Babs, you are running true to form

yeah, barbara boxer is running true to form.
she's the chairclown of the senates environmental committee, and boy, does she have the curly shuffle down pat.
let's see.... there were these leaked emails from a campus server in the UK, emails that on the surface indicates malfeasance on the part of the global warming proponent's side of the fence. i'll not get into the whole what's what regarding this, because there are many many sources of info that can do much better than i.
but when a senator, Sen. Inhofe (who is a vocal opponent to the quick let's do something, even if it's wrong crowd)reasonably asks to have policies in the pipeline inspected vis a vis the revelations about cooked and massaged data, ol' babs starts the smoke generating machine and puts on some cheesy disco to dance to.
"it's not about the potentially skewed data, it's about the email crime" (my paraphrasing, not an actual quote. she wouldn't know how to speak the truth if her life depended on it if the truth somehow countered the paradigm she and saint al are espousing.)
so she is going to kill the scientifically correct investigation into how the bogus data and manipulation of peer review, and insist any investigation includes a criminal one regarding the email source. sorry babs, this happened in Britain. a little out of your jurisdiction. not that will stop her. she's on a mission. a mission to preserve the AGW myth at all costs. she has too much political capital invested in fighting global warming to ever let a little something like facts get in the way. they haven't done so yet, and i see no reason for her to change now.

more evidence that THEY LIE!

Pretty dramatic, i admit. but damn, the hype and hyperbole surrounding the world's global warming phenomenon has my head spinning. i've recounted in this blog several times that the data sets, and analysis of those sets, is not only flawed, but intentionally misleading. just a couple of links from here using the nifty blogger search bar --- bothenook's take on global warming---.
and now this:

...GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

read the whole article here.

i don't know exactly why the pholks behind the whole global warming hysteria are doing what they are doing, but i can make a few educated guesses. i think the main reason is that the truth is not what is important, but the message. the message is that mankind is bad for the planet, and since we (those folks stirring the pot) can't kill everyone to save mother earth, we (again, you know, those folks) will concoct something really frightening, get a big time politician to pimp the idea, and force everyone into doing as we say, and thinking as we want them to think.
just a guess.
but THEY LIE!

UPDATE11/17/08. Gus has his own take on the article here. interesting stuff.
ditto that for Photios

"The Courage to do Nothing"

this is a post in its entirety from today's daily newsletter from the Americans for Limited Government website GetLiberty.org . google them if you want the link, because right now things are down for remodeling over there.

so this is about global warming, and if you have read my blog long enough, you know that i think the hysteria over global warming is without scientific merit, based on an extensive and avid check of the actual science behind the computer models and rhetoric. the fact that algore has been lionized simply shows emotions play far better at getting attention than rigorous and ethical analysis. why is the global warming issue such a hot button for the "progressives"? one theory proposed by Jonah Goldberg in Liberal Fascism is that to "energize and mobilize" the citizenry to accept Big Government edicts and controls, one needs a moral equivalent to war. my take on most of the blather regarding global warming is just that. to independently and "pedantically" assess the information and draw your own conclusion seems to be way beyond the attention span or skill set of the majority of folks. they would rather get fed sound bites and USAToday simple piecharts for their info, because if someone of stature says it's true, it's true.
regardless of the expense that realigning the world's energy consumption, the fact that people are now dieing around the world because of our shortsighted drive to find "alternative fuels" must make some inroads into the Green movement's collective mind. probably not.

anyway, enough of my soapbox. here's AGL's soapbox. enjoy.

The Courage to Do Nothing

“[W]e must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no ‘climate crisis’ at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”—Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Physics & Society, July 2008.

There is no “climate crisis.” So says a recent study published in Physics & Society this month, a devastating blow into the all-important computer models utilized by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the very models that today are used by demagogic politicians to justify radically reducing, restricting, and taxing the use of fossil fuels.


Christopher Monckton’s conclusion and advice to politicians: Do nothing. The science of global warming is wrong, and has been wrong. And the policies necessary to radically reduce carbon emissions will be devastating to a world heavily dependent upon industry to maintain the largest population explosion in human history.


Dr. Monckton has provided a valuable service to policy makers, but mostly, to the general public who would suffer under the alarmist rule of the Greens. His contribution is a critical warning to all who value civilization.


According to the study, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the ‘global warming’ of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001.”


In other words, the computer models that have projected excessive global warming are wrong—drastically, horribly wrong—because they predicted uninterrupted warming of the earth leading to a catastrophe on the order of the Apocalypse. And it did not happen. So the study observes:

“[N]o great reliance can be placed upon the IPCC’s central estimates of climate sensitivity, still less on its high-end estimates. The IPCC’s assessments, in their current state, cannot be said to be ‘policy-relevant’. They provide no justification for taking the very costly and drastic actions advocated in some circles to mitigate ‘global warming’, which Eqn. (30) suggests will be small (<1 °C at CO2 doubling), harmless, and beneficial.”

In short, the IPCC’s models are unreliable, they have grossly exaggerated the impact of increased carbon emissions on the climate, and according to the study, whatever impact the emissions have will actually be beneficial.


Therefore, the continued use of the IPCC’s models to inform public policy will only produce dire consequences. To keep the world of 6.6 billion people fed, a considerable amount of energy is required. And to actively seek to drastically reduce the use of the sources of energy that the world depends upon every day can only result in drastic reductions of the world’s population.


In other words, if politicians continue to listen to the Greens, people will die. Because they will starve.


And one can only wonder, based upon the religious zeal of the Greens, if that’s not what they actually have in mind. Theirs is a religion that views practically all human activity as “unnatural”—even evil—that must be countered by the “all-wise”, “all-knowing” rulers of Big Government. And in so restricting human activity, theirs is a cause that is completely repugnant to the philosophy of individual liberty.


And to the advancement of civilization as we know it. Theirs is a totalitarianism more insidious than its predecessors. Theirs is a “utopia” that seeks to undo the industrial and technological progress of thousands of years of human history in less than a century. Theirs is an ideology that will control every aspect of human existence. And it can only result in the enslavement of billions to poverty, economic depression, and ultimately, starvation.


Instead, as Dr. Monckton implores, leaders need to have the courage to do nothing about the climate crisis, because there is no climate crisis.


ALG Perspective: Now that the Cult of Global Warming’s oracle—computer-generated climate change models—have been debunked, it will be interesting to see how the Greens react. Ultimately, it will reveal that they really have no interest at all in science, or preventing climate change. They will in all likelihood deny the findings presented by Dr. Monckton without any scientific refutation or critical analysis whatsoever. And that is because their goals are ultimately political and economic in nature: 1) destroy the U.S. economy; 2) restrict individual liberty; and 3) expand governmental control over all human activity.



the link didn't copy, so here's a link to the Monckton paper at American Physical Society's site. Physics and Society: Monkton

more ranting about the environment

long time readers have probably figured out that i'm much more of an environmentalist that most of the vapid doo gooder/feel gooders out there. biggest difference? i am all for doing something about real issues, rather than yelling about how messed up we are. want to get rid of the "horrible carbon footprint" of modern society? build nukes. lots of them. that way we can stop using precious carbon based fossil fuels that emit tons of carbon dioxide daily. that will help us with our issues in the middle east as well, since our dependence on their oil will be sharply curtailed. find and exploit new sources, or even known old sources, such as the fuel buried in the bottom of the Santa Barbara channel. but of course, environmentalists and nimbys are all flapping over that one.
i've ranted before about the vocal rabble-rousers that insist we DO SOMETHING!!!, but when a workable plan is hatched, they are the first to get in line decrying it. case in point, the Cape Cod wind turbine plan from 2004.
now, many Californians are being absolutely two faced about enviro issues.
Dan Walters has written about in the latest flap in today's Sacramento Bee. Greens like idea of renewable energy, balk at the reality. to quote the article/editorial:

An environmental coalition called Californians for Solar and Clean Energy has submitted more than 700,000 signatures for an initiative measure that would compel the state's utilities to use renewable sources for 40 percent of their electric power supplies by 2020 and 50 percent by 2025, a sharp increase in what the state's current policy requires.

The underlying notion is to reduce our reliance on carbon-generating fuels such as coal and natural gas and thus contribute to the fight against global warming.

Fair enough. If global warming is the threat to human life that we're being told it is, and reducing human-caused carbon emissions is the critical factor, then it will require big changes in the way we live, including how we generate and use energy.

As the coalition's name implies, solar is its preferred form of renewable energy – tapping the rays of the sun to create electricity through photovoltaic panels – although geothermal energy, utilizing heat from the Earth's core, is another source. And, as it happens, California is blessed with copious amounts of both sunshine and geothermal heat.

Merely generating energy from renewable, nonpolluting sources is one thing. Transmitting it from generation sites to where people live is another, and environmental groups that tout renewable energy often oppose transmission lines that would carry the power to homes and businesses, as a long-running battle over a project called "Sunrise Powerlink" illustrates.

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. wants to build the 150-mile-long high-voltage line from solar and geothermal plants in Imperial County to urban users along the coast, but environmentalists and property owners along the proposed route are lining up against it in anticipation of a Public Utilities Commission decision in August.

Environmental groups are especially unhappy with sending the power through Anza-Borrego State Park, even though it would follow an existing power line corridor, while local landowners and governments stiffly oppose alternative routes that bypass the park.

The environmental groups' opposition follows an odd pattern of supporting green policies in a macro sense, only to oppose specific projects that would implement their larger vision.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's proclaimed himself leader of California's – and perhaps humankind's – anti-global warming crusade, appears to be getting a little frustrated with his supposed allies' attitude toward specific projects.

"One energy expert the other day said that the California Mojave Desert … is one of the best spots on planet Earth for solar power plants," Schwarzenegger said in a speech to a recent climate change conference at Yale University. "Pacific Gas and Electric wants to put three huge solar plants right there. And the whole world – the Germans, the French, the Canadians, the Japanese – they all want to come out to California and put solar power plants in the Mojave Desert and in other places. The only thing is that the problem is getting that new energy to the power grid because of environmental hurdles.

"San Diego Gas & Electric wants to develop solar geothermal fields in Imperial Valley and build 150 miles of transmission lines to go and take this power right into San Diego, but it faces opposition even though it would replace an old carbon-based power plant. So the point I'm making is it's not just businesses that have slowed things down, it's not just Republicans that have slowed things down, it's also Democrats and also environmental activists sometimes that slow things down. … I don't know whether this is ironic or absurd. But, I mean, if we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave Desert, I don't know where the hell we can put it."

Indeed.

as my old man used to say: "Put your money where your mouth is"

and here's a link to a youtube video about a discussion on global warming that you probably haven't seen, or heard about. intellesting, velly intellesting.

bet they're hoping for global warming

The temperature has been down as low as -24 degrees Celsius, and for the first time in living memory there has been snow in the country's southern deserts.

i suppose if it's snowing in the deserts of Iran, since they're the bad guys, it doesn't count. right Al?