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Global Warmists: New Frontiers





In one of those departures from reality so common among Global Warmists, we learn that television advertising has a huge "carbon footprint". Out of Australia, where wombats and moonbats frolic together, we here at DBKP were horrified to learn:

AUSTRALIAN television advertising is producing as much as 57 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hour, and thirty second ad breaks are among the worst offenders, according to audit figures from pitch consultants TrinityP3.

TrinityP3 managing director Darren Woolley said emissions are calculated by measuring a broadcasters’ power consumption and that of a consumer watching an ad on television in their home, B&T Magazine reports.

“We look at the number of households and the number of TVs, and then the proportion of TVs that are plasma, LCD or traditional, and calculate energy consumption based on those factors,” Woolley said."

Now, the curious might ask: why anyone would care about this?

TrinityP3 (Isn't the excess use of the 3 carbon wasteful?) helpfully explains.

"TrinityP3 is formalising a standard carbon footprint measurement of advertising, which it claims will be the first of its kind. "

Yeah.

And my soon-to-be-assembled dog bowl collection will be the first of its kind. So what?

Obviously this useless blather is about an attempt to sell consulting services to idiot advertisers--intent on trying to appease their moronic audiences--by somehow implying that they have balanced their carbon footprint. Most commercials are between 15 and 30 seconds. The programs run 40 minutes to the hour. So if you really wanted to save on energy, keep the advertisements and get rid of the programming.

That should work just fine.




by pat
images:
* Conservation finance
* gawker
sources
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24062638-29277,00.html

Global Warming Delusions May Turn Brains To Mush




Although the world has been undergoing dramatic cooling for the last 19 months, that has not stopped the Warmists from finding ever more reasons to panic about the non-existent effects of imaginary warming.. A new low was recently touched upon.

GLOBAL WARMING MAY LEAD TO MORE KIDNEY STONES

Headlines such as this flew around the globe yesterday.Yahoo News, Bloomberg, The Boston Globe all headlined the latest thriller pathology to be inflicted upon the world because of the existence of mankind. We are not talking polar bears here. This is personal. From the article.

"July 15 (Bloomberg) -- More Americans may develop kidney stones as global warming raises the risk of dehydration, according to a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...
Warmer temperatures predicted by climate scientists may lead to a 30 percent increase in kidney stone cases in some U.S. regions, researchers at the University of Texas wrote in the study published today. That would result in a $1 billion increase in annual treatment costs by 2050, they said...

``It's pretty well established that the prevalence of kidney stones increases with annual average temperatures,'' lead author Tom Brikowski, associate professor of geosciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, said in an interview.

So we have a geologist telling me that warmer temperatures cause kidney stones.And that the USA and presumably the world will be paqued by the same. Because in case the geoscience guy did not notice, there are places a lot hotter than most of the USA. At anyrate, DBKP found the assertion so laughable, we put the matter to our esteemed scientific panel for review.




After almost 10 minutes of research, the came up with the following.

"According to a study on the incidence of kidney stones in the United State, people have a higher incidence of stones in the South. The West has the lowest incidence in the U.S. Some researchers believe the higher incidence in the South is caused by higher rates of hypertension, hot and humid climates due to dehydration, and poor dietary habits that results in magnesium deficiencies."

Nothing about TEMPERATURE whatsoever. And the West is a lot hotter than the South. A nonfactor. In fact sex and ethnicity play a far larger role.Women are 4 times more likely than men to get kidney stones. Whites more likely thasn other groups. Genetics may be the most important factor. And most important of all, drink lots of beer. Absent that, water makes a poor second choice.

by pat
images:
* affordable housing institute
* wise guys promo
* People's Cube

Noted scientist, Arnold Schwarzenegger, casts his eye over the political landscape and wags his finger at the Bush administration. Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, said the decision to delay a decision on regulations affecting greenhouse gases showed it did not believe in global warming.

Schwartzenegger might not have realized he was also lecturing a majority of Americans for being nonbelievers. According to Pew Research Center:

Americans generally agree that the earth is getting warmer, but there is less consensus about the cause of global warming or what should be done about it. Roughly four-in-ten (41%) believe human activity such as burning fossil fuels is causing global warming, but just as many say either that warming has been caused by natural patterns in the earth's environment (21%), or that there is no solid evidence of global warming (20%).

Though the above info is two years old, a recent (June 22 2008) poll of Britons confirmed that a majority doubt that any warming is caused by human activity.

The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer.

The results have shocked campaigners who hoped that doubts would have been silenced by a report last year by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found a 90 per cent chance that humans were the main cause of climate change and warned that drastic action was needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Schwarzenegger's headed for political obscurity, a politician blown about by the winds of eco-fashion in a state famous for such posturing.

Schwarzenegger, in an interview with ABC television broadcast Sunday, said it would have been insincere for the administration to take action on the harmful emissions with only six months left in George W. Bush's presidency.

"Well, to be honest with you, if they would have done something this year, I would have thought it was bogus anyway... because you don't change global warming and you don't really have an effect by doing something six months before you leave office," he told ABC on Friday.

Schwarzenegger spoke on the day the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a report offering no new action against emissions and calling for 120 days of public comment, essentially leaving any decision to the next administration.

Taking action at this late stage in Bush's second four-year term would not have been credible, said Schwarzenegger, who signed a historic bill in 2006 that made California the first US state to impose limits on global warming gases.

His political future stymied--at least for the foreseeable future--Arnold must be contemplating a career as a writer for science textbooks.

"It doesn't sound to me believable at all [the Bush's sincerity on global warming]. The sincerity is not there," the governor said.

"I think that the way they have done it is much better, because it just really means basically this administration did not believe in global warming, or they did not believe that they should do anything about it since China is not doing anything about it and since India is not willing to do the same thing, so why should we do the same thing," he said.

Schwarzeneggar unwittingly mentions one problem of the U.S. hamstringing its economy: if China and India do nothing, it doesn't matter. What he doesn't mention is the pouring of billions of U.S. dollars down the global warming rat-hole, to address a faux science cause célèbre.

RidesAPaleHorse's Arnold Assessment: "Teutonic Twit".

We agree--with one addition. After looking at Arnold Schwarzenegger and his academic background, our verdict on Arnold's latest scientific pronouncements:

We liked him in "Terminator".


by Mondoreb
image: RidesAPaleHorse
Sources:
* Schwarzenegger slams Bush administration on global warming
* Little Consensus on Global Warming
* Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change

k

Click on image to enlarge it.

Financing that wind farm on the Lower 40 just got easier for Greens.

Of course, we're talking about the Carbon Credit Card for Progress--endorsed by Al Gore! When Al's not busy dictating his latest chapter of the Goran, he's out networking with Pat Robertson, Al Sharpton, Newt Gingrich and all the other Al-colytes.



Brought to you by the hard-working comrades at the ever-progressive Peoples Cube.

by Mondoreb
Source/image: People's Tools
DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.
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It was a curious exercise, watching environmentalists and weathermen turn Global Warming into a universal evil: the average temperature of the world is rather chilly.

Virtually all animals and plants do better in a warmer climate than a cooler one.

And not just because of the temperature: a warmer climate means more rain showers because water vapor increases. This also means less cyclonic storms, contrary to public perception.

But not to be deterred from turning a very active sunspot cycle into good news--in spite of record harvests throughout the world between 1995 and 2005--nut jobs, hysterics, Luddites, and opportunists have caused a world wide panic, blaming mankind for essentially warming the Eath by the release of Carbon Dioxide.

Albeit, the panic, so far, seems to be primarily among those of similar inclination--which unfortunately includes all 3 Presidential candidates, as well as every socialist government on the planet. As well as the scientific illiterates that make up the Mainstream Media...

Mob logic: "The issue is settled", "the argument is over"
and "scientific consensus".

But there was one group of scientists that was not panicking about global warming: The astrophysicists. However they were concerned--but for a different reason: they were aware that the convergence of sunspot cycles would be followed by a dearth.

Sunspot Cycle 24 had begun in 2007, and it began with the expected whimper they had predicted. A wimpy sun means cold. The nearly spotless sun of the last few months, coincident with La Nina, has accelerated the very mild cooling trend that commenced in the year 2000. So much so that all of the ice lost in the last 10 years in and about the arctic has been replaced.

Russia's largest icebreaker caught in ice attempting to take
Global Warming enthusiasts through the Northwest Passage.

The astrophysicists concern has now become concentrated.

"You probably haven’t heard much of Solar Cycle 24, the current cycle that our sun has entered, and I hope you don’t. If Solar Cycle 24 becomes a household term, your lifestyle could be taking a dramatic turn for the worse. "

As put by geophysicist Philip Chapman, a former NASA astronaut-scientist and former president of the National Space Society, “It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age.”

Yikes!

"The consequences of the Little Ice Age, because they occurred in relatively recent times, have come down to us through literature and the arts as well as from historians and scientists, government and business records. When Shakespeare wrote of “lawn as white as driven snow,” he had first-hand experience – Europe was bitterly cold in his day, a sharp contrast to the very warm weather that preceded his birth. During the Little Ice Age, the River Thames froze over, the Dutch developed the ice skate and the great artists of the day learned to love a new genre: the winter landscape.

In what had been a warm Europe , adaptations were not all happy: Growing seasons in England and Continental Europe generally became short and unreliable, which led to shortages and famine. These hardships were nothing compared to the more northerly countries: Glaciers advanced rapidly in Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and North America, making vast tracts of land uninhabitable. The Arctic pack ice extended so far south that several reports describe Eskimos landing their kayaks in Scotland. Finland’s population fell by one-third, Iceland’s by half, the Viking colonies in Greenland were abandoned altogether, as were many Inuit communities."

So, as the leopard lost it's spots, so has sol. And that can be a very serious manner. But well in line with "Generals who prepare for the last war", our intrepid U.S. Senate--a body that exudes more hot gas than any herd of cows in a feed lot--has begun to debate the merits of taxing carbon emissions.

At the very time we may need them!

Yes. We may have to increase emissions to warm ourselves up.



by pat



images:
* http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1999/09/04/mob_500x326.jpg">enquirer
* greatstories
* aad
* b12
Sources:
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2007/apr07/noaa07-019.html
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/30/the-deniers-our-spotless-sun.aspx
http://www.junkscience.com/
http://www.icecap.us/
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"The Population Bomb" was the "Global Warming" of 1968.

--Paul Ehrlick, The Population Bomb (1968)

Try this one on for an environmental doomsday scenario: a disaster of epic proportions is threatening Earth. It is man made in nature. In ten years--ten years!--life as we know it will be radically changed for the worst. And if mankind doesn't do something right now, it will be too late later.

Oh, and how do we know that the disaster is big, bad and scary?

A scientific consensus has developed which supports it. Scientists are scared, so everyone else better be prepared to hunker down for doom, too.

Global warming? Nope.

Try "the population explosion". The year was 1968 and the World Wide Web was still over 20 years away in the future. That's when Paul Ehrlich released his best-seller, "The Population Bomb", and seemingly overnight, population control was all the rage.

Americans were peppered with stories of global doom, in a world stripped of food and resources by an exploding, out-of-control population.

The prescription? Be responsible! Quit having children! Better yet: put the government be in charge of how many children a woman can have.

The Population Bomb (1968) is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich. A best-selling work, it predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion". The book predicted that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death", that nothing can be done to avoid mass famine greater than any in the history, and radical action is needed to limit the overpopulation.

Ehrlich wanted government action and he wanted it now--before the earth reached the point of no-return. As with all environmentalists, the instrument of Mother Earth's destruction would be humans living their lives.

To radical environmentalists, or socialists masquerading as environmentalists, it's always the same equation: Humans are the root of all evil.

The Population Bomb became one of the best-selling environmental books of all time. Its main message was that continued population growth would place tremendous stress on natural resources and the environment. He predicted that, as a result, society would face war, famine, pestilence, and general calamity. Ehrlich asserted that only drastic governmental measures could curtail the impending disaster. He suggested a national Department of Population and Environment to police population growth and, in some instances, order mandatory sterilization. He expressed strong opposition to the antiabortion doctrines of the Catholic Church and the profit motive and aggressive consumption of the free enterprise economic system.

National Department of Population? A population czar? Mandatory, government measures? Radical government takeover of what had previously been private decisions?

Beginning to sound familiar?

It should--if the reader has been following the suggestions of the global warming crowd.

Ehrlich and his supporters insist that his predictions came true, but that the effects of his predictions go largely unnoticed because world food production exploded faster than the population.

That spin is partially true: Norman Borlaug's "Green Revolution" in the 1960s dud push food per capita to the highest levels in the history of mankind. But what Ehrlich and the rest of his scientific consensus don't say is that birth rates in much of the world have fallen off dramatically.

Birth rates have fallen so far so fast that parts of the world, particularly Europe and Japan are experiencing "baby busts" that no country has ever recovered from previously.

Today about half the world lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility. That is, births are not equaling deaths and migration, so the country will lose population in the future.

Instead of the famines and scarcity predicted by Ehrlich, we have most European countries offering incentives--cash and otherwise--for women to have babies.

124 countries (of 223) are below replacement rate fertility (commonly 2.1 per woman). Two are at 2.1: the United States and Domenica. In developing countries, the replacement rate may be as high as 4+/woman, due to high infant mortality and other factors. It's now predicted that the human population will actually decline within the next 40 years if present fertility trends continue.



In fact, it is a world totally unforeseen by Paul Ehrlich and the fifty-eight academies of science who agreed that the "population explosion" was on a collision course with planet Earth.

As recently as 1994, the worry was still the population explosion, long after serious study would have thrown doubt on the scare-mongers.

In Ehrlich's books, many predictions are made, for example, The Population Bomb begins "[t]he battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death," while in "The End of Affluence", Ehrlich stated, "One general prediction can be made with confidence: the cost of feeding yourself and your family will continue to increase. There may be minor fluctuations in food prices, but the overall trend will be up". According to Ehrlich, the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 years by 1980 because of pesticide usage, and the nation's population would drop to 22.6 million by 1999.

On similarity between the "population explosion" and the "global warming" prophets stand out: neither Al Gore nor Paul Ehrlich were specialists in their field of prognostication. Before Ehrlich began his population predictions, he was best known as a renowned entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies).

Before Al Gore began his global warming predictions, he too was best known in another, completely different field. At least Ehrlich's field was in science.

Gore, et. al. will have a good guide how to spin "global warming" if the earth doesn't explode into 20-foot water wave of burning disaster: Ehrlich's been spinning his wildly-wrong predictions for the last several decades and shows no signs of recanting.

When I wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, there were 3.5 billion people. Since then we've added another 2.8 billion — many more than the total population (2 billion) when I was born in 1932. If that's not a population explosion, what is? My basic claims (and those of the many scientific colleagues who reviewed my work) were that population growth was a major problem. Fifty-eight academies of science said that same thing in 1994, as did the world scientists' warning to humanity in the same year.

How many scientific academies have lined up behind Global Warming?

Who was behind the Population Bomb? Try the well-known environmental group, Sierra Club.

The Population Bomb was written at the suggestion of David Brower, at the time the executive director of the environmentalist Sierra Club, following an article Ehrlich wrote for the New Scientist magazine in December, 1967. In that article, Ehrlich predicted that the world would experience famines sometime between 1970 and 1985 due to population growth outstripping resources. Amongst other remarks, Ehrlich also stated that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," and "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." These predictions did not come to pass. In the book's 1971 edition, the latter prediction had been removed.

Ehrlich, unlike Gore, took on his leading detractors, putting his money where his mouth was--and it cost him.

The leading critic of Ehrlich was Julian Lincoln Simon, a libertarian theorist and the author of the book The Ultimate Resource, a book which argues a larger population is a benefit, not a cost. To test their two contrasting views on resources, in 1980, Ehrlich and Simon entered into a wager over how the price of metals would move during the 1980s. Ehrlich predicted that the price would increase as metals became more scarce in the Earth's crust, while Simon insisted the price of metals had fallen throughout human history and would continue to do so. Ehrlich lost the bet. Indeed such was the decline in the price of the five metals Ehrlich selected, Simon would have won even without taking inflation into account

.



The U.S., thankfully is alone among the industrialized nations when it comes to population. America is the only country not facing population implosion. In Europe, this fertility collapse has led to a mad rush for bodies--any and all workers, regardless of background, country of origin or support for their host country's ideology--to support aging, native populations.

While almost all of the developed world, and many other nations, have seen plummeting fertility rates over the last twenty years, the United States' rates have remained stable and even slightly increased. This is partly due to the high fertility rate among communities such as Hispanics, but it is also because the fertility rate among non-Hispanic whites in the US, after falling to about 1.6 in the 1970s and early 1980s, had increased and is now around 1.9, or slightly below replacement level, rather than collapsing to the 1.3-1.5 level common in Europe.

The one part of the United States that is most European in birth rates is also the most European in political outlook: the reliably blue New England states.

New England has a rate similar to most Western European countries, while the South, Midwest, and border states have fertility rates considerably higher than replacement.

The country with the highest fertility rate in the developed world?

Israel, with a rate of 2.84 children per woman.

An environmental scare which is:
1- caused by humans;
2- going to cause mass destruction of life as we know it;
3- going to occur in the very near future;
4- requires massive intervention by the government into personal choices and lives; and,
5- based on just enough science that it sounds plausible to the press, government officials and the portion of the population that believes government is a solution to such mega-problems.
6- fronted by a man who rode to fame on the publicity the problem generated--and who profited from its growing acceptance.

The Population Bomb was just a trial run for Global Warming.

And if enough people wake up, Global Warming will just be a trial run for the "Next Big Environmental Doomsday Story".


by Mondoreb
images:
* DBKP
* Hoover Institute
* telegraph
Sources:
* The Population Bomb
* Sub-Replacement Fertility
* Paul Ehrlich


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Pixelaneous #34



The news just came out this week that Al Gore has made over $37 million since he left office in 2000.

His net worth in the last 7 years reportedly went from under $2 million to over $100 million--much of it from pimping the dangers of man-made climate change.

Gore's speaking fees were reported as $175,000 a pop--and up.

This is up near Watertown NY ...talk about some snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




One area had 146 inches of snow in 2 weeks !!!!!






146 inches of snow!



That's over 12 feet of snow.






The last pimp for global warming tried to leave Watertown, but was snowed in--last we heard.









Will anyone make a movie about Watertown's run-in with man-made climate change?






I have a feeling that Algore would get his ass
kicked around here.

by RidesAPaleHorse
images: RAPH

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Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.
DBKP/Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

[NOTE: While moving files to the new site, DBKP, this story caught our attention. We repost it for your edification.]

by RidesAPaleHorse

You can check more out HERE

House #1 A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by
natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest
house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more
energy than the average American household does in a year. The
average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400.
In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the
national average for an American home. This house is not situated
in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the South.

House #2 Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is
4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermalheat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground.

The water (usually 67 degrees F. ) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern.

Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville , Tennessee; it is the abode of the "environmentalist" Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford,Texas ; it is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

An "inconvenient truth".


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New Ice Age the New Worry?



Shilling for global warming is getting to be a dreary business these last several months.

DBKP has reported on the record snowfalls, the deaths from cold snaps in Europe, the increase in ice packs--in short, all the things that are sure to freeze the heart of any advocate of man-made climate change.

And now, there's the news that snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater at any time since 1966.

That's 42 years, for those whose math skills aren't what they should be.

Talk about inconvenient timing. Al Gore probably needs an ice pack.

Oh, sorry.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

Besides the bad timing, there's other signs that the hysteria which drives the global warming crusade is encountering more bad news than it can handle.

The Arctic Sea Ice?

That story isn't going well either for the First Church of the Man-made Climate Change.

The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

The thing that's striking here is that Canada has a "Canadian Ice Service".

So, they ought to know.

After being subjected to the nonsense of "computer models" where the GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle is always in play, maybe the sheer fact that the earth isn't going to hell in a handbasket--climate-wise--will begin to dawn on people treated to a MSM Globaloneyfest everytime they turn on the TV or pick up a MSM print piece.

That's assuming that anyone still is reading and watching the Mainstream Media.

Maybe Time and Newsweek ought to dust off those "Global Cooling" graphics, covers and stories they featured so prominently in the 70s--just like they the ones today about Global Warming that are so popular in their "newsrooms".

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

What a handful of scientists have been insisting--to those who would listen--is that climate is a tricky business.

It's not something you can make a buck on by hysterically insisting that's there is 'scientific consensus' about a non-existent problem that calls for more government, taxes, regulation and schemes.

Oh, sorry again.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

The Little Ice Age is the reason the Irish started planting potatoes--it became too cold to plant the grains they were used to harvesting to survive.

Of course, that bit of history doesn't fit into the tidy scenario of Help! Humans-are-destroying-Mother-Earth-Quick-Call-Al-Gore. It also doesn't help the PC researchers in need of a quick grant fix or the hysterics who've hitched their stars to the Global Warming wagon.

Those who have invested so much in the Global Warming storyline--the U.N., Al Gore, various environmental groups--are not likely to take this news quietly.

Already, some have tried floating the notion that the cold is really a result of Global warming. Can't blame them for trying to cover all the bases.

It can be pointed out to Mr. Gore not to lose hope just yet.

It's still not too late to resurrect the old Time and Newsweek magazines from the 1970s and make a Global Cooling film.

by Mondoreb
image/idea: RidesAPaleHorse
image: Time
Source: Forget global warming; welcome to the New Ice Age



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Obesity Needs to Be Tackled Like Climate Change
We "Need a Coherent Government-Led Strategy"

First, drugs. Then, smoking.
A Call for More Government Control for the Overweight

Health groups, or Health Nazis, are more and more tipping their hands as to what the next big crusade for government laws and regulations will be: what a person eats and weighs.

Obesity needs to be tackled in the same way as climate change, a top nutritional scientist has said.

Of course, the two would seem to go hand-in-hand: a non-elected group of people or scientists calling for more government regulations and taxes and ultimately, the power to tell other people what to do.

The chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce wants world leaders to agree a global pact to ensure that everyone is fed healthy food. Professor Philip James said the challenge of obesity was so great that action was needed now, even without clear evidence of the best options.

As with other "health crusades", action is always needed "now!"

It's an emergency.

When the anti-drug war was begun, it was presented--as always with calls for more government control--as an emergency.

Drugs were an emergency. Concerns were raised at the time about the wisdom of government trying to control the chemical preferences of its citizens.

Those concerns were answered with stiff laws and regulations. A plethora of substances were made illegal if put in a person's body.

More and more substances became illegal and more and more otherwise law-abiding U.S. citizens became lodged in prisons. These laws and regulations were no longer made by elected officials--who had to face voters and answer for their actions.

The creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency took care of that. When the DEA was created, no longer was it necessary to get Congress to outlaw a substance. The DEA only had to declare a substance forbidden and millions of people became outlaws.

Thanks to the U.S. War on Drugs, the United States now has the largest prison population in the world.

As more substances became illegal, frustrated anti-drug spokemen warned that the Drug Warriors would not be content with just drugs--after all, there are few substances left that haven't been demonized, then made illegal.

"Cigarettes and smoking will be next," predicted libertarians, among others.

Law enforcement, government agencies and ordinary people mostly scoffed.

More and more, Big Brother will be watching your pants size

Now, after it is illegal to smoke in many places in America, people are no longer scoffing at the power of "health groups"--unelected bodies that regulate what can and can't be done and have the power to take your money with fines and, in many cases, put you in jail--all for what you choose to do with your body.

All this happened; first for substances (drugs) that were then legal; then for smoking, a perfectly, still-legal activity.

Of course, up until 70+ years ago, marijuana was legal, the third-most prescribed drug in America, available in many pharmacies.

Now, the over-weight are in the cross-hairs of the Health Nazis.

Professor Phillip James wants more laws, of course.

A common sight in the near future?

He called for stricter rules on marketing and food labelling.

The only consolation to the overweight: people take seriously the power of "health groups" and there are more voices being raised against the latest "public health problem" of obesity than when drugs and tobacco were targeted.

It started with childhood obesity. The number of stories written on this problem is truly staggering.

Google "childhood obesity" and you'll get 2.59 million responses. More laws and regulations are being passed and implemented concerning the overweight person, including both children and adults.

And now, comes Professor James, shilling for action to combat a new emergency: this new "epidemic" that the overweight are involved in.

Professor James, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, was speaking in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

"This is a community epidemic that is actually a response to all the wonderful apparent industrial and economic development changes that we've seen, with a collapse in the need for physical activity, and now a targeting of children to make profits by big industry in food and drink.

"We have to change that, and it will not come unless we have a coherent government-led strategy. The issue is: have we got the political will?"

Political will? For "a government-led strategy"?

Who's the Prof kidding?

What he really means is: "Can we overcome the objections of those people who don't want to be told by government what to eat, what to weigh, and demonized if we don't fit the constraints of a height-weight chart.

Can we dress this up like global warming?

Big Food will join Big Tobacco, Big Oil and Big Pharma as the new Axis of Evil.

at left: The Nazis were also very concerned about what their citizens put into their bodies. Nazi posters urged people to eat right--or else.

Will Twinkies become like marijuana? Forced underground and sold on the black market?

Don't laugh. That won't help.

Yesterday as it is today: after attacking tobacco, the Nazis sought total social control expanding to food and alcohol; but today's Nazis hide in white coats.

The statistical junk science methodology was invented by the Nazis. Differently than the junk science statistics on tobacco, however, the reality that today's "health movement" (and its contempt for liberty and self-determination) is of Nazi origins cannot be dismissed.
--from "No, Nazi German 1937-1944"

Professor James added that it was important that all food used a "traffic lights" labelling scheme so that consumers could immediately assess fat, sugar and salt content.

"This is a form of public education which is being resisted mightily in Brussels with intense lobbying of commissioners who've just announced that they won't go down the British road," he highlighted.

Just how ridiculous does a proposed regulation have to be that the European Union thinks it's too onerous?

But the brave Professor soldiered on, oblivious to any obstacles that stand between him and his vision of a world free of fat people--whether those obstacles include inconvenient things like personal choice, liberty or freedom.

"So we're in the process of trying to make it clear that if you're concerned about the health and economics of a society you should take this seriously."

Ten percent of the world's children are either overweight or obese, twice as many as the malnourished, said Professor James.

In what could be an ad for the Democratic National Committee platform, this poster advertises the Nazi charity, the NSV. The text translates:
"Health, child protection, fighting poverty, aiding travellers, community, helping mothers: These are the tasks of the National Socialist People's Charity. Become a member!"
Courtesy of Dr. Robert D. Brooks.
--from the German Propaganda Archives: Nazi Posters

The Professor apparently wasn't around for last fall's SCHIP debate--or the perennial calls by Democrats for more programs and taxes to help starving children.

Which is it? Are the kids starving or suffering from malnutrition?

The Left and the Health Nazis had best schedule a conference call.

"A huge range of analyses show that we have not been looking at the problem of children's nutrition and well-being properly.

"They're disadvantaged from birth, their academic achievement is impaired, their earning power is diminished, and they almost certainly have a life expectancy which is less than that of their parents."

at left: Foods in some UK supermarkets sport a "stoplight" label. Green = good; Red = bad. Just in case people are too stupid to know what's good for them, the government in the US and UK is increasingly getting involved in telling them.

New data from Scandinavia showed that the weight of a child at the age of 7-12 predicted whether or not they were going to die early from heart disease or other problems, he said.

"We now have to think in a totally different way and recognise that it's the life cycle," he added.

"Because these children start off being born small, they are then exposed to totally inappropriate environments, and they are therefore super-sensitive."

Just in case Professor James needed reinforcements, another "expert" spoke in favor of more--regulations, laws, government control and taxes--in the pursuit of less.

Another expert, Professor Rena Wing, presented research at the AAAS in Boston suggesting that large-scale changes in diet and exercise were needed to prevent obesity.

A study of 5,000 men and women who lost an average of 70lbs (30kg), and kept the weight off for six years, shows that large lifestyle changes - such as exercising 60 to 90 minutes a day - were needed to keep people slim.

"The obesity epidemic won't go away simply because people switch to skimmed milk from whole milk," she said.

"They need to substantially cut their calories and boost their physical activity to get to a healthy weight - and keep minding the scale once they do."

If only the experts had called for voluntary goals to be healthier set by individuals, it would have made the speeches easier for libertarians or anyone concerned with another looming government "war on" to swallow.

Tobacco had long been considered a potential "genetic poison" by the Racial Hygiene movement in Germany, clearly the high level of concern regarding the health effects of smoking was strongly connected to the goal of general improvement of the Arian "race".

And it's just not in the 'Land of the Fat-Free' America that the government and "health groups" are watching you. From the Daily Mail:

First it was models that are too skinny.

Now the weight police are after Santa’s who are too “fat.”

This is all in an effort to set a good example for impressionable youths who will undoubtedly see Santa and think they should go all out and get a big beer gut.

So there it is: a call by "experts" to do something--now!

An "epidemic" that only more government can tackle. A problem so bad, that we'll have to take it on the same way Al Gore wants to take on "global warming": with more government, more taxes, more loss of personal freedom, more regulations, more unelected officials dictating to others.

To the Health Nazis, it's always the same story: only the culprits/criminals change.

Those damn druggies.

Those damn smokers.

Those damn fat people.

If only someone would start a crusade against "those damn Health Nazis".

Other DBKP Stories on how Government is taking an unhealthy interest in their citizens' eating and drinking habits. San Francisco tries disguising a new tax on soft drinks. They make it a part of their campaign with the spiffy slogan "Shape Up San Francisco". * Democrats Disguise New Tax Three lawmakers in Mississippi introduce legislation: if any restaurant in the state serves an overweight person, they lose their business license. * Nazi Tactics Against the Obese in Mississippi Government is more and more concerned with what you are eating. * Big Brother is Watching You Eat

by Mondoreb
hat tip: Geoffrey Hayes, Freedom Phoenix
images:
* bbc
* dreamzork
* forceitaly
* calvin
Sources:
* Big T's Roundup: 11-8-07
* Obesity 'requires climate plan'
* No, Nazi Germany 1937-1944
* Democrats Disguise New Tax
* Nazi Tactics Against the Obese in Mississippi
* Big Brother is Watching You Eat



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Carbon footprints buried in Ice, Snow



The forces of man-made climate change continue to wreck havoc with mankind.

This week, it's in the Midwest, South and parts of the West.

How long will it take the United Nations to pass a resolution calling on the U.S. Congress to tax somebody--anybody--to stop this madness.

With cold weather being blamed on global warming, thousands in the U.S. are stranded and shivering, left to ponder the folly of the continued use of fossil fuels.

COLORADO

Rescue crews riding snowmobiles and Sno-Cats delivered urgently needed food and medical supplies today to 17 Park County homes where residents have been stranded in their homes for a week by snow and high winds that have made rural roads impassable.

About 50 search and rescue team members from Jefferson, Clear Creek and Arapahoe counties aided Park County officials in reaching people in areas where blizzardlike conditions on the ground have sealed in residents. About 100 people have been stranded at their homes since Super Bowl Sunday when a series of storms pounded the area, repeatedly dropping between two to 10 inches of snow.

Officials are hoping the governor declares a state of emergency for Park County so it can get larger plows to clear roads of mountains of snow that has fallen in the area.

The county has seven large plows, but officials hope to use specialized snow-moving equipment from the Colorado Department of Transportation if an emergency is declared. The county's Office of Emergency Management was activated Monday.

Officials said that at least 7 feet of snow has collected in some parts of the county since Thanksgiving. High winds and strong storms have made matters worse.

WISCONSIN

Today's predicted snowfall won 't simply be the 41st day of measurable snow accumulation this winter.

If, as the National Weather Service is forecasting, another 3 to 5 inches of snow falls on southern Wisconsin by the time the storm blows through Tuesday morning, it will put the winter of 2007-08 into the record books as Madison 's snowiest.

Or as some weary residents might call it, the most cursed.

CHICAGO

Ice and snow on the roads prompted Greyhound to cancel dozens of trips, stranding about 100 Greyhound bus passengers overnight in Chicago, officials said.

Nearly 40 trips were canceled Monday, including about six trips to and from Chicago's four stations, Greyhound's Web site stated. Some of those trips are rescheduled for Tuesday, although Greyhound has suspended ticket sales to several Midwest cities.

UPPER MIDWEST

It was so cold Sunday in the upper Midwest, and visibility was so poor in blowing snow, that church services were called off in parts of Michigan. At noon, thermometers in one North Dakota town still registered minus 20.

The wind and cold blanketed the Dakotas and much of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Subzero temperatures at midday extended into northern Iowa, the National Weather Service said. Snow whipped up by the biting wind created hazardous driving conditions Sunday in Michigan.

State police said the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge was closed because of whiteout conditions, and the sheriff’s office in southwest Michigan’s Cass County said visibility was less than 20 feet.

Many churches across western Michigan canceled services.

SOUTH

Schools are closed and roads are treacherous in a region stretching from Illinois to West Virginia amid a winter storm that's dumping snow and freezing rain.

An icy five-mile stretch of an Indiana interstate has been shut down after more than a dozen accidents within an hour.

Schools are closed in much of West Virginia and Ohio. Some parts of northern Ohio are expecting up to eight inches of snow.

In Kentucky, more than 13,000 customers are reported to be without power.

This latest round of anecdotal evidence of global warming should convince even the most skeptical that more regulations and taxes are needed to combat this coming catastrophe.

The human cost in suffering will move some city somewhere, perhaps Berkeley or Boulder, to pass a resolution.

Will someone not do something?

It's obvious we're running out of time.

by Mondoreb & RidesAPaleHorse
image: RidesAPaleHorse
Sources:
* Park County Crews Finally Reaching snowbound residents
* Today's Snow Could Break a Record
* County Wants State help with Snow
* Snow Forces Greyhound to Suspend Midwest Ticket sales
* Upper Midwest Hit by Bitter Cold, Blowing Snow
* Ice, Snow Blanket Parts of Midwest, South



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

New study details how simple changes at New York Times
could help save planet Earth

A few changes could go a long way toward reducing climate change a new study released Friday showed. While it's good news for Planet Earth, it may be bad news for Editorial writers at the New York Times.

The United States could shave as much as 27 percent off the amount of greenhouse gases it emits at fairly modest cost and with only small technology innovations, according to a new report.

DeRhode Report on Reducing Greenhouse Gases

A large share of the reductions could come from steps that would more than pay for themselves in lower energy bills for industries, individual consumers, and long-suffering readers of the New York Times the report said, adding that people should take those steps out of good sense regardless of how worried they might be about climate change.

But that is unlikely to happen under present circumstances, said the authors, who are energy experts at DeRhode & Company, the consulting firm.

The report said the country was brimming with “negative cost opportunities” — potential changes in the reading, viewing and discussion of newspapers editorial policies, for example, that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the emissions of NY Times Editorial Staff meetings, even as they save money.

“These types of savings have been around for 20 years,” said Dr. Juan Morefor DeRhode, a director of the study. But he said they still face tremendous barriers.

"We've charted enormous potential resistance to any suggestion that the Times' writers take basic science courses to better acquaint themselves with what they are writing about."

But DeRhode said that the stakes are "so high it makes it all worth pursuing."

Another of the study's authors, Dr. Getta Klough, echoed DeRhode.

"The emissions from the editorial staff at NY Times, CNN, MSNBC and USA Today alone, well--they were off the chart. If these could somehow be limited, it would go a long way toward solving many of the problems of perception about climate change."

The study was released Friday in Washington, D.C. and was conducted by DeRhode and Company for DBKP.

Its release comes a week before a United Nations climate conference is to convene in Bali, and as Congress approaches a vote on proposals to limit emissions of greenhouse gases.

by Mondoreb
[image:.blog.thesietch]
Sources:
Study Details How U.S. Could Cut 28% of Greenhouse Gases
DeRhode and Company Study



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

The Web site JunkScience.com (http://junkscience.com/) has raised its “prize” offering from $100,000 to $125,000 for anyone who can actually supply proof that human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing global warming.

In presenting its Ultimate Global Warming Challenge, the Web site states: “If you think it’s a no-brainer that humans are causing catastrophic global warming, here’s your opportunity to earn an easy $125,000.”

The challenge: “$125,000 will be awarded to the first person to prove, in a scientific manner, that humans are causing harmful global warming.”
The winning entry, the site notes, will reject this “hypothesis”:
“Man-made emissions of greenhouse gases do not discernibly, significantly and predictably cause increases in global surface and tropospheric temperatures along with associated stratospheric cooling.”

Entrants are told to limit their entries to 700 words — and include a $15 entry fee.
The Web site defines Junk Science” as “faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas.”

As of this writing, the “prize” had gone unclaimed by anyone — including Al Gore — for more than 60 days.

by RidesAPaleHorse



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.