I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

On the Black Friday front, I saw half a dozen tents pitched in front of Best Buy Thanksgiving morning at 7:30am. People were camping out there. They weren't Occupiers. They were shoppers. I drove past Best Buy at 10:30pm, and there was a line going from the front door around the side of the building. The parking lot was packed, and I estimate at least 150 people were standing there waiting, 90 minutes before the store opened. Unreal.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
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The global warming data manipulators are back in the news, as 5,000 new e-mails have been made public:

A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

That doesn't sound too good. What do the new e-mails say ?

Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The Dept. Of Energy is "happy" about not releasing the data ??? What possible reason could there be for them to be happy about keeping it secret ? Perhaps the data doesn't match the global warming rhetoric being spewed by certain politicians at the top of the D.C. food chain, like that megalomaniac who told us his inauguration marked "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal" (link).

The original Climategate e-mails illustrated how the scientists were intent on destroying "inconvenient" data, and the new e-mails reveal that the work of the global warming scientists is politically motivated:

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

The "cause" ??? Since when do scientists have a cause other than arriving at the truth ?

These cause driven, global warming advancing, data destroying scientific crusaders also tried to discredit those who disagreed with them:

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.

It gets worse. The new e-mails exposes the rank dishonesty of the global warming scientists. Their data was telling them one thing and they were reporting something entirely different:

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

Who needs honesty when there's a political agenda to pursue ? Not the warmers, apparently.

Whatever one's view of anthropogenic global warming, this behavior is entirely unacceptable. It is a mockery of the scientific process.

And they haven't even gone through all the newly released e-mails yet.

Being one of those alleged anti-science conservatives, as was mentioned in my last post, today I have the latest development in anti-science global warming skepticism. This information comes from that noted anti-science organization – NASA. This article is titled, New NASA Data Blows Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

Ah, what will those anti-science wingnuts over at NASA come up with next ? Don't they know the science is settled ? Btw, have any of you checked out the pictures from anti-science NASA's Dawn spacecraft ? They were taken while Dawn was orbiting the dwarf planet Vesta in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, 117 million miles from earth. Not bad for a bunch of anti-science winger deniers, eh ?

Here's some more global warming anti-science from NASA:

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

Scientists on all sides of the global warming debate are in general agreement about how much heat is being directly trapped by human emissions of carbon dioxide (the answer is "not much"). However, the single most important issue in the global warming debate is whether carbon dioxide emissions will indirectly trap far more heat by causing large increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds. Alarmist computer models assume human carbon dioxide emissions indirectly cause substantial increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds (each of which are very effective at trapping heat), but real-world data have long shown that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing as much atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds as the alarmist computer models have predicted.

The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models. The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA's ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.

It has long been my position that some anthropogenic (man-made) global warming was occurring, but I was never convinced of the doomsday scenario painted by Al Gore and others in the alarmist camp. This latest data confirms my skepticism, and could explain why the IPCC's hockey stick graph about future warming was wrong from the moment it was published. I have always based my "anti-science" view on the, you know, reliability of the science, which is turning out to be most unreliable. It will be interesting to see what the reaction to this information will be from the AGW camp. Here's the bottom line:

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

Indeed. At the very least, I would think some apologies from the AGW alarmists are in order for all the name-calling.

That about wraps it up for this alleged anti-science wingnut conservative/libertarian denier. Over and out.

P.S. – One prominent global warming scientist, whose work about Arctic polar bears helped "galvanize" the AGW hysteria (you all remember the picture of the sad polar bear on the thin sheet of ice, as if polar bears can't swim), has just been suspended and accused of scientific misconduct. You may also remember that the world's leading expert on polar bears, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, was banned by the global warmers a couple years ago, because Dr. Taylor said the polar bears were doing fine, that their numbers were increasing. The global warmers found his expert views most "unhelpful", so they didn't want to hear them. That's just the way those "pro-science" warmers roll.

The despicable people over at ThinkProgress wasted no time in politicizing the deadly tornados that have killed 300 people in Alabama and other states. In a piece called Storm Kills Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers, the renowned liberal climatologists at StinkProgress blamed the tornados on global warming climate change. Here's an excerpt:

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”

The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

In other words, those southern sh*tkickers (to use one of my liberal blogger pal the Reverend's favored adjectives for describing people from southern states), had it coming for not believing in the religion science of global warming, and for voting Republican, of course. Such people basically deserve to die. Also, notice that the climate scientist quoted by StinkProgress is promoting the 'all weather is attributable to global warming now' hypothesis. I describe this "scientific" belief system as follows…

If it's hot, it's global warming.
If it's cold, it's global warming.
If it's windy, it's global warming.
If it's calm, it's global warming.
If it rains, it's global warming.
If it's dry, it's global warming.

With this belief system, the global warmers have conveniently closed the circle, because there is now NO weather pattern they can't attribute to global warming. Thus, their hypothesis can NEVER be disproven, and never needs to be proven either. They have reached the 'if it's weather, it's climate change' stage of omnipotent inviolability. And they wonder why I refer to this as more of a religion than a scientific pursuit.

Fortunately, not all climatologists kneel down before the global warming gods in such knee-jerk fashion as do the StinkProgress types. When tornados appear in a region of the country that has long been known as 'Tornado Alley', those with common sense don't immediately attribute it to global warming and warn the tornado victims to repent or die. No, instead, they attribute the tornados to springtime:

US meteorologists warned Thursday it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes in the wake of deadly storms that have ripped through the US south.

"If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it's agreed upon by the tornado community that it's not a real increase," said Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University.

"It's having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we're seeing them more often," Dixon said.

But he said it would be "a terrible mistake" to relate the up-tick to climate change

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), also dismissed Thursday climate change as a factor in the deadly tornadoes: "Actually what we're seeing is springtime," he said.

"Many people think of Oklahoma as 'Tornado Alley' and forget that the southeast United States actually has a history of longer and more powerful tornadoes that stay on the ground longer."

The stronger-than-usual tornadoes affecting the southern states were actually predicted from examining the planet's climatological patterns, specifically those related to the La Nina phenomenon.

"We knew it was going to be a big tornado year," he said. But the key to that tip-off was unrelated to climate change: "It is related to the natural fluctuations of the planet."

The StinkProgressers would all probably shout "heretics !" at this information and refer to their fellow scientists as 'deniers" of the true faith, but enough with the religious fervor of global warming disciples. I want to return to some global warming data from a couple years ago. Informed people know the 2001 UN hockey stick graph was wrong from the moment it was published, and informed people also know about the Climategate scandal from a couple years ago, where the pre-eminent global warming promoters, the CRU from East Anglia, were attempting to fix the global warming data. The CRU's "findings" figured prominently in the UN's global warming findings. The problem is, that data was a joke. I want to put forth something I've never mentioned before, and have never seen reported on television. It's commonly known as the Harry_Read_Me file, and it contains 274 pages of frustrated e-mails from a CRU computer programmer who is attempting in vain to extract the information the CRU global warmers want from a mountain of data. Time and again, the programmer fails to get the desired CRU conclusions, so he finally just more or less makes up what the global warmers want to hear. These e-mails are absolutely damning, and if any of you are programmers out there, as I am, reading enough of this nonsense will make you realize exactly how damning they are. The e-mails are way too long to quote, and much of it is in computerese, so I'll give you some of the highlights. These are some of the e-mail statements from the CRU programmer, only a fraction of the information:

“But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless …” (Page 17)

- “It’s botch after botch after botch.” (18)

- “The biggest immediate problem was the loss of an hour’s edits to the program, when the network died … no explanation from anyone, I hope it’s not a return to last year’s troubles … This surely is the worst project I’ve ever attempted. Eeeek.” (31)

- “Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite.” (37)

- “… this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!” (45)

- “Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!” (47)

- “As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless.” (57)

- “COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993!” (71)

- “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah — there is no ’supposed,’ I can make it up. So I have : – )” (98)

- “You can’t imagine what this has cost me — to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a ‘Master’ database of dubious provenance …” (98)

- “So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option — to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations … In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad …” (98-9)

- “OH F— THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done, I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases.” (241).

- “This whole project is SUCH A MESS …” (266)

Any questions ? There's an old saying in the computer programming world, 'garbage in, garbage out'. It means that if your input data is faulty, your output results will be worthless. I've never seen a better example of 'garbage in, garbage out' than the data the CRU programmer was working with, and I spent 26 years in the programming business.

The global warming research scientists all subsequently closed ranks around CRU and each other, saying there was no impropriety at CRU, naturally, but…are we really supposed to believe that ? Their funding and careers depend of global warming being real and a serious threat, and the facts speak for themselves.

Finally, it's not my purpose to discredit the science of global warming, but I am skeptical. I'm not sure how that is a bad thing. I thought science was SUPPOSED to be skeptical as it searched for more and better answers, especially when the data is in serious question. Without skepticism, there is no scientific advancement. When I get worried is when scientists start saying "the science is settled", when there is so clearly much more to learn. That's when I start questioning their motivations. I get even more worried when politicians start dreaming up grand ideological plans to fix the "problem", that involve draconian government controls and increases in energy prices that will harm the economy, and harm the average person the most. And I get most worried of all when politically-driven people like those at StinkProgress start treating skeptics as if they are sub-human heretics who deserve to die. If I wanted intractable religious absolutism, I'd move to Iran.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been in Congress for 29 years. He has a degree from Harvard Law School. You'd think Schumer might have some idea about how our government works. You'd be wrong. Here's Chucky, who never met a camera or microphone he didn't like, opining on our three branches of government:

There's your Schumerian civics lesson for today. The three branches of government are the House, the Senate, and the President (if Sarah Palin had said this, it would be on a continuous 24-hour loop on CNN). It's odd that Schumer, a lawyer, would forget all about the Judicial branch of government, but it's not that odd. Democrats aren't too fond of the Judicial branch these days, seeing as how another federal judge just ruled ObamaCare to be unconstitutional. That prompted assorted liberals to claim the judge was engaging in "judicial activism". I've come to learn that to liberals, "judicial activism" is when a judge applies the Constitution to overturn legislation liberals like. It means nothing more than that.

For the record, the three branches of government are the Igneous, the Sedimentary, and the other one.

Back to ObamaCare, here's White House advisor Stephanie Cutter's bizarre take on the ObamaCare ruling:

"The judge's decision contradicts decades of Supreme Court precedent that support the considered judgment of the democratically elected branches of government that the act's individual responsibility provision is necessary to prevent billions of dollars of cost-shifting every year by individuals without insurance who cannot pay for the health care they obtain," White House adviser Stephanie Cutter wrote in an Internet posting.

Allow me to translate. Cutter is saying it's not the job of the judiciary to overturn legislation passed by the legislative and executive branches, because there are decades of precedent in which the judiciary didn't overturn legislation….

Wow. Using Cutter's logic, we wouldn't need a Judicial branch of government at all, or a Constitution either. All we'd need is the "considered judgement" of Democrats. I wonder if Cutter is related to Schumer. Naturally, it is precisely the job of the Judicial branch to overrturn legislative overrreach by Congress and the President. It's their job to insure legislation passes constitutional muster. That's WHY we have a Judicial branch. It's known as checks and balances. Perhaps Cutter, like Schumer, believes that PROPER checks and balances consist of a Democratic-led House, a Democratic-led Congress, and a Democratic President all agreeing that ObamaCare is great, but that type of unilateral rule is what has Hosni Mubarak in trouble in Egypt. In fact, when Democrats aren't in power, they call such things "tyranny of the majority". You may have heard Democrats use that phrase once or a thousand times during the Bush years, though they've stricken the phrase from the English language now. These days, they deem opposition to Democrats to be "obstruction". You've heard that word used by Democrats once or a thousand times since Obama became President. Such intellectual honesty, those Dems.

From the "Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste" files, some liberals are hard at work trying to turn the crisis in Egypt to their political advantage. Like rust, they never sleep. MSNBC's Chris Matthews tried to blame it on Bush and the Iraq war, but the grand prize winner in the Loony Liberal Logic category goes to global warming alarmist Joe Romm, NPR, and John Podesta of the Center For American Progress, who blamed the Egyptian crisis on, you guessed it, global warming:

Political unrest has broken out in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and other Arab countries. Social media and governmental policies are getting most of the credit for spurring the turmoil, but there’s another factor at play. Many of the people protesting are also angry about dramatic price hikes for basic foodstuffs, such as rice, cereals, cooking oil and sugar.

This summer’s extreme global weather raised fears of a “Coming Food Crisis,” as CAP’s John D. Podesta and Jake Caldwell warned in Foreign Policy: “Global food security is stretched to the breaking point, and Russia’s fires and Pakistan’s floods are making a bad situation worse.” Earlier this month I discussed how, in fact, “Extreme weather events helped drive food prices to record highs.” Back then, experts were worried about food riots. Now they are happening.

Energy insecurity and climate instability have now become key factors in food insecurity, which in turn has become a key factor in toppling governments

Those who think that the serious impacts of climate change — and our inane energy policies — on the world economy and U.S. national security are decades away are simply not paying attention.

Can anyone remember what floods, fires, droughts, and food shortages were blamed on before global warming ? I'm pretty sure they were just considered natural events, though I don't want the loons to start calling me a flat-earther, a denier, or any of those other "scientific" names they call people. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin made the observation that the logic the loons use to decide whether global warming is the cause of everything something is similar to the way Monty Python decided if a woman was a witch. This is too funny not to use:

Update – I've found there is a problem with the Monty Python video playback. Rats. You can view the video on YouTube here.

So, I guess either the Egyptian crisis is caused by global warming….or Egypt is a duck….or made of wood…and is therefore a witch. Burn it !!!

Back in 2000, here's what the top global warming experts predicted for the UK:

…the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Aw, those poor little tykes. Let's see how the predictions of these global warming experts have panned out here in 2010:

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill. And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.

The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f). The Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910..

The latest snowfall carpeted large swathes of Britain today – with up to 5in falling in places – paralysing roads and rail, and forcing airports and schools to close. Forecasters warned the worst was still to come over the next 24 hours as the heaviest December snowfall for 30 years tightened its grip on the nation once more.

Question: How did Britain go from 'no snow within a few years' to 'the coldest December on record and the heaviest snowfall in 30 years' in one short decade ? Somebody call the CRU. They got some splainin' to do. Or maybe the IPCC's hockey stick graph, which was wrong from the moment it was published, was meant for ice hockey. Things ain't adding up, and somebody should have to answer for it. The discrepancy shouldn't be relegated to places like tiny blogs on ohio.com. Where is our major media on this story ? As I explained in my last post on this subject, global warming stopped fifteen years ago, yet the mainstream media has been as quiet as a churchmouse on the subject.

Meanwhile, the UN is rolling merrily along with it's climate change recommendations following the recent Cancun summit:

The United Nations urged governments on Monday to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions quickly, saying the world will otherwise overshoot a ceiling for global warming agreed this month in Mexico.

The U.N. Climate Change Secretariat also called on countries to work out the details of new institutions, such as a "Green Climate Fund" to help poor nations, agreed on December 11 at the 190-nation talks.

"All countries, but particularly industrialised nations, need to deepen their emission reduction efforts and to do so quickly," Christiana Figueres, head of the Secretariat, said in a statement.

In Cancun, governments agreed to measures such as a new fund to help oversee $100 billion in annual aid to developing nations from 2020, a new mechanism to slow deforestation and ways to help poor countries adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Hold on there a second, UN. The doomsday scenarios about ice-free arctic seas and melting glaciers have been overstated, and contrary to another doomsday scenario, the sea level is not rising, according to a former IPCC expert:

26 Feb 10 – Dr Nils-Axel Mörner, geologist, physicist, and one-time expert reviewer for the IPCC, announced this week that, contrary to IPCC claims, sea levels are not rising.

"Sea level is not changing in any way, " said Dr Mörner in an hour-long interview with Kim Greenhouse of "It's Rainmaking Time."

Dr. Mörner, who received his PhD in geology in 1969, is one of the greatest – if not the greatest – experts on sea levels in the world today. He has worked with sea level problems for 40 years in areas scattered all over the globe

There is no change, says Mörner. There is absolutely no sea-level rise in Tuvalo, there is no change here, and there is zero sea-level rise in Bangladesh. If anything, sea levels have lowered in Bangladesh.

We do not need to fear sea-level rise, says Mörner. "(However), we should have a fear of those people who fooled us."

And btw, the scare tactics being used regarding melting ice in Greenland may also be just that, scare tactics. Here are the results of a recent study:

Greenland ice sheet flow driven by short-term weather extremes, not gradual warming: UBC research

Sudden changes in the volume of meltwater contribute more to the acceleration – and eventual loss – of the Greenland ice sheet than the gradual increase of temperature, according to a University of British Columbia study.

Isn't it time to admit we don't have the answers ? Isn't it time to admit more study is needed ? Isn't it time to reopen those closed minds ? Isn't it, IPCC ? Isn't it, UN ? Isn't it, CRU ? Isn't it, Al Gore ?

Let me start by saying I agree with several things Obama has done recently – instituting an effort to secure loose nukes is great. Probably the single greatest threat to the USA and the world is a nuke falling into terrorist hands. Obama's move to start offshore oil drilling is a step forward. I supported his surge in Afghanistan (though I'm having second thoughts after Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized American efforts. We can't possibly succeed without the support of the Afghan government). Obama took a small step forward on gay rights by requiring hospitals to allow patients to designate who can visit them during crucial moments. It no longer has to be a family member. The former policy discriminated against unmarried couples and gay couples who are not allowed to marry, and are therefore not recognized as family. Allowing unmarried and gay partners to visit their loved ones in the hospital is simply the right and humane thing to do. Kudos to the President for changing this longstanding and unfair policy.

But thursday, the President returned to what I termed "full-blown economic retard" mode a couple posts back. At a Democratic fundraiser in Miami, Obama said the following about the tax day Tea Party protests. From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama said Thursday he's amused by the anti-tax tea party protests that have been taking place around Tax Day. Obama told a fundraiser in Miami that he's cut taxes, contrary to the claims of protesters.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you," he said.

At that, many in the crowd at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts stood and yelled, "Thank you!"

The Democrats at Obama's fundraiser may have bought into this schlock, but anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows better. This was Obama at his worst.

First of all, the Tea Party protests aren't really about current levels of taxation. They are primarily about out-of-control government spending and growth, along with the resulting massive deficits and debt increases. It doesn't take too many brain cells to figure out that higher taxation HAS to follow such fiscal irresponsibility eventually, even if Obama is throwing a populist bone to the taxpayers now. The Democrats who are saying "thank you" to Obama's program of cut taxes/increase spending certainly didn't feel the same way about George W. Bush's same program of cut taxes/increase spending. The Democrats were right about Bush, but they've become incredible hypocrites now that their man is in charge, and in little more than a year in office, their man has increased spending more than Bush ever dreamed. Federal spending in 2011 is scheduled to be nearly a trillion dollars more than it was in 2008. That is astounding, and remember, after that the huge spending increases for ObamaCare start to kick in.

Second, Obama is a tax RAISER, not a tax cutter. He broke his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making under $200,000 about two weeks after he took office, when he implemented a regressive cigarette tax. Obama's health care reform will implement a slew of new taxes, far more than the TEMPORARY tax cuts he instituted for 95% of Americans last year. Obama's wants to end his middle class tax cuts after 2010. Then he wants to reverse the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000. Several of the health care reform taxes will hit the middle class, further violating his pledge not to raise taxes on those making under $200,000 per year. Coming up on Obama's agenda is another huge regressive tax scam known as Cap And Trade, which will drive up everyone's energy costs while doing virtually nothing to decrease CO2 emissions. Obama's economic advisors are contemplating several other tax increases, among them a VAT tax, which would also be regressive.

Yet, Obama wants us to say "thank you" for the temporary tax cuts. I don't think so. The American public has to be smarter than to fall for this bait-and-switch crapola. How our President thinks he can control the economic narrative with such fatuous nonsense is beyond me. Oh wait, I do know how. The mainstream media seldom calls him on his lies. Instead, they are complicit in pushing them. That's how.

Welcome To The Machine - On the same day President Obama invited Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) to the White House to pressure him to switch his vote on health care reform, Obama appointed Matheson's brother, Scott Matheson, to a judgeship on the 10th Circuit Court Of Appeals. I'm sure that was an entirely random, coincidental event with absolutely no underlying political calculations whatsoever…not at all similar to the way things are done in Obama's old stomping grounds…not at all similar to the Chicago way….not at all. This is the most ethical administration ever…especially when they aren't lying about everything.
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Global Warming Kettle Calls Pot Black – "First of all, we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody is like — a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that, there’s all this snow on the ground, this doesn’t mean anything. I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow." – Barack "The Weatherman" Obama.

The glaring problem with Obama's "everything is climate change now" rhetoric is that Vancouver doesn't usually get much snow in February. The average temperature there in February is 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Not exactly snow weather, and a temp of 55 degrees is just an example of normal weather variation. Exit questions – What if Sarah Palin said something this dumb ? How many months would it be before the media stopped talking about it ?
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Nominee For Idiot Of The Year - The following video shows MSNBC talker Dylan Ratigan "interviewing" a Tea Party representative, and hijacking his own interview by refusing to allow the Tea Party guy to answer the questions put to him. Ratigan instead used the segment as a transparent ploy to parrot the constant MSNBC propaganda point that the Tea Party movement is a racist movement.

This might be a new low in what passes for journalism. Either that, or Ratigan fancies himself the next Keith Olbermann, a dubious aspiration at best.

While I'm on the subject of the Tea Party movement…I keep hearing from liberals that the Tea Parties are chock full of racist signs, and having attended Tea Parties, I haven't seen any. Not one. I have seen a couple signs on the internet that COULD be interpreted as racist (and could also be liberal plants), out of the hundreds of thousands of signs from which to choose at Tea Party events. Can some liberal please show me all these racist Tea Party signs ??? I really want to see what all the fuss is about.
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A Good Day To Die – "Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good." – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) link

I've heard of the bigotry of soft expectations, but this is ridiculous. By Reid's standard, if only 20,000 people lost their jobs next month, that would be, as Tony the Tiger used to say, "GRRREEAAT !"

Time for a new Senate Majority Leader. This one's broken.
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Rules ? We Don't Need No Stinking Rules - From NBC News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today the American people ought to know more about what she called "total obstruction" by the Republican Party in the Senate. Referring to Sen. Jim Bunning's hold-up of unemployment benefits earlier this week, Pelosi said, "It's not about rules, it's about a decision they've made to obstruct."

Here we have Pelosi admitting that the Pay-Go rules passed by the Democrats a couple weeks ago are basically meaningless. They bypassed them the first time they had the opportunity to enforce them, and then they have the gall to portray the one Senator who called the Dems on their dishonesty an obstructionist. Wow. Words fail me.

Time for a new Congress. This one's broken.
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Obama As The New Bush - Students in Jakarta, Indonesia are protesting President Obama's upcoming visit to that country. Obama previously has been very popular in Indonesia, having spent part of his childhood in Jakarta. From the Associated Press:

Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta's parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama's head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Protest organizer Ahmad Irhamul Fikri, spokesman for the Coordinating Board for Campus Proselytizing Institute, said bigger rallies will be staged next Friday in more Indonesian cities ahead of Obama's March 20-22 visit.

If there's a bright side here…maybe this will shut up some of the fringe element nuts known as the Birthers, who think Obama is a foreign-born Muslim who wants to establish a Caliphate here in America, or something.

Most people have accepted as fact the notion that the earth has warmed over the last century, even if they debate the reasons behind it. The last IPCC assessment deemed global warming to be "unequivocal." When I have discussed global warming previously on this blog, I always accepted as fact the underlying idea that the earth has warmed slightly, though I was skeptical of all the doomsday rhetoric being spewed by the global warming alarmists.

But British scientists and others are now saying the earth may not be warming at all.

The London Times has reported new studies examining the unreliability of temperature measuring stations around the world. Here are the findings of a peer-reviewed study:

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

In other words, temperature measuring stations that used to be in the middle of rural fields are now in or near urban areas, so they register the warmer urban temperatures.

I only hope Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Al Gore, and company won't call the London Times anti-science flat-earthers for reporting this information. They don't think any of this stuff should be aired. They think the science is settled, the matter decided.

Isn't that THEIR problem ? Doesn't that make THEM anti-science ? I'm just asking.

I keep thinking I should write a post about my differences with the Republican party, but Democrats keep talking, thereby constantly reminding me why I detest Democrats, so I never quite get around to the Republicans. Here are a few of the latest examples of Demo-speak.

"I am very optimistic about, about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration." –Vice President Joe Biden, Febrary 2010.

Don't that beat all ? Here is Biden crediting the Obama administration for our successes in Iraq. Time for a short history lesson. Biden and Obama both opposed the Bush-era Surge, which transformed the Iraq War from a failing proposition to a winning proposition. And Biden was the one who proposed the colossally stupid three-state solution in Iraq, which would have been a logistical and humanitarian nightmare involving the uprooting and relocation of millions of Iraqis. In addition, the timetable for America's withdrawal from Iraq was setup by the Bush administration, not the Obama administration. To Obama's credit, he did continue the policies of his predecessor Bush in Iraq, policies which were condemned by Democrats for years, policies that Obama himself condemned over and over again on the campaign trail in 2008. Obama also repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he'd end the Iraq War in sixteen months, another promise he will not keep (thankfully).
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"Most small businesses right now, if they've got enough customers to make a profit and they can get the bank loans required to boost their payroll, boost their inventory and sell to those customers, they will do so." –Barack Obama, February 2010.

Here is a comment from a man who has no idea what it means to run a business. FYI Obama – A business doesn't take out bank loans to make payroll. If a business is taking out bank loans to make it's payroll, that is a business soon to be out of business. If a business can't make payroll, it lays people off, it scales back.
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"The idea [to create jobs] is to provide financial support to workers, age 60 to 62, who are currently employed, to opt for a temporary, expanded early retirement benefit under Social Security. The jobs those individuals leave will need to be refilled, even under the current recessionary circumstances. Employers will hire an equal number of unemployed people to take their places. With approximately 4.2 million workers in that age group, we would need only one-quarter of them to elect to take expanded early retirement in order to create 1 million private-sector jobs." – Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), January 24, 2010.

Here, Dennis the Menace is saying a million jobs will be created by moving a million people to early Social Security at age 60. Sigh. I can't stand it. First of all, retiring a million people early to have their jobs taken by other workers DOESN'T CREATE ANY JOBS. It's a wash. A million workers leave the workforce and a million workers replace them. That's ZERO jobs created. Second, the net result of Kucinich's proposal is only that a million more people go on Social Security, adding more unfunded entitlement liability than that program already has. It adds more to the government debt. Why does it seem that the Democrats response to absolutely everything is to have MORE people dependent on the government ? Maybe it's because the Democrats response to everything is to have MORE people dependent on the government (Whoa. I just got that deja vu feeling. Weird). Speaking as someone from northeast Ohio, I sincerely apologize for Dennis Kucinich. We are not all dolts here.
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"It's [called] climate change, where where it's supposed to get warm it gets warmer, and where it's supposed to get cold, it gets colder." – Keith Olbermann, February 2010.

Maybe it's not fair to Democrats to characterize Olbermann as a Democrat. He's more like…a raving left-wing madman. I'm sure Olby doesn't ever vote Republican, however. The above quote is Olbermann of PMS-NBC responding to Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who joked about how the recent record snowfalls don't seem to indicate any global warming taking place. Olby takes the insane liberal loon stance that no matter what happens with the weather…global warming, er, I mean, climate change, is responsible for it. This is pretty convenient for the loons, because it's makes their climate change religion inviolable. Climate change is responsible for EVERYTHING now. Heavy rain ? Climate change. No rain ? Climate change. Hot temperatures ? Climate change. Cold temperatures ? Climate change. Heavy snowfall ? Climate change. No snowfall ? Climate change. On and on it goes. The old flat-earthers look absolutely intelligent by comparison.

On the same subject:

"One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that they just don’t believe in science any more. And that is not an approach that is likely to generate any kind of creative thinking…People who use snowstorms as an example of why global warming doesn’t exist don’t understand the science and they don’t care.” – Democrat Howard Dean, February 2010.

See: Olbermann's response that ALL WEATHER PHENOMENON is climate change. How scientific is that ?

For further response to How-weird Dean, I give you Ed Morrissey from HotAir, who responds to Dean better than I could:

"Actually, we do respect science. What we don’t do is adopt belief systems based on hypotheses from so-called scientists that use incomplete and unreliable predictive modeling, include wild conjectures as fact, pass off student dissertations as reliable research, and accept advocacy claims without testing, all while conspiring to hide contradictory evidence and scheme to ruin the careers of those who question them. Science requires that claims get tested, that predictive models that fail get discarded, that data and process remain open for review, and that critical thinking get welcomed instead of demonized.
Now, when Howard Dean wants to discuss scientifically how anyone can represent what the IPCC did as rigorous and reliable science, and how the “science” that predicted unstoppable increases in global temperatures for the last 12 years got it wrong but still remains reliable as a basis on which to enact public policy that massively intrudes on private enterprise, property rights, and energy production, well, I’d bet the GOP would welcome such a forum. But while we’re there, perhaps Dean and the scientific acolytes in the Democratic Party can scientifically explain how a group of cells with a unique, human DNA that divide and multiply within a uterus is somehow not human life.
You know, since we’re being scientific and all." – Ed Morrissey

Yeah. What he said.

Or we can go with the dumb screamy guy who said Republicans don't believe in sicence. You pick.

My biggest problem with the advocates of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming has always been their obvious closed-mindedness, which is utterly inconsistent with the principles of science. The "warmers" won't engage in debate. They demonize global warming agnostics and questioners as "flat-earthers." They question the motives of dissenters. They ignore any data that isn't consistent with their beliefs, which makes those beliefs appear predetermined. These characteristics of the warmers make them appear almost like cult members, driven by ideology. I can understand this from a political standpoint, because politics is often little more than thuggery. I can't, however, accept this type of behavior from a scientific standpoint. Science is supposed to be the pursuit of truth, not the pursuit of an agenda. Science is not fixed and unquestioned. It doesn't have an end. It is an ongoing endeavor.

Wikipedia explains the scientific method as follows:

The Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2]

When existing scientific hypotheses are disproven, as the IPCC hockey stick graph has been disproven, then explanations or alternate hypotheses are called for. More scientific inquiry is called for. What we have witnessed with the Climategate e-mails has been precisely the opposite of science. We have witnessed scientists acting like ideologically-driven thugs (aka, politicians). The e-mails reveal scientists rigging data and attempting to squelch dissenting opinions. At the center of the storm are two man-made global warming advocates, the climatologists Michael Mann of Penn State, and Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, from which the e-mails were lifted. The Wall Street Journal describes some of the e-mail communiques between these two scientists:

The real issue is what the [e-mail] messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged.

This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.

As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr. Mann's liking, that "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously, they found a solution to that—take over a journal!"

Mr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board." In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

Notice the circular logic contained in the above e-mail exchanges. Mann and Jones only want peer-reviewed journals to be taken seriously regarding man-made global warming, but when a peer-reviewed journal publishes anything that the warmers don't like, the warmers move to exclude them as a peer-reviewed journal, thus closing off the dissent (and the science). This is not science.

Here's more reported by Robert Tracinski at RealClearPolitics:

You can also see from these e-mails the scientists' panic at any dissent appearing in the scientific literature. When another article by a skeptic was published in Geophysical Research Letters, Michael Mann complains, "It's one thing to lose Climate Research. We can't afford to lose GRL." Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome editor: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." That's exactly what they did, and a later e-mail boasts that "The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/new editorial leadership there."

Not content to block out all dissent from scientific journals, the CRU scientists also conspired to secure friendly reviewers who could be counted on to rubber-stamp their own work. Phil Jones suggests such a list to Kevin Trenberth, with the assurance that "All of them know the sorts of things to say…without any prompting."

I love the part where the warmers say they "can't afford to lose" another group of climate researchers. What can't they afford to lose ? Their grants, their big salaries, their perks, or what ?

There are a number of other e-mails indicating the deception of the warmers.

Here's one about hiding the fact that global temperatures have been DECLINING:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Here's one that doubts global warming science:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Here's one about a global warming skeptic scientist:

Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.

Here's an attempt to hide the facts about the Medieval Warming Period:

Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back….

More possible suppression of evidence:

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? [the UN's Fourth Assessment Report]
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

This stuff is distrubing, to say the least. Perhaps all scientific credibility is not lost, however. Another climatologist at the East Anglia CRU, Mike Hulme, had this to say about the e-mails:

"This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science."

Amen to that.

Let's get the crazy train rolling at high speed right off the bat with this first quote…

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.” – Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse (link).

Let me get this straight. After years and years of Democrats attempting to undermine President Bush at every turn in the War On Terror, er, I mean the Overseas Contingency Operation, including attempts to lose the Iraq war, a DNC spokesman now has the nerve to say Republicans have thrown in with the terrorists because some Republicans opined that Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize (which he most assuredly didn't, as Obama himself even said). Wow-freakedy-wow-wow. Words fail me. I literally can't think of a negative adjective strong enough to convey how wrong this remark is. I can't even think of a way to equate an opinion on the Nobel Prize with throwing in with terrorists, but evidently Brad Woodhouse can.

And Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) seems to agree. I expect this stuff from dolts like Keith Olbermann or the other lib-nuts on MSNBC, who routinely compare Republicans to jihadis, but not from Democratic Senators or the DNC.

Also, somebody better hip Woodhouse to the fact that the Obama administration has decided the Taliban isn't our enemy any longer. Or Hamas either, for that matter. I bet that'll do wonders for the morale of our troops who've been fighting against the Taliban and dying in Afghanistan for the last seven years. Acceptance of the Taliban is also a major step backwards for human rights, especially from a President who just won the Nobel Peace Prize here on Planet Orwell. Sigh. Is the world turning on it's ear, or is it just me ?
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Next up is this very conscientous Democratic Senator, who is fully committed to doing his job:

"I don't expect to actually read the legislative language [of the health care bill] because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life." –Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE)

Yes, being a Congressman is soooo hard, and now they expect Sen. Carper to read AND understand the legislation he's voting upon ? What's a poor Senator to do ? Study or something ? I presume Carper's state of confusion over the legislation won't prevent him from voting "Yea" on the health care bill. You just don't see integrity like Carper's anymore. On second thought, yes you do, all the time on Capitol Hill, and that's the problem.
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Now we move on to another patriotic Senator, John Kerry (D-NVA). Here's what Kerry said about cap-and-trade legislation:

"Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent."

Yeah, baby ! We're fundamentally transforming America !!! If we can only make this recession a lot worse, and make it last forever, we can help the environment ! And golly gee, if we go into a full-fledged permanent Great Depression II, maybe we can even reach the Kyoto emission standards ! Victory is at hand ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can ! Yes We Can, Destroy The Economy !!!! C'mon, everybody sing !

"Obama ! mmmm mmmm mmmm."

I can't stand it. Where did I put that hammer ?

Below is a graph of the Earth's temperature change estimates from the IPCC's Third Assessment report in 2001.

Take a look at the period from 2000-2010 on the above graph. Do you see the steady upward climb of the Earth's temperature predicted by the IPCC ? Okay, hold that thought.

Here are the actual measurements of the earth's temperature since 2003.

The Earth's temperature has not followed the IPCC model. In fact, the Earth's temperature hasn't increased at all. It has decreased (ever since the 1998 El Nino effect created a modern high temperature mark).

Bottom line – The IPCC was wrong from the minute it published it's temperature estimates. The SCIENCE says so. We might want to take this into consideration before we wreck our economy by passing cap-and-trade.

No wonder the EPA didn't want to consider Alan Carlin's information. The EPA wanted to issue a carbon dioxide endangerment finding (and it did), and Carlin's information was an inconvenient truth for that agenda, as is the SCIENCE I just pointed out.

This leads me to wonder, is global warming science really settled, as the Goreacle claims, or is it merely global warming politics that is settled ?

Even more important, why isn't the mainstream media talking about this stuff ? Who are they working for ?

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.” – Thomas Jefferson

Allow me to construct a hypothetical set of circumstances. Let's say our country was in the midst of a severe recession, that unemployment was rising rapidly as millions of jobs were being lost, that average people were having an increasingly difficult time getting by, that our industries were having a difficult time competing, that the value of the dollar was dropping, that we were up to our ears in debt……

Okay, that isn't hypothetical at all. That's what is actually happening.

Now, in response to this not-so-hypothetical set of crisis circumstances, what would you think of our government if it passed legislation that would bring about massive tax increases, that would make it even more difficult for our industries to compete, that would cause more job losses, that would raise energy costs dramatically, that would increase the price of practically every product consumers purchase, that would put the average person much further in the hole, and that wouldn't even provide the desired benefit of said legislation ???? (link)

I'd call that government destructive to the ends of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'd want that government replaced for working against the interests of the American people. That's what I'm thinking today after the House of Representatives passed Cap-And-Trade legislation by a narrow vote of 219-212.

The Cap-and-Trade bill, also known as Waxman-Markey, also known as The American Clean Energy And Security Act, also known as the Let Them Eat Cake Act, is a 1,200 page monstrosity that nobody in the House had time to read, because the final version of the bill wasn't posted until the night before friday's vote, and a 300 page amendment was added at 3:00am on the day of the vote. I seem to remember President Obama saying something about having the most transparent administration EVAH !…….I guess Congress didn't get the memo on that, because they are operating like cat burglars in the dead of night.

Here's a quick rundown of the bad guys and the good guys in the House. The bad guys voting FOR the destruction of America included 211 Democrats and 8 Republicans. The good guys voting AGAINST destruction included 44 Democrats and 168 Republicans. You can find a complete vote tally here. I'd like to single out Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) for praise for standing against this bill. I've maligned Mr. Kucinich in the past, but I'm beginning to think I was wrong about him. He seems to be one of the few in the House who actually stands on his principles. That's noteworthy to me, even if I often disagree with him. The fact that 44 Democrats voted against this bill shows us that the Dems know Cap-And-Trade is a really bad idea, but lots of Democrats caved to pressure from the White House. El Presidente badly wants more control over all aspects of America, and this bill puts him in the express lane toward acquiring that control (but he believe in free markets ! lol).

"We've seen the example in Spain, it's a colossal mistake there, a political and an economic error. This could be the most colossal mistake ever made in the history of the United State Congress." – Congressman Steve King (R-IOWA).

I picked the above quote not only because a guy named King must be right, but because he mentioned Spain. What happened in Spain ?

Spain already implemented cap-and-trade, and has the most far-reaching renewable energy agenda in the European Union. The result ? Unemployment is at 18% in Spain (double the EU average), and there have been 2.2 jobs lost for every green job created. In addition, tons of subsidies are required for green energy initiatives to be competitive. The wind industry jobs created in Spain have come at a cost of $1.4 million PER JOB. (link)

Gee, who wouldn't want to emulate such "success" ???

But my favorite comment on the cap-and-trade legislation came from Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who when asked why he spent an hour reading portions of the bill aloud on the House floor, said, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of s–t." (link)

Even those who are in favor of restricting carbon emissions know that this cap-and-trade bill is, um, crap. Here's one such person, billionaire Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway:

"I think if you get into the way it was written, it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. And it's a fairly regressive tax. If we buy permits, essentially, at our utilities, that goes right into the bills of the utility customers, and an awful lot of people in Iowa, in Oregon, and Utah, and places where we are, very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for electricity. So I think that can be improved." (link)

Speaking of restricting carbon emissions, which is the stated purpose of cap-and-trade (all it's negative and destructive effects are just icing on the cake), exactly how much of an effect on global warming will this cap-and-trade bill have ? (for the sake of brevity, I'm assuming here that man-made carbon emissions are a significant cause of global warming, an assumption that is itself a source of controversy).

Washington Post writer Martin Feldstein lays it out in an article called Cap-And-Trade: All Cost, No Benefit.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices needed to achieve a 15 percent CO2 reduction — slightly less than the Waxman-Markey target — would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. Some expert studies estimate that the cost to households could be substantially higher. The future cost to the typical household would rise significantly as the government reduces the total allowable amount of CO2.

Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by the very small resulting decline in global CO2. Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable. The U.S. should wait until there is a global agreement on CO2 that includes China and India before committing to costly reductions in the United States.

Waxman-Markey will have NO EFFECT on global warming, but it will have the "benefit" of further destroying our country.

In spite of all this, there are many American corporations ready to jump on the green bandwagon and profit from the carbon credit trading frenzy that El Presidente is trying to unleash on us. You're even familiar with some of these corporations – AIG, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, General Electric…you know, the GOOD corporations that we've all come to know and love so much during the recession. They are ready to jump on the manufactured energy bubble and rake in the big bucks. That these same companies are all recipients of government bailouts is just a big old coincidence, I'm sure. Too bad Enron isn't around any longer. Those guys knew how to run an energy bubble. I bet most of you didn't even know that General Electric got a bailout. Somehow, that hasn't been mentioned by the mainstream media very much. Not only did GE get a bailout, they got a $139 billion bailout, second in size to AIG's bailout. Yet somehow, the enormous GE bailout hasn't been mentioned or condemned by major television networks like……NBC, nor by NBC's retarded cable stepchildren over at MSNBC (aka, The Obama Channel). I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that General Electric OWNS NBC, or the fact that GE is deeply in bed with the Obama administration. I'm sure that can't be it. Everyone knows MSNBC is a group of highly dedicated professional journalists who would never compromise their integrity or ideals for…….LOL. Oh, man. I can't finish this sentence. Sometime I even crack myself up.

But make sure you contact GE for all your carbon credit trading needs. They are primed and ready for all their cap-and-trade lobbying to start paying dividends.

As for you, America, I hope you like cake, because if you don't rise up and stop this Cap-And-Trade disaster in the Senate, cake is all you'll have left. And maybe some government cheese to go with it, if you're lucky.

The House Energy And Commerce Committee has approved the American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009 (cap and trade). Although no members of the committee actually read the nearly 1,000 page bill, the House did employ a speed reader for a day to read part of the bill aloud (think Pittsburgh Pete), which didn't help inform Congress at all, but did provide some excellent material for all the late night talk show comedians.

The aim of the bill, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, is to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from automobiles, coal plants, and factories by 83% over the next 40 years. Here's the bill's primary sponsor, Representative Henry "Clueless" Waxman (D-CA), explaining what is in the bill when he was asked the other day:

"You're asking me ? Well, I certainly don't claim to know everything that's in this bill….I don't know the details. We rely on the scientists."

Excellent leadership, Mr. Waxman.

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post describes the cap and trade legislation:

There remains a robust argument over whether the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 represents a crucial step in preserving life as we know it. But there is no question that there are few pieces of legislation that are likely to have a more profound effect on the U.S. economy. It would bring about dramatic changes in the relative prices of energy and goods produced by energy-hungry industries. It would redistribute trillions of dollars in business sales and household income and generate hundreds of billions in government revenue. And it would represent the most dramatic extension of government's regulatory powers into the workings of the economy since the early days of the New Deal.

For all that, there are probably not more than a few hundred people who really understand what's in this legislation, how it would work and what its impact is likely to be.

The other thing to say about it is that it is a badly flawed piece of public policy. It is so broad in its reach and complex in its details that it would be difficult to implement even in Sweden, let alone in a diverse and contentious country like the United States. It would create dozens of new government agencies with broad powers to set standards, dole out rebates and tax subsidies, and pick winning and losing technologies, even as it relies on newly created markets with newly created regulators to set prices and allocate resources. Its elaborate allocation of pollution allowances and offsets reads like a parody of industrial policy authored by the editorial page writers of the Wall Street Journal. The opportunities for waste, fraud and regulatory screwup look enormous.

Sounds just peachy. Sure, cap and trade may cost a million jobs and drive up everybody's energy costs by several hundred to several thousand dollars each year, but we get an enormous new government bureaucracy to boot ! What could possibly go wrong ? Besides, we're in an economic boom period now, right ? Who cares if job losses, costs, and taxes go up ? It's not like we're in a recession or anything, where something like this cap and trade legislation would REALLY hurt.

As if all that isn't enough, here's a little about the 'trade' part of cap and trade from David Sokol of the Washington Post:

If you liked what credit default swaps did to our economy, you're going to love cap-and-trade. Just read Title VIII of the bill, which lets investment banks, hedge funds and other speculators participate in the cap-and-trade market. They don't have emissions to cut; they have commissions to make.

The Waxman-Markey bill imposes a market-based (read: unregulated) trading program on a highly regulated industry that must make enormous long-term and least-cost capital decisions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In an unprecedented and unwise fashion, it turns American industry over to the federal Environmental Protection Agency by giving the agency the authority to change the rules on allowances every five years. Is this sound public and economic policy? I think not.

Well, at least Wall Street will make money, even as American industries and American consumers take it up the tailpipe.

I think this cap and trade legislation could work, but it will require the "nuclear option" to succeed. By that, I mean it could work if we use nuclear weapons to destroy China and India, because that's where the rest of our industries and jobs will go if this legislation goes into effect.

Other than that, it sounds great. And after all this, what impact will cap and trade have on the environment ? Beats me. Maybe a little, maybe none whatsoever. Does that even matter anymore ?

Following are some news stories our esteemed mainstream media just can't manage to find time for, at least not when such pressing issues as whether or not Miss California, Carrie Prejean, has had a boob job are still under investigation. Prejean, the 21-year old liberal hate media target of the week, also had some racy Victoria's Secret modeling photos taken of her when she was 17, so it's perfectly understandable why the media missed the following stories. I imagine they are too busy working up a full-scale profile on the hypocrisy of the entire Christian movement after Miss California had the audacity to politely say she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman. Prejean is obviously worse than Hitler, and must be destroyed, along with that Sarah woman from Alaska. Those b's (or are they c's ?) better zip it, and go bake some cookies. This is the hope and change era, dammit. We can't have these dames going around offering their pretty little opinions, even when asked for them at a Miss USA pageant or a national Vice Presidential debate. It's not like they didn't know what they were SUPPOSED to say. If we don't put these gals in their place, before you know it, women will be running around giving all kinds of opinions about stuff, and not the always the RIGHT ones either. Who wants THAT kind of country ?

On to the news the media can't use.
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The Obama administration has decided not to release the photos from the Scare Force One New York flyover that terrified the residents of lower Manhattan. This sets an interesting standard of what constitutes classified or privileged information to the Obamans. The Bush "torture" memos – NO. The Iraq prisoner abuse photos – NO. Photos that might embarass the President – YES. It appears "the most open administration in history" is only open about OTHER administrations, not it's own.
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Multiple Chrysler creditors are saying the Obama administration engaged in political threats and intimidation to get the creditors to surrender their contractual rights as the Obama administration wants. From Business Insider:

Conversations with administration officials left them [Chrysler creditors] expecting that they would be politically targeted, two participants in the negotiations said.

Although the focus has so been on allegations that the White House threatened Perella Weinberg, sources familiar with the matter say that other firms felt they were threatened as well. None of the sources would agree to speak except on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of political repercussions.

The audacity of hope. The politics of fear. This is why the government shouldn't run businesses, and why government should be limited, as the Constitution intended. It looks like Obama's Chicago political machine training is coming in handy. Make 'em an offer they can't refuse. One creditor, who voted for Obama, called him "the most dangerous smooth talker on the planet – and I knew Kissinger."
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Recent polling suggests Americans don't believe in man-made global warming, despite the finest scare tactics the left and the media could muster up. A recent Rasmussen poll found that only 34% of Americans believe man is causing global warming. A Pew Research poll found that out of twenty important issues facing the country, global warming ranked dead last, the least important. I'd say maybe Al Gore should make another movie to protect his green investments, but Democrats are pressing forward with climate change legislation anyway. House Democrats say they'll have a bill ready by Memorial Day, and intend to pass it by year end.
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In the $3.5 trillion budget approved by Congress, President Obama's much hyped "tax cuts for 95% of Americans" end after NEXT YEAR. Y'all really didn't believe the hype, did you ? Notably, Bush's tax cuts for the lower and middle classes will be kept (I thought those were "tax cuts for the rich"). Also, the budget stops Republicans from blocking Obama's health care plans (but I'm sure they are blocking the GOP in a "bipartisan" and "inclusive" fashion).
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But I want to be fair to our media. Here is a great story MSNBC broke about Obama and Biden going to a burger joint in Virginia. It seems our Telemprompter-In-Chief and his Gaffemaster VP walked right up to the counter, ordered their own burgers, and waited until the burgers were done. End of story. Do I smelll a Pulitzer in the air for MSNBC ?????

Because we're on the verge of riding the cap-and-trade road (to hell ?), paved with good intentions, of course, I thought I'd share some of the not-so-accurate predictions our environmental gurus made on the original Earth Day in 1970. Not that I'm saying Al Gore could EVER be mistaken now. Lord, no. He said "the science is settled," so…that's it. There will be no more science on global warming. Nada. It's over. The science stops here. We know all there is to know. That's the way all scientific achievement has been brought about, by stopping the science…..wait a minute. That doesn't sound quite right…..

Ah, no matter.

Anyway, as Reason Online states, when it comes to predictions, the environmental prophets of doom have not only been wrong, they've been spectacularly wrong.

I give you the 1970 Earth Day predictions from the leading Al Gore's of their day (except the following people REALLY WERE scientists, unlike the Goreacle, who is, in case nobody has noticed, a businessman, heavily invested in (guess what?) green technologies).

Check these out:

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind" – Harvard biologist George Wald

"By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s" – Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Ehrlich estimated that 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the 'Great Die-Off' in the 1980's.

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation" – Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day 1970. The reality ? Since 1970, the amount of food per person globally has increased by 26 percent, as the International Food Policy Research Institute reported in October 1999.

"Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…." – Life magazine.

"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable" – ecologist Kenneth Watt

"Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out" – a 1973 Deparment of Health, Education, and Welfare study about the effects of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons.

"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any" – ecologist Kenneth Watt.

"Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct" – Sen. Gaylord Nelson in Look magazine.

"The greenhouse theorists contend the world is threatened with a rise in average temperature, which if it reached 4 or 5 degrees, could melt the polar ice caps, raise sea level by as much as 300 feet and cause a worldwide flood" – Newsweek, 1970.

"Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born" – Newsweek, 1970.

"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age" – ecologist Kenneth Watt.

"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" – Barack Obama, 2008

Candidate Obama wasn't kidding when he made the above statement, and now President Obama and the Democrats are preparing to raise consumer energy prices through the roof. It isn't only their cap and trade proposals that will drive up energy costs either. Alternative energies will have the same effect. As the New York Times reports:

experts…estimate that wind power is currently more than 50 percent more expensive than power generated by a traditional coal plant… The cost of solar thermal electricity, made by using the sun’s heat to boil water and spin a turbine, would be nearly three times that of coal and more than twice that of natural gas. (It would be almost double the cost of wind energy, too.)

Carbon dioxide regulations will also drive up the costs associated with producing coal-based electricity, which will be passed along to the consumers as well. Jason Furman, deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council, has said the annual costs of cap and trade could be $250 billion (other cost estimates are MUCH higher). Government mandates on green energy usage also increase the price. It's no coincidence that California, the state with the highest renewable energy mandates (20%), has the highest energy prices in the nation.

Naturally, those hardest hit by the skyrocketing energy prices will be those among us who can least afford it, the poor and the middle class (but, don't worry, Obama is only raising taxes on the rich ! LOL. Some people will believe anything).

So, what can we do about these skyrocketing future energy prices ?

Not much. You see, our fourth branch of government (and you thought there were only three branches, didn't you ?), the Environmental Protection Agency, has ruled that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health by causing global warming. This gives the EPA the power to control energy under the Clean Air Act. Our cars, homes, and businesses are all subject to EPA regulations and mandates now. Through either EPA mandate or Congressional legislation, the greenies have us boxed in. As Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) put it, "It is now no longer a choice between doing a bill or doing nothing. It is now a choice between legislation and regulation. The EPA will have to act if Congress does not act." Game, set, and match. Get out your wallets, America. It's a darned good thing our economy is humming along so nicely, isn't it ? I'm sure we'll hardly feel the pinch, right ?

As for those "millions of green jobs" President Obama promised, consider this, from Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK):

“It’s estimated by the Heritage Foundation that if they are successful in their [CO2] endangerment findings in the White House, it will cost us 800,000 jobs almost immediately. The jobs, where would they go? They would go China, India, Mexico. They’d go to places where they don’t have any emissions restrictions.

“Consequently we would have a net increase worldwide in CO2, so it just doesn’t make any sense. But when you’re dealing with the Hollywood elitists, the extremist environmentalists, you don’t have to make sense.”

A Spanish study indicated that there were 2.2 jobs lost for every job created by wind and solar power.

If we're not careful in what we are doing in the energy sector, we could jack up consumer energy costs, jack up taxes, lose jobs, and after all that…HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT ON GLOBAL WARMING.

Other than that, I guess there's no problem.

What if Bush or Palin said this ?: "It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of — I don't know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics" – Barack Obama, who apparently doesn't know that Austrians speak German.

Yes, but freedom fries were before Sarkozy: "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." – Barack Obama, Apologist-In-Chief. Maybe you didn't notice Barry, but Europe was pretty dismissive of YOU during your overseas lovefest. The NATO countries are bailing on the Afghanistan War. Someone please remind me, why does NATO still exist ?

Um, weren't those JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ideals and values ?: "One of the great strengths of the United States is — although as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." - Barack Obama in Turkey.

The times, they are a changin': "London hosted a Group of 20 meeting amid chaos. Chinese communists are now the capitalists, France's president is Hungarian, the Anglo-Saxons are being led by a socialist and a Kenyan, and Germany is refusing to send troops into other countries. Astronauts aboard the Space Station report the Earth is spinning backwards." – comedian Argus Hamilton.

This guy knows liberals: "The Huffington Post is organizing "citizen journalists" to attend the protests, allegedly to "report." Which means that they will try to find someone in a crowd who says something stupid, will post it on the internet, and build an argument around it trying to demonize the movement. And left-wing bloggers will react in unison like dogs responding to a whistle, about the "dangerous" and "violent" and "racist" tea parties. This tactic is as old as time; or at least as old as the internet." - William Jacobson, creator of the website Legal Insurrection, describing the pre-emptive faux-horror strategy of the left about the upcoming "treasonous and seditious" tea party rallies. Which reminds me, I'll see you at the Cleveland Tax Day Tea Party rally on April 15th at Mall C from 4-6pm.

And here's the reason why we are having Tea Party rallies: "Finally, what of the claim not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year? Even ignoring his large energy taxes, Mr. Obama must reconcile his arithmetic. Every dollar of debt he runs up means that future taxes must be $1 higher in present-value terms. Mr. Obama is going to leave a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of additional future taxes, unless he dramatically cuts spending. (With interest the future tax hikes would be much larger later on.) Call it a stealth tax increase or ticking tax time-bomb.
What does $6.5 trillion of additional debt imply for the typical family? If spread evenly over all those paying income taxes (which under Mr. Obama’s plan would shrink to a little over 50% of the population), every income-tax paying family would get a tax bill for $163,000. (In 10 years, interest would bring the total to well over a quarter million dollars, if paid all at once. If paid annually over the succeeding 10 years, the tax hike every year would average almost $34,000.) That’s in addition to his explicit tax hikes. While the future tax time-bomb is pushed beyond Mr. Obama’s budget horizon, and future presidents and Congresses will decide how it will be paid, it is likely to be paid by future income tax hikes as these are general fund deficits." – Michael Boskin.

For science lover's only: "New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain. Dr Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s – particularly in the Arctic – may have resulted from changes in levels of solid “aerosol” particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level – of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.
Shindell’s research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:
Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates." – Lewis Page, The Register.

Snort. I knew those NASA guys were nothing but a bunch of evangelical religious nut holocaust denying flat-earther zealots in the pocket of big oil. Geez. Don't they know the "debate is over," as the pre-eminent [non]scientist Al Gore says ? Enough with this so-called "science." It only confuses people.

The following chart illustrates what percentage of CO2 greenhouse gases are attributable to man:

The rest of the greenhouse gases consist mostly of water vapor (95%). Read the Global Warming Primer for more information. Also keep in mind that the proposed cap-and-trade system of taxation being proposed by Obama, which would cost trillions of dollars, aims to decrease that tiny dot of man-made CO2 in the above chart by only 15%. Color me skeptical as to the positive effects of cap-and-trade.
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Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) has introduced the Save The Liberal Media Act, er, I mean, the Newspaper Revitalization Act, which he says could help save the ailing newspaper industry. Cardin's press release stated, "The Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but they would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible."

As most of you already know, the vast majority of newspapers and other mainstream media outlets lean left. The Dems don't want to lose their propaganda advantage.
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From the Here's Why The GOP Is Braindead files: Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) may soon have both houses of Congress taking up an issue of vital national security – the NCAA football championship system (BCS). The legislation would prohibit the NCAA from naming a national champion unless it follows whatever playoff system Congress dictates. Unbelievable. I don't know where Congress gets the idea it has the authority to regulate this, and I have even less idea why Congress thinks this deserves their attention. Maybe Hatch is mad that undefeated Utah didn't make the championship game last year. Whatever. This is just one more small sign that Capitol Hill is WAY out of control.
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The Big Lie: "…in this budget, we have to make the tough choices necessary to cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term, even under the most pessimistic estimates. At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest." –President Barack Obama, who is moving America into the most massive crushing debt in history, faster than any presidential administration in history.

And, of course, when Obama says "invest," he means tax, borrow, and spend.
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Joke of the day: On a Saturday afternoon, in Washington, D.C., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's aide visited the Cardinal of the Catholic cathedral. He told the Cardinal that Nancy Pelosi would be attending the next day's sermon, and he asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Pelosi to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling Pelosi a saint. The Cardinal replied, "No. I don't really like the woman, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over certain of Pelosi's views." Pelosi's aide then said, "Look. I'll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 to your church if you'll just tell the congregation you see Pelosi as a saint."
The Cardinal thought about it and said, "Well, the church can use the money, so I'll work your request into tomorrow's sermon."
As Pelosi's aide promised, House Speaker Pelosi appeared for the Sunday sermon and seated herself prominently at the edge of the main aisle. And, during the sermon, as promised, the Cardinal pointed out that House Speaker Pelosi was present. Then the Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation — "While Speaker Pelosi's presence is probably an honor to some, she is not my favorite person. Some of her views are contrary to those of the church, and she tends to flip-flop on many other views. Nancy Pelosi is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite, a thumb sucker, and a nit-wit. Nancy Pelosi is also a serial liar, a cheat, and a thief. Nancy Pelosi is the worst example of a Catholic I have ever personally witnessed. She married for money and is using it to lie to the American people. She also has a reputation for shirking her Representative obligations both in Washington, and in California. She simply is not to be trusted."
The Cardinal completed his view of Pelosi with, "But, when compared to Senators Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, and John Kerry, House Speaker Pelosi is a saint."

The Goracle

Seeing as how cap-and-trade legislation is about to be implemented by our President and Congress, and 2,300 lobbyists (a 300% increase in the last 5 years) are vying for influence over the newer, greener, more expensive energy sector, I thought another perspective on global warming climate change might be in order.

Last week, the Heartland Institute sponsored the 2008 International Conference On Climate Change in New York City. Unfortunately, the Conference, which consisted of 200 climate change scientists who are largely NOT man-made global warming alarmists, was completely ignored by the mainstream media. Undoubtedly, this was due to the fact that there is virtually no media presence in a little, out-of-the-way burg like New York City. NYC only has a few local mom-and-pop media outlets, such as NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, the Associated Press, the New York Times, etc. Nothing that could really reach a mass market. Plus, Octomom was putting in a bid on a house, so the media's attention was diverted to more important matters than whether or not climactic Armageddon was going to occur. Last week was also 'Get Limbaugh' week for the mainstream media, so they were very busy.

Al Gore and other well-known man-made global warming alarmists were invited to speak at the Conference, but they all refused. The alarmists did send in some professional hecklers to disrupt the proceedings however, all in the spirit of open scientific inquiry, I'm sure.

Wait until you hear what a bunch of lunatic fringe nutjobs these man-made global warming skeptics are, and since when has skepticism had any place in science, anyway ? Here's how Conference host Joseph L. Bast describes these loons:

We have with us, tonight and tomorrow, more than 200 scientists and other experts on climate change, from Australia, Canada, England, France, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and of course the United States. They come from the University of Alabama, Arizona State, Carleton, Central Queensland, Delaware, Durham, and Florida State University. From George Mason, Harvard, The Institute Pasteur in Paris, James Cook, John Moores, Johns Hopkins, and the London School of Economics. From The University of Mississippi, Monash, Nottingham, Ohio State, Oregon State, Oslo, Ottawa, Rochester, Rockefeller, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. And from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Suffolk University, the University of Virginia, Westminster School of Business (in London), and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And I apologize if I left anyone out. These scientists and economists have been published thousands of times in the world’s leading scientific journals and have written hundreds of books.

Obviously, they all must be corporate toady, fundamentalist, dittohead freaks on the payroll of FoxNews and the oil companies, as the Algoreans would say. Real scientists like the Algoreans know you must demonize, marginalize, ignore, and libel any heretical, blaspheming skeptics who question the true and infallible scientific doctrine. The sky IS falling, dammit, and the Algoreans are not amused by any contradictory data. Facts only confuse people.

But if any of you out there still bitterly cling to that failed idea from the past known as the scientific method, I highly recommend giving the linked website a thorough read. The sky may not be falling, and even if it is, it may not be for the reasons you think. Enjoy (but don't tell anyone you read this. You don't want the global warming police on your case, man. Keep it on the downlow until the current PC virus (Political Correctness) passes and free speech comes back into style).

P.S. – This post will self-destruct in, oh, about 4-10 years, depending upon Algore's latest revised prediction of doom.

A famous American weather forecasting animal, the groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil, emerged at Gobbler's Knob this morning and allegedly saw his shadow. As we all know, that means we're in for six more weeks of winter. Sigh.

I say Punxsutawney Phil "allegedly" saw his shadow because, as it turns out, Groundhog Day isn't just a weather forecasting tool (and a funny Bill Murray movie), it's also a vast Gobbler's-wing conspiracy. It seems nobody really knows or cares if Phil sees his shadow or not every year. The result is determined in advance by 14 poobahs from the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, collectively known as the Inner Circle (sorta like a groundhog Illuminati).

My friends, we've been scammed. The little groundhog can't predict the weather. Double sigh. Say it ain't so.

This brings to mind another famous weather forecasting tool, Al Gore, who recently emerged from his energy-sucking mansion in Tennessee to inform us the earth will only support human life for four more years due to global warming climate change. The Goreacle's Illuminati are referred to by the acronym IPCC, which I think stands for International Purveyors of Carbon Credits (or something like that). The IPCC consists of 2,500 scientists who are certain that global warming climate change isn't just a theory, it's a fact. Since 2,500 scientists could never be wrong (even though they were wrong about global cooling in the 1970's), who are we to question them ? We're just peons, and they are SCIENTISTS. Case closed. As the Goreacle says, "the debate is over." Let's kill all the cows (the number one source of "unnatural" carbon dioxide emissions) and run all our vehicles on solar or wind power (also referred to as "peddling").

Like Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

Well, except for a few other inconvenient truths I'd like to share, such as…

- The planet has experienced no global warming since 1998. During that time, the Earth has cooled. (link)

- Over 31,000 American scientists say there is no convincing evidence of man-made global warming, or evidence that it will cause catastrophic weather changes on the Earth. (link) This brings up a mathematics question. Are 31,000+ American scientists more than 2,500 IPCC scientists ?

- IPCC scientists have been caught promoting fraudulent data to promote their global warming hypothesis (link)

- The proposition that Greenland's ice sheet is shrinking is suspect, and the Antarctic ice is growing (link)

Now, I'm the first one to admit I don't have the answers, but neither does Al Gore (who is NOT a scientist, btw). The debate is not over, so when you hear the Goreacle say something like this:

"[Global warming] would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fiber of life everywhere on the earth….If we stopped global greenhouse gas emissions today, according to some scientists … we would [still] see an increase in temperatures that many scientists believe would be extremely challenging for civilization…If we continue at today's levels, some scientists have said it can be an increase of up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit." – Al Gore testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

There really should be an accompanying laugh track.

The bad news is, President Barack Obama buys into the Goreacle's future shock scenario, unproven though it is. Obama would implement the onerous cap and trade system to control carbon emissions, and his stimulus bill contains lots of money to combat global warming (how will that stimulate the economy again ? The point keeps eluding me).

But Obama doesn't believe in global warming when it comes to HIS lifestyle. He's been turning up the White House thermostat, because, darn it, it's COLD outside (cue the laugh track):

"He's from Hawaii, O.K.?" said Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod. "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there."

You see, Obama only believes in global warming when it comes to YOUR lifestyle:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK." – Barack Obama, May 2008.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Same as it ever was. It's Groundhog Day all over again.

I'm happy to report that GOP Senators, along with 4 Democrats, voted down the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill, in a move that will kick the cap-and-trade carbon tax can down the road until next year, when support for the economy-killing bureaucratic monstrosity will presumably be stronger.

There is more to say about the alleged "consensus" on global warming, however. Al Gore famously declared the global warming debate to be over a while back, and many seem to agree with him. As proof of scientific consensus, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) is cited. In February 2007, the IPCC found a 90% or greater probability that human activity (the burning of fossil fuels) was the cause of global warming over the last hundred years. The IPCC claims the planet has warmed just short of a whopping 1 degree in the last century, which Democrats took as a clear sign that America should abandon this free market capitalism nonsense at once. Of course, Democrats also think the existence of one poor person anywhere in a country of 300 million is sufficient reason to abandon free market capitalism, so we may not want to listen to them. When I think of the Dems economic socialist intentions, the saying 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' always pops into my mind.

But I digress. The IPCC's declaration on man-made global warming was signed by 19,000 scientists, and these were REAL scientists, not the FAKE kind that private industry uses. These were GOVERNMENT scientists, you know, the good ones. We know they are good, because government NEVER lies, a lesson that poor Winston Smith was forced to learn the hard way in the George Orwell novel 1984. Not to worry though, Winston was only a fictional character. There are NO examples of government ever lying to it's own citizens in real life (this is doubly true on sundays, when Congress isn't in session).

Now, I admit that 19,000 agreeing scientists is a lot, and it does sound mostly consensual, sorta like Bill Clinton's sex life….

Except when almost 32,000 American scientists have signed the Oregon petition, which states:

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

So, what's going on here ? Do we have a consensus or don't we ? It seems we don't. Could all 32,000 of these American scientists be the BAD kind ??? That seems pretty unlikely to me. Scientists aren't really good or bad anyway. I was just funnin' the Dems before, because they immediately demonize anyone who doesn't hold with their global warming alarmist theories. Scientists just follow the scientific data (in theory).

I don't pretend to know who is correct about global warming. I'm not an expert on the subject. I'm just pointing out that there DOES seem to be a debate still going on, no offense to the Algoreans.

There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress. – Mark Twain

As I was watching our distinguished Senators debate the Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill, which has been amended into the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill, I was wondering why it is that such a group of educated ladies and gentlemen can disagree so profoundly about such an issue. Even more curious is how the disagreement seems to follow so closely along party lines. The disagreement I'm speaking of is not about whether man-made global warming is real or not. Most of the Senators from both sides of the aisle speaking yesterday seemed to agree it is real, with the exception of a couple prehistoric bone-waving Republican heretics who dared question the SCIENCE OF THE CARBON GODS (amen). No, the disagreement I'm speaking of is the disagreement over the remedies for global warming (pardon me, the CARBON GODS inform me I am to use the term "Climate Change" from now on, not "Global Warming". The operative words are "Climate Change". That way, ANY inclement weather AT ALL can be attributed to global warming, er, climate change. My bad). Not only do our educated Senators disagree over the cap-and-trade program, they also disagree over whether the Climate Change bill is the biggest new government bureaucracy since the New Deal, which will raise everyone's energy prices drastically, destroy our economy, and accomplish very little in the way of curbing CO2 emissions (the Republican position) – or whether the Climate Bill will save us from extinction, cost nothing, and create jobs (the Democratic position). Talk about polar opposites (hey, is that a pun ?).

So, who is right ? The title of this post might provide a hint. You'll have to read the link to get all of the info, because there is too much for me to write out here.

Nobody quite knows how much the current Climate Change bill will cost (which is a reason to vote against it right there), but here are some estimates:

A study by Charles River Associates puts the cost (in terms of reduced household spending per year) of S. 2191 at $800 to $1,300 per household by 2015, rising to $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050.[2] Electricity prices could jump by 36 to 65 percent by 2015 and 80 to 125 percent by 2050.[3] No analysis has been done on the impact of S. 2191 on gasoline prices, but an Environmental Protection Agency study of a less stringent cap and trade bill estimates impacts of 26 cents per gallon by 2030 and 68 cents by 2050.[4]

Most independent studies have calculated the costs to be even higher than those estimates.

The Democrats solution to everything is to create a huge new government bureaucracy, impose onerous regulations and restrictions on business and/or society, increase taxes, and increase government spending. I have come to believe it is the liberal Democratic modus operandi to interfere with capitalism and free markets as much as possible in order to later complain that capitalism and free markets don't work (all evidence to the contrary). It's their self-fulfilling prophecy, and it is intentional. They've done it with health care. They've done it with business, jobs, poverty, education, retirement. They've used it to destroy the middle class. They use their philosophy to get as many Americans as possible dependent on the government, which in turn forces those Americans to vote for Democrats to maintain the free flow from the government teat. It's a clever and insidious strategy, and the bigger our government grows, the more irresistible that strategy becomes. You aren't supposed to notice that such a strategy ends with the death of liberty. I actually heard Barbara Boxer (D-CA) say on the Senate floor yesterday that if the Climate Change Bill she's co-sponsoring drives up the cost of energy, that's okay, because then we can just increase the HEAP entitlement program to help people pay their higher energy bills. That is dastardly, folks.

Nevertheless, the cause of diminishing CO2 emissions (if you believe they must be diminished) may be one case where some measure of government interference is unavoidable, but we must exercise extreme vigilance with the system we impose. The considerations of energy, environment, and economy must all be carefully balanced. The current Congressional majority wants to do SOMETHING about climate change just so they can say they did something, but what they are proposing IS a boondoggle. It's a huge tax and regulatory bureaucratic nightmare that will send the prices of gasoline and electricity soaring at a time we can least afford it. The current bill will probably be voted down, but the issue isn't going away. Regardless of which Democrat wins the presidency in november, Obama or McCain, expect the Climate Change bill to return with a vengeance next year, because both Obama and McCain favor cap-and-trade (Bob Dole, will you please send McCain a nasty e-mail ?). We the people had better keep a close eye on Congress and get involved, or we'll soon be looking back on today as the good old days of low energy prices. I don't think anyone wants that.

At the UN Climate conference in Bali, a global tax on carbon emissions was recommended by a panel of participants. Advocates said the tax would be “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.” (Translation: Bend over, United States Of America). Basically, the richer countries would be paying for the poorer countries to prepare for the catastrophic specter of global warming. It's CO2 socialism. Advocates of the tax say failure to adopt it will bring about the end of all life on earth as we know it, and some even worse stuff too. And that's their conservative estimate.

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog following the panel discussion titled “A Global CO2 Tax.” Schwank is a consultant with the Switzerland based Mauch Consulting firm

Schwank said at least “$10-$40 billion dollars per year” could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”

The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal."

The UN was presented with a new report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”

Sounds to me like somebody hasn't done their homework here. There's a big difference between $10 billion and $40 billion. Expect the actual cost to be much, much, much higher if the UN ever convinces the US to go along with this step toward the end of our national sovereignty (to prevent it, elect a Republican in 2008). I wonder what the UN would do if america didn't pay it's global taxes ? Maybe they could put blue helmets on our soldiers and have us attack ourselves, or perhaps they would foreclose on Washington, D.C. It's a brave new world.

Not everyone favors the global carbon tax. There is a group of scientists who are strongly against it. These are the people Al Gore would call "deniers" (like Holocaust deniers) and "anti-scientific" (even though they ARE scientists). The Goreacle is not real flexible on this issue. He says the science of man-made global warming is settled (even though it isn't). Speaking of science, is Gore a scientist ? I think not, even if he did invent the internet.

…a team of over 100 prominent international scientists who warned the UN that attempting to control the Earth's climate was "ultimately futile."

The scientists wrote, “The IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions." The scientists, many of whom are current or former members of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sent the December 13 letter to the UN Secretary-General.

Could there be more to all this than the stated reason of reducing carbon emissions and preparing for the post-apocalyptic globally warmed world ? It sounds to me like there is. Listen to the following quotes. These people sound more like socialists who want to run the world than folks concerned about climate change:

The environmental group Friends of the Earth, in attendance in Bali, also advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations on Wednesday.

“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

In 2000, then French President Jacques Chirac said the UN’s Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic global governance." Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide." Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed Kyoto as a “socialist scheme.”

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen warned about these types of carbon regulations earlier this year. "Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life," Lindzen said in March 2007.

In addition, many critics have often charged that proposed tax and regulatory “solutions” were more important to the promoters of man-made climate fears than the accuracy of their science.

Former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth reportedly said in 1990, "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

I will close with a prayer of thanks.

Thank you, Lord, (and Florida and the Supreme Court too), for not letting Al Gore become president of the United States. Amen.

Back in the days of ancient Rome, unusual weather was seen as a sign that the Gods were angry. Now, a couple thousand years later, after much scientific progress, unusual weather is attributed to a slight increase in a minor greenhouse gas that makes up 0.03% of the atmosphere. On the whole, I think the ancient Romans made a better case, at least so far.

The high priest of man-made global warming, Al Gore, has declared that the debate on global warming is over, and he has compared global warming 'deniers' (note the holocaust analogy) to people who still believe the earth is flat. There is one thing we can gather for certain from such an attitude: Big Al and the Algoreans are NOT interested in science, because pure science would NEVER slam the door on all opposing theories to the man-made global warming HYPOTHESIS. Science does precisely the opposite:

The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] The scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2]

Science doesn't declare the debate to be over, especially on something as complex as the weather of the entire planet, and the flat earth analogy is just put out there so Al's dense-minded acolytes can feel superior.

As further proof of the Algorean 'faith', a lot of people of a certain political stripe will call you names just for bringing up any contradictory information to global warming theology, as if you are some kind of heretic (and these same people have the arrogance to refer to themselves as the 'intellectual elite'. What a gas).

I assume you all are aware of the man-made global warming hypothesis, so I won't go into that. What I want to do is list some of the OTHER information, the stuff the Algoreans refuse to debate or even think about, because the Algoreans are too intellectual and elite to bother with anything as trivial as facts that fly in the face of their theologic certainty. I mean, golly, Gore is SO superior that he would have been president if Bush hadn't stolen Gore's election (and we aren't supposed to acknowledge the fact that Bush won ALL the Florida counts and recounts in 2004 either. Inconvenient truths are not allowed in the Algorean faith. Belief is all that's required).

This 10 question quiz on global warming will test your basic knowledge on the subject. Among some of the facts stated in the quiz are the following:

The earth has been getting steadily warmer for about 18,000 years (with some peaks and valleys). Since the end of the Ice Age, Earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and sea levels have risen a total of 300 feet! Forests have returned where once there was only ice.

Orbital eccentricities and variations in the sun's output is the main cause of our planet's warming and cooling.

The Greenhouse Effect helps to moderate temperatures — especially nighttime temperatures. Without the greenhouse effect, the average temperature of the Earth would be -18 degrees C.

Over 95 percent of the Greenhouse Effect is the result of atmospheric water vapor in Earth's atmosphere.

Temperatures have gone through nearly two complete cycles of warming and cooling over the last 100 years. During the period 1900 to 1940 temperatures were increasing. Then from 1940 to 1975 temperatures were decreasing. Currently, temperatures are increasing back to about where they were in the 1930's.

Few scientists would say the attribution issue [the argument that global warming is caused by human industrial activity] was a done deal. Even the IPCC doesn't say that. Only the media hype and the Algoreans say that.

Orbiting satellites provide the most accurate global temperature readings — accurate to 0.1 degree C. Interestingly, in the 18 years that satellites have been recording temperature they have actually showed a slight decrease in average global temperatures.

Ground-based thermometers that were originally in rural areas have been reading increasingly hotter temperatures with time due to urban encroachment. The asphalt and concrete structures replacing green leafy plants makes for hotter local ground temperatures. This phenomenon is known as the "urban heat-island effect" and has been well-documented by climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels, professor of environmental sciences, University of Virginia.

So, let's bag all that 'debate is over' nonsense, and before we repeal the Industrial Revolution to make the environmental nutjobs happy, let's proceed with the scientific method. The earth's climate is ALWAYS changing. It ALWAYS has, it ALWAYS will, and I doubt there's much any of us mere humans can do except adapt to it. The Gods are in charge.