Warning: despite their benign appearance, don't sleep on these guys

The U.N. climate change conference (ne'e global warming conference) wrapped up yesterday and which "began with modest aims and ended early Saturday with modest achievements."

Perhaps we've been looking at these climate change conferences in the wrong manner. While we see a global attempt towards a massive wealth redistribution scheme, these folks that are attending the conference are a bit more realistic and are just viewing it as some down time at a popular tourist destination before the hectic holiday season.

It has become a little dance, if you will: We get our hackles up, perspiring over economy-killing policies that have not one chance of ever being implemented and the faith-based AGW zealots convene their annual circular cocktail firing squad and prove us right by not accomplishing a single agenda item of real substance.

But just so we don't lose that fire in the belly, there always seems to be one or two utterances from the faith-based AGW zealots that reminds us of why we're all here.

“This is not the end, but it is a new beginning,” said Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who serves as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “It is not what is ultimately required, but it is the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective ambition.”

Because last century was nothing except a study of the somewhat ill effects of "collective ambition".

So, 2011.... Durban, South Africa. See you then?


H/T: Secular Apostate

The most wonderful time of the year

With the weather turning cooler and tomorrow kicking off the beginning of the holiday season there is an unmistakable feeling of good will towards mankind in the air. Why, just this past Monday, we reported out on the fact that Al Gore finally admitted that corn ethanol was a horrible idea (no doubt before moving on to the next subsidized green get-rich-quick scheme).

And, also just the other day, we've figured it all along but one of the leading acolytes of the faith-based AGW movement came out and admitted that international efforts to combat global warming/climate change have nothing to do with global warming/climate change.

Just in time for the movement's big confab down in Cancun next week, here's Ottmar Edenhofer:

Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change (say that twice), told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: "The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said "climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth" and that "it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization."

The spectacular failure that was the climate change conference in Copenhagen last year (remember Hopenchangen?) gets another go around but this time the AGW zealots are dropping any pretense of wanting to do anything towards thwarting climate change and instead will attempt to implement a global wealth redistribution plan.

Edenhofer claims "developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community" and so they must have their wealth expropriated and redistributed to the victims of their alleged crimes, the postage stamp countries of the world. He admits this "has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."

It's as if these Marxist AGW zealots figured out they junked up the science so much the public no longer believes them so they look around and say, "Well, we don't have much credibility anymore with the "AGW" thing but we still have our "Marxist" and "zealot" chops intact - let's roll with that.

Again, we are appreciative of the honesty and good will that is bursting out all over the place, of late.

And may Cancun '10 be every bit the laughable spectacle that Copenhagen '09 was.

But do you know what would look better here, instead? Fir. Douglas Fir.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food.

The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation's incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture.

According to the economic model used by the department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the legislation would give landowners incentives to convert up to 59 million acres of farmland into forests over the next 40 years. The reason: Trees clean the air of heat-trapping gases better than farming does.

Mr. Vilsack, in a little-noticed statement issued with the report earlier this month, said the department's forecasts "have caused considerable concern" among farmers and ranchers.

(italics... all of them, ours)

This is just insanity.

And haven’t we been down this road of “altering” data to “hide the decline” to fit snugly into a political agenda just recently?

The article goes on to say that Vilsack wants his chief economist to work with the EPA to "undertake a review of the assumptions in the FASOM model, to update the model and to develop options on how best to avoid unintended consequences for agriculture that might result from climate change legislation."

Well, we certainly know what some of the intended consequences of agriculture are: abundant and cheap food that will feed this country’s and the world’s growing population. Unfortunately, we are not really concerned with that. Radically altering the business model of our agrigulture sector based upon junk science is apparently trumping starving ourselves.

The dairy industry is already heavily subsidized in order to prop up prices, so we guess this is just the Obama administration’s way of extending a cash for conifers program to the rest of the agriculture industry.

We’re beginning to wonder: are they really that incompetent or do they sit around and make-up the most blatantly retarded crap just to make blogging easy?

P.S. Looking forward to more green on green violence as the ethanol industry clashes with the Cash for Conifers lobby.

Quote of the day

"It’s a catastrophe," said Dan Joergensen, a member of the European delegation, of the five-nation agreement. "We’re so far away from the criteria that was set up in order to call it a success, and those weren’t really that ambitious to start with."

(italics, ours)

Well, the President was able to save some face by getting India and China to buy into a vague and totally meaningless non-binding carbon emissions reduction agreement that was not endorsed by the balance of the 193 nations voting on the official accord so I guess we can classify this as a win-win situation.

The 2009-2010 great scandal-off

Tiger Woods alleged mistresses vs. faith-based global-warming community scandals.

Who ya got?



Currently, Tiger has jumped out to a pretty impressive lead. As of this posting, his alleged mistresses count is at 7 while the current scandal count for the faith-based global-warming community is at 4 .

We’re counting (1) the East Anglia (motley)CRU data manipulation, (2) the East Anglia (motley)CRU data destruction, (3) NASA’s refusal to disclose data of their own and (4) the CARB’s lead scientist resume’ lying.

What about the fact that the CRU dudes were threatening and intimidating scientists who weren’t playing along with the rest of the faith-based AGW crowd? Look, we were told that all those nasty emails just proved that scientists are human afterall. So, if character assassination is just part of the scientific method, then no scandal points.



(Phil Jones, HMFIC of the East Anglia CRU, who has temporarilty stepped down from that position.)



Though, we fully expect a few more ladies to crawl out of the woodwork, one has to wonder just how it was that Tiger was able to squeeze in any actual golf play. Kind of explains Tiger’s strategy the last few years of hitting the Majors and then just a handful of selected “other” tournaments.

The scandals for the faith-based global-warming community will start rolling in here in the by and by. Any religion that has been predicated upon manipulated science and academic thuggery and which is backed by the full faith and credit of your tax dollars should be a bonanza of latent scandalous behavior that like Tiger’s ladies, is just waiting for its fifteen minutes.

Some more of that old time religion

20 years on and its looking like another faith-based scandal-a-minute. Back in the late eighties it seemed like you couldn’t turn on the T.V. or pick up a news paper without hearing about another disgraced fat-cat preacher.

Not that turning on the T.V. or picking up a soon-to-be state-sponsored newspaper will do you any good in revealing the growing scandals in the faith-based global warming community – you have to rely on blogs for that. And worse, it’s not the unwashed mouth-breathers and senior shut-ins that are voluntarily parting ways with their jack to smooth-talking religious hucksters, it’s our involuntary tax “contributions” that are being committed to religious zealotry.

It seems there is yet another publicly-funded institution that is refusing to disclose its data regarding global warming. This, on the heels of the East Anglia (motley)CRU admitting that they destroyed all their original data.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

That’s your tax dollars at work, folks, spinning furiously to prop-up a false religion.

And here in California, it appears that the lead scientist on the California Air Resources Board which fashioned the economically ruinous AB 32 legislation has himself some resume’ problems.

On Dec. 12, the state Air Resources Board approved sweeping new rules governing diesel emissions, winning applause from environmentalists around the nation who said that once again California was blazing a path for the world.

Within days, however, a Union-Tribune editorial writer had confirmed allegations that Hien T. Tran -- the lead scientist and coordinator of the study used to justify the stringent new diesel regulations -- had falsely claimed to have a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of California Davis. ...

... air board spokesman Leo Kay said his agency would not explain what it was doing in the Tran matter because of state privacy laws. We consulted with Terry Francke of Californians Aware, one of the leading experts on the California Public Records Act. Francke said the air board was ignoring a long history of legal precedents requiring disclosure of disciplinary actions and investigative findings involving non-public safety public employees, as well as precedents requiring disclosure of such employees' occupational history and qualifications. Provided with Francke's legal citations, Kay had no further substantive comment. ...

... Air board Chairwoman Mary Nichols refuses to answer whether she was aware of the allegations about Tran before the Dec. 12 vote -- justifying her refusal with inventive interpretations of state law and the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Temple of Mut has a nice round-up of the negative impact of AB 32 and other CARB-related shenanigans which it calls Climategate’s “little sister in California”.

Of course they can do whatever the hell they want because the "science" is settled, right?

Temple of Mut has a nice round-up of the negative impact of AB 32 and other CARB-related shenanigans which it calls Climategate’s “little sister in California”.

Re-thinking the definition of "scientist"

The hits for the faith-based global warming crowd… they just keep on coming.

Damn, it’s going to take every fiber of self-restraint to keep from going full-tilt gloat on this.

No wonder our friends at East Anglia CRU (Climate Research Unit) have been so willing to (now) comply with Freedom of Information requests for their data – because it no longer exists.

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

We're not even scientists and we fully realize the perfidy of not maintaining original raw data.

Now were supposed to take the “scientists” word for it that the adjusted data was done without any malice, forethought or with respect to the advancement of any agenda? Fat chance.

Time to shut down Copenhagen. Time to stick a fork in cap and trade. Game over, you faith-based losers.

H/T: Hot Air and The Scratching Post

Big Media and Climategate

Article here in L.A. Times recounts how President Obama plans to attend the Copenhagen climate conference next month in hope of securing some meaningful commitments regarding reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Here’s how they describe the challenges the President faces:

Obama's attendance carries political risks at home, where his energy and climate bill has bogged down in the Senate behind health care. Republicans in particular are mindful of Obama's trip to Copenhagen earlier this year, when he lobbied unsuccessfully for Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Whaaa…? How it is that an article that addresses the hurdles facing the President to push through a climate change bill while not mentioning Climategate, which is certainly shaping up as the greatest scandal in the science field’s history, is unbelievable.

The New York Times reporting the same day on the same trip also fails to make any mention of Climategate. The New York Times’ enviro-blogger, Andrew Revkin, perhaps helps explain the Old Gray Lady’s refusal to engage in such inconveniences by stating that the emails were illegally obtained:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

Were the Times so fair-minded and judicious when it comes to matters of national security. But perhaps we are comparing apples to oranges as the Times extends exceptions for leakage on their pages to personal emails.

Unfortunately, the Times cannot even make that rationalization as they were only to willing to post screen shots of Sarah Palin’s hacked email Inbox last September during the presidential campaign.

If the political reality (read: coal dependent states) wasn’t enough to put the lid on the coffin of cap and trade legislation then Climategate probably nailed it shut – not that you would know any of that from Big Media who simply refuse to change in the face of their continuing death spiral.

H/T: NRO's Media Blog

P.S. KT has been all over the implications of, as he calls it, ClimaQuiddick and the faith-based AGW crowd. Click and scroll, baby, click and scroll.

How we stopped worrying and learned to love the unions

... well, for now at least.



How it is that the manufacturing sector unions in the U.S. might derail the economically ruinous climate change deal in Copenhagen?




Secular Apostate has the details here.

Hubris Pt. III

As a matter of fact, I am horrified when I contemplate climate engineering. Although there’s always been a gee-whiz part of me that likes big projects — in the 1980s I did a cover story for Esquire, “When Men Think Big,” about plans for the English-French Chunnel and less realistic plans for a super-fast subterranean train from New York to Los Angeles — I’ve also gotten a lot more skeptical of the practicality of grand schemes.

I shudder to imagine entrusting the global thermostat to the United Nations or some quasi-governmental agency (an entity that brings to my mind the U.S. Postal Service). I don’t trust today’s computer models to predict climate, much less tell us how to precisely control it. I don’t know how much the world will warm up, and I hope climate engineering won’t be necessary. As I noted, some scientists fear that artificially cooling the globe could lead to more drought and other disasters.

More here from the man who broke the New York Times Magazine record for hate mail.

It's Official...

GWDS... Global Warming Derangement Syndrome

Last year, an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was refusing to drink water. Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as the first known instance of "climate change delusion."

And possibly some sort of perverse strain of a Messiah complex, as well.

Hey, if we were doing Cold War-induced “duck and cover” drills early in our grade school career, what would be the appropriate 2nd grade response to global war… climate change these days? "Dehydration Day" every Wednesday?

This Vehicle Powered by Recycled Sanctimony

Spied this afternoon outside the Joan Kroc center. (click to enlarge)

UPDATE #1: Commentor 'Dawg passes along article here that suggests we were perhaps taking some chances with our safety with our nosy behaviour.

P.S. This artcle may have been sent to us previously via email or perhaps we saw it somewhere else on the interwebs, perhaps even in the Theocracy because it has a distinctly familiar feel. Let us know if were failing to give due credit and we will rectify the matter right quick.

If it's Good Enough for Grandma....

If you can’t make it to church this morning, don’t sweat it, BwD’s gotcha covered. Barack’s Traveling Medicine Show over at Trinity has a guest speaker this morning: Rev. Michael Pfleger with today’s message of hope, unity and reconciliation.



UPDATE #1: It appears that Obama has seen and heard enough. After nearly 20 years at Trinity, Camp Obama is severing ties with the church. Obama claimed that the divisive words of former pastor Jeremiah A. Wright did not reflect his views but rejected his leaving the church for political expediency because those mean, nasty reporters poring over all of the Trinity medicine show’s sermons were just making his attendance there one big political circus. Story here.

The New York Times does their best to soft-pedal the Trin’s rhetoric: “Trinity’s pastors preach an often fiery philosophy known as Black Liberation Theology. It is not a separatist philosophy, but it argues that the poor and oppressed occupy a special place in God’s eye. Ministers are expected to provoke and push.”

Hmmm… we didn’t ask but since they brought it up…

Here’s James Cone, the Godfather of Black Liberation Theology:

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

And here’s Wright himself from his book, “A Black Theology of Liberation”: "There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: 'How can we become black?'"

So the NYT is quite right in their assumption that BLT is not separatist but merely a socio-political construct that tailors a God to suit their agenda and asks white people to renounce their inherent racism and “go Black”. See…. Unity! Damn. No wonder self-hating white liberals love these guys.

UPDATE #2: Chicago: Is it the water..? Is it the air..? Something has to explain the lunacy that overtakes some people there. Father Pfleger offers an apology of sorts on his chuch’s webpage (and check out Black Jesus at the top of the website. There's only one Black Jesus as far as we're concerned). He’s sorry… He’s really, really sorry. In fact this whole unfortunate episode has been painful – more painful than the day his foster son was murdered. Unbelievable.

Newt's Triangle Offense

If you haven’t seen it, here is the ad for Al Gore’s group that has Newt Gingrich sitting down with Nancy Pelosi making nice over Global Warming/Climate Change (which from here on out will be referred to as “GW/CC”).



But at Newt’s website he appears to be singing a different tune:
“I completely understand why many of you would have questions about this, so I want to take this opportunity to explain my reasons. First of all, I want to be clear: I don't think that we have conclusive proof of global warming. And I don't think we have conclusive proof that humans are at the center of it.”

So what gives? As far as we can surmise, this is just Newt’s way of a well-intended and good faith effort to alter the course of a run-a-way freight train. Yeah, exactly. But at least he’ll always be able to claim he made an honest effort to get the true believers to at least acknowledge market-based green technological solutions and “way-aheads”.

We remain suspect, though. If he is truly skeptical of the GW/CC conventional wisdom then his stunt with the ad is disingenuous… and for a man for which we have a tremendous amount of respect, we wish he wouldn’t triangulate in this manner and simply, as WFB exhorted, stand athwart history and yell “stop”.

So why does it seem that GW/CC seems to attract the greatest amount of grandstanding? Why the headlong rush to get out in front of the GW/CC PR wave. It is because of this: GW/CC is the single largest issue out there where an abundance of activity can be hustled and bustled about without having any actual measurable consequences and which is completely risk-free AND which comes with it, free of charge, the advantage of the self-stroking that is part and parcel for “doing something” about GW/CC.

Well, there ARE measurables and there ARE consequences but those are highly deflectable. High food and fuel prices? Don’t blame ethanol – blame India and China’s huge and growing populations. Global Warming continues to rise and/or Climate Change becomes more volatile? Obviously, you are not doing enough or not pulling your share. Global warming subsides? See… we knew what we were doing all along.

After all, if you think coupling human activity to GW/CC is a dubious enterprise, then attempting to measure the positive benefits to GW/CC from “going green” becomes a mathematical impossibility.

What is there not too like about all that? How is this not a powerful elixir for politicians and celebrity activists alike?

Its too bad that one of the sharpest minds out there has apparently decided to start slugging back the pink liquid.

H/T: American Thinker