FLASH: Sun Makes Things Hot !!!

Some European scientists obviously haven't gotten the memo from Algore that they're to be treated as the equivalent of racists:

If Michael Crichton had lived to write a follow-up to State of Fear, the plotline might well have gone like this: at a top secret, state of the art laboratory in Switzerland, scientists finally discover the true cause of “global warming”. It’s the sun, stupid. More specifically – as the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark has long postulated – it’s the result of cosmic rays which act as a seed for cloud formation. The scientists working on the project are naturally euphoric: this is a major breakthrough which will not only overturn decades of misguided conjecture on so-called Man Made Global Warming but will spare the global economy trillions of dollars which might otherwise have been squandered on utterly pointless efforts to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions. However, these scientists have failed to realise just how many people – alarmist scientists, huckster politicians, rent-seeking landowners like (the late Michael Crichton’s brilliant and, of course, entirely fictional creation) the absurd, pompous Sir Reginald Leeds Bt, green activists, eco-fund managers, EU technocrats, MSM environmental correspondents – stand to gain from the Man Made “Climate Change” industry. Their discovery must be suppressed at all costs. So, one by one, the scientists on the cosmic ray project find themselves being bumped off, until only one man remains and must race against time to prove, etc, etc…

Except of course in the real world the second part wouldn’t happen. No one would need to go to the trouble of bumping off those pesky scientists with their awkward, annoying facts and their proper actual research. That’s because the MSM and the scientific “community” would find it perfectly easy to suppress the story anyway, without recourse to severed brake cables or ricin-impregnated hand-washes or staged “suicides”.

This is exactly what has happened with the latest revelations from CERN over its landmark CLOUD experiment...

[Read the whole thing]

My Comments:
Whenever "science" is described as "settled", leaving no room for scholarly disagreement and completely dispensing with the scientific method; whenever "science" comes packaged with a one-world authoritarian collectivist policy agenda that allows central planners to to do the same thing for environmental reasons under the guise of "Green" what they failed to do for socio-political-economic reasons under the guise of "Red"; whenever "science" comes complete with its own set of talking points that demonizes dissent and skepticism to the point of treating opponents as the equivalent of "racists" and bullying respected scientists into silent submission and/or unemployment: then that "science" is a complete load of bullshit of which we should not only be skeptical, but outraged at the fraud being perpetrated upon us.

The Debate Answer I Long to Hear

[Laughs good-naturedly in response to question] Well, I may not have served in the Obama Administration or appeared in the pages of Vogue magazine, but I don't think those are necessarily valid measures of "sophistication" or "intelligence", either. [Looks gravely into the camera] Look, it's not a matter of "believes" or "doesn't believe" in a scientific theory that, quite honestly, a whole lot of people are skeptical about, and rightly so, given the fact that the earth has heated and cooled all on its own - without any help from humans - for millenia. What this is about is that, in one of the worst economies in our nation's history, with millions of folks unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, it just doesn't make sense to implement the sort of policy schemes supported by Ambassador Huntsman and President Obama that will devastate our already fragile economy, throw even more people out of work, and raise the costs of heating and cooling our homes and driving our cars beyond what people can afford.

So, the question is not whether I quote/unquote "believe" in science the way some folks around here seem to treat it like some sort of religion, but rather why Ambassador Huntsman and President Obama and those like them, who seek to impose their catastrophic tax and cap regulatory schemes that will only further devastate our economy, seem so unconcerned about the working families of this country on whom their policies will most heavily fall. I'm for putting America BACK to work, not breaking our backs economically to futher some environmentalist dogma.

THIS is Why No One Likes Greenies

Just when you thought the environuts couldn't get any more insufferable:

[...]

Hybrids Trump Handicapped At Liquor Store

In order to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, Nashua’s new 20,000-square foot liquor store, which is owned and operated by the state, was “built with solar panels, geo-thermal heating and cooling systems, local building materials and recycled products.”

The problem? It was also designed with reserved parking spaces right in front of the door. Not for the handicapped, though—they had those, too, but they were further down. Who got the primo spots? Low emission and hybrid cars, of course!

[...]

See, I frequently get accused of hating the environment in a most un-christian way, but this is not fair. I actually love the natural world, and my family’s lifestyle is amazingly green. No, really all I hate is professional environmentalists, because of the way they are jerks.

The sheer moronitude of the environmental planning board’s decision boggles the mind. First, how did they not realize how much outrage it would generate? It’s a policy just begging for inflammatory headlines. I’m imagining the environmentalists putting their heads together, realizing that ideas like forced sterilizations make them kind of unpopular. “I know!” says one stringy fellow in hemp biking shorts. “We need a new message, to make our ideas more palatable. How does this strike you:’Nyah, nyah, cripples—we got here first!’ ”

[Read the whole thing]

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "The Earth Is Full"

How long before China's chief cheerleader in the West, the New York Times' Thomas Friedman, calls for a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy for the entire world?

... “In China’s thousands of years of civilization, the conflict between humankind and nature has never been as serious as it is today,” China’s environment minister, Zhou Shengxian, said recently. “The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation’s economic and social development.” What China’s minister is telling us, says Gilding, is that “the Earth is full. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact.”

We will not change systems, though, without a crisis. But don’t worry, we’re getting there.

We’re currently caught in two loops: One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability. At the same time, improved productivity means fewer people are needed in every factory to produce more stuff. So if we want to have more jobs, we need more factories. More factories making more stuff make more global warming, and that is where the two loops meet...

[More]

Heck, for all I know, given Friedman's crush on all things ChiCom, he's probably already suggested a U.N.-mandated 1-child policy.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Hypocritical Malthusian Nonsense: Father of 5, Ted Turner, Wants U.N. to Institute World-Wide 1-Child Policy

Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Hypocritical Malthusian Nonsense: Father of 5, Ted Turner, Wants U.N. to Institute World-Wide 1-Child Policy

The former Mr. Jane Fonda, Ted Turner — father of five — thinks there's too many of thee, but obviously not enough of he:

Climate change and population control can make for a politically explosive mix, as media mogul Ted Turner demonstrated Sunday when he urged world leaders to institute a global one-child policy to save the Earth’s environment.

[...]

Mr. Turner – a long-time advocate of population control – said the environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.

“If we’re going to be here [as a species] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” Mr. Turner said.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson warned that radical prescriptions for population control would backfire, ensuring that the subject will remain off the agenda of international climate talks.

“If we do it the wrong way, we can divide the world,” Ms. Robinson said. “A lot of people in the climate world could communicate this very badly.”

China boasts that its controversial one-child policy has helped limit emissions growth in that rapidly industrializing country. At the Copenhagen climate summit last year, national planning official Zhao Baige said Chinese population policy has resulted in 400 million fewer births since 1979, with a population that now stands at 1.3 billion. The lower birth rate converts to a reduction of 1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, Ms. Zhao said.

But critics contend it has not only interfered with reproductive choice, but contributed to high levels of female infanticide and abortions.

[More]

My Comments:
"Former Irish president Mary Robinson warned that radical prescriptions for population control would backfire, ensuring that the subject will remain off the agenda of international climate talks."

I believe that's the first time I've ever found myself agreeing with something Mary Robinson said.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Anti-Carbon "10:10 Campaign" is Confirmation of the Global Alarmists' "Inhuman Agenda"

Not too long ago, Joe Hargrave wrote about the "inhuman agenda" behind the fight against so-called global climate change. Some among the usual suspects scoffed at Joe's description.

Need more proof that Joe's assessment is 100% correct? Here it is:





Yeah, "no pressure". None whatsoever. Conform to the alarmist agenda, or die. That is all.

Hard to believe, but Alan Grayson's theatrics are tame by comparison.

Man vs. Nature: the Inhuman Agenda Behind the Fight Against “Climate Change”

At Inside Catholic, Joe Hargrave writes on the Malthusian assumptions underpinning current efforts to curb carbon emissions blamed for causing "climate change":

... One year ago, a study conducted by Oregon State University concluded that "having one less child" would be the best way for a family in the United States to reduce their impact on the environment, even more so than all of the energy-efficient cars and appliances that they could use in a lifetime. But it is the researchers at the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) at the London School of Economics who consistently make strident arguments for population reduction as the most effective way of combating global warming.

Their decision to look directly at how contraception would affect carbon emissions should be unnerving enough for Catholics: For every $6.63 spent on birth control, it would cost $31.48 to reduce carbon emissions with low-carbon technology by the same amount, in their estimation. But it is the shift in language that we ought to find more disconcerting. To quote the chairman of the OPT: "It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions." Is this how we are to be seen by those who have arrogated to themselves the task of rescuing the planet? As "emitters"?

Those who think that the very question is alarmist would do well to consider the praise some of our Western intellectuals offer the Chinese population-control regime, which includes regimented family size as well as forced abortions and sterilizations. At the Copenhagen summit last year, Chinese officials proclaimed that, due to such policies, "China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year." Of course, the majority of those prevented births were not caused by forced abortion; rather, they are largely attributable to the fact that the Chinese government has promoted contraception to the point that "85 percent of the Chinese women in reproductive age use contraceptives, the highest rate in the world."

Around the same time, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman expressed his admiration for the Chinese authoritarian regime, lauding it as "a reasonably enlightened group of people" that can, without any checks or balances, impose whatever policies it sees fit "to move a society forward in the 21st century." While this did not directly praise China's population-control measures, a column in the Financial Post by Diane Francis caused quite a controversy for doing exactly that. In the midst of her alarmist screed forecasting the immanent doom of the planet if governments did not take sharp measures to reduce the population, she identified the main obstacle to this goal: "Leaders of the world's big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control."

Used in this pejorative sense, there is of course nothing "fundamentalist" about the largest religious organization on the planet that also happens to preach these unpopular ideas with the most resolve: the Catholic Church. But there is something quite fundamental about the Church's teaching on the sanctity of human life and the true purpose of sexuality. In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II wrote that, "to defend and promote life, to show reverence and love for it, is a task which God entrusts to every man, calling him as his living image to share in his own lordship over the world" (42). In bringing new life into the world, men and women take part in "a certain special participation" of spouses in the "creative work of God" (43)...

[Read the whole thing]

(Hat tip: The American Catholic)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
National Academy of Sciences Plots Attacks on AGW Skeptics [UPDATED]

Political Accountability for Scientific Arrogance

Another American Media Failure

World May Not be Warming, Say Scientists

Nope, No Reason for Skepticism Whatsoever

What the One-Child Policy Has Wrought

Baby-Hating Malthusian Nonsense Goes Mainstream at Copenhagen

Sen. Inhofe Sticks Fork in Global Alarming Hysterics

BBC Asks "What Happened to Global Warming?"

China Begins to "Figure it Out" on Demographics

Obama Culture of Death Update™: President's "Science Czar" Supports Forced Population Control Measures [UPDATED]

UK Government Official Says Having More Than 2 Children "Irresponsible"; Catholics Respond

Rich Leonardi on the "Obnoxiousness" of the Concept of "Carbon Footprints"

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: "Save the Planet — Have Fewer Kids"

Deacon Fournier Reviews Population Controllers

Malthusian Nonsense Alert: Babies a Drag on the Economy, Report Says

Darwin Catholic: "Want Sustainable? Try a Family"

Malthusian Nonsense in the Extreme: "When Should You Die?"

Population Control Movement is "Number One Violator of Human Rights," Author Claims

USAToday Columnist: Religion is Killing the Planet

The Pitter-Patter of Carbon Footprints ...

Cardinal Pell Criticizes Australian Medical Ass'n for Publishing Letter Advocating Carbon Tax on Children

Professor Solves Global Warming: Let’s Tax Reproduction

Global Alarming Update: Focus on So-Called "Carbon Footprint" Anti-Family

Malthusian Nonsense from "Global Warming" Alarmists

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming Alarmists: "Scaremongers" and "Zealots"

Actor Jeremy Irons: “One Always Returns to the Fact That There Are Just Too Many of Us”

Guy with 7 mansions and a pink castle rants about "consumption", "sustainability" and "overpopulation":

The world is becoming so overpopulated that nature will one day wreak its revenge, claims Jeremy Irons, the actor.

Launching himself as a green campaigner, Irons has revealed plans to make a documentary about sustainability and waste disposal, likening himself to Michael Moore, the controversial film maker, although “not as silly”.

The increasing global population would put an intolerable strain on the world’s resources, Irons said, and the gulf between developing countries and westerners living a bountiful “pie-in-the-sky” existence must be addressed.

“One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it’s unsustainable,” [ED.: "One" does, huh?] he said in an interview with The Sunday Times. “I think we have to find ways where we’re not having to scrap our effluent junk and are a really sustainable planet.”

[...]

In a film on the website 1billionhungry.org, Irons declares: “People around the world suffer hunger — 1 billion. Now that’s bad, worse than bad, that’s crazy! We’ve got to get mad. I want you to get mad. I want you to get up right now, stick your head out of the window and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell’.”

Irons, who owns seven houses, including a pink castle in Co Cork, Ireland, believes a new economic vision is needed in the wake of the global financial crisis. “We are facing an economic revolution,” he said. “I don’t think things can ever be the same again. The next generation will have to think laterally and find ways to cope with this.”

He dismissed the idea that a recovery in consumption would help Britain out of recession: “You walk down the high street and it’s just clothes, clothes, clothes. How many clothes do people need? [ED.: Asks the guy with 7 houses and a pink castle. "One" might very well ask: "How many houses do self-important, bloviating, pseudo-sophisticate actors need?] We’re on a hiding to nothing with that.

“We’ve always known the City was a bubble. We can’t continue to divide the world between people who live a pie-in-the-sky life [ED.: You mean, for instance, like some guy owning 7 mansions and a pink castle?] and people who are starving.”

Irons, who says he runs “very old motor cars” including a 13-year-old Range Rover, also launched an attack on today’s throwaway society. “Why does it make sense for us all to be buying a lot of motor cars [ED.: or houses?], selling our old ones and scrapping them? [ED.: Ah, I get it. You're not selling or scrapping your houses; you're accumulating on to them.] Why don’t we make cars that last for 40 years? We could,” he said.

[More]

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)

My Comments:
Actors ... is there anything they don't know?

Algore Offers Words of Encouragement to College Graduates

So uplifting.

Inside Catholic: "Shroud Skeptics Bump against Science" [UPDATED]

An interesting post on the Shroud of Turin at Inside Catholic:

...Experts in many disciplines have added to the growing body of knowledge about the Shroud of Turin: Physicians, historians, botanists, chemists, artists, anthropologists, physicists, textile consultants, and photographers. Their collective assessment is that, while we do not know how the image was made, we do know how it was not made. The confounding of science thus far forces a certain respect for the artifact, whatever one believes it to be: a holy relic, a pious work of art, a 14th-century hoax...

[More]

Incidentally, I recently watched an excellent History Channel documentary titled "The Real Face of Jesus?", which "follows a team of graphic experts as they use cutting-edge 3D software to bring a holy relic known as the Shroud of Turin to life".

It was a very sympathetic portrayal of the Shroud as quite possibly being authentic. Apart from a weird and completely unnecessary tangent the program takes regarding 1st and 2nd century Gnosticism, this documentary is one I can highly recommend.


Promotional images from the History Channel special, "The Real Face of Jesus?"


UPDATE
Let me just say that, if the image on the Shroud truly is that of Jesus, the 3D image that the software engineer created is surely the most accurate depiction of what our Lord actually looked like that will ever be produced. For me, the most interesting part of the program was when the researchers took a bust of Christ that was produced from the 3D image and placed it over a document scanner to produce an almost-identical replica of the face on the Shroud.

I was also pretty amazed to see the uncanny likeness of the computerized 3D image the researchers created to the portrayal of Christ by Jim Caveziel in "The Passion of the Christ".


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
USAToday on NBC, the Turin Olympics, and the Shroud (or Lack Thereof)

USAToday: NBC Chooses to Keep the Faith Out of Olympics — For Now

Mention of Shroud Absent From Turin Olympics Opening Ceremonies

Holy or Hoax, Shroud Still a Draw

One Reporter's Futile Attempt to See the Shroud of Turin

Criterion Online Provides "Olympic Coverage With a Catholic Twist"

Shroud of Turin Would Outdraw Winter Olympics

Before the Olympics, Turin Had the Shroud

What I'm REALLY Looking Forward To During the Turin (Torino) Olympics ...

How I Know It's Lent

Something happens every year at this time to remind me that we are officially in the season of Lent and fast (no pun intended) approaching the Church's holiest feast of Easter.

It's not the ashes Father smeared on my forehead a few weeks ago. It's not the purple vestments and altar cloth. It's not even the ubiquitous fish fries hosted every Friday by various local councils of the Knights of Columbus or Ancient Order of Hibernians.

No, the liturgical season is announced with fanfare each and every year by the appearance of sensationalist stories like this.


(Hat tip: Cranky Con)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this story:
The Easter "Hit" Parade

Discovery Channel Cancels Jesus Tomb Mockumentary

A Dominican Priest's Take on the Jesus Burial Site Mockumentary

Humor and the Mockumentary

Archaeologist Who Discovered Jerusalem Gravesite Casts Doubt on Jesus Mockumentary

Jesus Seminar Relic Lends His "Credibility" to Purported Jesus Relics

I'm Sorta Shocked ...

BREAKING: Jesus’ Burial Site Found - Film Claims

National Academy of Sciences Plots Attacks on AGW Skeptics [UPDATED]

Ed Morrissey reports:

... Today, an American newspaper breaks news of yet another scandal involving AGW scientists and e-mail — but this time here in the US. The Washington Times obtained e-mails sent through the National Academy of Sciences that show AGW scientists conspiring to attack critics:

Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.

In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of “being treated like political pawns” and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.

“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Some scientists question the tactic and say they should focus instead on perfecting their science, but the researchers who are organizing the effort say the political battle is eroding confidence in their work.

Perhaps the scientists should concentrate more on science than advocacy. In fact, that was the conclusion of several people in the e-mail chain, warning against getting into a big public-relations battle when the supposedly “settled science” of the IPCC has all but utterly collapsed. Even if one is inclined to the most paranoid possible perspective on the meltdown, a $50,000 back-page ad in the New York Times will hardly offset all of the negative publicity that AGW scientists have managed to create on their own.

And besides, a $50,000 back-page ad in the New York Times isn’t going to reach people inclined towards skepticism on AGW anyway. Do these scientists realize who reads the Gray Lady? The only people impressed by an ad in the NYT will be the Times’ business office...

[Read the whole thing]

UPDATE
I knew Paul Ehrlich's name rang a bell. See Ed's update to his post:

... Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, which also included this interesting advice for governments of the future: that they should put “temporary sterilants” in the water supply and then closely regulate the antidote in order to choose who could reproduce and when. If he’s the leading light of AGW theory, that explains (a) why it’s not science-based at all but rather a screen for statist control, and (b) why it’s collapsing as a science.

As this blogger puts it, "Paul Ehrlich is one of the most discredited pseudo-scientific alarmists of all time." Yep.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Political Accountability for Scientific Arrogance

Another American Media Failure

World May Not be Warming, Say Scientists

Nope, No Reason for Skepticism Whatsoever

Sen. Inhofe Sticks Fork in Global Alarming Hysterics

BBC Asks "What Happened to Global Warming?"

Political Accountability for Scientific Arrogance

Joe Hargrave hits a home run in this post about the "science" behind Global Alarming:

... The next thing they ought to do is apologize to the entire planet in general, and the skeptics in particular, for all of the nasty and libelous things that they said about them. It turns out after all that we were not “crazy”, “insane”, “naive”, “bought off” or any of the other things that were said about us; we were right all along, to a far greater extent than they ever were willing to admit, and the whole time they knew it but thought that they could bully their critics into silence with insults and by stonewalling. Now that they’ve failed, and admitted that they were at fault, it is also time for them to apologize for their arrogance.

Finally, its time we all learn a lesson about life in a democratic society: legitimacy is derived from the consent of the governed, especially when a massive global agenda of taxes and regulations that could affect millions of jobs and cause an unknowable number of unforeseen consequences is on the order of the day. If as a scientist you are claiming that human activity is killing the planet, and politicians are using your claims to rationalize power-grabs unprecedented in their size and scope, you have an absolute moral obligation to make all of your methods, data, and results down to the most minute detail known to the entire planet. It isn’t about allowing public opinion to dictate scientific results, but allowing citizens and policymakers to have a clear and truthful picture of the objective situation.

We cannot be asked to make major sacrifices on the basis of blind trust; that’s just fundamentalism, whether we’re talking about religion or science. After all, it isn’t as if science is never wrong, never revised, never changing, or as if scientists themselves were not human beings subject to human problems. Reason tells us that for these reasons and more, we have every right to be cautious and even skeptical when listening to scientific claims with vast political implications. We have every right to demand transparency and openness, perhaps in a way we wouldn’t demand when the topic is something mundane. But this is the kind of wisdom that must come from outside of science itself.

In general, but most especially when the political stakes are this high, we must have as much certainty and accuracy as possible when we move from the scientific stage to the political stage. This has nothing to do with “denial” - this is about the people of the world being able to decide their own fate, and not have it decided for them. That’s what it means to live in a democracy. We must also remember that the truths that the American founders believed were “self-evident” were not establish by data sets, but through philosophical, religious and historical wisdom...

My Comments:
There goes Joe again, being all "anti-science" and stuff. Good on him.

Argentine Family Reduces Its "Carbon Footprint" ... But Not by as Much as It Had Wanted

Gateway Pundit reports:

A seven-month old baby girl survived a shot to the chest after her parents shot themselves and their two-year-old in a global warming murder-suicide pact... Someone should sue Al Gore. He played on their fears and now a whole family is dead.

[More]

Another American Media Failure

Ed Morrissey compares the American media mea culpas over failing to investigate the Bush Administration claims of Iraqi WMDs to the lack of mea culpas over the MSM failure to do due diligence regarding the so-called "science" behind claims of global warming:

In the years after the the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent failure to find WMD, the American media flagellated itself publicly over its lack of skepticism of Bush administration cassus belli claims. We endured reams of essays about the supine nature of the corporate-owned media, the supposed disinformation campaign of the White House, the “lies” on WMD claims (that had also been made by Democrats in Congress from 1998 until the invasion), and so on. To this day, the American media still considers their self-described blind acceptance of claims about intelligence without sufficient investigation as an indictment on their industry — and a consequence of the Internet-driven changes to the media market.

[...]

Unfortunately, US journalists have missed a grand opportunity to demonstrate that it learned a lesson about swallowing a story from the government without question, if indeed that is what happened in 2002 on Iraq. We know this because their colleagues across the pond in the United Kingdom have not missed the chance to speak a little truth to power, both in their own government and to multilateral organizations that issued faulty analyses, false data, bad research, and hysterical demands for action.

[...]

The Australian and British press have eaten the American media’s lunch on the collapse of credibility at the IPCC and in the anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) movement. In the past four months, media outlets like the Times of London, the Telegraph, the Australian Herald-Sun, and even the Left-leaning paper The Guardian have broken important stories (along with bloggers) exposing the fraud, mismanagement, and unscientific behavior of the core group of AGW advocates, such as:

University of East Anglia e-mails that exposed data destruction, attempts to hide contradictory data, and conspiracies to sabotage the work of skeptical scientists

The East Anglia CRU threw out their raw data, undermining any effort to check their work

NOAA/GHCN “homogenization” falsified climate declines into increases

East Anglia CRU’s below-standard computer modeling

No rise in atmospheric carbon fraction over the last 150 years: University of Bristol

IPCC withdraws claim that AGW will wipe out Himalayan glaciers by 2035

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri knew Himalayan claim was bogus for months before exposure

Amazonian rainforest conclusions not based on scientific research but on advocacy group claims

Mountain glacier claims based on unsubstantiated student theses and anecdotes from climber magazine

Search of IPCC report footnotes exposes ten more student dissertations presented as peer-reviewed research

Medieval Warming Period temperatures may have been global, undermining entire AGW case

Measurements used for AGW case were influenced by urbanization, poor location, bad data sets

African-crop claims exposed as false

IPCC researchers excluded Southern Hemisphere data to exaggerate effects of warming on hurricanes

Hurricane claims further exposed as false by actual peer-reviewed research — including by some AGW researchers

Major scientific group concludes IPCC-linked researchers “complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices“

None of these — none — were exposed by a major American media outlet. The efforts of the American press, with a couple of rare exceptions such as the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal, have mainly been to play down the significance of every revelation and to emphasize their view of scientific AGW “consensus.” When the Washington Post finally got around to reporting on the East Anglia scandal, it provided only a straightforward but superficial recounting of the journalism done in the UK and Australia. The New York Times didn’t even bother to do that much, saying that the collapse of the basis of Obama administration policy didn’t amount to a “three-alarm story.”

[More]

Bernie Sanders Says Climate Change Skeptics Remind Him of Nazi Appeasers

The U.S. Senate's only socialist member (at least he's the only one who will own up to being one), Bernie Sanders of the People's Republic of Vermont, says climate change skeptics remind him of those who denied the Nazis were a threat:

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is comparing climate change skeptics to those who disregarded the Nazi threat to America in the 1930s, adding a strident rhetorical shot to the already volatile debate over climate change.

"It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s," said Sanders, perhaps the most liberal member of the Senate, during a Senate hearing Tuesday. "During that period of Nazism and fascism's growth-a real danger to the United States and democratic countries around the world- there were people in this country and in the British parliament who said 'don't worry! Hitler's not real! It'll disappear!"

Sanders’ reference to the Nazi threat is sure to enrage Republicans who are already skeptical of the science behind climate change. But Sanders wasn't the only one throwing bombs at a hearing that was ostensibly about the EPA's fiscal 2011 budget. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has called global warming a "hoax," is asking for an investigation into the science used in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the governing body on climate science.

Earlier in the hearing, Inhofe had chided Sanders: "I know the senator from Vermont wants so badly to believe that the science on climate change is settled but it's not."

[Read more]

My Comments:
That's all right, Bernie, because the climate change proponents, their tactics, and their policy preferences seem to me to bear a remarkable resemblance to the Soviet-era Stalinists.

World May Not be Warming, Say Scientists

Heh!

And heh, again.

But, you know, I'm just "anti-science" and a "denier".


UPDATE (16 February)

(Language Warning)

"The Gore Effect" Strikes Again

"The Gore Effect" is a well-documented phenomenon. In fact, "The Gore Effect" is probably a much more accurate prediction of weather and climate patterns than is the global warming "science" that Al Gore has spent the better part of 2 decades pimping.


Well, it seems "The Gore Effect" has struck again:

As D.C. continued to dig out from Snowmageddon and is keeping an eye on another storm system, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was busy making a climate change announcement.

NOAA, part of the Department of Commerce, is going to be providing information to individuals and decision-makers through a new NOAA Climate Service office. “More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives,” the release says.

Earlier snowmelt? That would be nice.

Turns out the release was planned prepared ahead of the snowstorm, which shut federal agencies today and forced its senders to hold a press conference by telephone instead of at the National Press Club.

LOL!

Nope, No Reason for Skepticism Whatsoever

Global alarming hysteria based more in agenda-driven politics than in sound scientific research? Surely not.

First, read this post by Joe Hargrave at The American Catholic:

How many more lies and frauds will the IPCC have to perpetrate on the entire world before we’re allowed to reject it’s scare-mongering without being ridiculed as “deniers” by their blind followers?

[...]

It makes you wonder how accurate other reports dismissed as “voodoo science” might turn out to be if they were given a fair hearing. This is politics, not science.

[More]

Then, read this post by Ed Morrissey at HotAir:

The UN’s team on climate change, the IPCC, has had a rather bad few months. First came the uncovered e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, a key research organization for the IPCC, that showed deception and professional character assassination by so-called scientists attempting to block data and analyses that contradicted the CRU conclusions on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Next, a scandal hit closer to home when the IPCC’s reliance on a theory of dissipating Himalyan glaciers turned out to be unscientific speculation — that the IPCC badly misquoted anyway. Now the Telegraph’s James Delingpole reports that another key claim by the IPCC also comes from non-peer-reviewed work by scientists operating out of their field of work:

Here’s the latest development, courtesy of Dr Richard North – and it’s a cracker. It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest...

[...]

How did the IPCC come to include this claim in its report to the UN? Supposedly, all of the underlying data is supposed to be peer-reviewed, legitimate research by professional scientists and not advocates. Yet within nine days we have seen two of its major claims turn out to be anecdotal speculation based on nothing at all. It goes right along with those Himalayan glaciers that were supposedly going to disappear within 25 years — at best, speculation that the IPCC falsely presented as scientific research, and likely a large load of carbon-rich effluvium.

[More]

Irony: Blizzard Dumps Snow on "Global Warming" Conference

Heh:

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”

Delegates from 193 countries have been in Copenhagen since Dec. 7 to discuss how to fund global greenhouse gas emission cuts. U.S. President Barack Obama will arrive before the summit is scheduled to end tomorrow.

Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).

DMI defines a white Christmas as 90 percent of the country being covered by at least 2 centimeters of snow on the afternoon of Dec. 24.

(Hat tip: Ed Morrissey)