Global Warming Hysteria (cooled)

There has been an increasingly overt move by the Left, under the 'cloud-cover' of climate change rhetoric to pursue their agenda to rid the world of people (the ones responsible for destroying our the planet) once and for all. 

Here's yet another leftie - and, surprisingly, in the Guardian-owned Observer - attempting to worry us into giving up having children and bring on declining demographics. In fact,  just exactly what is already happening right across the Western world!  (Don't these 'scientists' ever concern themselves with real scientific facts?) Anyway, here he is (yawn...)

The new head of the Science Museum has an uncompromising view about how global warming should be dealt with: get rid of a few billion people. Chris Rapley, who takes up his post on September 1, is not afraid of offending. 'I am not advocating genocide,' said Rapley. 'What I am saying is that if we invest in ways to reduce the birthrate - by improving contraception, education and healthcare - we will stop the world's population reaching its current estimated limit of between eight and 10 billion.

Source: The Observer 

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.

Source: Breitbart.com - ed. sadly, it seems, a change of Sec. General at the UN is just a way of changing the name on the SG's door and revealing which lunatic is now running the asylum.

Planet Gore:

Brussels lambasted the US and Australia yesterday for their inaction in cutting carbon dioxide emissions and stressed Europe's leading role in the battle against global warming. What Mr Dimas knew - but did not tell the scientists, apparently - is that the EU's programme for cutting carbon, its two-year-old emissions trading scheme (ETS), remains in disarray. In 2006, industry emitted about 30m tonnes less than permitted. German emissions rose 0.6% while overall EU emissions went up by 1%-1.5% because of resumed growth in the eurozone.
--David Gow, The al-Guardian, 3 April 2007

 Planet Reality:

US carbon-dioxide emissions declined by 1.3 per cent in 2006 even as the world's largest economy expanded by 3.3 per cent, the White House announced late Wednesday. The US Energy Information Administration issued a so-called flash estimate of carbon-dioxide emissions that showed a decline of 78 million metric tons last year in the United States. In a statement, US President George W Bush touted the report as validating his energy and climate-change policies.
--Associated Press, 24 May 2007

Leonardo DiGorioHere's a taster from an article presaging Leonardo DiCaprio's forthcoming science fiction epic The 11th Hour - a remake of Al Gore's fantasy blockbuster powerpoint presentation An Inconvenient Truth...

True to its doom-laden title, global-warming doc "The 11th Hour" presents the viewer with reams of depressing data, loads of hand-wringing about the woeful state of humanity and, finally, some altogether fascinating ideas about how to go about solving the climate crisis. Co-produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, this latest exercise in celebrity eco-activism lacks the personal touch that helped "An Inconvenient Truth" go green at the box office, but auds might warm to its layered insights and polished presentation, given careful nurturing by Warner Independent and effective showcasing as an educational tool.

DiCaprio and first-time helmer sisters Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners scripted the film's text -- an earnest, sometimes clunkily verbose set of warnings about the dire state of the planet, which DiCaprio more or less recites at the camera. Narration is supplemented by a rapidly edited flood of devastating images that show not just meteorological phenomena such as tidal waves and Hurricane Katrina, but also shots of more basic signifiers of human greed -- deforestation, a bloody slaughterhouse, fishermen draining the ocean of its wildlife and rush-hour traffic in downtown Los Angeles.

Docu's thesis, that mankind's insensitivity to the environment, consumption of limited resources and over-reliance on fossil fuels will soon make the planet uninhabitable for future generations, should by now (hopefully) come as nothing new to viewers.

But the dizzying assemblage of talking heads (among them Stephen Hawking, Mikhail Gorbachev, science reporter Andy Revkin and heads of environmental orgs such as Lester Brown, Tim Carmichael and Wes Jackson), all well-spoken and at times prone to philosophizing, turn "The 11th Hour" into a ruminative essay on what it means to be human in a scarce world.

Their unanimous conclusion is that human beings can't view themselves as a superior species -- a very subtle dig at the traditional (biblical) view that man was meant to have dominion over the earth and all other life forms.

A former chief of the U.N. World Health Organization who also is a former prime minister of Norway and a medical doctor has declared an end to the climate-change debate.

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, one of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's three new special envoys on climate change, also headed up the 1987 U.N. World Commission on Environment and Development where the concept of sustainable development was first floated.

"This discussion is behind us. It's over," she told reporters. "The diagnosis is clear, the science is unequivocal -- it's completely immoral, even, to question now, on the basis of what we know, the reports that are out, to question the issue and to question whether we need to move forward at a much stronger pace as humankind to address the issues."

Ed. So there it is then.  The UN has spoken and all dissent is "immoral" - much like the UN's handling of Darfur et al. Do also see Bruntland's prescription (two posts earlier) for keeping the poor poor.

The Daily Show's 'Back In Black' is back - and hitting the Earth Day glitterati moralist 'intellectuals' where it really hurts - in their hip-ocrisy.

This is a must see video....enjoy!

Sheryl Crow - on her way to the loo?The batty diva Sheryl Crow is at it again in her Stop Global Warming Tour - as she gives a whole new slant to the term: Hollywood roll call.  Here's Gary Bauer's take on Crow's latest 'think-tank' effort to prevent GW:

Pop singer Sheryl Crow had a busy weekend. Saturday night, Crow and Laurie David, a producer of Al Gore’s eco-fiction “An Inconvenient Truth,” decided to mix it up with Karl Rove over global warming at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner. According to numerous press reports, Mr. Rove didn’t take too kindly to their interruption and heated words were exchanged. I’m willing to give Rove the benefit of the doubt, especially if Ms. Crow was attempting to explain her latest theory.

In an effort to save the planet, the environmentalist Left has devised a “brilliant” plan – ban toilet paper. No, I’m not making this up. Ms. Crow has been traveling the country on her “Stop Global Warming College Tour,” visiting our institutions of higher learning and preaching from the “Gospel according to Gore.” She has maintained a blog on her web site, and here is part of her entry from April 19th:

“I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming. Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. …I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. …I think we … can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.”

Given the source, it would be easy to dismiss such bizarre statements. (You may recall Crow once informed us that her foreign policy solution to terrorism and war was “not to have enemies.”) But, these folks are serious. Last month the New York Times ran a 2,200 word report entitled, “The Year Without Toilet Paper,” about a Manhattan couple that well, you get the point. Granted, Ms. Crow admits she’s only in the “earliest stages” of developing her thoughts, but I have wonder how she plans on enforcing this. Does she propose we start rationing toilet paper so you can buy only one roll a week? Should the government require metered dispensers in every bathroom assessing taxes on excessive square usage?

The fact that Sheryl Crow can indulge herself by pondering how much toilet paper we consume is a testament to the greatness of our country, and our extraordinary liberty and opportunity. At the same time, it demonstrates yet again just how out of touch Hollywood liberals are with Main Street, U.S.A., where most folks are more concerned about paying their bills, protecting their kids, and preserving our prosperity.

Surely Gary meant 'posterity'? In any event the suggestion is getting a deal of media attention including this "Have you seen my ass?" TV segment from Rosie O'Donnell on Barbara Walters' 'In View'.  (Normally, I wouldn't waste any space on much that Rosie had to say on any issue, however, this time...she has a 'scientific' point to make!).

For the record Sheryl, I am already doing my bit to help clean up the environment - I religiously use only the The Guardian or the New York Times.  (The downside is that I often want to use far more of them is absolutely necessary. Forgive me Al.)

With grateful thanks to Michael Claydon in Oz for the Gary Bauer take on this story. 

The Republican governor - the former body-builder turned film-star turned politician - invoked images of pumping iron to make his point. Weight-lifting was once considered a pursuit for weirdos, he said, carried out in dungeon-like gyms by people embarrassed to admit to doing it. But with positive marketing "it became mainstream, it became sexy, attractive, and this is exactly what has to happen with the environmental movement", he said.

Ed. Arnie could be right you know. After all, when the substance is not on your side it's always a good move to play up the image (look at UK Tory leader David Cameron!).

And pumping iron could well make us all personally warmer requiring less burning of fossil fuel nationally, after all. Though it is hard to see how a sexy makeover will help Greenpeace activists who enjoy poking us in the eye with their propaganda demanding to know if we care about the environment. Personally, I want to deck them.  I really must start getting in touch with my feminine side....

You have to admit, it's a hard thesis to debate. But according to many climate alarmists it is still the earth's (man-made) warming that 'could'  be causing the latest US record cold spell. Whatever happens to the climate therefore, according to them...it proves their the0ry that man is, ultimately, responsible for it. (Good job this is not a debate based on science and logic but one based on pure faith.)  However, here's the telling quote from a recently published article on the subject:

"This is what you might expect [of global warming]," says Jeff Volenec, an agronomist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. "It isn't necessarily always a warmer climate, but a more variable climate."

So that would be a 'variable climate' as the climate has always been variable then? 

Footnote: There's no truth in the rumor that an 'agronomist' is a wethurman (sic: sorry for the bad spell of weather) who goes around causing 'aggro' for real economists, however.  

Greenpeace doesn’t know the meaning of its own colour.

There is no greater hypocrisy in the present debate on climate than Greenpeace describing carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This today from Professor Augie Auer, chairman of the science panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. He was commenting on criticism of the government by Greenpeace following comments by OECD about New Zealand’s handling of climate change issues.

"Don't they know that it's carbon dioxide that maintains on the Earth the greenness from which the organisation's name is presumably derived?" asked Prof. Auer.

"To describe as a pollutant what Dr David Bellamy has correctly described as the Earth's best friend, displays an ignorance of the most basic lessons of science taught in our schools to third formers. Carbon dioxide is essential for plant growth and essential for controlling our breathing.

For the full article go here.  

The Institute of Public Policy - a UK non-think-tank -  is calling for tobacco-style global warming health warnings on planes. But will the Greenpeace international GW-activist jetsetters be able to read? All the evidence so far suggests not.

A National Tree Planting programme has been launched to enable Uganda be a "carbon free state and get relief from " global warming threats". Maria Mutagamba, the Minister for Water and Environment, while launching the project on March 9 at Entebbe, said about 125 million trees will be planted this year in which every Ugandan is expected to plant at least of five trees.

"Uganda has never experienced the heat which it is currently experiencing. This means that global warming is with us and we need to plant more trees and conserve the environment," Mutagamba said.

Ed. Uganda has been ravaged by HIV/AIDS and has other massive problems on its hands. Is a theoretical and expensive tree-planting programme really what Uganda - or any struggling African economy - really needs?   

Cows and tourism are the twin causes of global warming.

According to scientific estimates, the methane gas produced by cows is responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. And now, German scientists have invented a pill to cut bovine burping.  And tourism's a problem too...

"Tourism is unfortunately one of the vectors of (climate) change at the moment and contributes, through its excesses, to the process of global warming," World Tourism Organisation (WTO) director general Francesco Frangialli told an international conference on meteorology in Madrid this week.

GWH.com hot tip:  If you do go have to go on holiday this year and you see any vacationing bovines - a twin evil! -  why not take some anti-burping pills with you? As well as saving the planet you will can have personal solace as an alternative to carbon/moral responsibility offsets.

Latest Mars probe photo: I can't quite make it out...can you see something...?The National Review Online has posted an 'Editor's choice' excerpt and radio link giving  Fred Thompson's (actor and former senator from Gore's home state of Tennessee - and a man, according to Fox TV News today, may well be throwing his hat in the presidential ring shortly) take on the warming on Mars and Pluto et al. Thompson says this:

"...has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.

Ask Galileo."

Ed. he gets my vote. And don't you just love it whenever science 'consensus' gets mentioned?  I thought that was the whole point of brilliant science - that someone actually gets past the 'consensus' theory to the Truth. It is amazing these days how theory has, somehow, become truth. Have you noticed that science prediction is a like a swarm of bees? One day, butter, wine, chocolate and carbon emissions are bad for you, the next...

Is there any world ill or behavioural change for which global warming is NOT responsible? Now it seems GW (that's 'global warming' not 'George W.' by the way)  is being blamed for making male grey seals "friskier".  But then when you think about it, I suppose it is analogous to the affect on a male university student from New York taking spring break down in Florida.  Same effect - and yes, technically, the 'warming' is a contributory factor.

Here is the excellent Melanie Phillips (columnist with the Daily Mail) from her blog writing about a remarkable admission in The Guardian a couple of days ago - which amounts to a confession that climate theory is not about empirical truth at all but must be seen in the light of  "post-normal" scientific "truth". Remarkable, read on:

"From the horse’s mouth — climate change theory has nothing to do with the truth. In a remarkable column in today’s Guardian Mike Hulme, professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — a key figure in the promulgation of climate change theory but who a short while ago warned that exaggerated forecasts of global apocalypse were in danger of destroying the case altogether — writes that scientific truth is the wrong tool to establish the, er, truth of global warming. Instead, we need a perspective of what he calls ‘post-normal’ science:

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled ‘post-normal’ science…The danger of a ‘normal’ reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow.

Indeed! Facts first, conclusions afterwards is the very basis of scientific inquiry. But not any more, it seems, where the religion of global warming is concerned. Here the facts have to fit the theory. Hulme goes on:

Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.

 For Melanie's blog posting go here. For Hulme's The Guardian article 'The Appliance of Science" here.

Hat tip: Paul Flett.

Insured against anyone upset with your eco-lifestyle? Transgressed any of the new GW-inspired laws? Well nothing has the lawyers chomping at the bit more than the juicy news prospects offered by your transgressing the upcoming demanding carbon cutting laws we are all facing.  Read more here. Enjoy! (Coming a little later than the original 1984 advertised date.)

Having seen Al Gore's rise to mega-stardom on the back of the world's greatest environmental scam, Senator John Kerry has decided to pursue the same 'loser' path.

This report informs us about Mr Kerry that, "In town after town, he was deeply moved by the energy and enthusiasm he discovered among everyday citizens who were fighting to save the environment."  (Ed. So that would be everyone then - except the 'non-consensus minority' who know the real science and subscribe to the views on this site.)

John Kerry has thus co-authored his own 'inspired' book on environmental issues with his shy, retiring wife, Tersea Heinz Kerry. Teresa is of course the 'Heinz 57 Varieties' heiress. Heinz Beans,  of course, is leading global 'producer' of methane.  Presumably, Mrs Kerry is considering closing the factory down and working for a living in the future.  

Environmentalists and liberal activists - why do these two ideologies always go together? - will be on the streets of Washington on March 2o as the first 'Climate Action Crisis Day'.

 "Visuals will include a giant inflatable earth on fire, hybrid cars, and thousands of advocates in crimson T-shirts," the news release said. Wait a minute...all these peoples, cars (being 'hybrid' they'll have to use their petrol to get them their) and the burning of a rubber globe...isn't that using the globe as fossil fuel? I thought this was billed as a "carbon-neutral global warming event"?

NB. Organisers have assured GWH.com that no placard carrying polar bears have received any monies from Greenpeace (except to cover expenses of course, including: their expensive hotel stays, transport costs by private jet and a trip to see their relatives at the zoo.)   

You see, this is why I get upset with the "we should apply the precautionary principle" nitwits. In adopting their precautionary principle and acting against global warming by stopping our use of cheap fossil fuels to lower our carbon footprint and submit to paying Green taxes is in fact to de facto cede the argument to the alarmists. The trouble is, either the alarmists are right (and we should do all these things because the science IS settled) or, if the science does not support their case (and it plainly doesn't) then applying their "precautionary principle" will simply make us all poorer (through pointless Green taxes), impoverish our national economies, threaten the very lives of the world's poor (who can't develop) and put countless thousands out of work, amongst other things.

 That is precisely why these New Zealanders said "stuff your extremely expensive and costly precautionary principle and took to the streets to fight proposals for a batch of (entirely pointless - except to give governments a windfall) litany of Kyoto taxes.  Good for them!