What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Jimbo1490]

Leader of none
Obama’s global warming policies have few US followers –
and fewer on the global stage
By Paul Driessen 8 Sep 09 -

“Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating climate change,” President Obama has asserted. “We will make it clear that America is ready to lead.”

The President and Al Gore are certainly ready to lead. But how many will follow?

Even in America, and certainly on the world stage, the two increasingly look like Don Quixote and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. As they tilt for windmills, and against a “monstrous giant of infamous repute” – climate disasters conjured up by computer models and Hollywood special effects masters – their erstwhile followers are making politically correct noises, but running for the hills.



The House of Representatives passed a 1400-page energy and climate bill – by a razor-thin margin, and only after Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman packed it with enough last-minute deals to protect favored congressional districts, buy votes, and curry favor with assorted special interests. Not one legislator actually read the bill – which would create a trillion-dollar cap-trade-and-tax industry, ensure that energy and food costs “necessarily skyrocket,” kill jobs, and impose an all-intrusive Green Nanny State.

Republicans want to control what people do in their bedrooms, insists the old canard. Democrats, it appears, want to dictate what we do everywhere outside of our bedrooms. And Sancho Gore wants to become the world’s first global warming billionaire, by selling climate indulgences, aka carbon offsets.

Citizens are livid over yet another attempt to use a purported crisis to justify further expanding the government and spending billions more tax dollars for alarmist research, activism and propaganda, just ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference. Global warming continues to rank dead-last in Pew Research and other polls that actually list it as an issue. Rasmussen puts the President’s approval ratings at 46% and falling. Zogby reports that 57% of Americans oppose cap-and-trade bills.

Manufacturing states, which get 60-98% of their electricity from coal, worry that the only thing they’ll export in ten years will be jobs. Democrat senators from those states worry that the energy and climate issue will be “toxic for them during midterm elections,” says Politico magazine.

Not even the climate is cooperating. Outside of Dallas, 2009 has brought some of coldest summer days on record across the US. Near freezing temperatures nipped at crops, and gas heaters were sine qua non at an August 29 outdoor wedding in Wisconsin. The Farmers Almanac predicts a brutal 2009-2010 winter.

Germany plans to build 27 coal-fired electrical generating plants by 2020. Italy plans to double its reliance on coal in just five years. Europe as a whole will have 40 new coal-fired power plants by 2015, columnist Alan Caruba reports. The Polish Academy of Sciences has publicly challenged manmade global warming disaster hypotheses. And only 11% of Czech citizens believe rising carbon dioxide emissions caused global temperatures to climb.

Australia just voted down punitive global warming legislation. New Zealand has put its emissions bashing program in a deep freeze.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s top economic aid bluntly dismissed any talk of following President Obama’s quixotic lead. “We won’t sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction,” he told reporters at the July 2009 G8 meeting.

Chinese and Indian leaders are equally adamant. China is playing a smart hand in this high-stakes climate poker game ... building a new coal-fired power plant every week and putting millions of new cars on its growing network of highways.

So is India, which will double its coal-based electricity generation and produce millions of Tata and other affordable cars by 2020. “India will not accept any binding emission-reduction target, period,” Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has stated. “This is a non-negotiable stand.”

No wonder: 400 million Indians still do not have electricity; 500 million Chinese still do not.

No electricity means no refrigeration, to keep food and medicines from spoiling. It means no water purification, to reduce baby-killing intestinal diseases. No modern heating and air conditioning, to reduce hypothermia in winter, heat stroke in summer, and lung disease year-round. It means no lights or computers, no modern offices, factories, schools, shops, clinics or hospitals.

Fossil fuels are “gradually eliminating poverty in the Third world,” observes UCLA economist Deepak Lal. Any call to curb carbon emissions would “condemn billions to continued poverty. While numerous Western do-gooders shed crocodile tears about the Third World’s poor, they are willing to prevent them from taking the only feasible current route out from this abject state” – oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric energy development. The situation is intolerable, unsustainable, lethal and immoral.

British politicians remain committed to slashing CO2 emissions and replacing hydrocarbons with wind power. Unfortunately, the biggest UK wind projects have been abandoned or put on indefinite hold – and a growing demand/supply imbalance portends still higher energy prices, widespread power cuts, rolling blackouts and energy rationing, the Daily Telegraph reported on August 31. Brits may soon trade their stiff upper lips for contentious town hall meetings and ballot-box revolution.

Then there is Africa, where leaders appear ready to support curbs on energy use – in exchange for up to $300 billion per year in additional foreign aid, “to cushion the impact of global warming.” That will be nice for their private bank accounts, but less so for Africa’s 750 million people who still don’t have electricity. Those people will simply be sacrificed, to prevent natural or fictitious climate disasters.

Of course, the real goal was never to control the climate. It was always to control energy use, lives, jobs, economies, transportation and housing – and usher in a new era of high tax global governance. The American people are increasingly saying they’re not ready to grant that power to Obama Gore & Company.




Full article here.


Jimbo

[Guillermo]

"Republicans want to control what people do in their bedrooms... Democrats...want to dictate what we do everywhere outside of our bedrooms."
I think this great phrase cleary states how the right and left behave the world around.

"And Sancho Gore wants to become the world’s first global warming billionaire, by selling climate indulgences, aka carbon offsets."
This makes me wonder about who is our "Sancho Gore" in Spain.

Cheers.

[hoytedow]

If Senor Gore believed what he preached, he would tear down his energy extravagant mansions and quit burning all those tons of jet fuel. It is the same with all those guys who want us to do as they say and not as they do. Viva La Verdad!!

[Pericles]

Reference #3419, it would seem the Arctic ice is set to rebound as we in the NH head towards a bitter winter.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/1...09/#more-10844

The sun is still quiet.

http://www.solarcycle24.com/index2.htm

How galling for Al Gore Rhythm.

[TeddyDiver]

I'm a bit disappointed due the slow progress in the climate change. Thou some seem to downplay CO2 influence I wish better times for coalplants and deforestation

[fasteddy106]

The monthly CO2 report from SPPI.....................

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/mo...o2_report.html

[Jimbo1490]

Originally Posted by hoytedow

If Senor Gore believed what he preached, he would tear down his energy extravagant mansions and quit burning all those tons of jet fuel. It is the same with all those guys who want us to do as they say and not as they do. Viva La Verdad!!

A Gulstream II (like his jet) burns ~500 gallons per hour and carries about 10 people.

Jimbo

[hoytedow]

Yoou should see his home electric bill. It has multiple comforts of life which he does not want us to enjoy. Count his air conditioners.

[ancient kayaker]

Originally Posted by fasteddy106

The monthly CO2 report from SPPI.....................

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/mo...o2_report.html

From the report, and MHO:

“Science should be done by observation, meditation, calculation, and verification. Politicized science cannot usefully inform political decisions.”
-experimental verification is inappropriate when the future of the planet is at stake.

"Since 1980 temperature has risen at only 2.3 °F (1.4 °C)/century ..."
-only 2.3 °F?

"Sea level rose just 8 inches in the 20th century, and has scarcely risen since 2006."
-only 8 inches? 8 inches in my bathtub is more than enough.

"Arctic sea-ice extent is currently at its summer low, but there is more summer ice than there was in 2007 or 2008. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent reached a record high in 2007."
-awesome: these guys really take the long term view!

"Hurricane and tropical-cyclone activity is almost at its lowest since satellite measurement began. The Sun is still very quiet. There were no sunspots in August at all."
-wonder how long that will last and what will happen to global temperature, sea levels and hurricanes when the Sun decides to stop fooling around?


There was a guy who fell off a 20 storey building. As he passed the second floor he was heard to say "Gee, this is no big deal"

There was this other guy who was kicking a hibernating bear. He was heard (by a guy running away at full speed) to say "what's the big deal with these critters?"

At my age life expectancy is just a decade or so. Good luck to the rest of you!

[Guillermo]

Hi Terry!
Down here some coments on yours (no offence intended)

-experimental verification is inappropriate when the future of the planet is at stake.
Science is all about experimental verification. The rest (as done by GWAs) is politics.


-only 2.3 °F?
Yeap!


-only 8 inches? 8 inches in my bathtub is more than enough.
But the planet is not your bathtube.


-awesome: these guys really take the long term view!
You should have quoted the last 30 years trends they mention (and if you prefer to take it longer, we may have a look to the last hundreds of thousands, or millions, of years, no problem)


-wonder how long that will last and what will happen to global temperature, sea levels and hurricanes when the Sun decides to stop fooling around?
What kind of question is that? Are you agreeing Sun is a mayor climate forcer?


At my age life expectancy is just a decade or so
Has age closed so much your mind as to not accept evidence?


Cheers.

[stu large]

Sure we are doomed, we are greedy, never want to give up nice things in life, even though they cause harm, we never think far enough ahead, and there are far to many of us, so many that only advanced agriculture, electronic communication, extreme logistics keep us going,
When some big disaster comes we will starve, and it won't be the first time, many civilizations have grown and by there own neglect, stupidity, and irrespponsibilty, caused their own downfall, read about the people of Easter Island, and Maya indians for just a few examples.

[Guillermo]

Originally Posted by stu large

... read about the .....Maya indians for just a few examples.

Excuse me, but Maya indians were not neglect, stupid and irresponsible people. I've been living in the area for years and can tell you that.

About the fading of their civilzation, causes are not yet well understood. There are some studies about cycles of 200 years droughts in the region caused by climate variability as well as drought-associated epidemics of hemorrhagic fever being main reasons. Also the low productivity of big areas of their land (not arable) was an important factor . As Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, a governor of the state of Quintana Roo (Mexico), put it: "Esta tierra es feroz, no feraz" (pun: feroz means fierce, feraz means fertile)

References:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...f/375391a0.pdf
Gill, R. (2000). The Great Maya Droughts. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retri...06987705001295

Cheers.

[fasteddy106]

Terry, I chose to post the entire article so we could read it in its full context. You chose, like most AGW alarmists, to cherry pick some of the data in the monthly report. But the main point of the report, continues to be that #1 The impending disaster of AGW is non-existant #2 There is no verifiable evidence that climate change is anthropogenic in nature.

[hoytedow]

OK. If global warming is caused by man, why does Martian temperature rise and fall in sync with Earth's? I don't think we have arrived there yet.

[Guillermo]

Originally Posted by hoytedow

OK. If global warming is caused by man, why does Martian temperature rise and fall in sync with Earth's? I don't think we have arrived there yet.

But perhaps a cloud of our cows' farts has!!!