posted March 02, 2015 10:31 AM            

He stated, "In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair—you know what this is?—it’s a snowball. Just from outside here. So it’s very very cold out. Very unseasonable. So Mr. President, catch this." He tossed the snowball to a waiting page, and then gave a triumphant "Um, hmm!" The video is here.

Over at NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning, Inhofe's performance was thought to be good clean fun, grist for a round of chortles at our zany all-American politics. Here's how host Chuck Todd introduced the Inhofe clip (the segment can be streamed here; skip ahead to about the 48:35 mark):

"A little lighter note here. Sen. Jim Inhofe used a fun little prop to make his point, apparently, on global warming, claiming it was a hoax, this week. Here he is."

They ran the clip, and then Todd came back on.

"Now, I'm not going to use that to get into a climate change debate," Todd said dismissively, as though a "climate change debate" would just muck up the cheery good fellowship of the Meet the Press panel and maybe cause glumness for its Sunday morning audience. "I am actually going to use it because I think the House and Senate floor sometimes get some fun moments."

"Meet the Press" likes to swank around as though it's our premier network public affairs program. Yet somehow its producers and host think it's all right to treat a manifestly ignorant statement about climate change as "a fun moment" involving a "fun little prop"--and to pander to American anti-intellectualism by implying that the global warming debate is just too serious and boring to waste time on, like high school kids grousing about having to go to math class. One can almost hear the producers of "Meet the Press" going, "What, climate change again? Cue up the escaping llamas."

How low can the news departments of our major networks sink? We've already reported on the decline of journalistic standards at CBS's "60 Minutes," in the context of its flawed and credulous reporting on disability and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And now "Meet the Press," by endorsing a display of pure ignorance about an urgent issue of public policy as a "fun" prank, cedes the last shred of its credibility.
'60 Minutes'' shameful attack on the disabled
'60 Minutes'' shameful attack on the disabled

It's true that there's room for levity in reporting on politics, but this effort was spectacularly tone-deaf. Ridiculing or minimizing climate change as a topic only wonks care about--or conniving with our least-informed political leaders to do so--is an abandonment of every principle "Meet the Press" should stand for.

That Inhofe chairs a committee involved with science policy is a national embarrassment. His assertion that finding a snowball in wintertime Washington, D.C., counters the immense accumulation of scientific data establishing the existence of climate change is cause for a national facepalm. Confusing "weather" with "climate" is a hallmark of scientific illiteracy. Inhofe should be condemned, not encouraged.

It's proper to note that this episode follows by only a few days a new study of sea-level rise in 2009-2010, published in Nature on Feb. 24. The study documents a rise in the sea level outside New York City by a magnitude "unprecedented (a 1-in-850 year event) during the entire history of the tide gauge records."

posted March 05, 2015 02:27 PM            

Flashback 1985: Gov’t Scientists Predicted NYC Would Resemble Daytona Beach
03/05/2015

There’s a winter storm afoot, and places like New York City are expected to get hit with several inches of snow Thursday.

It’s hard to imagine that just 30 years ago, government scientists were predicting that global warming would make New York City resemble Daytona Beach, Florida — which does not get snow.

In 1985, the New York Times reported that ‘[f]ederal climate experts have suggested that within a century the greenhouse effect could turn New York City into something with the climate of Daytona Beach, Fla.”

“Beginning in a decade or two, scientists expect the warming of the atmosphere to melt the polar icecaps, raising the level of the seas, flooding coastal areas, eroding the shores and sending salt water far into fresh-water estuaries,” the Times reported. “Storm patterns will change, drying out some areas, swamping others and generally throwing agriculture into turmoil.”

Three decades later, and New York City does not remotely resemble Daytona Beach — even if some resident wished it did on winter days like this. On Thursday, New York City’s temperature stood at 28 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Weather Channel, while Daytona Beach was a balmy 75 degrees Fahrenheit. This winter, in fact, New York City experienced its coldest recorded temperature ever for Feb. 2nd just this year when thermometers in Central Park dipped below 7 degrees Fahrenheit – shattering a previous 65-year record for the coldest Feb. 2nd set in 1950.

It may be that Daytona Beach is becoming more like New York City, as Daytona did get a light dusting of snow in Jan. 2008 and again in Jan. 2010. Snow flurries were also reported in Daytona in 1989 and in 1977. Ok, so maybe not like New York City, which gets a lot more snow.

But federal scientists in the 1980s predicted that trace greenhouse gases, and not just carbon dioxide, were causing the world to warm rapidly, though at the time there was little to no evidence of rapid warming.

Since the Times report, however, temperature did climb, according to federal climate data. Global average surface temperatures climbed until 1998, but have since flattened and showed little to no warming trend since.

“In an October 1983 report, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the sea level could rise as much as 11 feet by the end of the next century – or as little as 2 feet,” the New York Times reported. “It settled on 5 to 7 feet as the likely range. The higher figure would put substantial pieces of Florida and Louisiana under the waves and flood parts of some coastal cities.”

“Even the lower figure would cut away chunks of shoreline. Experts estimate that a one-foot rise in the ocean could erode 100 to 1,000 feet of sand beach all along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts,” the Times reported.

Sea level rise, of course, has not been as dramatic as EPA predicted in 1983. According to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, global sea level rise from 1992 to 2010 was only 3.2 millimeters per year — meaning sea level only increased 0.19 feet over this period.

posted March 05, 2015 02:35 PM            

And That’s the Way It Was: In 1972, Cronkite Warned of ‘New Ice Age’
Julia A. Seymour
March 5, 2015

The “brutal” winter is on the attack again, bringing sleet and heavy snow to the mid-Atlantic region. Previous storms targeted the deep south including Dallas, Texas, and several hammered New England. By March 4, Boston was just 2 inches away from hitting an all-time record for snow, Boston.com reported.

It’s a reality more in keeping with media warnings from the 1970s than today’s arguments about global warming. Then, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, the dean of American journalism, was warning about an "ice age." Cronkite cited scientific claims that the Earth was cooling and "the full extent of the new ice age won't be reached for 10,000 years." That's completely different from the media's line today that global warming is settled science.

NBC Nightly News reported February 23 that Dallas was paralyzed “after an entire season’s worth of sleet and freezing rain, up to two inches, fell in a single day,” causing massive traffic problems. Similar scenes happened in other southern states as the cold swept across the nation. Single-digit temperatures hit New York City and Newark saw temperatures as low as 8 degrees on February 23, NOAA said.

Massive pileups mangled cars, Louisianans built snowmen and thousands flocked to Letchworth State Park, near Rochester, N.Y. to see a 53-foot tall ice fountain that keeps growing as record lows abound in the Northeast, CBS reported on February 25. CBS also noted Rochester experienced its coldest month since 1871.

Some winters are “bone-chilling,” like this one has been, others are mild, and some like the 1972-1973 winter started early and harsh, but grew surprisingly mild. That was the same year Walter Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America” in 1972, according to polls. A 2009 CBS obituary for the journalist said, “Cronkite was the biggest name in television news, the king of the anchormen; in fact, he was the reporter for whom the term ‘anchorman’ was coined."

On September 11, 1972, Cronkite cited scientists’ predictions that there was a “new ice age” coming. He called that prediction from British scientist Hubert Lamb “a bit of bad news.”

“But then there is some good news,” Cronkite continued. “That while the weather may be just a little colder in the immediate years to come, the full extent of the new ice age won’t be reached for 10,000 years. And if you can stand any more good news, even then it won’t be as bad as the last ice age 60,000 years ago. Then New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, were under 5,000 feet of ice. Presumably no traffic moved and school was let out for the day. And that’s the way it is, Monday, September 11, 1972.”

Lamb, the scientist Cronkite cited, was no fringe scientist. He founded the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. When he died, the CRU director called him “the greatest climatologist of his time,” according to the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He was also credited with establishing “climate change as a serious research subject.”

Unlike scientists often quoted by the media today, GWPF said that Lamb viewed the Earth’s climate as changing constantly and naturally. Unlike its founder, CRU now has a major role in spreading global warming alarmism. CBS said in 2009, CRU “wields outsize influence” in warming circles. The Climategate scandal centered around leaked documents and emails from that organization.

The late Cronkite is considered a “legendary journalist” and a pioneer in the field, which is why Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot, said this footage was so important. Morano is a former staff member of U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee and producer of the upcoming global warming documentary Climate Hustle, set for release later in 2015.

"Global warming activists have claimed for years that the 1970s global cooling scare never existed. They have tried to erase the inconvenient history which ironically blamed extreme weather like tornadoes, droughts, record cold and blizzards on global cooling,” said Morano.

Morano told MRC Business, “But now -- unearthed from bowels of media archives -- comes none other than Walter Cronkite reporting on fears of a coming ice age in 1972. Having Cronkite's image and face discussing global cooling fears reveals the fickleness of the climate change claims.”

posted March 05, 2015 02:42 PM            

And, the Chicken Littles know how many species of life on earth are going extinct...even if they haven't got a clue how many different species of life exist on Planet Earth. Right! Check!

February 28, 2015
Plenty of Wiggle Room in Scientific Certainty
Mike Kimmitt

Recently I stumbled across an Internet site that displayed stunning photographs of 10 animals whose existence, until recently, had been totally unknown to our highly educated scientific community.

I must admit that my confidence is shaken in these same scientists when they for so long have overlooked a spider large enough to eat birds and venomous snakes, a monkey that looks like a cast member of Monster, Inc. (the Lesula), and a Louisiana Pancake Batfish that appears already to have been rolled around in Zatarain's Creole Seasoning mix by an overzealous Cajun chef.

These aren't exactly one-celled bacteria that are crawling around under our toenails -- they're pretty big dudes. And yet biologists who didn't have a clue they exist will tell us with certainty how many species become extinct each day – and it’s your fault.

They know that 99.9% of all species that ever existed on Earth are now extinct. They know that in the last 540 million years there have been five events in which more than half of the planet's "animal genera" have died off. (They have not been able to link all of these events to the activities of Big Oil yet, but they're working on it.) They know we are in the midst of Sixth Great Mass Extinction that the "experts" say is more destructive that the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

They can prove that point with certainty by first demonstrating how little they know. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are between 1.4 million and 1.8 million unique species that have been “scientifically documented.” (Assuming university-trained biologists can count and they actually have documented their findings, do they really need wiggle-room on the order of 400,000 species, more or less?) They also are confident more than ten million unknown species are yet to be encountered. How the heck do they know, or even assume, that?

These scientists, who are forever boasting that they deal in facts only, are conceding they have no clue what the base number of the total species might be. Yet they feel confident in extrapolating how many species will be wiped forever from the face of the Earth next Thursday and assigning blame for this holocaust. This leads us to wonder if they are including in their numbers the extinction of species they don't even know exist.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) reported researchers were “startled” to learn from one study on just 19 trees in Panama that “80% of 1,200 beetle species discovered were previously unknown to science.” But after the WRI admitted “scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than how many species there are on Earth,” the WWF resolutely warned that global biological diversity declined exactly 28% between 1970 and 2005.

How can that be? Well, it’s quite easy when we take a look at this fine piece of work our friends at the WWF refer to as a scientific analysis:

"The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.

"If the low estimate of the number of species out there is true -- i.e. that there are around 2 million different species on our planet -- then that means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year.

"But if the upper estimate of species numbers is true -- that there are 100 million different species with us on our planet -- then between 10,000 and 100,000 species are becoming extinct each year."

The same folks explain that the natural extinction rate "simply means the rate of species extinctions that would occur if we humans were not around." Interesting, not a single board member of the WWF has volunteered not to be around in order protect other fragile life forms.

MSNBC dutifully will bemoan the “fact” that 100,000 species of flora and fauna will no longer be with us by next Christmas (sorry -- Winter Holiday). Our public school teachers will terrify the kindergarten tykes by revealing that, as they sleep peacefully each night, mommy and daddy are out slaughtering harbor seals and baby polar bears.

Unfortunately, this is the state of "science" today. It is not intended to enlighten or educate, but to serve as a vehicle to drive political outcomes and keep the government/foundation grants flowing. The generic "mankind" always is the culprit, but free-market capitalism is the real target.

posted March 06, 2015 11:56 AM            

“Beginning in a decade or two, scientists expect the warming of the atmosphere to melt the polar icecaps, raising the level of the seas, flooding coastal areas, eroding the shores and sending salt water far into fresh-water estuaries,” the Times reported. “Storm patterns will change, drying out some areas, swamping others and generally throwing agriculture into turmoil"

Sealevel rise on the Northeast Seaboard has been several inches in the last couple years...

posted March 06, 2015 01:47 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Catalina:
Whether or not due to warming this HAS been happening

[b]“Beginning in a decade or two, scientists expect the warming of the atmosphere to melt the polar icecaps, raising the level of the seas, flooding coastal areas, eroding the shores and sending salt water far into fresh-water estuaries,” the Times reported. “Storm patterns will change, drying out some areas, swamping others and generally throwing agriculture into turmoil"

Sealevel rise on the Northeast Seaboard has been several inches in the last couple years...

[/B]

---

posted March 06, 2015 03:40 PM            

Of course, the usual suspects and O'Bomber Kool-Aid drinkers are for any initiative which will harm the United States...which is their intention with their 'green energy' bullshiiite.

According To Spanish Government Its Green Energy Initiative Is Responsible For Spain’s Economic Distress

Energy is fundamental to any economy. When energy prices climb it impacts every corner of the economy, from the prices paid at retail shops to the costs of manufacturing goods sold in the shops. Higher energy costs drain money from the entire economy.

The best quote I have seen regarding the importance that energy plays in an economy was in Pravda (yes; that Pravda):

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies. Energy is the key stone to any and every economy, be it man power, animal power, wood or coal or nuclear. How else does one power industry that makes human life better (unless of course its making the bombs that end that human life, but that’s a different topic). Never in history, with the exception of the Japanese self imposed isolation in the 1600s, did a government actively force its people away from economic activity and industry.

Even the Soviets never created such idiocy.

As pointed out before, Spain pushed to become the leader in ‘green energy’ several years ago and the results have been disastrous. Spain now has Europe’s highest electrical utility rates and its highest unemployment rate (20%). Furthermore, Spain is close to becoming the EU’s next Greece.

According to leaked Spanish government internal documents, the Green energy initiative Spain undertook is the primary cause for their economic distress.

Via Pajama Media:

But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.

Unsurprisingly for a governmental take on a flagship program, the report takes pains to minimize the extent of the economic harm. Yet despite the soft-pedaling, the document reveals exactly why electricity rates “necessarily skyrocketed” in Spain, as did the public debt needed to underwrite the disaster. This internal assessment preceded the Zapatero administration’s recent acknowledgment that the “green economy” stunt must be abandoned, lest the experiment risk Spain becoming Greece.

The government report does not expressly confirm the highest-profile finding of the non-governmental report: that Spain’s “green economy” program cost the country 2.2 jobs for every job “created” by the state. However, the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study.

This document is not a public report. Spanish media has referred to its existence in recent weeks though, while Bloomberg and the Washington Examiner have noted the impact: Spain is now forced to jettison its plans — Obama’s model — for a “green economy.” (emphasis added)

And the bizarre twist to this story is that Obama is pressuring Spain to cut its public debt. And the main driver for Spain debt problems is their Green Energy initiative. The same initiative that Obama (and Michigan’s very own Jennifer Granholm aka “The Worst Governor in America”) is modeling his energy policy on.

An item which has been covered widely, however, is that President Obama is now pressuring Spain to turn off its spigot of public debt in the name of averting a situation similar to that of Greece.

Also covered widely is Obama’s promotion of the American Power Act — the legislation which would replicate Spain’s current situation in the United States.

Put simply, Obama is currently promoting a policy in the U.S. which is based on a policy that he wishes to see Spain abandon. Welcome to Obamaland (emphasis added)