Monday Quick Bites

1. Buh-bye Global Warming:

John Hawkins of RWN had the fabulous opportunity to interview Denis Avery, co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years.

Here is just a taste of the brilliance:

Another thing I have noticed is that even the global warming alarmists were right: the solutions that they’re suggesting don’t come close to fixing the problems. Kyoto, these cap and trade schemes, they are really expensive and actually do very little to reduce greenhouse gasses. Any thoughts on that?

They’re really talking about going back to the Great Depression. Nobody has a car, nobody could afford the fuel if they had a car. They’re talking about living a hundred yards from the factory, except there isn’t going to be a factory because there is not going to be any coal burning to power it. No nuclear power, no drilling for oil, no hope.

I just want to remind you that there are millions of people in the Third World, women and children, heating and cooking with cow manure, firewood that they gather off the mountainside. The air pollution in some of those areas is equal to a 2 pack a day cigarette habit….If there’s no kerosene, no propane, no nuclear electricity, are we all going to be in that situation?

You can read all about it HERE.

2. President Bush lifts an executive ban on off shore drilling. It is about time, Mr. President! These are proven reserves, why would a democratically-controlled Congress deny US citizens this precious resource?

To reduce pressure on prices we must continue to implement good conservation policies, and we need to increase the supply of oil, especially here at home. For years, my administration has been calling on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal — and now Americans are paying at the pump. When members of Congress were home over the Fourth of July recess, they heard a clear message from their constituents: We need to take action now to expand domestic oil production.

One of the most important steps we can take to expand American oil production is to increase access to offshore exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf, or what’s called the OCS. But Congress has restricted access to key parts of the OCS since the early 1980s. Experts believe that these restricted areas of the OCS could eventually produce nearly 10 years’ worth of America’s current annual oil production. And advances in technology have made it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills. Last month, I asked Congress to lift this legislative ban and allow the exploration and development of offshore oil resources. I committed to lift an executive prohibition on this exploration if Congress did so, tailoring my executive action to match what Congress passed. It’s been almost a month since I urged Congress to act — and they’ve done nothing. They’ve not moved any legislation.

And as the Democratically-controlled Congress has sat idle, gas prices have continued to increase.

3. What we can reasonably expect from a Democrat in the White House:

4. The bloody consequences of cutting and running from Afghanistan and Iraq – Snuff footage of women being executed in Afghanistan:

My Pet Jawa

The Sniper

The silence from NOW and so-called peace groups regarding this deliberate murder in the name of islam is deafening! Although, I am used to the silence from these groups.

Bovine Bloviation Taxation

The Economic Costs of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Legislation

H/T: Flopping Aces

Members of Congress are considering several bills designed to combat climate change. Chief among them is Senate bill 2191–America’s Cli­mate Security Act of 2007–spearheaded by Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA). This bill would set a limit on the emissions of green­house gases, mainly carbon dioxide from the com­bustion of coal, oil, and natural gas.

YIKES! Any you though paying 4 dollars/gallon of gas was expensive……

S. 2191 extracts trillions of dollars from the mil­lions of American energy consumers and delivers this wealth to permanently identified classes of recipients, such as tribal groups and preferred tech­nology sectors, while largely circumventing the normal congressional appropriations process. Unbound by the periodic review of the normal bud­getary process, this de facto tax-and-spend program threatens to become permanent–independent of the goals of the legislation.

This type of wealth redistribution sounds similar to Demand 13 and 14 of the National German Socialist Workers Party

The Heritage Foundation has presented a detailed review of the economic impact of S.B. 2191. Their conclusion finds this Bill to be one of the most expensive environmental undertakings [disasters] in history.

Even under a fairly optimistic set of assump­tions, the economic impact of S. 2191 is likely to be serious for the job market, household budgets, energy prices, and the economy overall. The bur­den will be shouldered by the average American. The bill would have the same effect as a major new energy tax–only worse. In the case of S. 2191, increases in the tax rate are set by forces beyond legislative control.

Under a more realistic set of assumptions, the impact would be considerably more severe. More significant than the wealth destroyed by S. 2191 is the wealth transferred from the energy-using public to a list of selected special interests.

Overall, S. 2191 would likely be–by far–the most expensive environmental undertaking in history.

William W. Beach is Director of the Center for Data Analysis;
David W. Kreutzer, Ph.D., is Senior Pol­icy Analyst for Energy Economics and Climate Change in the Center for Data Analysis;
Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies;
Nicolas D. Loris is a Research Assistant in the Roe Institute at The Heritage Foundation.

More COLD FACTS on Global Climate Change

Let Them Eat Tofu

I couldn’t have said this better myself:

Even right-wingers who know that “global warming” is a crock do not seem to grasp what the tree-huggers are demanding. Liberals want mass starvation and human devastation.

Forget the lunacy of people claiming to tell us the precise temperature of planet Earth in 1918 based on tree rings. Or the fact that in the ’70s liberals were issuing similarly dire warnings about “global cooling.”

Simply consider what noted climatologists Al Gore and Melissa Etheridge are demanding that we do to combat their nutty conjectures about “global warming.” They want us to starve the productive sector of fossil fuel and allow the world’s factories to grind to a halt. This means an end to material growth and a cataclysmic reduction in wealth.

There are more reputable scientists defending astrology than defending “global warming,” but liberals simply announce that the debate has been resolved in their favor and demand that we shut down all production.

They think they can live in a world of only Malibu and East Hampton — with no Trentons or Detroits. It does not occur to them that someone has to manufacture the tiles and steel and glass and solar panels that go into those “eco-friendly” mansions, and someone has to truck it all to their beachfront properties, and someone else has to transport all the workers there to build it. (And then someone has to drive the fleets of trucks delivering the pachysandra and bottled water every day.)

Liberals are already comfortably ensconced in their beachfront estates, which they expect to be unaffected by their negative growth prescriptions for the rest of us.

There was more energy consumed in the manufacture, construction and maintenance of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Malibu home than is needed to light the entire city of Albuquerque, where there are surely several men who can actually act. But he has solar panels to warm his house six degrees on chilly Malibu nights.

Liberals haven’t the foggiest idea how the industrial world works. They act as if America could reduce its vast energy consumption by using fluorescent bulbs and driving hybrid cars rather than SUVs. They have no idea how light miraculously appears when they flick a switch or what allows them to go to the bathroom indoors in winter — luxuries Americans are not likely to abandon because Leo DiCaprio had solar panels trucked into his Malibu estate.

Our lives depend on fossil fuel. Steel plants, chemical plants, rubber plants, pharmaceutical plants, glass plants, paper plants — those run on energy. There are no Mother Earth nursery designs in stylish organic cotton without gas-belching factories, ships and trucks, and temperature-controlled, well-lighted stores. Windmills can’t even produce enough energy to manufacture a windmill.

Because of the industrialization of agriculture — using massive amounts of fossil fuel — only 2 percent of Americans work in farming. And yet they produce enough food to feed all 300 million Americans, with plenty left over for export. When are liberals going to break the news to their friends in Darfur that they all have to starve to death to save the planet?

“Global warming” is the left’s pagan rage against mankind. If we can’t produce industrial waste, then we can’t produce. Some of us — not the ones with mansions in Malibu and Nashville is my guess — are going to have to die. To say we need to reduce our energy consumption is like saying we need to reduce our oxygen consumption.

Liberals have always had a thing about eliminating humans. Stalin wanted to eliminate the kulaks and Ukranians, vegetarian atheist Adolf Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eliminate poor blacks, DDT opponent Rachel Carson wanted to eliminate Africans (introduction to her book “Silent Spring” written by … Al Gore!), and population-control guru Paul Ehrlich wants to eliminate all humans.

But global warming is the most insane, psychotic idea liberals have ever concocted to kill off “useless eaters.” If we have to live in a pure “natural” environment like the Indians, then our entire transcontinental nation can only support about 1 million human beings. Sorry, fellas — 299 million of you are going to have to go.
Proving that the “global warming” campaign is nothing but hatred of humanity, these are the exact same people who destroyed the nuclear power industry in this country 30 years ago.

If we accept for purposes of argument their claim that the only way the human race can survive is with clean energy that doesn’t emit carbon dioxide, environmentalists waited until they had safely destroyed the nuclear power industry to tell us that. This proves they never intended for us to survive.

“Global warming” is the liberal’s stalking horse for their ultimate fantasy: The whole U.S. will look like Amagansett, with no one living in it except their even-tempered maids (for “diversity”), themselves and their coterie (all, presumably, living in solar-heated mansions, except the maids who will do without electricity altogether). The entire fuel-guzzling, tacky, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching middle class with their over-large families will simply have to die.

It seems not to have occurred to the jet set that when California is as poor as Mexico, they might have trouble finding a maid. Without trucking, packaging, manufacturing, shipping and refrigeration in their Bel-Air fantasy world, they’ll be chasing the rear-end of an animal every time their stomachs growl and killing small animals for pelts to keep their genitals warm

Europeans talk big about ‘fighting climate change’ yet balk at putting the Euros out for their belief:

Europeans reluctant to pay extra for clean cars

Despite a groundswell of support for measures to fight climate change, Europeans are reluctant to pay extra for clean cars. In some cases they resist features such as stop-start mechanisms, which some drivers fear will hamper their ability to merge at roundabouts.

Environmental Hysteria Week

How many times has you read of the imminent danger posed to this planet by ‘runaway greenhouse gases’?

The world’s leading science journals report that glaciers are melting ten times faster than previously thought, that atmospheric greenhouse gases have reached levels not seen for millions of years, and that species are vanishing as a result of climate change. They also report of extreme weather events, long-term droughts, and rising sea levels.

Statements like the one above beg the questions – What are greenhouse gases and does the Earth behave like an actual Greenhouse?

Atmospheric greenhouse gases are comprised of water vapor, CO2, N20, Sulfur Dioxide, methane and miscellaneous gases such as CFC. Most proponents of a human based global warming catastrophe and staff of The Weather Channel point to CO2 pollution from industrialized nations as the primary cause of ‘global warming’.

Human based contribution to greenhouse gases amounts to 0.28% when factoring in water vapor – the most significant greenhouse gas, which happens to be of natural origin. The graph below compares natural and human based contributions to the greenhouse effect. Human activities such as agriculture, manufacturing, transportation and power generation contribute only slightly towards the total greenhouse gas effect.

Despite the lack of any meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature, The Kyoto Protocol demands mandatory 30% reductions of CO2 emissions from signatory nations. Vast sums of money are being poured into the ‘problem’ of global warming by the nations, primarily European, who signed up to the Kyoto Protocol – pledging to achieve drastic reductions in CO2 emissions within a defined time frame. Then one day, the Earth belches: A 2005 Cranfield University study revealed “vast quantities of carbon released from British soils since 1978…. effectively canceling out the UK’s recent successes at reducing [CO2] levels.” CO2 is far from being the determining factor in global temperature as this chart so neatly illustrates and the proponents of the Kyoto Protocol so adeptly ignore.

Do Greenhouse gases act like an actual Greenhouse?

In one word: NO.

The term ‘greenhouse effect’ as applied to ‘global warming’ is a terrible misnomer. An actual greenhouse acts as a physical barrier to suppress the actions of convection – nature’s way of transferring heat from an area of high temperatures to an area of lower temperatures by the displacement of the cooler molecules by the warmer molecules. A good example would be the interior temperature of a car with windows closed at midday. Got it? Greenhouse gases let solar radiation pass through to the surface of the earth, then slows the return energy back into space; unlike a greenhouse, they do not ‘trap’ energy forever in our atmosphere.

The Sun emits high-energy short wave radiation while the Earth reflects back longer wave radiation. The Earth absorbs more energy – in the form of radiation- than it releases back into space. This is an important point, if the Earth did not have a net gain of energy (heat), provided by the slow return back to space, Earth’s global temperature would resemble that of the Moon.

The take home message: Despite attempts to label atmospheric carbon dioxide a “pollutant” it is, in fact, an essential trace gas, the increasing abundance of which is a bonus for the biomass globally – 10 out of 10 plants agree!

Cosmic Rays and Earth’s Climate

Warning: All adherents to the anthropogenic global warming belief should injest Tums before reading the following article published by the Royal Society entitled:

“Experimental Evidence for the role of Ions in Particle Nucleation under Atmospheric Conditions“

For those with less time on your hands to read and digest the information presented in the paper, here is a a press release summerizing the results of this experiment in this media release:

A MISSING LINK IN CLIMATE THEORY

The experimental results lend strong empirical support to the theory proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen that cosmic rays influence Earth’s climate through their effect on cloud formation. The original theory rested on data showing a strong correlation between variation in the intensity of cosmic radiation penetrating the atmosphere and the amount of low-altitude clouds. Cloud cover increases when the intensity of cosmic rays grows and decreases when the intensity declines.

It is known that low-altitude clouds have an overall cooling effect on the Earth’s surface. Hence, variations in cloud cover caused by cosmic rays can change the surface temperature. The existence of such a cosmic connection to Earth’s climate might thus help to explain past and present variations in Earth’s climate.

Interestingly, during the 20th Century, the Sun’s magnetic field which shields Earth from cosmic rays more than doubled, thereby reducing the average influx of cosmic rays. The resulting reduction in cloudiness, especially of low-altitude clouds, may be a significant factor in the global warming Earth has undergone during the last century. However, until now, there has been no experimental evidence of how the causal mechanism linking cosmic rays and cloud formation may work.

‘Many climate scientists have considered the linkages from cosmic rays to clouds to climate as unproven,’ comments Eigil Friis-Christensen, who is now Director of the Danish National Space Center. ‘Some said there was no conceivable way in which cosmic rays could influence cloud cover. The SKY experiment now shows how they do so, and should help to put the cosmic-ray connection firmly onto the agenda of international climate research.’

Tax away Global Warming….

UK Foreign Secretary calls for “global warming” tax for travellers.

Anthropogenic global warming is a myth, yet it hasn’t stopped our good socialists friends from finding new and creative ways to validate increased taxation to ‘fight’ this imagined global warming meanace. One positive benefit from this scheme would be that taxing the EU out of existance will be a signifcant stride in combating ‘global warming’ worldwide.

Holidaymakers could be hit with a “global warming” tax of up to £50 under plans aimed at forcing airlines to reduce gas emissions.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said the new charges should be imposed by as early as 2008 or Britain will be thrown into “climate chaos”.

In a keynote speech, Mrs Beckett urged Brussels to speed up plans to enforce the levy on airlines to encourage them to fly more fuel-effecient planes and deter people from travelling by air.
The cost is almost certain to be passed on to holidaymakers as budget airlines would be worst affected by what the aviation industry describes as a “tax on holidays”.

Experts say the scheme could put £50 on the cost of flying from London to California, £35 on tickets to New York and between £5 and £10 on flights within Europe. Mrs Beckett used her speech in Berlin to up the pressure on Germany – which is taking over the presidency of the EU – to speed up progress on combating global warming.