This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth, Volume 4

Tim McCarver joins the ranks of the Stupid People.



Actually, he's been a member of the club for some time.

Hey Al, why do you talk that way?

You would think after beclowning himself with a profanity-laced tirade a few weeks ago, Al Gore would want to keep a low profile for the time being. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In another tirade equally obnoxious, if not quite so profane, the former vice president turned climate change profiteer is now comparing "climate change skeptics" with racists who opposed the civil rights movement in the 1960's.

“I remember, again going back to my early years in the South, when the Civil Rights revolution was unfolding, there were two things that really made an impression on me,” Gore said. “My generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators and we went, ‘Whoa! How gross and evil is that?’ My generation asked old people, ‘Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?’ And when they couldn’t really answer that question with integrity, the change really started.”

The former vice president recalled how society succeeded in marginalizing racists and said climate change skeptics must be defeated in the same manner.

“Secondly, back to this phrase ‘win the conversation,’” he continued. “There came a time when friends or people you work with or people you were in clubs with — you’re much younger than me so you didn’t have to go through this personally — but there came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people would say, ‘Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go for that so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that.’ That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won.”

“We have to win the conversation on climate,” Gore added.

When Bogusky [sic] questioned the analogy, asking if the scientific reasoning behind climate change skeptics might throw a wrench into the good and evil comparison with racism, Gore did not back down.

“I think it’s the same where the moral component is concerned and where the facts are concerned I think it is important to get that out there, absolutely,” Gore said.

It should be noted that Gore's father, Sen. Albert Gore Sr., not only voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but also "attempted to send the Act to the Senate Judiciary Committee with an amendment to say 'in defiance of a court desegregation order, federal funds could not be held from any school districts.'" The younger Gore's memory of his late father's voting record, however, has always been a little fuzzy.

What is most amusing about Little Al's latest rant is that everything he says should happen to the "skeptics" is, in fact, happening to the people on his side of the argument. The alarmists are the ones who are finding themselves unable to answer the skeptics' questions with integrity. When Gore so nonchalantly equates the skeptics with racists or angrily calls their arguments bovine excrement, a normal, decent person can only say, "Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go for that so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that."

It is Gore who is being marginalized, and rightly so. His rhetoric of late only serves to prove it.

You can't make this stuff up: Global warming may cause aliens to destroy earth

The global warming alarmists are becoming more and more desperate. Their latest claim: "Universalist Aliens" may preemptively destroy the earth if they view our over-use of greenhouse gases as a threat to other civilizations.

In a scenario best-saved for a science-fiction novel, two scientists from Penn State and another scientist from NASA have sounded another bell in global warming alarmism – Aliens. Yes, aliens. According to a report published by the three scientists, so-called “Universalist Aliens” may view our over-use of greenhouse gases as a way that would unintentionally destroy other civilizations, so we must be preemptively destroyed. Make sense doesn’t it? 

The report goes on to state:

It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets. We acknowledge that the pursuit of emissions reductions and other ecological projects may have much stronger justifications than those that derive from ETI [extraterrestrial intelligence] encounter, but that does not render ETI encounter scenarios insignificant or irrelevant.

So, based on what we think we might know about aliens, and what we think they might do to us if they ever encounter us, we should radically alter our lifestyle and change our laws. What these and other global warming scientists don’t understand is that making these kinds of changes will result in significant job losses and be catastrophic for the economy. And if they do understand it, they fail to recognize the negligible environmental benefits that come with U.S. carbon-cutting schemes.

It really makes you long for the good ol' days when those little green men simply wanted to blow up the earth because it obstructed their view of Venus.

Meade: Al Gore is full of hot air

Walter Russell Meade eviscerates the blowhard hypocrite Al Gore in the first of a two-part series which ought to consign the former vice president to the dust bin of history.

Gore has the Midas touch in reverse; objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at his touch. Few celebrity cause leaders have had more or better publicity than Gore has had for his climate advocacy. Hailed by the world press, lionized by the entertainment community and the Global Assemblage of the Great and the Good as incarnated in the Nobel Peace Prize committee, he has nevertheless seen the movement he led flounder from one inglorious defeat to the next. The most recent, failed global climate meeting passed almost unnoticed last week in Bonn; the world has turned its eyes away from the expiring anguish of the Copenhagen agenda.

The state of the global green movement is shambolic. The Kyoto Protocol is withering on the vine; it will almost certainly die with no successor in place. There is no chance of cap and trade legislation in the US under Obama, and even the EPA’s regulatory authority over carbon dioxide is under threat. Brazil is debating a forestry law that critics charge will open the floodgates to a new round of deforestation in the Amazon. China is taking the green lobby head on, suspending a multibillion dollar Airbus order to protest EU carbon cutting plans.

It is hard to think of any recent failure in international politics this comprehensive, this swift, this humiliating. Two years ago almost every head of state in the world was engaged with Al Gore’s issue; today the abolition of nuclear weapons looks like a more hopeful cause than the drafting of an effective international treaty that will curb carbon emissions even a little bit.

The plunge from the brink of victory to the pit of defeat must be as unpleasant as it is familiar to the winner of the 2000 popular vote; in his latest essay in Rolling Stone he gives his own best analysis of why he keeps losing. Few American politicians could write an essay this eloquent or this clear. Few people in the world can command this kind of attention for their thoughts. Even so, the results of all this talent and effort are exactly the opposite of what the former vice president would wish; the essay illuminates his shortcomings more than his strengths and makes crystal clear that if global climate policy is going to change, then Al Gore must get out of the way.

Let us begin with a basic question of judgment. The former vice president has failed to grasp the basic nature of the kind of leadership the global green cause requires. Vice President Gore, like all who aspire to lead great causes, must reconcile his advocacy with his conduct — that is, he must conduct himself in a way that is consistent with the great cause he seeks to promote.

Not all character flaws are inconsistent with positions of great dignity. General Grant’s fondness for whiskey did not make him unfit for command. Other statesmen have combined great public achievement with failure in their personal lives. Franklin Roosevelt was neither a good father nor a good husband; Edward VII was a better monarch than man.

But while some forms of inconsistency or even hypocrisy can be combined with public leadership, others cannot be. A television preacher can eat too many french fries, watch too much cheesy TV and neglect his kids in the quest for global fame. But he cannot indulge in drug fueled trysts with male prostitutes while preaching conservative Christian doctrine. The head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving cannot be convicted of driving while under the influence. The head of the IRS cannot be a tax cheat. The most visible leader of the world’s green movement cannot live a life of conspicuous consumption, spewing far more carbon into the atmosphere than almost all of those he castigates for their wasteful ways. Mr. Top Green can’t also be a carbon pig.

You can be a leading environmentalist and fail to pay all of your taxes. You can be a leading environmentalist and be unkind to your aged mother. You can be a leading environmentalist and squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle, park in the handicapped spots at the mall or scribble angry marginal notes in library books.

But you cannot be a leading environmentalist who hopes to lead the general public into a long and difficult struggle for sacrifice and fundamental change if your own conduct is so flagrantly inconsistent with the green gospel you profess. If the heart of your message is that the peril of climate change is so imminent and so overwhelming that the entire political and social system of the world must change, now, you cannot fly on private jets. You cannot own multiple mansions. You cannot even become enormously rich investing in companies that will profit if the policies you advocate are put into place.

It is not enough to buy carbon offsets (aka “indulgences”) with your vast wealth, not enough to power your luxurious mansions with exotic low impact energy sources the average person could not afford, not enough to argue that you only needed the jet so that you could promote your earth-saving film.

You are asking billions of people, the overwhelming majority of whom lack many of the basic life amenities you take for granted, people who can’t afford Whole Foods environmentalism, to slash their meager living standards. You may well be right, and those changes may be necessary — the more shame on you that with your superior insight and knowledge you refuse to live a modest life. There’s a gospel hymn some people in Tennessee still sing that makes the point: “You can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.”

St. Francis of Assisi understood the point well. Taken by the Pope on a tour to see the treasures of the Vatican, St. Francis was notably unimpressed. “Peter can no longer say, ‘silver and gold have I none,’” smiled the Pontiff, referring to the story in the Book of Acts that recounts what St. Peter said to a crippled beggar asking him for alms.

“Neither can he say, ‘rise up and walk.’” replied St. Francis — quoting what St. Peter said as he miraculously cured the beggar of his affliction.

You can sit on ivory chairs with kings in their halls of gold, participating in the world of politics as usual, or you can live with the prophets and visionaries in the wilderness, voices of a greater truth and higher meaning that challenge the smug certainties and false assumptions of the comfortable, business as usual elites. You cannot do both.

Al Gore cannot say “silver and gold have I none and no excess carbon do I spew,” and neither can he say to the paralyzed global green movement “rise up and walk.” He speaks, he writes, he speaks again, and the movement lies on the ground, crippled and inert.

A fawning establishment press spares the former vice president the vitriol and schadenfreude it pours over the preachers and priests whose personal conduct compromised the core tenets of their mission; Gore is not mocked as others have been. This gentle treatment hurts both Gore and the greens; he does not know just how disabling, how crippling the gap between conduct and message truly is. The greens do not know that his presence as the visible head of the movement helps ensure its political failure.

Consider how Gore looks to the skeptics. The peril is imminent, he says. It is desperate. The hands of the clock point to twelve. The seas rise, the coral dies, the fires burn and the great droughts have already begun. The hounds of Hell have slipped the huntsman’s leash and even now they rush upon us, mouths agape and fangs afoam.

But grave as that danger is, Al Gore can consume more carbon than whole villages in the developing world. He can consume more electricity than most African schools, incur more carbon debt with one trip in a private plane than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime — and he doesn’t worry. A father of four, he can lecture the world on the perils of overpopulation. Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption. This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents.

What this tells the skeptics is that Vice President Gore doesn’t really believe the gospel he proclaims. That profits from his environmental advocacy enable his affluent lifestyle only deepens their skepticism of the messenger and therefore of the message. And when they see that the rest of the environmental movement accepts this flagrant contradiction, they conclude, naturally enough, that the other green leaders aren’t as worried as they claim to be. Al Gore’s lifestyle is a test case for the credibility of his gospel — and it fails. The tolerance of Al Gore’s lifestyle by the environmental leadership is a further test — and that test, too, the greens fail.

On one point, I have to disagree with Meade. Rather than move forward without Al Gore, the whole phony "green movement" needs to follow its failed leader off the stage, never to bore us again with its concocted crises and pseudo-science masquerading as environmental stewardship.

Al Gore could not be reached for comment

Bundle up and sharpen the blades on your ice skates.

What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.

The announcement made on 14 June (18:00 UK time) comes from scientists at the US National Solar Observatory (NSO) and US Air Force Research Laboratory. Three different analyses of the Sun's recent behaviour all indicate that a period of unusually low solar activity may be about to begin.

The Sun normally follows an 11-year cycle of activity. The current cycle, Cycle 24, is now supposed to be ramping up towards maximum strength. Increased numbers of sunspots and other indications ought to be happening: but in fact results so far are most disappointing. Scientists at the NSO now suspect, based on data showing decades-long trends leading to this point, that Cycle 25 may not happen at all.

This could have major implications for the Earth's climate. According to a statement issued by the NSO, announcing the research:

An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots [which occurred] during 1645-1715.

As NASA notes:

Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715. Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the "Little Ice Age" when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past.

During the Maunder Minimum and for periods either side of it, many European rivers which are ice-free today – including the Thames – routinely froze over, allowing ice skating and even for armies to march across them in some cases.

"This is highly unusual and unexpected," says Dr Frank Hill of the NSO. "But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."

Another reason to bypass Charles for William and Kate

You have to give a lot of credit to our cousins across the pond. "More than half" of them want the throne to pass directly from Elizabeth to newlyweds William and Kate, bypassing the longsuffering Prince of Wales, affectionately known as "Charles of Infidelity," or, perhaps more appropriately (as this video illustrates), "Charles of Hypocrisy."

Saturday Morning Cartoons: NASA global warming satellite plunges into the sea . . . AGAIN!

ROTFLOL! Do you think, maybe, somebody's trying to tell them something?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the second time in two years, a rocket glitch sent a NASA global warming satellite to the bottom of the sea Friday, a $424 million debacle that couldn't have come at a worse time for the space agency and its efforts to understand climate change.

Years of belt-tightening have left NASA's Earth-watching system in sorry shape, according to many scientists. And any money for new environmental satellites will have to survive budget-cutting, global warming politics and, now, doubts on Capitol Hill about the space agency's competence.

The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and plummeted to the southern Pacific several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring probe in 2009 with the same type of rocket, and engineers thought they had fixed the problem.

"It's more than embarrassing," said Syracuse University public policy professor Henry Lambright. "Something was missed in the first investigation and the work that went on afterward."

You can't make this stuff up: Teleconference to "explain" link between global warming and record snowfall

The following press release (H/T to THE HOCKEY SCHTICK) is submitted for your entertainment without further comment (except for the highly appropriate accompanying photographic illustration).

MEDIA ADVISORY AND DAYBOOK ITEM FOR TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2011
CONTACT: Randy Rieland, Union of Concerned Scientists, 202-331-6959

TELEPHONE PRESS CONFERENCE

CLIMATE EXPERTS TO LOOK BACK AT WILD WINTER OF 2010-2011 AND EXPLAIN THE LINK BETWEEN HUGE SNOW STORMS AND GLOBAL WARMING.
SCIENTISTS ALSO WILL LOOK FORWARD AT THE IMPACT EXTREME WINTER WEATHER EVENTS COULD HAVE THIS SPRING

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) will hold a telephone press conference featuring two leading climate and weather experts explaining what is behind the string of heavy snowfalls in the U.S. and Europe this winter and put the extreme weather in the context of climate change.

They will discuss how a rise in the number of snowfalls of 6 inches or more may be related to an increase in moisture in the atmosphere and how Arctic warming and the shrinking of Arctic sea ice to record lows also may have been a factor in generating major winter storms.

Looking ahead, the scientists will talk about what we can expect in the coming months as the potential combination of earlier spring weather and deep snowpack raises the threat of serious flooding, particularly in the upper Midwest.

WHO
Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, Colorado
Jeff Masters, director of Meteorology at Weather Underground
Todd Sanford, climate scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists

WHEN
Tuesday, March 1, 2011, 11 a.m. EST

WHERE
The comfort of your own office. Call: (866) 961-7940; Conference ID: UCS winter and climate change teleconference

Another side-splitter from the Climate Change Division of the Make It Up As We Go Along Department

Some people just can't let a good hoax die or, in this case, melt away.

Climate change may not be as catastrophic for Greenland's icecaps as scientists first thought after researchers found hotter summers may actually slow down the flow of glaciers.

Increased melting in the warmer summer months is causing the internal drainage system of the ice sheet to 'adapt' and accommodate more melt-water, without speeding up the flow of ice toward the oceans.

This is because in hot conditions there is initially so much melt-water that it runs off into channels below the ice, thereby decreasing the lubricating layer which sits on top of the ice sheets and causes melting over a much larger surface area.

Owing to this, the acceleration of melting appears to stall early on in hot summers, whereas it does not in cool ones.

The findings, reported in the journal Nature, have important implications for future assessments of global sea level rise.

The Greenland ice sheet covers roughly 80 per cent of the surface of the island and contains enough water to raise sea levels by 7 metres if it were to melt completely.

Rising temperatures in the Arctic in recent years have caused the ice sheet to shrink, prompting fears that it may be close to a 'tipping point' of no return.

Some of the ice loss has been attributed to the speed-up of glaciers due to increased surface melting.

Each summer, warmer temperatures cause ice at the surface of the sheet to melt.

This water then runs down a series of channels to the base of the glacier where it acts as a lubricant, allowing the ice sheet to flow rapidly across the bedrock toward the sea.

Summertime acceleration of ice flow has proved difficult for scientists to model, leading to uncertainties in projections of future sea level rise.

'It had been thought that more surface melting would cause the ice sheet to speed up and retreat faster, but our study suggests that the opposite could in fact be true,' said Professor Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, who led the study.

'If that's the case, increases in surface melting expected over the 21st century may have no affect on the rate of ice loss through flow. However, this doesn't mean that the ice sheet is safe from climate change, because the impact of ocean-driven melting remains uncertain.'

The researchers used satellite observations of six landlocked glaciers in south-west Greenland, acquired by the European Space Agency, to study how ice flow develops in years of markedly different melting.

Although the initial speed-up of ice was similar in all years, slowdown occurred sooner in the warmest ones.

The authors suggest that in these years the abundance of melt-water triggers an early switch in the plumbing at the base of the ice, causing a pressure drop that leads to reduced ice speeds.

This behaviour is similar to that of mountain glaciers, where the summertime speed-up of ice reduces once melt-water can drain efficiently.

Despite their findings, however, the researchers were keen to emphasise that the ice sheet is 'not safe from climate change'.

Okay, let's get all this straight. Great Britain is having the coldest, snowiest winter on record despite predictions a decade ago that snowy winters were a thing of the past. The glaciers in Greenland are growing, not shrinking. But that chill in the air that everyone is feeling is simply more evidence of global warming and, despite the stubborn resiliency of creation to adapt to naturally fluctuating weather patterns, we must continue to heed the dire warnings of the climate "experts" who insist they saw all this coming from the beginning. Perhaps the only thing the ice sheet is "not safe from" is the ever increasing quantity of hot air emanating from the deepest recesses of these desperate charlatans' oral cavities.

Where is Socrates when you need him?

Victor Davis Hanson offers a much needed critique of the "new sophists" who are polluting our culture with their pearls of wisdom on everything from climate to economics to the U.S. Constitution.

In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous “really wise guys” made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts of having “proved” the most amazing “thinkery” that belied common sense.

We are living in a new age of sophism — but without a modern Socrates to remind the public just how silly our highly credentialed and privileged new rhetoricians can be.

Take California, which is struggling with a near-record wet and snowy winter. Flooding spreads in the lowlands; snow piles up in the Sierras.

In February 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist, pontificated without evidence that California farms would dry up and blow away, because 90 percent of the annual Sierra snowpack would disappear. Yet long-term studies of the central Sierra snowpack show average snow levels unchanged over the last 90 years. Many California farms are drying up — but from government’s, not nature’s, irrigation cutoffs.

England is freezing and snowy. But that’s odd, since global-warming experts assured us that the end of English snow was on the horizon. Australia is now flooding — despite predictions that impending new droughts meant it could not sustain its present population. The New York Times just published an op-ed assuring the public that the current record cold and snow is proof of global warming. In theory, they could be, but one wonders: What, then, would record winter heat and drought prove?

In response to these unexpected symptoms of blizzards and deluges, climate physicians offer changing diagnoses. “Climate change” has superseded “global warming.” After these radically cold winters, the next replacement appears to be “climate chaos.” Yet if next December is neither too hot nor too cold, expect to hear about the doldrum dangers of “climate calm.”

In 2009, brilliant economists in the Obama administration — Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, and Christina Romer — assured us that record trillion-plus budget defects were critical to prevent stalled growth and 10 percent unemployment. For nearly two years we have experienced both, but now with an additional $3 trillion in national debt. All three have quietly returned to either academia or Wall Street.

There is also a new generation of young sophistic bloggers who offer their wisdom from the New York–Washington corridor. They usually have degrees from one or more of America’s elite colleges and navigate an upscale urban landscape. One, the Washington Post’s 26-year-old Ezra Klein, recently scoffed on MSNBC that a bothersome U.S. Constitution was “written more than 100 years ago” and has “no binding power on anything.”

One constant here is equating wisdom with a certificate of graduation from a prestigious school. If, in the fashion of the sophist Protagoras, someone writes that record cold proves record heat, or that record borrowing and printing of money will create jobs and sustained economic growth, or that a 223-year-old Constitution is 100 years old and largely irrelevant, then credibility can be claimed only in the title or the credentials — but not the logic — of the writer.

Dovetailing with my observation from a few days ago, these "new sophists" appear to be the prime beneficiaries of a hyper-sensitive society's inability to laugh at ridiculous ideas. Where is Socrates when you need him?

Sage advice for the new year

From Canada Free Press:

Queensland has wasted millions on the global warming industry. Residents would be better off had they spent it on water storage, flood gauges and flood-proofing of highways, railways and airports.

Europe and USA have wasted billions on the global warming industry. Residents would be better off had they spent it on reliable power stations and snow-proofing of highways, railways and airports.

Climate change and extreme weather have endangered every generation of humans. But this is the first generation that has sacrificed its savings on the altars of the climate gods instead of preparing for whatever weather shocks we may encounter.

“We can forecast and control the weather” has always been the false promise of fakirs and shamans.

Sensible people make sure they have the equipment to cope with extreme weather events.

It’s time to ignore climate fakirs and shamans, and cease paying tributes to them.

You can't make this stuff up: Harsh winter caused by global warming

I toyed with the idea of moving forward in 2011 by imposing a ban on all stories related to the global warming/climate change scam. However, to do so would be to rob myself and readers of this blog the pleasure of laughing at the assertions of the climate alarmists, which seem to be growing more intensely hilarious every day. Once upon a time, laughter was one of the most indispensable means of ending needless debates before they got started. An idea so ridiculous that it was met with laughter upon its introduction in the public square could never spawn a worldwide movement or force the leaders of the civilized world to fork over billions of dollars to advance its bogus aims.

Over the last few decades, however, we have, in the interest of "tolerance" and "fairness," lost our ability to laugh at ridiculous ideas. Nowadays an idea, no matter how absurd, is deemed worthy of consideration merely because it is the brainchild of lettered men and women who have eschewed life in the real world for the cozy comfort of the ivory tower. You wouldn't laugh at an esteemed professor at a noted international university, would you? Of course not! So, when the "experts" told us ten years ago that "global warming" meant the end of snowy winters in Great Britain, we couldn't laugh. We had to take them seriously. Likewise, it is no laughing matter now when they tell us that this year's record cold winter in Great Britain is a direct result of the very same "global warming."

Scientists have established a link between the cold, snowy winters in Britain and melting sea ice in the Arctic and have warned that long periods of freezing weather are likely to become more frequent in years to come.

An analysis of the ice-free regions of the Arctic Ocean has found that the higher temperatures there caused by global warming, which have melted the sea ice in the summer months, have paradoxically increased the chances of colder winters in Britain and the rest of northern Europe.

The findings are being assessed by British climate scientists, who have been asked by ministers for advice on whether the past two cold winters are part of a wider pattern of climate change that will cause further damaging disruption to the nation's creaking transport infrastructure.

Some climate scientists believe that the dramatic retreat of the Arctic sea ice over the past 30 years has begun to change the wind patterns over much of the northern hemisphere, causing cold, Arctic air to be funnelled over Britain during winter, replacing the mild westerly airstream that normally dominates the UK's weather.

The study was carried out in 2009, before last year's harsh winter started to bite, and is all the more prescient because of its prediction that cold, snowy winters will be about three times more frequent in the coming years compared to previous decades.

The researchers used computer models to assess the impact of the disappearing Arctic sea ice, particularly in the area of the Barents and Kara seas north of Scandinavia and Russia, which have experienced unprecedented losses of sea ice during summer.

Their models found that, as the ice cap over the ocean disappeared, this allowed the heat of the relatively warm seawater to escape into the much colder atmosphere above, creating an area of high pressure surrounded by clockwise-moving winds that sweep down from the polar region over Europe and the British Isles. Vladimir Petoukhov, who carried out the study at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said the computer simulations showed that the disappearing sea ice is likely to have widespread and unpredictable impacts on the climate of the northern hemisphere.

One of the principal predictions of the study was that the warming of the air over the ice-free seas is likely to bring bitterly cold air to Europe during the winter months, Dr Petoukhov said. "This is not what one would expect. Whoever thinks that the shrinking of some far away sea-ice won't bother him could be wrong. There are complex interconnections in the climate system, and in the Barents-Kara Sea we might have discovered a powerful feedback mechanism," he said.

In the paper, submitted in November 2009 but published last month in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Dr Petoukhov and his colleague Vladimir Semenov write: "Our results imply that several recent severe winters do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it."

Arctic sea ice has been in retreat over recent decades, with record lows recorded in September 2007. The normal recovery of the sea ice during winter has also been affected, especially in the Barents and Kara seas which have seen significant losses of ice cover over the past decade.

Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at the Potsdam Institute, said the floating sea ice in winter insulates the relatively warm seawater from the bitterly cold temperatures of the air above it, which can be around -20C or -30C.

"The Arctic sea ice is shrinking and at the moment it is at a record low for mid-to-late December, which provides a big heat source for the atmosphere," Professor Rahmstorf said. "The open ocean actually heats the atmosphere above because the ocean in the Arctic is about 0C, and that's much warmer than the atmosphere about it. This is a massive change compared with an ice-covered ocean, where the ice operates like a lid. You don't get that heating from below.

"The model simulations show that, when you don't get ice on the Barents and Kara seas, that promotes the formation of a high-pressure system there, and, because the airflow is clockwise around the high, it brings cold, polar air right into Europe, which leads to cold conditions here while it is unusually warm elsewhere, especially in the Arctic," he explained.

The scientists emphasised that the climate is complex and there were other factors at play. It is, they said, too early to be sure if the past two cold winters are due to the ice-free Arctic.

"I want to be cautious, but basically in the past couple of months the sea ice cover has been low and so, according to the model simulations, that would encourage this kind of weather pattern," Professor Rahmstorf said.

"The last winter of 2009-10 turned out to be fitting that pattern very well, and perhaps this winter as well, so that is three data points. I would say it's not definite confirmation of the mechanism, but it certainly fits the pattern," he said.

The computer model used by the scientists also predicted that, as the ice cover continues to be lost, the weather pattern is likely to shift back into a phase of warmer-than-usual winters. Global warming will also continue to warm the Arctic air mass, Professor Rahmstorf said.

"If you look ahead 40 or 50 years, these cold winters will be getting warmer because, even though you are getting an inflow of cold polar air, that air mass is getting warmer because of the greenhouse effect," he said. "So it's a transient phenomenon. In the long run, global warming wins out."

George Orwell, who would doubtless be impressed with the climate alarmists' adept use of doublespeak, once wrote of the similarly absurd and often self-contradictory notions popular among intellectuals of his day, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” Wesley J. Smith summarizes the comical twists and turns of the "global warming" saga and its diminishing credibility among the "ordinary" folks.

Weather changes supposedly to be caused by global warming and computer models have proved continually wrong–and still government leaders go to them for a tarot card reading. I am reminded of a great old Twilight Zone, in which a newlywed couple (a very young William Shatner played the husband) were afraid to leave town because of what a fortune telling machine kept telling them. No matter what the question or circumstance, somehow disaster portended.

But this is what most people see: If it’s an arctic freeze, it’s global warming. If it’s unseasonably mild, it’s global warming. If it rains harder than normal, why that is exactly what we would expect with global warming! Drought? Ditto. Heat wave–well of course, the earth is warming! Neither rain, nor snow, nor hail, nor sleet, nor baking sun, nor hurricanes, nor lack of hurricanes–or for that matter, any unusual weather pattern or condition–can stop some global warming scientists from blaming global warming. Whatever it is. Wherever it is. Whenever it is.

And that, is precisely why fewer and fewer people are paying attention. Maybe they should keep their mouths shut and just say, “We aren’t sure exactly what will happen.”

Indeed, admitting a little uncertainty, not taking themselves and their work quite so seriously, would give these "experts" a little more credibility. There is no laughter more therapeutic than the laughter directed at oneself.

UPDATE: Investors Business Daily takes aim at the religion of global warming. H/T to Stand Firm.

Karl Popper, the late, great philosopher of science, noted that for something to be called scientific, it must be, as he put it, "falsifiable." That is, for something to be scientifically true, you must be able to test it to see if it's false. That's what scientific experimentation and observation do. That's the essence of the scientific method.

Unfortunately, the prophets of climate doom violate this idea. No matter what happens, it always confirms their basic premise that the world is getting hotter. The weather turns cold and wet? It's global warming, they say. Weather turns hot? Global warming. No change? Global warming. More hurricanes? Global warming. No hurricanes? You guessed it.

Nothing can disprove their thesis. Not even the extraordinarily frigid weather now creating havoc across most of the Northern Hemisphere. The Los Angeles Times, in a piece on the region's strangely wet and cold weather, paraphrases Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert as saying, "In general, as the globe warms, weather conditions tend to be more extreme and volatile."

Got that? No matter what the weather, it's all due to warming. This isn't science; it's a kind of faith. Scientists go along and even stifle dissent because, frankly, hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants are at stake. But for the believers, global warming is the god that failed.

Merry Christmas and good riddance, climate alarmists!

H/T to JammieWearingFool

The decline and fall of the global warming myth

It has not been a good year for global warming alarmists. From last December's catastrophe in Copenhagen to the recently ended comic farce in Cancun, the climate change racket has been rapidly running out of steam. In one of the first post-mortems for the movement that once dreamed green dreams of a carbon-free utopia, Phillip Stott analyzes the factors involved in the "lingering death" of the "global warming grand narrative."

To understand a little of what is happening to the global warming grand narrative, we should turn to psychological theory, to what is generally known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This was first developed by the humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow, in his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motiviation, and fully expounded later in his 1954 book, Motivation and Personality. Basically, Maslow proposes a hierarchy of five levels of basic human needs. Beyond these needs, higher levels of need exist. These include needs for understanding, aesthetic appreciation, and purely spiritual needs. In the levels of the five basic needs, the person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied, nor the third until the second has been satisfied, and so on. His hierarchic theory is often represented as a pyramid, with the larger, lower levels representing the lower needs, and the upper point representing the need for self-actualization.

A recent ‘Newsletter’ (‘Only one crisis at a time’, July 23, 2010) from the Scientific Alliance cogently analyses the present situation in Maslowian terms:

“We can also see this partly as another dimension of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. As our basic needs are fulfilled and life gets more secure, so we place more emphasis on higher tiers. This rationalises our increasingly rights-based culture and the rise and entrenchment of environmentalism in everyday life. Subsistence farmers or poor labourers have more pressing needs to fulfil. But the obverse of this is that, as short-term, pressing threats are lifted, we have time to focus on longer-term or less urgent ones.

By this reckoning, there would need to be some fairly significant changes for the present obsession with climate catastrophism to be replaced. The economic crisis has already played some part: it is virtually impossible to deliver radical and expensive policies at a time when painful cuts are being made in spending on basics such as welfare and education. A hypothetical contact with an alien civilization could at some stage again shift our focus.

But there is another crisis which is almost upon us. The chances are that energy insecurity will hit us in the next few years. Ignoring the Peak Oil arguments for now, there is a looming gap in electricity generating capacity as ageing coal- and nuclear- powered stations are decommissioned and at least part of the slack is unrealistically expected to be taken up by a large expansion of renewable power generation.”

It appears that, the higher we move up the Maslow pyramid, the greater is our need for theoretical, manufactured, future ‘catastrophes’. ‘Global warming’ thus comprised the classic ‘need’ of the ‘loads-of-money’ generation. But, we are now plunging back to reality, so that we no longer require this particular ‘catastrophe’ for our psychological fulfilment. Of course, new ‘catastrophes’ will surely arise to replace it, and they are already doing so, in the guise of food and energy security, and genetic choices, among many others.

Likewise, climate will continue to change, as it has always done. We must only hope that we have not undermined our ability to adapt to these changes, as and when they arise, and that science has not been too damaged by the Lysenkoistic grand narrative of global warming.

By contrast, I predict that global warming will now suffer a lingering death, as with so many other grand narratives that have gone before it, although there will always be a rump of adepts speaking in its tongues and propounding the faith, especially, I suspect, in the UK and its universities.

Meanwhile, if you need further evidence of the demise of this grandiose hoax, consider the number of left-leaning scientists who are abandoning ship, most notably, Canadian physicist Dennis Rancourt.

“I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized,” Rancourt said.

“Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass,” he stated.

Summing up the gist of both articles, Melanie Phillips suggests a (seasonal) change in terminology.

A telling point, surely. The modern activist wants jam with everything. Well-heeled Greens rail against capitalism and technological progress while personally benefiting hugely from their unique bounty. In similar vein, militant atheists rail against Judeo-Christian ethics while wanting to retain the human rights these codes have uniquely bestowed upon western society. As such, maybe Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ might be refined for the western intelligentsia to become a ‘hierarchy of humbug’.

More evidence that the U.N. is one big international joke and climate change is a hoax masquerading as a fraud disguised as a scam

H/T to Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke for this choice tidbit from the Washington Post:

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you — because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools.”…

“Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skilful interlacing of many threads,” said Figueres, who hails from Costa Rica and started her greetings in Spanish before switching to English. “I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel.”

Commentary would be superfluous.

Saturday Morning Cartoons: I'm a Denier (with apologies to the Micky, David, Michael, and Peter)

27 October designated "Climate Fools Day"

Mark your calendar and plan a suitable observance.

The day was named by protestors outside the British House of Commons on 27th October 2008 when the house was debating the Climate Bill. As the first October snow in 70 years blanketed the House (and a big swathe of Europe), MP’s droned on about the need to fight global warming.

For six hours MP’s reassured one another about the desperate need to be the first government in the world to saddle its unfortunate people with a burden estimated at £15 billion a year. As snow continued to blanket Westminster, only two MP’s questioned the huge cost and dubious benefits from the energy taxes and green energy rorts they were imposing.

Christopher Booker of the Daily Telegraph noted gloomily:

“If the Bill’s intent is taken seriously, the cost of cutting our CO2 emissions by 80 per cent would cripple our economy, closing down much of what remains of our industry and rendering most motorised transport impossible.”

Nigel Lawson said in the House of Lords at the time:

“The Bill will go down in history, and future generations will see it, as the most absurd Bill that this House and Parliament as a whole as ever had to examine”.

Luckily, the appalling foolishness started at Westminster has not spread far, but sceptics world-wide will be celebrating Climate Fools Day to ensure the suicidal example of once-great Britain is not followed anywhere else.

Global warming, uh, cooling, uh, whatever

Submitted without comment from our friends in Mother Russia.

After the record heat wave this summer, Russia's weather seems to have acquired a taste for the extreme.

Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.

The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe.

So far, the results have been lower temperatures: for example, in Central Russia, they are a couple of degrees below the norm.

“Although the forecast for the next month is only 70 percent accurate, I find the cold winter scenario quite likely,” Vadim Zavodchenkov, a leading specialist at the Fobos weather center, told RT. “We will be able to judge with more certainty come November. As for last summer's heat, the statistical models that meteorologists use to draw up long-term forecasts aren't able to predict an anomaly like that.”

In order to meet the harsh winter head on, Moscow authorities are drawing up measures to help Muscovites survive the extreme cold.

Most of all, the government is concerned with homeless people who risk freezing to death if the forecast of the meteorologists come true. Social services and police are being ordered to take the situation under control even if they have to force the homeless to take help.

Moscow authorities have also started checking air conditioning systems in all socially important buildings. All the conditioners are being carefully cleaned from the remains of summer smog.

It has come to this: Go green or die!

If there were ever a piece of disgusting propaganda that deserves universal condemnation, it's this grotesque promotional film for the so-called "10:10" campaign in Great Britain. There are no words to describe how sick this is, but it exposes, for all to see, the true colors of the "green" movement.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

The Anchoress offers a very pertinent quote from C.S. Lewis. . .

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.

. . . and suggests a creative way to respond.

Watch the videos–some joke, eh?–and then do what I’m going to do; take a long drive, burn some candles, cook dinner over some coals, and turn on all the lights. I’m sick to death of these liars and freaks.

I know they believe they’re smarter than the rest of us, but they (like some in our own government) are too stupid to realize that all they’re doing is destroying their own credibility and creating backlash.

Big, big, backlash.

The group responsible for this garbage has released a half-hearted apology which only further illustrates the sickness of their twisted, psychotic minds.

With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britain’s leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis – writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others – agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn’t and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended.

Can any decent, reasonable person still doubt that this whole global warming/climate change enterprise is a hoax, a fraud, and a damnable lie?

From the "He thinks somebody's still listening to him" department . . .

Much like his buddy Prince Charles, Al Gore is a delusional dreamer with too much time on his hands. Apparently undaunted by recent allegations of sexual assault and revelations about the fraudulent "research" of leading climate "scientists," the former vice president continues to channel his inner Chicken Little, summoning his dwindling ranks to battle in the name of saving the planet.

Former Vice President Gore is calling for major rallies to protest congressional inaction on climate change.

In a post on his personal blog headlined “The Movement We Need,” Gore linked to and quoted from an Australian wire service report that “tens of thousands of protesters … have taken to the streets across Australia to urge the major political parties to take action on climate change.”

“Across the world, when politicians fail to take action to solve the climate crisis, people are taking action,” Gore wrote.
He added after excerpting the news report: “It is my hope we see activism like this here in the United States.”

Gore noted he trained activists in Australia to deliver the slideshow that formed the basis for the documentary film that won him an Academy Award. A representative of Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection addressed the rally in Sydney.

Gore has in recent weeks stepped up his criticism of the Senate for its inability to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill that would put a price on carbon. In a conference call with environmental activists last week, he reportedly said “the United States government in its entirety, largely because of the opposition in the United States Senate to taking action on clean energy and a solution to the climate crisis, has failed us.”

You can keep talking, Al. We always enjoy a good laugh. But if you think anyone is still listening to you, then you've become a bigger joke than anyone could have ever imagined.