Will Al Gore Be Sued for Fraud?

The science behind Global Warming looks less and less "settled" every day.

The idea of exposing the lies behind global warmingin courtrooms is catching on in the U.S. also. John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, published an article in ICECAP last year in which he called global warming the greatest scam in history. Coleman added, “[S]ome dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long-term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the ‘research’ to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.” Coleman didn’t stop there. On March 3, while attending the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York he said the following: “I have a feeling this is the opening. If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits, that includes Al Gore – that lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the witness stand and testified, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.” Well, it worked in Britain.

The ICECAP article referred to above is here.

Warner-Lieberman Bill May Die - That's a Good Thing

I certainly hope this news is true. The Warner-Lieberman cap and trade bill for carbon is an economy killer that will raise energy prices and have no impact whatsoever on the climate. It will benefit a very few companies that have become very adept at rent-seeking.

"Businesses supporting Lieberman-Warner stand to profit from clean-energy or energy-efficiency iniatitives. GE, for instance, sells wind turbines, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and energy-efficient locomotives and aircraft engines. Just this week, GE and the oil-field services firm Schlumberger announced plans to work together on clean-coal technology.

Utility companies Exelon, FPL Group, NRG Energy and PG&E Corp., which signed a letter supporting the bill, are developing nuclear energy, wind or solar power, or so-called clean-coal plants. They would gain as the costs of burning coal in conventional plans goes up. About 50% of electricity in the United States comes from burning coal."

They are merely trying to hobble their competitors at our expense. (Full disclosure: I am particularly upset with GE because I own stock in that company. I am what I call a refuGE, I used to work there). The media have completely bought into the faulty premise that carbon dioxide causes global warming, as evidenced by this passage from the article: " ...Companies would need permits to emit pollutants that cause global warming."

No one has even established correllation, let alone causation and global average temperature peaked a decade ago. In fact, this past Winter saw global cooling that wiped out all of the temperature gains of the last century. The most telling part of the article is this:

""I believe in cap and trade. I believe we ought to put a price on carbon," [Duke Energy CEO] Rogers says. But senators who want to auction permits, and then use the money for a variety of projects - ranging from deficit reduction to water projects to job training - threaten to turn the climate-change bill into the "ultimate in earmarking.""

Once again, this legislation is not about what's good for the Earth, or for the US economy. It's another opportunity for the Congress to pass a huge tax increase by the back door and acquire even more power by redistribution of the spoils to their favored constituencies (who are not likely to be the voters).

Update: More on correlation of CO2 and temperature here.

Obama Says Experience Not Necessary - Judgment Enough

Kimberly Strassel's weekly Potomac Watch column in the Wall Street Journal points to a claim frequently made by Barack Obama that his superior judgement makes up for his lack of experience;

"And so it goes, as Mr. Obama shifts and shambles, all the while telling audiences that when voting for president they should look beyond "experience" to "judgment." In this case, whatever his particular judgment on Iran is on any particular day."

It reminds me of an old adage, attributed by many to Jim Horning: "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." Horning modestly disavows coming up with this himself, pointing to a Sufi sage, Mulla Nasrudin. Whoever came up with it, it's spot-on

Things Get Dangerous Over at Tim Blair's New Site.....

....according to this post at his old one. Moderator Tran sounds like a force to be reckoned with.

But Tran is absolutely terrifying. The other day, down in the moderation pit, he got into a fight with one of Joe Hildebrand’s night shift moderators over possessive apostrophes. The ambulance guys said they’d never before seen such elaborate knife wounds.

Thing is, Tran was armed only with a thesaurus. Sharpened, admittedly, but still just a thesaurus.

I hope I got that possessive apostrophe in the post title right. I shudder to think what Tran might do to me if I didn't...........

Obama the Self-Absorbed Adolescent

Mark Steyn's column in this week's Orange County Register really rips the Democrats and Obama in particular for objecting to Presidnet Bush's speech to the Knesset on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel. One particular passage appears to have particularly irked them. Even though the speech makes no reference to any living Democrat Obama has decided it's all about him. Isn't that just like an adolescent to think that everythng is all about him? As usual, Steyn nails it:

"Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here's what the president said:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't – or, to be more precise, he wasn't talking only about you

In fact the senator who uttered those words in 1939 was William Borah of Idaho, a Republican. The Democrats should really take to heart the old adage; "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." Plus, it's harder to get your foot in there when your piehole is shut.

Read the whole thing, of course.

Tim Blair Has a New Home....

....at the Daily Telegraph and a great Global Warmening post in the form of a letter from climate researcher David Archibald. The Global Warm-mongers won't like this:

"John Connor of The Climate Institute says that my boat, my car and I are destroying the environment. My work says the opposite. The more carbon dioxide you put into the atmosphere, the more you are helping all plants on the planet to grow, and of course that makes you a better person. Virtue is in direct proportion to your carbon dioxide output. What of the temperature, you ask? Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but the effect is strongly logarithmic. The first 20 ppm achieves 1.5 degrees of heating, but it takes more than another 400 ppm to equal that. By the time we get to the current level of 384 ppm, carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas. From here, every 100 ppm extra may be worth 0.1 of a degree.

So how does the IPCC achieve 5 degrees of heating from a doubling of the pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide to 560 ppm? They do it by cheating. Their computer models are written so that a little bit of carbon dioxide-caused heating puts more water vapour in the air. Water vapour is the major greenhouse gas, so they have the heating compounding away until they get a number that will melt icecaps, kill polar bears and all the other effects of their apocalyptic visions. Their view of the Earth’s climate is that it is tremendously unstable, prone to thermal runaway at the slightest provocation. In fact it is the opposite, a buffered system that dampens disturbances. Tropical seas can’t get warmer than 31 degrees because they start evaporating too rapidly to get any hotter. Similarly, high level tropical clouds part to vent radiation to space. The Earth is just about perfect for sustaining equable living conditions over a good proportion of its surface."

Read the whole thing of course.

Weimar Canada?

If you've been following the spectacle of various Canada's Human Rights Commission's (functional equivalent of the Thought Police) inquisitions "prosecutions" of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, you'll love Steyns latest salvo.

(via Overlawyered)

The Price of Rice....

.....is definitely on the rise. We went to Lee Lee Market, our local Asian grocery store where we do a lot of our shopping today. There is no shortage of rice here but since I last bought a bag of the Double Horse brand Thai jasmine rice that we use, the price has risen from $14.99 for a 25lb bag to $19.99. It was only a month or so ago that I last bought it. The reason there is no shortage here is that the marketplace has curtailed demand by increasing the price. That's OK for me because I can afford the increase but for someone for whom rice is a staple part of his diet, or corn, this is a serious problem.

The solution to this is to reverse the market-distorting government mandates and subsidies that are making it more attractive to turn food into a fuel that very few vehicles can use than it is to make sure people can afford to eat.

Mark Steyn on unintended (but entirely predictable) consequences

(via Tim Blair) I've blogged before on some of the unintended consequences of attempting to "save" the environment. Mark Steyn has an article in the National Review Online that, as usual, puts it into perspective far better than I ever could:

Unlike “global warming,” food rioting is a planet-wide phenomenon, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Ivory Coast to the tortilla rampages in Mexico and even pasta protests in Italy.So what happened?

Well, Western governments listened to the eco-warriors, and introduced some of the “wartime measures” they’ve been urging. The EU decreed that 5.75 percent of petrol and diesel must come from “biofuels” by 2010, rising to 10 percent by 2020. The U.S.
added to its 51 cents-per-gallon ethanol subsidy by mandating a five-fold increase in “biofuels” production by 2022.

The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you’ve suddenly got less to eat? Or, to be more precise, it’s not “you” who’s got less to eat but those starving peasants in distant lands you claim to care so much about.

And it isn't just the cost of our food that is going up as a result of this idiotic policy. It's the cost of our fuel as well. Read the whole thing of course.

Recommendation: Excellent Bluetooth Headset

I don't spend a lot of time chatting on my cellphone and I especially don't like to use it when I'm driving, even if I am hands-free. It's not what you are doing with your hands that's the problem, it's what you are doing with your brain. However, there are times when it is necessary to have a brief conversation and anything that makes it easier to expedite it is welcome.

A month or so ago I bought an Aliph Jawbone bluetooth headset on the recommendation of a friend. It's distinguishing feature is a noise cancellation circuit. In a noisy enviroment such as a car, or even the waiting area at an airport gate, the noise cancellation feature takes out most of the background noise, both for you and the person at the other end of the call. The friend who recommended it to me would call from an airport and I could hear nothing but him, loud and clear. In addition to the noise cancellation technology, the headset features several interchangeable earpieces, so you can get a custom fit to your ear, and four additional ear loops, two for each ear, so the headset will hang over your ear and stay snugly in place, whichever side you prefer to wear it on. I bought mine at Amazon at a discount of roughly 50% from list and at least 30% from what I saw it selling for at a local store. I highly recommend it to anyone who has to spend any time talking on a cellphone. Here's the link to Amazon. Go check it out for yourself.

The Climate Change Debate Is Not Over......

....It's just being stifled.

"Tabletop, it turns out, has another name: Kim Dabelstein Petersen. She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia. What does she edit? Reams and reams of global warming pages. I started checking them. In every instance I checked, she defended those warning of catastrophe and deprecated those who believe the science is not settled. I investigated further. Others had tried to correct her interpretations and had the same experience as I -- no sooner did they make their corrections than she pounced, preventing Wikipedia readers from reading anyone's views but her own. When they protested plaintively, she wore them down and snuffed them out."

Rachel Lucas Feels the Pain

Rachel is doing her taxes. It hurts. I can suggest a cure for her pain.

(Via Instapundit)

Htichens on Hillary and Her Lying Habit

Writing at Slate.com, Christopher Hitchens makes the case for why Hillary Clinton's penchant for lying should disqualify her from the presidency. In this particular instance he cites her claim about landing under fire in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996:

"...........it would be quite impossible to imagine that one had undergone that experience at the airport if one actually had not. Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above. Any of the foregoing would constitute a disqualification for the presidency of the United States."

The sheer brazenness never ceases to amaze me. Read the whole thing.

It's Good to Have a Backup Plan

In these uncertain economic times it's good to have a backup plan.


Powered By Adult Toy Shop


It's nice to know one has options.

(via Instapundit)

Now can we stop panicing?

The evidence against global warming and carbon dioxide continues to accumulate as this interview transcript from The Australian illustrates.

Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

The tide may be starting to turn but there's still this to cope with:

"Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have
a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental
precepts................."

So we wait and see.