Today’s incident at Discovery Channel got me to thinking a bit about how someone evolves from your basic heathen to a guy who thinks human babies are filth and tries to take over a cable network. It’s a progressive mental illness and goes something like this:
- The Heathen: He’s the guy who doesn’t give a crap about the earth, drops his litter wherever he wants, doesn’t recycle anything, and feels free to abuse resources at will.
- The Good Citizen: Picks up his trash, recycles the stuff he’s supposed to, turns off lights when he’s not using them, but still drives whatever car he pleases. Put me in this category.
- The Activist: Picks up other people’s trash, recycles with a committed fervency, turns off lights even if he needs them, and buys a Prius because he thinks it will save the planet.
- The Evangelist: Not only does everything The Activist does but lectures you to do the same thing lest you lead to the destruction of the planet. “One Sheet” Sheryl Crow comes to mind with her crazy environmental contract demands.
- The Hypocrite: Says he does everything The Activist does, preaches environmentalism like The Evangelist, but owns multiple mansions that use more energy than your average housing tract and travels the world in his fuel-gulping private jet (see Al Gore).
- The Guilt Tripper: This is the poor sap who has become a devoted convert of The Evangelist. His self-esteem is so small he feels he’s personally guilty for the sins of mankind against Mother Gaia and weeps at the thought of oceans rising and swallowing Pacific islands whole. He’s a sucker and easily devolves into the more radical element listed below.
- The TV Terrorist: Ever watch Whale Wars on the Animal Planet Channel (owned by Discovery Networks)? A group of radical environmentalists try to stop the Japanese from conducting whaling activities that appear to be legal under international law, whether or not the Sea Shepherd people agree. Their activities border on piracy, but because they can claim the moral high ground they get away with it. Frankly, I don’t know why the Japanese don’t just sink them.
- The Real Terrorist: See today at the Discover Channel Network headquarters. Someone with an environmental bent finally goes completely off the reservation making crazy demands and taking hostages. He pays for his mental illness with his life.
Most people are able to stop by the time they hit The Activist level. The sicker ones keep descending into madness.
First this:
The world is heading for the next major climate change conference in Cancun later this year on course for global warming of up to 3.5C in the coming century, a series of scientific analyses suggest. The failure of last December’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen means that cuts in carbon emissions pledged by the international community will not be enough to keep the anticipated warming within safe limits.
Two analyses of the Copenhagen Accord and its pledges, by Dr Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute, and by the Climate Action Tracker website, suggest that, with the cuts that are currently promised under Copenhagen, the world will still warm by 3.5C by 2100. Such a rise would be likely to have disastrous effects on agricultural production, water availability, natural ecosystems and sea-level rise across the world, producing tens of millions of refugees.
And then this:
A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.
It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.
I think I’ll go with number 2.
Geez:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials are pointing to the devastating floods in Pakistan and other extreme weather events as signs that climate change is getting worse.
Clinton, in an interview with Pakistan’s Dawn TV, said “there is a linkage” between the recent spate of deadly natural disasters and climate change.
“You can’t point to any particular disaster and say, ‘it was caused by,’ but we are changing the climate of the world,” she said.
Clinton said that on top of the Pakistan floods, which have forced millions out of their homes, the forest fires in Russia stand as another example. She said there’s no “direct link” between the disasters in Pakistan and Russia but that “when you have the changes in climate that affect weather that we’re now seeing, I think the predictions of more natural disasters are unfortunately being played out.”
Climate change skeptics say the planet is going through natural phases — the kind it’s gone through for eons. Pakistan, in particular, is prone to flooding and is routinely drenched by the monsoon rains. Some officials have partially blamed deforestation and inferior levee systems for the historic flooding which has affected one-fifth of the country’s landmass and triggered nearly a half-billion dollars in international aid commitments.
If it is global warming then the forest fires in Russia are Mother Gaia’s way of cooling things off since they put tremendous amounts of particulates into the atmosphere which will then reflect more sunlight and reduce temperatures.
See, I can play that game too.
By the way, the longest heat wave on record? The Marble Bar heatwave in 1923-24.
Hope. Change.:
References to a cap on carbon emissions and a campaign pledge to spend $150 billion on clean energy technologies disappeared from the White House website in June — even as the Senate was still trying to pass legislation implementing those priorities.
Peter Bray, president of Versionista, a Portland, Ore.-based company that tracks changes to the White House site, said the Obama administration made “whole-cloth” changes to its Energy & Environment issues site on June 10.
Deleted items include a section titled “Closing the Carbon Loophole and Cracking Down on Polluters” that offered broad-brush goals for “protecting American consumers” and “promoting U.S. competitiveness.”
Also eliminated was President Barack Obama’s oft-repeated campaign call to spend $150 billion over a decade on “energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy.”…
The website changes came with little fanfare at the same time that environmental groups were pleading with Obama to take a more proactive role to find the votes for a sweeping climate bill. The president’s prime-time address from the Oval Office on June 15 drew criticism from activists when he didn’t mention the words “carbon,” “greenhouse gases,” “global warming” or “cap and trade.”
I’m thinking the White House knows now what a loser those ideas are and wants them out of the way for the midterms in November. Better to let Harry Reid and his energy bill swing on his own out there rather than join him in his political suicide.
Poor Al Gore. With little evidence of global warming to be found and various “massage therapists” coming out to report on his “chakra” issues, he’s become quite irrelevant. That’s hard for a guy who was once hailed as the great savior of the world.
Today’s he’s trying to rekindle a spark of recognition among the global warming crowd with a call for protests:
Former Vice President Gore is calling for major rallies to protest congressional inaction on climate change.
In a post on his personal blog headlined “The Movement We Need,” Gore linked to and quoted from an Australian wire service report that “tens of thousands of protesters … have taken to the streets across Australia to urge the major political parties to take action on climate change.”
“Across the world, when politicians fail to take action to solve the climate crisis, people are taking action,” Gore wrote.
He added after excerpting the news report: “It is my hope we see activism like this here in the United States.”
Sorry, Al, but after nearly two years of Obama we’re just not as susceptible to the cries of false prophets anymore.
Pat Sajak, TV game show host and former TV weatherman, has a good idea about global warming enthusiasts:
Manmade global warming, like so many other social and economic issues, has become hopelessly politicized. Each side has dug in its heels and has accused the other of acting irresponsibly and dishonestly. For the believers, the other side has become the equivalent of Holocaust deniers; and for the doubters, the other side has become a cult intent on manipulating mankind to remake the world in some sort of natural Utopian image.
The divide has become so great, it seems virtually impossible to bridge the gap. However, I’m not writing for Ricochet merely to outline problems; I’m here to offer real solutions. And I’m not just blowing carbon dioxide.
Let’s assume that a third of the world’s population really believes mankind has the power to adjust the Earth’s thermostat through lifestyle decisions. The percentage may be higher or lower, but, for the sake of this exercise, let’s put it at one-third. Now it seems to me these people have a special obligation to change their lives dramatically because they truly believe catastrophe lies ahead if they don’t. The other two-thirds are merely ignorant, so they can hardly be blamed for their actions.
Now, if those True Believers would give up their cars and big homes and truly change the way they live, I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be some measurable impact on the Earth in just a few short years. I’m not talking about recycling Evian bottles, but truly simplifying their lives. Even if you were, say, a former Vice President, you would give up extra homes and jets and limos. I see communes with organic farms and lives freed from polluting technology.
Then, when the rest of us saw the results of their actions—you know, the earth cooling, oceans lowering, polar bears frolicking and glaciers growing—we would see the error of our ways and join the crusade voluntarily and enthusiastically.
There’s more a the link.
I still remember when he was the weather guy on Channel 4 in Los Angeles one day he was standing in front of the satellite map and said it was so clear out you could see all the state lines.
The global warming crowd wants you to believe the Earth is burning to a cinder, but could it be their data collection methods are bogus?
The world is hotter than ever.
March, April, May and June set records, making 2010 the warmest year worldwide since record-keeping began in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.
“It’s part of an overall trend,” says Jay Lawrimore, climate analysis chief at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “Global temperatures … have been rising for the last 100-plus years. Much of the increase is due to increases in greenhouse gases.”…
Joe D’Aleo, a meteorologist who co-founded The Weather Channel, disagrees, too. He says oceans are entering a cooling cycle that will lower temperatures.
He says too many of the weather stations NOAA uses are in warmer urban areas.
“The only reliable data set right now is satellite,” D’Aleo says.
He says NASA satellite data shows the average temperature in June was 0.43 degrees higher than normal. NOAA says it was 1.22 degrees higher.
At Watts Up With That, a blog run by a professional meteorologist, there has been a long running series of posts showing weather sites around the U.S. and elsewhere located in areas where the air temperature readings can be affected by nearby asphalt roads and parking lots, or reflected heat from buildings. Because urban areas tend to collect heat thanks to all the buildings and roads, these stations are not giving reliable information.
Mother Gaia will continue to regulate her own temperatures with or without our help. We know there were periods in the earth’s history when the climate was much wetter and warmer and there wasn’t a man or carbon-spewing man-made creation in sight. We can’t change what the earth is going to do, and neither can we “fix” it.
So says a 95-year old scientist and global warming alarmist in Australia:
WE humans are about to be wiped out in a few decades. The grandchildren of many of us will not live to old age.
Hear it from Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University and the man who helped eradicate smallpox.
“Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years,” he told The Australian this week.
“It’s an irreversible situation.” Blame global warming….
It’s not that Fenner is a joke. He may now be 95, but he’s a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Society. And his views on the end of the world, however boring, were still deemed serious enough to publish in The Australian’s prestigious Higher Education supplement.
This curious disconnect between prediction and reception happens relatively often now. Four years ago another warmist, Prof James Lovelock, creator of the influential Gaia theory of an interconnected Earth, was every bit as apocalyptic as Fenner.
We’d passed the point of no return, he groaned. The world was heating catastrophically. “Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”
All that was left to do was to prepare “a guidebook for global warming survivors … on durable paper with long-lasting print”.
Maybe this is why Al Gore got a new girlfriend. He wanted to be one of the “breeding pairs”.
I guess this guy never heard of ClimateGate. He just saw the bogus hockey stick chart and freaked out.
From the OC Register:
Orange County residents are divided nearly in half on the reality of global warming, new survey results show.
The survey, by Brandman University in Irvine, found that a slim majority — 54 percent — say the problem is real and that some action is needed.
“I totally believe in global warming and the whole science,” said one survey respondent, Laurie Reeves, 54, of Cypress. “And I scoff at anyone who doesn’t.”
Totally! (flipping my hair back) Whole science is cool!
I can scoff too. Continuing:
But 46 percent said they don’t believe enough is known about global climate change, or feel that worries about the climate are unwarranted.
“I think it’s all made up,” said David Ramocinski, 56, a Villa Park dentist who took part in the survey. “There’s not a lot of scientific data. The global pattern just changes rapidly.”
Some 77 percent of Democrats say climate change is real and requires action, but only 39 percent of Republicans. Of those who decline to state a party or belong to another party, 55 percent agree that the problem is real and requires action.
I have to seriously wonder about their sample in terms of how well it really represents Orange County when I read the numbers above, and these numbers:
A majority, 51 percent, also said they would consider buying an electric car, and 68 percent said it was very likely (20 percent) or somewhat likely (48 percent) that the number of green jobs in Orange County will grow into the thousands.
Green jobs include those found in solar energy, energy conservation, electric vehicles and renewable materials, among others.
“We may end up with a greener economy and a cleaner environment, but it will be for different reasons,” Smoller said — economic reasons rather than concern about climate change.
In car crazy Southern California more than half the people would buy an electric car?? No way.
And the chance of a strong green jobs economy in Orange County are slim at best because as Smoller says the fears of global warming won’t be enough to make it happen. It will have to be economically feasible, and right now those technologies simply don’t exist in a form that makes economic sense.
Here comes the justification for the cap-and-tax bill Obama wants:
An environmental coalition publicized a new U.S. draft report on climate change on Monday, one week before the expected unveiling of a compromise U.S. Senate bill that aims to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The Project on Climate Science, a coalition of environmental groups, publicized the report in advance of Earth Day on April 22, a spokeswoman said. The report was released with little fanfare on April 7 and posted on the Federal Register on April 8.
The report, a draft of the Fifth U.S. Climate Action Report that will be sent to the United Nations, says bluntly: “Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced … Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.”
Without action to stop them, climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions will rise over 8,000 megatonnes by mid-century, the draft said. By adopting measures detailed in a bill passed last year by the U.S. House of Representatives, these emissions will drop beneath 2,000 megatonnes. They’re now about 6,500 megatonnes. The United Nations measures greenhouse gas emissions in megatonnes, or million metric tons.
The effects of climate change are already evident, the draft said: warming air and oceans, vanishing mountain glaciers, thawing permafrost, signs of instability in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica and rising sea levels.
What a bunch of bovine excrement. None of that stuff in that last paragraph is happening. None of it. And yet this pile of lies will be used to justify destroying the US economy and taking more and more of your money to fund crazy “green” schemes.
We’ve got to get these people out of power.
