Arctic Sea Ice in a Time Lapse Video

Very cool video which needs to be spread around. On the surface, you can readily see seasonal changes to the ice pack. Looking more carefully, you can see effects from wind and weather patterns. What you cannot see is any effect of global warming. The polar bears are safe.

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Waxman – About as Sharp as a Bag of Wet Mice.

What is in the water in California that causes that State’s residents to plague the rest of the country with absolutely complete idiots. Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein are well known examples. Today we must add Henry Waxman to this illustrious list of mentally challanged State Representatives.

What did Waxman do to earn his place in history as one of the dumbest people in history? Let me quote him:

We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point – they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by that ice cap.

It is sad that the average third grader would be able to correct Henry and teach him that there is no land, much less tundra, underneath the North Sea ice cap. It might take a seventh grader to inform poor Waxman that ice does not evaporate unless placed inside a vacuum, where it sublimates.

The really troubling idea in this quote is that the ice cap, somehow, holds down the tundra. Would this imaginary tundra somehow fly away if the ice were to melt? Is the North Pole Miyazaki Hayao’s Laputa? Is Waxman a heavy drinker?

We may never know as I’m sure that if this mouth-breather is ever confronted on his stupidity, he’ll just laugh and say he misspoke. In the mean time, it is painfully obvious that he has no business as Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee which puts him in charge of the global warming “strategy” to be rammed down America’s collective throat, as well as our nation’s energy policy. He has no business running a lemonade stand.

And California be known for it’s happy cows, but it is also known for it’s stupid politicians.

Update:

It appears, he doesn’t want to debate anything, just ram it through.

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Is Green the New Blue?

July 20, 1933 – General Hugh S. “Iron Pants” Johnson, the head of the National Recovery Administration, declares the Blue Eagle to be the symbol of compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act. The NRA was an agency created by Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the New Deal, modeled on the War Industries Board of WWI, and was a part of the continuation of the war time economy, shifted to combat the Great Depression.

The Act instituted codes of “fair competition” for a multitude of industries, set minimum wages, maximum hours, and a pricing floor for almost all goods. This intrusion into the workings of the free market, even though the different elements were “voluntary,” were partly responsible for prolonging the depression, as well as highly unconstitutional. Housewives were urged, pressured, and embarrassed into purchasing products only from companies displaying the Blue Eagle symbol. Slogans of “doing your part” and “Buy now under the Blue Eagle” were rampant.

In a fireside chat, even Roosevelt spread the propaganda

In war, in the gloom of night attack, soldiers wear a bright badge on their shoulders to be sure their comrades do not fire on comrades, on that principle those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance.

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2009 International Conference on Climate Change

Event Link

A veritable “who’s who” of climate scientists, who are “in the same camp with Holocaust Deniers,” are meeting this week in New York City. An expected crowd of 800 will be in attendance for the three day event, featuring no less than 73 conference speakers (most with Ph.D.’s), sponsored by the Heartland Institute. Details of the event are being posted on The Climate Scam blog.

Here is a snipit from the opening remarks by Joseph L. Blast

If the scientific community were convinced that we could reliably forecast future climates, or that the consequences of some warming would be catastrophic, then perhaps no price would be too high to pay to save the Earth. But that is not what the scientific community is telling us. According to the most recent international poll of climate scientists,

* Most climate scientists believe global warming “is a process already underway.”

* But that “consensus” drops to below 60 percent when climate scientists are asked if “climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.”

* 65 percent of climate scientists do not believe “climate models can accurately predict climate conditions in the future.”

* 68 percent do not believe “the current state of scientific knowledge is able to provide reasonable predictions of climatic variability on time scales of ten years.”

* 73 percent do not believe it is possible to predict climate “on time scales of 100 years.”

* About 70 percent of climate scientists think “climate change might have some positive effects for some societies.”

* Finally, on the question that might matter the most, climate scientists are perfectly split over the question of whether they know enough about global warming to turn it over to policymakers to take action, with 44 percent saying we do and 46 percent saying we do not.

This extensive disagreement within the scientific community is not reflected in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Why is that? Maybe because, to quote Alexander Cockburn again, “the IPCC has the usual army of functionaries and grant farmers, and the merest sprinkling of actual scientists with the prime qualification of being climatologists or atmospheric physicists.”

Here is a small part of the remarks made by Richard Liznden, Ph.D.

Global warming alarm has always been a political movement, and opposing it has always been an up-hill battle.

In this talk I wish to point out some simple truths that are often forgotten by our side of this issue.

First, being skeptical about global warming does not, by itself, make one a good scientist; nor does endorsing global warming make one, per se, a poor scientist. Most of the atmospheric scientists who I respect do endorse global warming. The important point, however, is that the science that they do that I respect is not about global warming. Endorsing global warming just makes their lives easier.

For example, my colleague, Kerry Emanuel, received relatively little recognition until he suggested that hurricanes might become stronger in a warmer world (a position that I think he has since backed away from somewhat). He then was inundated with professional recognition.

Another colleague, Carl Wunsch, professionally calls into question virtually all alarmist claims concerning sea level, ocean temperature, and ocean modeling, but assiduously avoids association with skeptics; if nothing else, he has several major oceanographic programs to worry about. Moreover, his politics are clearly liberal.

Perhaps the most interesting example is Wally Broecker, whose work clearly shows that sudden climate change occurs without anthropogenic influence, and is a property of cold rather than warm climates. However, he staunchly beats the drums for alarm and is richly rewarded for doing so.

For a much larger group of scientists, the fact that they can make ambiguous or even meaningless statements that can be spun by alarmists, and that the alarming spin leads politicians to increase funding, provides little incentive to complain about the spin.

and

The process of coopting science on behalf of a political movement has had an extraordinarily corrupting influence on science — especially since the issue has been a major motivation for funding. Most funding for climate would not be there without this issue. And, it should be added, most science funded under the rubric of climate does not actually deal with climate, but rather with the alleged impact of arbitrarily assumed climate change.

Strangely, no news has been released by the MSM. I guess Al Gore was unavailable for comment.

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Waxman sprinting for new Environmental Policy…

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman, plans on having two hearings per week until he completes a comprehensive revamping of the country’s environmental policy. This according to a Politico article published today (link). In the process he is ruffling a few feathers, most notably that of Charlie B. “Why don’t you mind your g*damned business” Rangel (D-NY) of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Turf battles are commonplace on Capitol Hill, especially over major legislation, but this one — should it shape up — could have a distinct impact on the substance of the legislation Congress enacts, on an issue that could divide Democrats more than any other in President Barack Obama’s agenda.

The basic goal is an overall reduction in carbon emissions, with rebates to help households pay for higher energy costs. But how to achieve that goal is the rub, and there are differences between the Waxman approach and those being offered by members of Rangel’s panel.

Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) both prefer a cap-and-trade measure — the president included hundreds of billions in revenue from this program in his first budget blueprint — giving Waxman an advantage at this early stage in the debate. Ways and Means members are considering a more direct tax on carbon emissions, with rebates on utility bills passed back to consumers.

“I think we are going to end up with a cap-and-trade bill,” Waxman told reporters last week, before reiterating his willingness to work with other committees of jurisdiction as Congress and the White House lurch toward a comprehensive climate policy.

Waxman, who was responsible for major changes to the 1990 Clean Air Act has now turned his attention to climate change. Initial CBO estimates for his cap-and-trade system show it generating between $50 and $300 billion during the first year of trading. This money would go to technology research, mitigating global warming, and providing offsets for consumer’s higher energy bills.

First, there is alot of room between $50 and $300 billion. I’ve written business plans before…who are the nitwits who came up with these numbers? That’s like some small business going into a bank, claiming first year sales between $50,000 and $3 million dollars! Second, all of it is a hidden tax. Everything that uses energy will increase in price to cover this money. Food will increase, gasoline will increase, heck, movie tickets will increase!

Getting to the destination for your increased taxes, technology research I can understand, but why does technology research require government funding? If it was any good, the private sector would be dumping money into it. Just research what happened to my previous field, fusion energy, when the government got involved (small tangent…thanks Al Gore…thanks alot…creep).

Mitigating global warming…mitigating global warming…hmm…assuming that global warming is a) happening, and b) controllable, does anyone have the slightest idea how to do that? [insert sound of chirping crickets]. Giant mirrors in the Sahara? Millions of snowmachines? Growing an Audrey-II?

Then the kicker, compensating people for rising energy prices. Huh? If all of our energy prices go up, and the government is taxing energy, and they are going to compensate us for our rising energy prices – then all we’re looking at is another money laundering scheme. The real question is who are they going to compensate. I’m positive it will not be you or me.

People in Waxman’s 30th District who still have their sanity: Write this nit-wit. Blow up his phone, fax, and email server. Fight this kookyness before someone loses an eye.

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Mood enhancer of the day:

I just found this on a blog from bikerbernie. Nice one.

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I wonder what the AWG crowd thinks about this?

I was surfing a Chinese news website early this morning (Chinaview), you know, ’cause I was awake, and I have a hard time finding real news from our “free” press, anyway, I found this cool article on the Top 10 Amazing Holes in the Earth. This picture caught my eye. It seems that while drilling for natural gas in 1971, the brilliant Russian geologists and miners in the former Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan (yeah, I had to look it up too) made this hole when the rig collapsed. Being the Earth conscience people that they are, they let the gas burn rather than have it escape into the air…it is poisonous you know.

So this hugantic campfire, in exactly the middle of nowhere, has been burning untold millions of cubic feet per year of natural gas since 1971, and I’m supposed to worry about my light bulbs. Umm, can somebody contact Al Gore? Surely he can come up with a 10 year plan to put this fire out.

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Al Gore, your 15 minutes of fame are up.

Al Gore was on another talking heads program (link here), this time with Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal. I decided I was going to hold my breakfast down and watch the video. Right out of the gate he states that it is possible to convert our carbon based energy production to…well, something else, in 10 years. A single decade, are you kidding me? The repaving and widening of I-95 through D.C. took longer than 10 years..and the road was already built! Maybe he plans on visiting Loompa Land and picking up some Oompa Loompas to get the job done. Hey, don’t laugh, it could happen.

“The enormity of the climate crisis” triggered my next gag reflex. What on God’s Green Earth is he talking about. The climate has been warmer in the past. The climate has also been cooler in the past. So what! We’re still kicking. In fact raising the temperature, and CO2 levels will actually help humanity through increased food production. Right now are planet is starving for CO2. A couple of degrees warmer would also put far more water vapor into the air, which would mean more rain and therefore less drought – again helping to increase food production. Not that it is going to be warmer any time soon since our planet has been cooling for the past decade or so. So Al, you’re darned right I’m not ready to hear the phrase “planetary emergency” in an “accepting way”. The world’s growing population needs food. Oh that’s right, I forgot you would like the population to shrink to some arbitrary number of lucky souls.

“Expensive carbon based fuels”. Urrp – I’m sorry, that was this morning’s waffle. Name an energy source that is cheaper than coal to the end user…(insert sound of chirping crickets here). Wind and solar are no cheaper than coal in their initial cost…they already exist. It is in harnessing the energy that produces the cost. We have coal coming out of our…well let’s just say it’s abundant. So is oil, so is methane. And we are not “hostage to carbon based fuels” we are hostage to foreign governments (who don’t like us) to obtain our supply. Not because we do not posses our own resources, but because we’d rather let them suck it out of their ground and buy it. This, of course, is never a good idea. Depending on the resources of other countries allows us to be dictated to by those countries. They also get to set the price, hence the “roller coaster” of oil prices. The “declining rate of new discoveries” is another flat out lie. We have discovered more oil in the last 20 years than we have burned in the last 100. Go look it up. And the higher costs of new discoveries is directly tied to increased regulation.

Boone, I’m with you in most respects. We need to get off foreign oil. But not oil totally. Your natural gas idea for heavy vehicles is brilliant. Al is setting up a straw man argument, coupled with the Democrats refusal to let us drill our own oil, to say that getting off foreign oil means we need to convert to non-carbon fuels. We needed to do this back in Carter’s day, and so far, no politician has had the stones to pull it off.

And Gore, stop using the word consensus. Science does not work by consensus, politics do. And, you’re right, if we spend zillions of dollars combating CO2 levels destroying the world’s economy in the process, future generations will look back and ask “what in the world were you thinking?”

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