attempt to drop one of their phony global warming bombs on America, Mother Nature drops a big chill on the crackpots.

The new UN report was hardly out before it started snowing in the north..including Washington DC were all the democrats who are pushing this fraud on America have fled the snowstorms and record or near record lows.

It would be funny if these junk scientists and power mad bureaucrats didn't use gimmicks, lies, non scientific methods and a complicit press to spread their poisonous global warming religion.

Now, it turns out Algore totally misrepresented the Polar Bear picture. These people are contemptible and have no shame whatsoever...no character either.

Australian TV Exposes 'Stranded Polar Bear' Global Warming Hoax
Posted by Noel Sheppard on April 6, 2007 - 12:05.

Remember that wonderful picture of stranded polar bears on an ice floe that were used by folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore to demonstrate how dire the man-made global warming issue is?

Well, ABC television in Australia, on a show called “Media Watch,” recently debunked the entire issue (video available here, h/t NB member dscott).

It turns out -- as NewBuster Jake Gontesky reported on March 20 -- the picture was taken in August, “when every year the fringes of the Arctic ice cap melt regardless of the wider effects of global warming.”

The photographer, Australian marine biology student Amanda Byrd, didn’t think the bears were in any jeopardy:

They did not appear to be in danger…I did not see the bears get on the ice, and I did not see them get off. I cannot say either way if they were stranded or not.

Denis Simard of Environment Canada agreed:

You have to keep in mind that the bears are not in danger at all. This is a perfect picture for climate change…you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die...But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim...They are still alive and having fun.

How delicious. Think this kind of broadcast would ever happen in America?

What follows is a full transcript of this segment. Furthermore, here are the e-mail questions answered by the photographer who took the picture. And, here is the full transcript of the interview “Media Watch” did with The Sunday Telegraph’s Neil Breen regarding this matter.

Those stranded polar bears on the shrinking Arctic ice - victims of global warming - certainly tugged at the heart-strings.

That photo was published not only in the Sunday Telegraph.

It made it onto the front page of the New York Times.

And the International Herald Tribune.

It also ran in London's Daily Mail, The Times of London and Canada's Ottawa Citizen - and that's just to name a few.

All used it as evidence of global warming and the imminent demise of the polar bear.

But the photo wasn't current. It was two and a half years old.

And it wasn't snapped by Canadian environmentalists.

It was taken by an Australian marine biology student on a field trip.

And in what month did she take it?

“The time of year was August, summer.”

— Email from Amanda Byrd to Media Watch

Summer, when every year the fringes of the Arctic ice cap melt regardless of the wider effects of global warming.

So were the polar bears stranded?

“They did not appear to be in danger…I did not see the bears get on the ice, and I did not see them get off. I cannot say either way if they were stranded or not.”

— Email from Amanda Byrd to Media Watch

And they didn't appear stranded to Denis Simard of Environment Canada.

He told Canada's National Post.

You have to keep in mind that the bears are not in danger at all. This is a perfect picture for climate change…you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die...But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim...They are still alive and having fun.

— The National Post (Canada), Gore pays for photo after Canada didn't, 23rd March, 2007

Polar bears are good swimmers. So how did all this come about?

Photographer Amanda Byrd gave her photo to fellow cruiser, Dan Crosbie - to have a look.

“Dan Crosbie gave the image to the Canadian Ice Service, who gave the image to Environment Canada, who distributed the image to 7 media agencies including AP.”

— Email from Amanda Byrd to Media Watch

Associated Press released the photo two and a half years after it was taken, on the day the United Nations released its major global warming report.

That's where Sydney's Sunday Telegraph got the photo, running it with a story taken from the Daily Mail as Neil Breen explains.

…the photograph represents polar bears standing on ice that’s melting. Now obviously there’s a disputed account of when that was taken now, and maybe it was taken in the Alaskan Summer when you would naturally expect ice to melt but at the time it was sent to us, Associated Press in their caption to us told us that the picture was taken of melting ice caps and to do with global warming and that it was sent to them by a Canadian ice authority and we had no reason to question it.

— Statement from Neil Breen (Editor of the Sunday Telegraph) to Media Watch

But Amanda Byrd didn't think her photo necessarily described whether global warming is occurring.

I take neither stand, I simply took the photos...If I released the image myself, it would have been as a striking image. Nothing more.

— Email from Amanda Byrd to Media Watch

That's not how Al Gore saw it.

He used it in a presentation on man made global warming.

"Their habitat is melting... beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet," Mr. Gore said, with the photo on the screen behind him. "They're in trouble, got nowhere else to go."
Audience members let out gasps of sympathy…

— The National Post (Canada), Gore pays for photo after Canada didn't, 23rd March, 2007

Well that's because they're bears… and at a distance, they're rather cute.

posted April 08, 2007 01:40 AM              

and he loves the spotlight...

and he does nothing personally for our environment, like the rest of Us are doing...

HollyWood

if God was to balance planet Earth...where do you think the next natural disaster would be...

posted July 25, 2007 11:18 AM            

Mrs. Edwards is giving up Tangerines.

I'd be a hell of a lot more impressed if the Edwards gave up their power gobbling 20,000 square foot house...and the private jets they fly around in harranguing everyone else about their energy use.

Same goes for Algore...same blather and same problem for anyone to take seriously on the subject. Algore's house gobbles up about 20 times the electricity as the average home. And then, there's all those trips on private jets...jumbo jets, not the little puddle jumpers like a Gulfstream 5.

So now, not only do these morons want to drive energy costs through the roof...they also want to drive food prices up too....you know, if it's not grown locally, then don't eat it or pay through the nose for transportation costs.

July 24, 2007
No tangerines for you?

The politics of global warming got very concrete, and oddly difficult, in a meeting with local environmentalists in the coastal town of McClellanville today, where Elizabeth Edwards raised in passing the importance of relying on locally-grown fruit.

"We've been moving back to 'buy local,'" Mrs. Edwards said, outlining a trade policy that "acknowledges the carbon footprint" of transporting fruit.

"I live in North Carolina. I'll probably never eat a tangerine again," she said, speaking of a time when the fruit reaches the price that it "needs" to be.

Edwards had talked about "sacrifice," at the meeting, but Elizabeth's suggestion illustrated just how difficult it is to sell the specifics of sacrifice.

Asked about her comment immediately after the event, John Edwards avoided the question twice, then said he isn't sure.

"Would I add to the price of food?" he asked. "I'd have to think about that."

UPDATE: Just to be clear, he's not talking about a food tax. The basic point is that any plan that imposes new costs on carbon emissions is going to make anything that's transported long distances with fossil fuels cost more. It is, in a way, a moment of clarity in this debate.

posted July 31, 2007 08:59 AM            

Facts are sooo inconvenient to the man made global warming clowns.

The Cult of Global Warming
By Don Feder
GrassTopsUSA | 7/31/2007

Global warming has become the apocalyptic cult of the new millennium. None of the other jeremiahs, throughout the ages, can hold an end-of-the-world candle to ozone-layer mystics prophesying climate Armageddon.

I just came across the ultimate Al Gore coffee table book, "The World Tomorrow: Scenarios of Global Catastrophe" by Yannick Monget.

On the jacket, the author is described as "the founder and chief representative of the Ankaa Group, an organization dedicated to conceiving and developing ambitious projects for the environmental protection of Europe."

If that weren't enough of a contribution to mankind, we are told Monget "has written several volumes of socially committed science fiction in France" - which didn't sell nearly as well as Gore's several volumes of socially committed science fiction, including "The Earth In Balance" and "The Assault on Reason."

"The World Tomorrow" is a lavishly illustrated book that stunningly depicts ecological end-times in familiar settings.

Singapore is demolished by super tornadoes. Fires ravage downtown San Diego (made to resemble Dresden during the Allied bombing). Torrential downpours and "terrible floods" drench Central Europe. (Prague looks like Venice during monsoon season.) Berlin's lush lawns are replaced by dusty, cracked earth. The ruins of Madrid are in the middle of a jungle. Moscow's St. Basil's Cathedral is stranded in a snowy wasteland. New York City is locked in ice. And D.C. is returned to the forest primeval, with what appears to be a giant, mutant iguana crawling in front of the Capitol - oh, I beg your pardon, Senator Clinton.

This enviro-porn compliments the ravings of Global Warming's nuttier acolytes - chimp girl Jane Goodall, at the Live Earth U.S.A. concert, squawking: "Up in the North the ice is melting. What will it take to melt the ice in the human heart?"

Not to be outdone, and demonstrating that the Kennedy clan loses brain cells with each succeeding generation (impossible as that may seem), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- son of RFK and president of something called the Waterkeeper Alliance - raved to the Live Earth audience: "Get rid of all of these rotten politicians (presumably, Republicans) we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies. This is treason and we need to start treating them as traitors!" His old man, who once worked for Joe McCarthy, would be proud.

Boy Bobbie could have put it differently: "This is heresy. And we need to start treating them as heretics!" Which way to the Global Warming auto-da-fe?

The environmentalist canon may be described thusly: 1) Global Warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions is revealed truth. 2) If we don't repent, mankind will be eternally damned. 3) Doubters are monsters and mental defectives comparable to Holocaust-deniers and members of the Flat Earth Society. And 4) It's time to purge our SUV sins by abolishing the industrial revolution and turning to pig manure and solar power for energy. The former may in found in abundance among Global-Warming advocates in Congress and the media.

In a 2003 speech to San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, popular science novelist Michael Crichton described the religion of environmentalism, predecessor to the Church of Global Warming:

"Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism," Crichton disclosed. "Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. . There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability."

Facts are irrelevant, Crichton explains, "because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation (the elect), or on the side of doom, whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them." Them being RFK Jr's "corporate toadies," "traitors" and other wretches yet to be saved by the amazing grace of biodegradable products.

Ditto, Global Warming. The CO2 witch doctors view a modest rise in the Earth's temperature with the alarm of Stone Age savages in Borneo encountering a 747. It's as if the surface temperature of the planet has been a constant for the past 5 billion years and suddenly things are heating up - due to greenhouse gases.

In reality, the Earth has regularly gone through hot and cold cycles. A thousand years ago, Viking settlements in Greenland were growing crops. (It really was green then.) When Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants in 218 A.D., it wasn't nearly the feat many imagine. There was little ice and snow.

Reid Bryson, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is known as the father of scientific climatology. Bryson is a Global Warming iconoclast, and thus is shunned by many of his colleagues.

The professor does not doubt the Earth is warming, as we come out of what's known as the "Little Ice Age."

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide," Bryson told a reporter for Madison.com (in an interview published on June 18). "We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up a long time."

Why then do so many scientists bring offerings to the altar of the Greenhouse God? Says Bryson: "There is a lot of money to be made in this. If you want to be an eminent scientist, you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'" Or, as Big Brother told Winston Smith: "Right thinking will be rewarded - wrong thinking punished."

"Speaking out against global warming is like being a heretic," Bryson significantly declares.

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, observes that much of the recent warming trend occurred prior to 1940 - "before the emission of much greenhouse gas from human activities."

On March 22, 2002, the Associated Press reported that a study "appearing in the March 21, 2002 issue of the journal Science analyzed ancient tree rings from 14 sites on three continents in the northern hemisphere and concluded that temperatures in an era known as the Medieval Warm Period some 800 to 1,000 years ago closely matched the warming trend of the 20th century." Is AP in the pocket of Exxon?

Avery sees a sunny (you should pardon the expression) future: "We're in a mild, erratic natural warming cycle (driven by a cyclical uptick in the sun's energy) that will gradually return us to the finest weather pattern in all recorded history - the Medieval Climate Optimum (circa 900-1300 A.D.). Winters will be milder, storms less powerful, and rainfall more abundant. The polar ice caps will not melt, and the sea level will continue to rise very slowly."

You mean the Eiffel Tower won't end up in the middle of a lagoon? Drat!

Scientists have documented nine moderate global warming cycles and nine somewhat harsher global cooling cycles in the last 12,000 years. Each cycle lasted roughly 1,500 years and - miracle of miracles -- coincided exactly with the known cycles of the sun's magnetic activity.

But this is an inconvenient truth for the Church of CO2 Emissions. We can't enact an international treaty to control the sun's magnetic activity. We can't legislate against it. Nor can it be used as a club to beat energy companies bloody or to institute the type of draconian controls over humanity for which the left has always lusted.

Global Warming a la Gore is merely the left's latest attempt to frog-march us into its brave new world.

With Marxism (another doomsday cult), the apocalyptic vision was a world where the rich kept getting richer and the poor sank deeper and deeper into drudgery, near-starvation and despair. The party elite was the priesthood sent to exorcise these political demons.

Since then, there has been a succession of leftist secular faiths - each calling on us to repent social sin, prophesizing doom and holding out the hope of salvation if only mankind can be coercively saved from itself.

In the '50s and '60s, it was the military/industrial complex. Then came overpopulation. Does anyone recall Paul Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller "The Population Bomb"? Dr. Ehrlich confidently forecast worldwide starvation and the exhaustion of natural resources sometime between 1970 and 1985, due to overpopulation. With birthrates falling worldwide, and well below replacement levels in most industrialized nations, Ehrlich joins the League of Distinguished Malthusians.

The pollution scare started with Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (1962). We were poisoning the Earth. Species were becoming extinct. We would shortly choke to death on our own garbage and toxic fumes. Part of the service for this particular faith was banning DDT - which led to millions of Third World deaths from disease-laden mosquitoes.

And now we have the Church of Global Warming, under the leadership of Pope Albert I and his college of cardinals (the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and editorial board of The New York Times).

Its Office for the Propagation of the Faith works overtime, churning out books, movies (from the fictional "The Day After Tomorrow" to the fictional "An Inconvenient Truth"), textbooks, concerts, congressional hearings, media pleading and inquisitions.

There are even children's versions of the Ozone Bible. "Arctic Tale" (opening in theaters August 17) is a "documentary" that follows the adventures of Mama Polar Bear and Mother Walrus and their cubs, as they try to deal with catastrophic changes in their environment due to - what else? - Global Warming.

Not to worry, soon they'll be cavorting among the ice floes of Manhattan.

As science, Global Warming ranks right up there with the Piltdown Man and the gay-gene theory.

All of the left's quasi-religions seek to take us to the same final destination - a state of rigid control, central planning, rationing, pre-industrial living standards and flagellation to purge us of our sins.

The end of the line can be vaguely discerned. In the United Kingdom, a group of Eco-Doom fanatics, called The Optimum Population Trust, recently got hysterical over a slight blip in the British birthrate (from 1.8 children per woman in 2005 to 1.87 in 2006 - still well below the replacement level of 2.11).

In its report, the Trust noted that a child born in Britain today will have a lifetime environmental impact (carbon-dioxide output) equal to the energy consumed on 620 round-trip, trans-Atlantic flights.

Brits have to limit childbearing, the Optimum Population Trust insists. If they won't do so voluntarily, the government should adopt coercive measures - which in China has meant forced abortions and sterilizations, and infanticide.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

How about this for a colorful coffee-table book "The World Tomorrow - Scenarios of Economic and Social Catastrophe Courtesy of the Church of Global Warming"?

posted August 02, 2007 06:28 AM              

Seriously, are posting pics of 'cold days' one of your main arguments??? It doesn't matter whether 'the photographer even admitted that the bears seemed to be ok on that particular ice berg' or not. The fact is that in general THEY ARE NOT OK. You seem to be looking at tiny little pictures instead of the big picture Jwhop.