Bumper Sticker Wisdom

Pretty funny to see this one as we got our second metro Atlanta snowfall in four days! Just remember: thank God for global warming. Without it we'd still be in the Ice Age!

Whine-Free Wine

I delivered a bundle of Wine Report magazines yesterday to the friendly wine merchant on my route. She then gave me my own personal copy. (Sam Neill, best known from the Jurassic Park movies, is on the cover. I rather enjoyed him in Dead Calm. Check it out if you haven't seen it.)

Anyway, this is from the beginning of a story called "A Hot Debate" in the Wine News section:

"Global warming is a bunch of bunk."

That's according to Charles Brammer, owner and winemaker at Morgan Creek Vineyards in Harpersville, AL.

Way to go, Chuck! I might have to buy a bottle or two of Morgan Creek wine (to help offset all those people who just demonized you for being a climate-change denier).

Also, Ernest Gallo died March 6 at the age of 97.

Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate. There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way. . . . The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.
(Read the entire article here)
-Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, MIT

Shoot, Newt!

Newt Gingrich has had a disappointing week. First there was the revelation of his new book due later this year about his brand of market-driven environmentalism called Contract with the Earth. It might be a good book, but what a pathetic title. Then there was his letter yesterday urging Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to consider stepping down over the U.S. Attorneys fiasco. I know Newt has been disgusted that the whole thing was so poorly handled, but nothing illegal or immoral occurred! You can't give scalps to political enemies (and make no mistake, that's an accurate description of the scenario we have here) for reason of administrative incompetence. That is only to chum the water!

Now today I see the report from the Newt and John Kerry environment debate. Pathetic again! Here is some of the limp-wristed action:

Gingrich began first with a concession to his opponent. Holding the new book by Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, Gingrich said, "This is a very good book. As a clearly right-wing reader, I would commend the book" as one that shows examples of local leadership on environmental issues.

"I would agree with about 60 percent of this book," he added.

~~~

Gingrich raised some discrepancies among the science that has led to the current data on climate change, but when asked pointedly about science doubters, like Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Gingrich strongly held the case that climate change is a problem.

"What would you say to Sen. Inhofe and others in the Senate who are resisting even science? What's your message to them here today?" Kerry asked.

"My message, I think is that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading in the atmosphere —"

"And do it urgently, now?" Kerry interrupted.

"Urgently, yes," Gingrich said.

It sounds to me that Newt concedes the premise of this nonsense--that global warming is caused by man--and if he does that he loses not only the debate, but my support as well. It also makes me much more nervous about that book title. Wake up, Newt!

Al was right about one thing . . .

. . . in his "testimony" the other day. He said, "I promise you a day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and ask...What in God's name were they doing?"

Exactly! I can hear them now . . .

Why were they worried about 45,000 polar bears when 5 million children were dying of malnutrition each year? Why did they spend hundreds of billions of dollars to comply with Kyoto rather than put that money into combating malaria and dirty water which, unlike "global warming," actually killed millions each year? Why did they listen to that idiot Al Gore, who couldn't decide from decade to decade whether it was getting colder or hotter? Didn't they notice all the communists hiding behind those "Love Your Mother" buttons and "Equal Rights For All Species" t-shirts? What were they doing????

Good questions, kids.

Immunize Yourself Against the Great Global Warming Swindle

This is the UK documentary that's upsetting all the worshipers of the Earth Mother. Most interesting to me (since I already don't buy the "science" of global warming) was learning of Margaret Thatcher's role in getting the whole man-made global warming movement going. Thatcher wanted to make the UK energy-independent through nuclear power – she didn’t like her country’s reliance on coal, which politically empowered the coal miner unions, or oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states. So Thatcher latched onto the notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby providing the perfect political cover for advancing her nuclear power agenda without having to fight coal miner unions or Arab oil states. She empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin global climate change research. And of course, any government bureaucracy is going to find exactly what it was created to find, whether it exists or not. Her move eventually led to the 1988 creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ group that has come to be the “official” international agency for global warming alarmism. Now you know.

Watch this film (which is a far more "documented" documentary than the winner of the Emmy for the best so-called "documentary"). Don't be swindled.

Bush Environmental Policy Meltdown

A polar bear doing what polar bears do.

I was disturbed to hear this week that the Bush administration proposed to list the polar bear as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. This is apparently some sort of qid pro quo, but I hate this implicit endorsement of global warming hysteria. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) even referenced predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean “within the foreseeable future.” In response Steven Milloy writes:

But such predictions and the potential consequences to polar bears are highly uncertain. No one knows exactly what’s happening with Arctic sea ice, much less what the future holds. The Greenland ice melt, for example, was actually larger in 1991 than in 2005 and the Greenland ice cap is thickening. Data from the Canadian Ice Service indicate there has been no precipitous drop-off in ice cap amount or thickness since 1970.

Let’s keep in mind that polar bears have survived much warmer times than we are now experiencing – like 1,000 years ago when the Vikings farmed Greenland during the Medieval Climate Optimum and 5,000-9,000 years ago during the period known as the Holocene Climate Optimum.

He concludes:

It’s distressing that the Bush administration is opening the door for the all-important issue of global warming regulation to be influenced more by our embrace of a soda mascot rather than science.

Click here for Milloy's year end review of the top Junk Science stories of 2006.

A Damning New Epithet: "Climate Change Denier"

The whole world in Al Gore's hands

I had intended to bring this to your attention last week. This is from Brendan O'Neill, a British writer, in response to the creation of a new category of humanity (which just so happens to include me!)--"CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER." This is the beginning of Brendan's article:

Whoever thought that serious commentators would want it made illegal to have a row about the weather? One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing 'climate change denial'. 'David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial', she wrote. 'Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.' Others have suggested that climate change deniers should be put on trial in the future, Nuremberg-style, and made to account for their attempts to cover up the 'global warming...Holocaust.'

The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.

Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is a tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. (Read the entire article here)

That rational debate on this issue has melted much more quickly than the polar ice caps is beyond doubt. Even this "climate change denier" epithet is a loaded label. It attempts to lump together those who deny any warming whatsoever (which our very limited data seems to confirm the slightest of warming) and those who grant slight warming but deny that it is caused by man (whether humans are to blame is the crux of the debate). So, you are either a normal, sane person who says that there is man made global warming, or you are a Nazi climate change denier who should be tried war crimes style. Such is the nature of public discourse. Don't fall for it!