Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute, has a few more words about CO2 and globaloney:

The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.

Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.” Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.

Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.

Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.

Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.

Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.

As we have said, it defies common sense that going from a carbon dioxide concentration of 280 parts per million to 380 parts per million threatens catastrophe when such larger forces are at work. Of course greed is a large force in human life as well, for those who wish to exploit the superstitions and mental frailties of the average American ignoramus.

Dennis Kucinich was once at the home of Shirley McLaine, and the things he saw! WSJ:

Ms. MacLaine — well-known for her fascination with things mystical and extraterrestrial — was in Canada that weekend in 1982, performing her one-woman show. But Mr. Costanzo’s girlfriend at the time, a model and actress who is now 50 years old, was visiting when the UFO incident took place…

Here’s what happened, according to separate interviews with Mr. Costanzo and his former girlfriend: The day was strange from the start. For hours, Mr. Kucinich, Mr. Costanzo and his companion noticed a high-pitched sound. “There was a sense that something extraordinary was happening all day,” says the girlfriend. She and Mr. Costanzo say that none of the three consumed alcohol or took drugs.

As they sat down to a dinner, Mr. Kucinich spotted a light in the distance, to the left of Mount Rainier. Mr. Costanzo thought it was a helicopter. But Mr. Kucinich walked outside to the deck to look through the telescope that he had bought Ms. MacLaine as a house gift. After a few minutes, Mr. Kucinich summoned the other two: “Guys, come on out here and look at this.” Mr. Costanzo and his girlfriend joined Mr. Kucinich, where they took turns peering through the telescope. What they saw in the far distance, according to both witnesses, was a hovering light, which soon divided into two, and then three.

After a few minutes, the lights moved closer and it became apparent that they were actually three charcoal-gray, triangular craft, flying in a tight wedge. The girlfriend remembers each triangle having red and green lights running down the edges, with a laser-like red light at the tail. Mr. Costanzo recalls white lights, but no tail. Mr. Costanzo says each triangle was roughly the size of a large van, while his former girlfriend compares it to a “larger Cessna, smaller than a jet certainly.” Neither recalls seeing any markings, landing gear, engines, windows or cockpits.

The craft approached to within 200 yards, suspended over the field just beyond the swimming pool. Both witnesses say it emitted a quiet, throbbing sound — nothing like an airplane engine. “There was a feeling of wanting to communicate something, but I didn’t know what,” says Mr. Costanzo.

The craft held steady in midair, for perhaps a minute, then sped away, Mr. Costanzo says. “Nothing had landed,” he says. “No strange beings had disembarked. No obvious messages were beamed down. When they were completely out of sight, we all looked at each other disbelieving what we had seen.”

At Mr. Kucinich’s suggestion, they jotted down their impressions and drew pictures to memorialize the event. Mr. Kucinich kept the notes, according to Ms. MacLaine…It was proof to me that we’re obviously not alone,” says the girlfriend.

“At Mr. Kucinich’s suggestion, they jotted down their impressions and drew pictures to memorialize the event.” We’d really like to see those pictures!

The Economist takes the long view of man’s downfall, in the manner of Jared Diamond:

About 12,000 years ago people embarked on an experiment called agriculture and some say that they, and their planet, have never recovered. Farming brought a population explosion, protein and vitamin deficiency, new diseases and deforestation. Human height actually shrank by nearly six inches after the first adoption of crops…

Take a snapshot of the old world 15,000 years ago. Except for bits of Siberia, it was full of a new and clever kind of people who had originated in Africa and had colonised first their own continent, then Asia, Australia and Europe, and were on the brink of populating the Americas. They had spear throwers, boats, needles, adzes, nets. They painted pictures, decorated their bodies and believed in spirits. They traded foods, shells, raw materials and ideas. They sang songs, told stories and prepared herbal medicines.

They were “hunter-gatherers”. On the whole the men hunted and the women gathered: a sexual division of labour is still universal among non-farming people and was probably not shared by their Homo erectus predecessors. This enabled them to eat both meat and veg, a clever trick because it combines quality with reliability.

Why change? In the late 1970s Mark Cohen, an archaeologist, first suggested that agriculture was born of desperation, rather than inspiration. Evidence from the Fertile Crescent seems to support him. Rising human population density, combined perhaps with a cooling, drying climate, left the Natufian hunter-gatherers of the region short of acorns, gazelles and wild grass seeds…

Willingly or not, humanity had embarked 50,000 years ago on the road called “progress” with constant change in habits driven by invention mothered by necessity. Even 40,000 years ago, technology and lifestyle were in a state of continuous change, especially in western Eurasia. By 34,000 years ago people were making bone points for spears, and by 26,000 years ago they were making needles. Harpoons and other fishing tackle appear at 18,000 years ago, as do bone spear throwers, or atlatls. String was almost certainly in use then—how do you catch rabbits except in nets and snares…

The idea that agriculture was a step back for humanity is ridiculous. However, such a dim opinion of farm country might dovetail rather nicely with Christopher Hitchens’ view of the Iowa caucuses.

Some things change, some don’t. Carbon dioxide emissions haven’t changed much in the last quarter century in the US, while they have quadrupled or quintupled in China, which is now the largest emitter of CO2. But you wouldn’t know that from the media’s handling of the party that just concluded in Bali, the results of which have been widely misreported.

One thing that never changes is the self-importance of bureaucrats and politicians, and their desire to arrogate power to themselves. The Sydney Morning Herald sympathetically describes the self indulgent, appalling scene in Bali as the deadline approached for the vacation of the 15,000 to end, and the scores of private jets to leave:

Deadlines came and went. Things were so bad on Saturday that at one point the UN’s chief negotiator, Yvo de Boer, fled the podium. He was holding back tears. That afternoon, well into extra time, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, made an unscheduled return, walking in alongside Indonesia’s Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It was too late for cajoling; time instead for rebuking and pleading. Ki-moon spoke of disappointment, and urged compromise on “everybody”. The host president said: “The world is watching anxiously and I beg you not to let them down.”

Their words “electrified the room”, de Boer said. The European Union — having earlier bowed to American pressure to tone down wording on emissions targets — swiftly kicked over another roadblock, acceding to demands from developing countries for promises on technology sharing.

Still the Americans held out. No, Dobriansky said once more, to more boos and jeers. The deadlock remained, but with a difference: no nation, not Australia, nor Japan, nor Canada, backed them.

Going down to the wire, Bali rules applied, and those rules meant niceties could be stomped on. The most powerful man in the room could be mugged in broad daylight by one of the weakest. Kevin Conrad, the delegate from Papua New Guinea, did not waste time taking the Americans down a dark alley. He wanted billions of witnesses.

“We seek your leadership,” he said. “But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way.” The room was silent as he said it, and drowned in explosive applause as he returned the shiv to its sheath. Dobriansky surrendered. A deal could be done, propelling the world forward to negotiating a new accord by 2009.

There was rejoicing. “A historic breakthrough,” said Gordon Brown in London. “A pivotal first step,” said Ban Ki-moon. “An incredible drama” that ended in a “brilliant strategy to unite the world”, said the Union of Concerned Scientists. America had been “humbled”, said Bill Hare of Greenpeace.

There is little in the world more revolting than the spectacle of such men congratulating themselves, except perhaps the fawning media coverage bestowed upon them. Moreover, the media appear to have misstated the essence of the story, centering it on America, as in the example above. Though developing nations like China and India were brought on board in a weak agreement, the media have in general acted as if they know nothing of what has actually transpired in the years since Kyoto, and that the story was about American intransigence. The American Thinker provides some background about the fact that the US is no longer the real story when it comes to global environmental regulation:

If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following:

* Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
* Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
* Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
* Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

The data have additional interesting aspects. For example, if you look at the spreadsheet by country from 1980 until 2004, you will see that the rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions (not that we care all that much about carbon dioxide concentrations) has been less than 1% per year in the United States. China, on the other hand, had an increase from 397 metric tons to 1284 during the same period, and even surpassed the US in total CO2 emissions earlier this year.

The media have misreported the Bali story. They have reported it as though the US was hobbled and humbled. But the reality is that the developing nations like China and India were brought on board in a final, tepid agreement, and that this made it possible for the US to participate as well. The watered-down nature of the agreement left a number of developed countries dissatisfied.

In a way you have to give the Bali revelers their due. By watering down a final agreement sufficiently to get the countries with the largest CO2 increases on board, they assured themselves that there would be plenty of such pleasant retreats in the future, as they work out further silly “frameworks” of this and that. (China will likely never agree to anything that cuts its growth rate to a level that would increase unemployment.) Moreover, by bringing the likes of India and China into the fold, they have increased the number of wealthy pockets they can pick, as they continue to revel in the usufructs of their power and to strut about like peacocks on island resorts.

Finally, as bad as the politicians and bureaucrats are, we can only expect the mainstream media to be even worse.

It’s oblivion again, say partiers at a tropical resort. AP reports that the UN wants nations to ban greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of “between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020″:

The human race faces oblivion if it fails to confront global warming…U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived on the resort island of Bali to preside over the final days of the two-week conference. “The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically,” Ban said in a speech to delegates. “We are at a crossroad,” he added. “One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear.”

“Oblivion.” Got to avoid oblivion of course. What to ban next? Maybe caffeine? Or maybe go all the way and attempt to ban new humans. Medical Journal of Australia:

Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime. Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and “greenhouse-friendly” services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits.

There would appear to be more than a little Margaret Sanger in all this:

“the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit,’ admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation….On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

Of course the West appears to have gone well beyond that point in our time.

China played the West for suckers at the Boondoggle in Bali. The WSJ explains:

BALI, Indonesia — China said Friday it will not consider mandatory cuts on greenhouse gases, saying the U.S. and other industrialized countries should take the lead in fighting climate change by embracing a less-extravagant lifestyle.

China, which some believed has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, also questioned the fairness of binding cuts when its per capita emissions are about one-sixth of those by the U.S.

It also noted that it’s only been pumping pollutants into the atmosphere for the last few decades, whereas the West has done so for much longer.

“China is in the process of industrialization and there is a need for economic growth to meet the basic needs of the people and fight against poverty,” said Su Wei, a member of the country’s delegation at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali.

“I just wonder whether it’s fair to ask developing countries like China to take on binding targets or mandatory targets,” Mr. Su said. “I think there is much room for the United States to think whether it’s possible to change [its] lifestyle and consumption patterns in order to contribute to the protection of the global climate.”

China didn’t hit a false note. They have to “fight poverty”, while the West, particularly the US, should “change lifestyle.” Perfectly pitched for the suckers who swallow this tripe. Well done.

A nation of ignoramuses who do not know how to read, apply logic, or do simple math, has no future. We don’t need jihad to undo the Enlightenment. We can do it all by ourselves. Consider the academic program that has a 20% market share in the nation’s grammar schools. NY Sun:

The state of Texas has dropped a math curriculum that is mandated for use in New York City schools, saying it was leaving public school graduates unprepared for college. The curriculum, called Everyday Mathematics, became the standard for elementary students in New York City when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the public schools in 2003.

About three million students across the country now use the program, including students in 28 Texas school districts, and industry estimates show it holds the greatest market share of any lower-grade math textbook, nearly 20%.

Some questions for 5th graders:

A. If math were a color, it would be –, because –.
B. If it were a food, it would be –, because –.
C. If it were weather, it would be –, because –.

The situation with 4th graders:

“The curriculum’s failure was undeniable: Not one of my students knew his or her times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations; knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal…what would you do, if you discovered that none of your fourth-graders could correctly tell you the answer to four times eight?”

The song School Days dates from 1907. Who would have thought that, a century later, “readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmetic,” not to mention the hickory stick, would have vanished from broad reaches of the American scene? HT: MM

UPDATE

A fellow who was taught Everyday Mathematics illustrates its worth, via AP:

Police say a man tried to open an account with a $1 million bill, which does not exist. The teller refused and called police while the man started to curse at bank workers, said Aiken County Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Michael Frank. Alexander D. Smith, 31, of Augusta, Ga., was charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of forgery, Frank said. The second forgery charge came after investigators learned Smith bought several cartons of cigarettes from a nearby grocery store with a stolen check, Frank said.

What a country.

A carbon footprint gets ever so much smaller if it is made in the sands of an island paradise such as Bali. The UK Times has a report on a meeting so critical that it demands 15,000 politicians and hangers-on.:

the latest United Nations climate change conference on the paradise island of Bali has itself become a major contributor to global warming. Calculations suggest flying the 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green campaigners and television crews into Indonesia will generate the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of extra CO2. That is similar to the entire annual emissions of the African state of Chad…

The meeting, which runs from December 3-14, aims to create the framework for a successor to the Kyoto treaty on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, which expires in 2012. However, climate change’s growing political importance has led to a surge in interest in the conference, which is being held in the luxury holiday resort of Nusa Dua on Bali’s palm-fringed southern coast.

Attendees are expected to include celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, and Al Gore, the former US vice-president.

It is amazing that anyone takes these self-aggrandizing nitwits seriously.

It turns out that we’re killing the universe — just by our existence. When we merely look at the 14 billion year old universe, we shorten its life, according to a new theory. Telegraph:

the theory suggests that we change things simply by looking at them and theorists have puzzled over the implications for years. They often illustrate their concerns about what the theory means with mind-boggling experiments, notably Schrodinger’s cat in which, thanks to a fancy experimental set up, the moggy is both alive and dead until someone decides to look, when it either carries on living, or dies. That is, by one interpretation (by another, the universe splits into two, one with a live cat and one with a dead one.)

New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

The damaging allegations are made by Profs Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and James Dent of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, who suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have caused the cosmos to revert to an earlier state when it was more likely to end. “Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life-expectancy of the universe,” Prof Krauss tells New Scientist.

Someone should have told Toni Vernelli. Perhaps she would have reconsidered her decision. And by the way, what if some space aliens discovered dark matter billions of years ago? Should we be looking for a letter to the editor of New Scientist from some fellows on Rigel VII demanding a correction?

Daily Mail:

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy. But the very thought makes her shudder with horror. Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet.

Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible “mistake” of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time. He refused, but Toni - who works for an environmental charity - “relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery. Finally, eight years ago, Toni got her way. At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”….

As Toni awaited the surgery which would destroy her fertility, she met her future husband, Ed…”A week before my sterilisation, I went to an animal rights demonstration and met Ed….”Every year, we also take a nice holiday - we’ve just come back from South Africa. We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint and combating over-population.”

Think of the win-win if she had been previously destined to mother a future suicide-bomber.

There is a lot of bad news predicted to happen or to be evident by 2020, as we previously discussed below. Here’s a handy checklist, via the Independent:

Arctic
Greenland ice sheet will virtually completely disappear, raising sea levels by over 30 feet, submerging coastal cities, entire island nations and vast areas of low-lying countries like Bangladesh

Latin America
The Amazon rainforest will become dry savannah as rising temperatures and falling water levels kill the trees, stoke forest fires and kill off wildlife

North America
California and the grain-producing Midwest will dry out as snows in the Rockies decrease, depriving these areas of summer water

Australia
The Great Barrier Reef will die. Species loss will occur by 2020 as corals fail to adapt to warmer waters. On land, drought will reduce harvests

Europe
Winter sports suffer as less snow falls in the Alps and other mountains; up to three-fifths of wildlife dies out. Drought in Mediterranean area hits tourism

Africa
Harvests could be cut by up to half in some countries by 2020, greatly increasing the threat of famine. Between 75 million and 250 million people are expected to be short of water within the next 30 years

Remember to keep your checklist in a dry, elevated area, so it will still be usable after the sea level has risen by the predicted 30 feet.

We keep getting reruns of movies we saw thirty years ago. We can’t stay awake anymore. NYT:

“Today the world’s scientists have spoken, clearly and in one voice,” Mr. Ban said as he released the final report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “In Bali I expect the world’s policymakers to do the same. “The breakthrough needed in Bali is for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace.”

Far more powerfully then ever before, members of the United Nations panel said today that their review of the data had led them to conclude that reductions in greenhouse gases had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster that could leave island states submerged and abandoned, decrease African crop yields by 50 percent and lower global economic output by 5 percent or more.

The panel, co-winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, said the world would have to reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 to avert major problems. “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late, there is not time,” said Rajendra Pachauri, a scientist and economist who heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “What we do in the next two, three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”…

one chart predicts that at 2 degrees of global temperature rise, up to 30 percent of species would be at risk of extinction and people would face a higher risk of death from heat waves, floods and droughts. If 3 degrees of warming were reached, the report says, millions more people would experience flooding each year, about 30 percent of wetlands would be lost, global health services would be burdened, and there would be massive deaths…

Didn’t Irwin Allen already make this flick a long time ago? Wake us when it’s over.

John Coleman is a meteorologist of some renown and commercial accomplishment. You have probably already read what he has said:

It is the greatest scam in history….It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming….

Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped.

It is possible of course that in time “everyone will come to realize we have been duped.” But there is also a significant probability that this will not happen. The grifters of political and economic power who champion global warmism for their benefit will no doubt claim that warming has been transmuted into cooling. And of course drastic measures are still needed — of any sort that fill their coffers and gild their thrones.

But that’s not the scary part. The business and political worlds have always been full of con men and their lackeys. That’s nothing new. The scary aspect of this to us is the media. We are producing generations of younger Americans who know little about life and yet feel perfectly justified in lecturing us about every aspect of it. They often come from great universities where they learn the current fashions in the liberal arts from professors who have never lived outside that sandbox. They then get jobs whose essence is to be observers of what other people do. (The Hollywood types have a quicker path to a similar end: from becoming high school dropouts to pretending to be other people.)

If there is a better recipe for creating witless grandees, we haven’t seen it. From the TV news to the fourth grade classroom, we’ve seen the power they wield and the intellectual carnage they create. Despite the advent of the New Media, we have not seen a noticeable drop in the power of those who shout fashionable, totalitarian nonsense into a large megaphone.

What goes on in the elementary schools of Marin County is scary:

Lu Sutton joined the program last month, bringing to eight the number of Marin schools that have introduced the program that began earlier this year at Bacich Elementary and Kent Middle schools in Kentfield. The program is being financed by a $200,000 donation from the Earth Day Every Day Fund of the Marin Community Foundation. Three nonprofits, the Marin Conservation Corps, Strategic Energy Innovations and Cool the Earth are implementing the program and hope to introduce it to 25 Marin schools by the end of the year…

Principal Candee Adams played “Mother Earth,” fifth-grade teacher Sue Spry played “The Sun” and Debbie Dees was “Mother Nature.” Fourth-grade teacher Cathy Stanek played “Polar Bear.” The title of the skit was “Save Some for Me.” “Too much carbon makes me feel like I’m wearing a blanket,” Adams said as Robles’ character swirled around the stage. “I’m Queen Carbon, not a role model,” Robles said in her introduction. “Do you want to save the Earth? It’s up to you to choose. “Yes, I’m Queen Carbon, and I’ve got the Carbon Dioxide Blues.”…

On Friday, Rancho students will be given bilingual “Cancel-a-Car” coupon books filled with ways they can fight global warming. Once the coupons are returned to school, teachers will track what conservation efforts are made and the date. Teachers will help monitor the progress. As the carbon reduction increases, images of cars will be crossed out on a giant poster kept at school.

This indoctrination is creepy and witless. Worse than that, cloaking bad thinking and limitations on freedom in enviro-hooey appears to be very effective.

Your government spends its four day workweek on things like this:

Select Committee to Examine Link Between Changing Climate, Frequency and Intensity of Wildfires…

Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who will chair the committee
Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.)
Jay Inslee (D-Wash.)
John B. Larson (D-Conn.)
Hilda L. Solis (D-Calif.)
Stephanie Herseth (D-S.D.)
Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.)
John Hall (D-N.Y.)
Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.)
F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the ranking minority member
John Shadegg (R-Ariz.)
Greg Walden (R-Ore.)
John Sullivan (R-Okla.)
Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)
Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.)…

“A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.”
–Robert Herrick

Following the devastating fires in Southern California, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will hold a hearing examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

Witnesses will discuss the present effects of climate change on wildfires and contributing factors such as increased drought, changes in snowmelt patterns, changes in precipitation, and higher temperatures. In addition, mitigation and adaptation strategies will be discussed.

The frequency and intensity of wildfires have increased in recent decades throughout the Western United States…Mounting scientific evidence indicates that the growth in wildfires is linked to global warming and that this trend is likely to intensify in the coming decades.

More geniuses at work. A pathetic use of resources better spent on the practical and time-tested solutions such as clearing brush, staging controlled burns, felling trees for firebreaks, etc. — and they have a pretentious website to boot. The only redeeming element in all this is the (unintentionally?) humorous misuse of the Robert Herrick quote from the 1640’s. Herrick may have thought of sparks and fire, but most of his carpe diem poems are devoted to sparks of quite a different nature.

The IHT reports that the UN is apparently now, at long last, going to shut up about global doom and gloom, since it has just produced a “final” report:

UN issues ‘final wake-up call’ on population and environment

Climate change, the rate of extinction of species and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the threats putting humanity at risk, the UN Environment Program said in its fourth Global Environmental Outlook since 1997.

“The human population is now so large that the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available at current consumption patterns,” Achim Steiner, the executive director of the program, said in a telephone interview. Efficient use of resources and reducing waste now are “among the greatest challenges at the beginning of 21st century,” he said…

Over the past two decades the world population has increased by almost 34 percent to 6.7 billion from 5 billion; similarly, the financial wealth of the planet has soared by about a third. But the land available to each person on earth had shrunk by 2005 to 2.02 hectares, or 5 acres, from 7.91 hectares in 1900 and was projected to drop to 1.63 hectares for each person by 2050, the report said…

The program described its report, which is prepared by 388 experts and scientists, as the broadest and deepest of those that the UN issues on the environment and called it “the final wake-up call to the international community.”

Three points: (a) didn’t we read something similar to this UN report a long time ago? (b) what gives with the use of land per capita as a critical measure as opposed to, for example, weath — are we all meant to be farmers? (c) what will the windy bureaucrats call the next report, since this one was supposed to be “final”?

The philosopher and eminent meteorologist Harry Reid shows himself to be a man completely in tune with the seriousness and probing depth of intellect that characterize the times in which we live:

“One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming”

The biggest fire in America was in 1910, and California routinely has had fires that have devoured millions of acres — many without the arson that played a major role in these latest blazes. Even environmental extremists don’t blame global warming for particular fires. Little wonder then that the geniuses in Congress are as popular as they are.

Daniel Botkin is professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He says that he is “a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us.” WSJ:

Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve. “Wolves deceive their prey, don’t they?” one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.

The climate modelers who developed the computer programs that are being used to forecast climate change used to readily admit that the models were crude and not very realistic, but were the best that could be done with available computers and programming methods. They said our options were to either believe those crude models or believe the opinions of experienced, data-focused scientists. Having done a great deal of computer modeling myself, I appreciated their acknowledgment of the limits of their methods. But I hear no such statements today. Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality.

A recent article in the well-respected journal American Scientist explained why the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro could not be melting from global warming. Simply from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating–especially the author’s Sherlock Holmes approach to figuring out what was causing the glacier to melt. That it couldn’t be global warming directly (i.e., the result of air around the glacier warming) was made clear by the fact that the air temperature at the altitude of the glacier is below freezing. This means that only direct radiant heat from sunlight could be warming and melting the glacier. The author also studied the shape of the glacier and deduced that its melting pattern was consistent with radiant heat but not air temperature. Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming.

Hey, man, truth is just a human construct. Get with the program. Professor Alan Sokal wrote a beautiful paper showing that physics isn’t about “truth” but about power relationships in our repressive society.

Bangkok will soon be swamped by the Gulf of Thailand, and the MSM and experts say it is Global Warming. Are you frightened yet? AP:

Bangkok Sinking Under Rising Seas
Major Cities Around the World at Risk of Being Swamped…

Experts say these waters, aided by sinking land, threaten to submerge Thailand’s sprawling capital of more than 7 million people within this century. Bangkok is one of many of the world’s largest cities at risk of being swamped as sea levels rise in coming decades, according to warnings at the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held here.

“This is what the future will look like in many places around the world,” says Lisa Schipper, an American researcher on global warming, while visiting the temple. “Here is a living study in environmental change.”…

“If the heart of Thailand is under water everything will stop,” says Smith Dharmasaroja, chair of the government’s Committee of National Disaster Warning Administration. “We don’t have time to move our capital in the next 15-20 years. We have to protect our heart now, and it’s almost too late.”

Are you frightened yet? You should be. Frightened of the media, that is. Here are paragraphs 7 and 8 of the story:

The still expanding megapolis rests about 3 1/2 to 5 feet above the nearby gulf, although some areas already lie below sea level. The gulf’s waters have been rising by about a tenth of an inch a year, about the same as the world average, says Anond Snidvongs, a leading scientist in the field.

But the city, built on clay rather than bedrock, has also been sinking at a far faster pace of up to 4 inches annually as its teeming population and factories pump some 2.5 million cubic tons of cheaply priced water, legally and illegally, out of its aquifers. This compacts the layers of clay and causes the land to sink.

Let’s do the math. The water around Bangkok is rising about 1 inch every 10 years. So if that current rate keeps up, the water will rise a foot by the year 2127 — 120 years from now. But Bangkok is apparently sinking about 4 inches a year, 40x faster than water is rising. So this article doesn’t really have anything to do with global warming at all, but you have to dig pretty deep to find out.

Another dopey story on our Planetary Emergency, this one via AP:

Every fall, Marilyn Krom tries to make a trip to Vermont to see its famously beautiful fall foliage. This year, she noticed something different about the autumn leaves. “They’re duller, not as sparkly, if you know what I mean,” Krom, 62, a registered nurse from Eastford, Conn., said during a recent visit. “They’re less vivid.” Other “leaf peepers” are noticing, too, and some believe climate change could be the reason…

University of Vermont plant biologist Tom Vogelmann, a Vermont native…says autumn has become too warm to elicit New England’s richest colors.According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in Burlington have run above the 30-year averages in every September and October for the past four years, save for October 2004, when they were 0.2 degrees below average.

So let’s get this straight. For the past 4 years in Vermont, or in some parts of Vermont, temperatures were above their 30 year average (why 30 years?) in September and October — except that they weren’t. Temperatures were lower than their 30 year average in 2004. And they were no doubt lower in 2002, or else the scare claim would have been about the past 5 years. So it would appear in reality that temperatures have been above their average about half the time in recent years, and below average about half the time in recent years. Isn’t that kind of what an average is all about? We don’t dispute the idea that Vermont might be warmer recently, but the MSM shouldn’t be trying to build a house out of Popsicle sticks.