Global Warming Hysteria (cooled)

Where would be all be without our green Hollywood celebs to keep us morally pure?

Oscar winner Cate Blanchett has stopped washing her hair in an effort to do her bit to save the environment and become a green example to her kids.The actress admits she has installed timers all around her home to restrict energy levels - and one is even on her shower head. Now she is no longer washing her hair, Blanchett has realized: "I only need to have a two minute shower."

Ed. By 'shower head' do you think the article author is referring to Cate's bathroom or what goes on under her hairline? 

Cate, of course, lives in a $10 million mansion so, as this article reveals, may have to quit showering altogether to apologize for her ginormous carbon footprint.  

Despite (what John Cleese would call the "bleedin' obvious") the production of decades old reports that show Minneapolis Bridge needed replacing because it was US (unfit for service), environMENTALS just can't leave it alone.

It was left to one Joseph Romm at the mysteriously titled 'Climate Progress'  to introduce the Idiot Factor and ask the question no one with actual sense dared ask:  "Did climate change contribute to the bridge collapse?"
Yes, you idiot!! we must all retort. The bridge needed replacing decades ago.  Time and weather do take their toll. It's the way of life!

To be fair, Jospeh Romm implicates his brother David in his assertion (see posting via link above), so we must spread the Idiocy Factor load here.  I can't wait to read what similar priceless gems his book hides, can you? Still it does make you wonder about what really happened to that bridge on the River Kwai...

Footnote: For the record (go here), Joseph Romm is a former member of the Clinton administration, and current Senior Fellow at the virtual Clinton think tank the Center for American Progress. Which explains everything.  David Romm is, apparently, not taking his medication.

 Last year I wrote a piece for the British Journalism Review (see What Climate Consensus? on the 'Articles' page of this site) which lamented the shoddy enviro-journalism which which marked most climate news analysis pieces.

A journalist (a loose description, you understand) called Peter Wilby, the former editor of the The New Statesman (just to the left of Stalin this organ), in time-honored leftwing activist fashion, entirely ignored the articulated argument and launched an ad hominen attack.  He described me as 'neither a scientist nor a journalist'. Odd really, as I never claimed to be a scientist (and neither is he btw - which doesn't prevent him writing on global warming issues) and I actually make my living as a journalist, which makes the statement just a tad libellous.

However, being a magnanimous fellow I let the matter go. After all, how do you communicate with a journalist who is plainly suffering from NDCF (No Discernible Cerebral Functioning)?  I mention this only to illustrate precisely what the thinking world is up against in the mass media more generally -- a syndrome which may well be explained by the following:  

I have often wondered how the media are in such lock step on Global Warming. Well, I wonder no more. Recently, I came across a website for the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ).  http://www.sej.org/  This website is veritable tool box for any budding reporter assigned to the global warming beat. If you're an editor at the Palookaville Post, all you have to do is send your cub reporters to this site and they'll have everything they need to write an article that fits the template and action line perfectly.

For the rest of this article go here - to The American Thinker website. 

 Here it is folks. A sort of Jackson Pollock...with issues. But this picture, so the artist and editor at MWC (Media With Conscience or More Warming Claptrap? You choose) claims, could help to save the earth. And here's what its all about (from the artist/author):

 TERRA – our Planet, the Earth - is under acute threat from Climate Criminals threatening the Third World with Climate Genocide and the Biosphere with Terracide (the killing of our Planet). Words are failing to persuade people to act urgently to save the Planet in a Bush-ite Western world in a morass of Mainstream media lying and spin. As one alternative approach to convince people to act I have painted a huge painting  (1.3 x 2.9 meters)  called “Terra” that attempts to show the beauty of the Earth and its uniqueness in the solar system and, maybe, the Universe. 

If one assumes that the Probability (P) of life arising de novo on a planet like the Earth (Terra) is 1.0 (i.e. 100%, a dead cert) then there will certainly be Life elsewhere in the Universe. However at present Life on Earth is an example of what is called a Singularity in Science – it is the ONLY Planet we presently know of that carries Life.

Accordingly decent, sensible people regard Life and Terra as Singular and Precious.

If the earth really looks as artist Dr Gideon Polya sees it, personally, I'm on the next shuttle. Media With Conscience - indubitably - but, sadly, no brains either.  (Why not send it to some pompous greenie you don't like, today!)

Martin Durkin (and you can almost see the fatwa on his head)When Australia's ABC had the guts to show The Great Global Warming Swindle last week the viscousness of the verbal attack was predictable. Here is Martin Durkin's post-showing response including:  "'I was warned a middle-class fatwa would be put on my head":

WHEN I agreed to make The Great Global Warming Swindle, I was warned a middle-class fatwa would be placed on my head.

So I wasn't shocked that the film was attacked on the same night it was broadcast on ABC television last week, although I was impressed at the vehemence of the attack. I was more surprised, and delighted, by the response of the Australian public.

The ABC studio assault, led by Tony Jones, was so vitriolic it appears to have backfired. We have been inundated with messages of support, and the ABC, I am told, has been flooded with complaints. I have been trying to understand why.

First, the ferocity of the attack, I think, revealed the intolerance and defensiveness of the global warming camp. Why were Jones and co expending such energy and resources attacking one documentary? We are told the global warming theory is robust. They say you'd have to be off your chump to disagree. We have been assured for years, in countless news broadcasts and column inches, that it's definitely true. So why bother to stamp so aggressively on the one foolish documentary-maker - who clearly must be as mad as a snake - who steps out of line?

I think viewers may also have wondered (reasonably) why the theory of global warming has not been subjected to this barrage of critical scrutiny by the media. After all, it's the theory of global warming, not my foolish little film, that is turning public and corporate policy on its head.

For the full article see:  The Australian

The Swiss branch of the environment group Greenpeace is recruiting hundreds of volunteers to pose naked on a glacier to draw attention to global warming. The group has commissioned photographer Spencer Tunick to take the photographs next month.

The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to melting Alpine glaciers. Volunteers are being promised that they will not be naked for very long. Tunick is known for his photos of people in the nude, with his latest taken just last month in Amsterdam, where some 2,000 volunteers stripped down for the shoot. Tunick is known for his photos of people in the nude, with his latest taken just last month in Amsterdam, where some 2,000 volunteers stripped down for the shoot.

Ed.  Does this mean that Greenpeace (Swiss Branch) 'male members' will be known as Bluepiece in the future?  As for Tunick, well he clearly has unresolved issues.

 A message from the President of the American Council on Renewable Energy   [Iain Murray]

"A few days ago, my colleague Dr. Marlo Lewis had a column over at the American Spectator on the current debate in Congress over climate issues. This morning he received the following message (I have edited one character)":

Marlo –

You are so full of cr*p.

You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.

Mike

Michael T. Eckhart, President

American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

Ed. So, any thoughts on what the missing letter in cr*p may be?? Do you think Eckhart's been to see Diehard 4.0? Should the organization be renamed 'American Council on Renewable Hatred'?  Will Marlo come out as that most evil of beings, a 'Corporate American'?

Al 'I-am-definitely-not-standing-as-a-candidate-for-the-presidency' Gore jetted in to the UK to warn us about something called climate change. Britain, currently - and contrary to climate predictions - is suffering one of the most changeable and wettest summers for a while. (Odd that Gore's message should be a warning about climate change then...). Now I have to say the timing of his visit could have been better. Haven't we in the Isles suffered enough terrorism these past days without hosting the world's no 1 Climate Terrorist?

The Ego now having landed I guess his visit has something to do with this weekend's global Live Earth Concert. For anyone that doesn't know what Live Earth is, it is where  the world's leading pop and rock star 'intellectuals' queue up to parade their ignorance of life, love and the pursuit of happiness - oh yes, and how the climate works.

Newspaper reports suggest that choosing Shanghai to kick the global concerts off this weekend was an inspired - well the al-Guardian owned Observer did any way - choice. (Presumably that has something to do with the Chinese being a world leader in the leftwing propagandist stakes?)  Gore expects around 2 billion people will be reached with his apocalyptic visions - wow, that's even more than suffered the Black Death (only 75 million).

In any event,  no one has got around to calculating the CO2 emissions jetting all of these super stars around the globe and moving around countless hundreds of thousands to concerts will pump into the atmosphere. But they, all 2 billion, having a greater insight into the future, are more important than the rest of us (who should sit still and breathe only when we simply must).

After weather 'experts' got yet another warning of an approaching  'perfect storm' wrong (this time in Sydney, Australia) the Sydney Morning Herald carried an excellent Opinion piece from which this excerpt is taken:

More than 100 studies have found that (climate) experts are often poor forecasters. In one survey Professor Philip Tetlock, of the University of California at Berkeley, obtained 82,361 forecasts from 284 academics, other commentators and professional advisers in the areas of politics and economics. The experts had to select one of three answers (that a situation would not change or would get better or get worse).

The experts performed more poorly than they would have done had they allocated forecasts at random. As an article on Tetlock by Louis Menand in The New Yorker put it: "Human beings who spend their lives studying the state of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who would have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices." Tetlock found that the more famous the commentators or forecasters, the more unreliable their forecasts.

Source: 'A bad explanation is better than none at all',  Sydney Morning Herald 

And in the same newspaper one politician has had strong words for Oz climate 'expert' Tim Flannery...

The NSW Treasurer, Michael Costa, has called Tim Flannery an "idiot" - just four months after Mr Flannery, the Australian of the Year, launched a climate change forum set up by the Premier.

Mr Costa, a renowned climate change sceptic, made his comments in question time in the Legislative Council, saying the environmental campaigner Mr Flannery was wrong to say that dams were going to dry up because of climate change.

Mr Costa referred to "idiots like Tim Flannery saying it'll never rain" as he launched into a tirade against the theory of greenhouse gases.

He said Mr Flannery and others continually came up with "ridiculous propositions" and told Coalition MPs he would not have appointed Mr Flannery Australian of the Year.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

NB. Readers of this site should know that the editor of this site does not necessarily agree with views express here. Take Tim Flannery for instance - a better and fairer observation would have been that he is a 'perfect idiot'.

 
Lights across the city were switched off for an hour on Thursday night to encourage London's three million households to conserve energy. The Lights Out London campaign aimed to have all non-essential lighting turned off between 2100 and 2200 BST.  It followed similar campaigns in cities including Sydney, Paris and Rome.

It was the first time the lights at Piccadilly Circus had been switched off since World War II.

Source: The BBC - alas, whose own media 'light' for balanced and fair reporting has long been extinguished. 

Ed.  The lights out campaign itself draws its inspiration from a similar principle employed in the thinking of Al Gore and climate change alarmists the world over.  As regards the facts of global warming, most UK politicians appear content to remain in the dark.

Anyone who thought that the genocide in Darfur was the result of the policies of the murderous band of Islamist thugs hanging out in Khartoum is, apparently,  quite wrong, according  to new UN Secretary  General, Ban Ki-Moon.  According to the UN Gen Secretary global warming is really to blame.

Some of us may have held out the fond hope that the replacement of the weak-need incompetent and fraud coverer-upper Kofi Annan might offer the hope of a useful and sensible UN. Alas, it is plainly not to be.  And here's the proof:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global Climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.

"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban said in the Washington daily.

When Darfur's land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.

With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing.

"For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out," he said.

A UN peacekeeping force may stop the fighting, he said, and more than two million people may return to rebuilt homes in safe villages.

"But what to do about the essential dilemma: the fact that there's no longer enough good land to go around?"

"Any real solution to Darfur's troubles involves sustained economic development," perhaps using new technologies, genetically modified grains or irrigation, while bettering health, education and sanitation, he said.

Coping with the ravages of global warming will cost $50 billion a year, and the rich nations who caused most of the pollution must pay most of the bill, aid agency Oxfam said on Tuesday.

The call, barely 10 days before a crucial Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany which has climate change at its core, is likely to make already tense negotiations even tougher.

The United States, which Oxfam says must foot 44 percent of the annual $50 billion bill, is rejecting attempts by German G8 presidency Germany to set stiff targets and timetables for cutting carbon gas emissions and raising energy efficiency.

"G8 countries face two obligations as they prepare for this year's summit in Germany -- to stop harming by cutting their emissions to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius and to start helping poor countries to cope," said Oxfam researcher Kate Raworth.

"Developing countries cannot and should not be expected to foot the bill for the impact of rich countries' emissions," she said, echoing the position of the developing world. Scientists say average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods and famine and putting millions of lives at risk.

The United States is the world's biggest producer of carbon emissions -- although experts predict that boom economy China will probably overtake it within a year as it builds a coal-fired power station every four days to feed demand.

Oxfam has created a global warming adaptation financing index based on the responsibility, equity and capability of each nation. It said after the United States, Japan owed 13 percent of the bill, followed by Germany on seven percent, Britain just over five percent, Italy, France and Canada between four and five percent and Spain, Australia and Korea three percent.

Germany wants the leaders of the G8 along with India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa at their summit from June 6-8 to agree to limit the temperature rise to two degrees this century and to cut emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

But in a draft of the final communique to be presented to the leaders at the summit, Washington rejected these goals in decidedly undiplomatic terms.

"We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position," the United States said in red ink comments at the start of a copy of the draft seen by Reuters on Friday.

"The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple 'red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to." The blunt language of the rejection sets the scene for a showdown at the summit. A source close to the negotiations described them as "very tense."

Source/More: Reuters 

Ed. Well there's a helpful suggestion in the increasingly quagmired international pursuit aimed at producing 'Son of Kyoto' agreement.  So, as China is about to become the world's biggest producer of CO2...are they rich...or poor? Oxfam, over to you...

Pascuala, the whale in need of a good 'green activist' mealReaders may remember the story of Knut the polar bear cub rejected by its mother and being hand-reared in a German zoo.  They might also remember the furore created (and still continuing) over the claims by Green activists that the cub should be killed...as being hand-reared 'set a bad precedent' (i.e. didn't fit with the Green moralists screwed up worldview).  Well they have been at it again.

This time Greenpeace are trying to Orca-strate the killing of a wounded, beached orphan whale as, they believe, saving its life by sending it to a US marine theme park would "set a bad precedent". 

Here's a thought that could only enhance the quality of life for us all: save the whale and the polar bear as best we can - and when each is fully grown let's set the president of Greenpeace in with them to get 'better acquainted'. Now how would that be for 'setting a bad president'?

There was a time when Greenpeace used to campaign to 'Save The Whales!' Now they want them dead. Better dead than bred, apparently.  

Picking up her Catholic rosary, Meg Williams, a 24-year-old from Maine, begins her prayers like this:

"Hail Persephone, full of strength and beauty. . . . Blessed are you and blessed is the cycle of your life. Holy Persephone, queen of life and death, pray for your children now, and in the hour of our need. Blessed be."

Williams calls herself a Christo-Pagan, a blender of traditional Christianity and pagan goddess worship. For her, adapting the Catholic rosary brings a peace that adhering only to the Christianity of her youth did not.

"It makes me feel very connected to God," said Williams, who didn't want her city named because she -- like many pagans who aren't open to their families -- still lives in what some call the "broom closet."

"Going through this cycle of prayer, it switches your brain into recognizing that something holy is happening and God is with you," she said.

Her prayer is one example of how some neo-pagans (followers of Wicca, Druidry, Asatru and other forms of ancient goddess or nature worship) are retooling the centuries-old rosary and other prayer beads for worshipping Celtic, Norse, Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.

Source: Washington Post 

Apparently, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people. Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth.

Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “W e are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion.

The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued.

Watson was invoking the worst of Robert Malthus, an English political economist who claimed that mankind was overpopulating the earth. That claimed first appeared in the late 1700s. Watson urged some solutions for mankind as part of a process to “ need to re-wild the planet” :

· “ No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas.” New York, London, Paris, Moscow are all too big. Then again, so are Moose Jaw, Timbuktu and even Annapolis, Md.  “We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference.”

“We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”  “Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.”

At least Watson was generous and said people could still talk with one another across great distances. “Communication systems can link the communities,” he proclaimed from on high. The Watson rant kept on going calling for everything from cutting down on the population of domesticated dogs and cats to cutting down on everything else in what he called “simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Watson essentially called for humans to return to primitive lifestyles. “We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us.”

Author & Source: Dan Gainor at the US Business & Media Institute. 

The idiot British Government 'Department For Environment Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) has sent out a 'Climate Change Study Pack' to every secondary School across the UK. It includes: 

A resource pack to help teachers and pupils explore and understand the issues surrounding climate change was sent to every secondary school in England today.

The pack, which includes the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth and a number of other resources, was developed by Defra and the Department for Education and Skills. It is accompanied by online teaching guidance showing how to use the resources in the pack in science, geography and citizenship lessons.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said:

"Climate change is one of the most important challenges facing our planet today. This pack will help to give young people information and inspiration to understand and debate the issues around climate change, and how they as individuals and members of a community should respond to it."

Climate Change and Environment Minister Ian Pearson said:

"There is a clear scientific consensus on the causes and impacts of climate change. Climate change is not solely an environmental issue - it is a challenge for the economy, for health, and for our way of life now, and in the decades ahead.

"The commitment and enthusiasm of young people will be essential to meeting this challenge. We must ensure that they have the tools and the information they need to make informed decisions about their lives and their communities, which this pack for secondary schools will help to provide."

Defra clearly believes that media hype plus science-predictions or science-faith equals science-fact. It doesn't, of course, it equals science-fiction.  Hence Gore's film. But clearly Defra's ministers are absolutely determined that every secondary school pupil in Britain has, on the is issue, the right to remain as clueless as they are.   Fair enough?

With thanks to Paul Flett for the tip. 

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as ``green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont.

``I'm not your traditional Birkenstocks and granola type of guy,'' said Stefan Muehle, general manager of the Orchard Garden, who said green measures are reducing energy costs as much as 25 percent a month. ``We're trying to dispel the myth that being green and being luxurious are mutually exclusive.''

Source: Bloomberg.com 

A devout Dutchman has spent two years and a million euros rebuilding Noah’s Ark after a dream that the Netherlands was suddenly submerged under water. As a firm believer in the Genesis story, Mr Huibers does not believe that the entire world will be destroyed by a second flood, despite global warming. God placed the rainbow in the sky as a guarantee against that. Al Gore, the US Democrat Vice-President turned environmentalist, recently said, however, that the Netherlands was particularly at risk from rising sea levels.

Source: David Charter, The Times, 30 April 2007

Ed. Point of order, Mr Chairman...God actually told Noah to build the Ark to save (physically) all the animals too (not just himself) and, because there would be no landfall to which he could escape, Noah had to build the Ark. As Mr Huibers, even on his own account, could escape the 'coming flood' by simply buying a train ticket to somewhere else (like France?), on wonders why he doesn't.  But then logic clearly is not his strong suit.

As a practising Christian and a teacher and preacher of the Christian gospel myself (over many years) it is a constant pain and embarrassment to me that so many of my fellow Christians are so incredibly uninformed and downright plain ignorant when it comes to applying their faith in the real world. This is precisely why the modern church has become so irrelevant in it.  But it was not a failing of Christ.  Neither should it be a failing of ours either. 

Green Party leader Elizabeth May is a classic example of the type - including the usual anti-Bush pseudo-spiritual drivel.  Confused herself she has set herself up as a teacher of others.  Here she is this weekend bursting into tears over the state  of the environment while addressing a congregation which had the poor sense to invite her in the first place (in London, Ontario).  A classic example of the blind leading the blind, I am afraid. Worse, Elizabeth May's god is not even in ultimate control of his world! The God of the Bible, however, most certainly is. She obviously has not read those parts of the Bible which state categorically the four seasons will endure till Christ returns, or the Book of Revelation. 

Here endeth the first lesson.

Source: London Free Press, Canada. 

BARMY Euro MPs are demanding new laws to stop cows and sheep PARPING. Their call came after the UN said livestock emissions were a bigger threat to the planet than transport.

The MEPs have asked the European Commission to “look again at the livestock question in direct connection with global warming”. The official EU declaration demands changes to animals’ diets, to capture gas emissions and recycle manure.