"The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance."
—Albert Einstein
Another freezing morning here in New England (So where is Spring? Gore only knows.). Go ahead and check out our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ccdispatch for the lastest news and posts.
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An environmental group focused on the dangers of climate change is lobbying for Canadian municipalities to pass bylaws that would require warning labels on gas station pump nozzles.
Lawyer Robert Shirkey says the warning labels on the nozzles would be similar to those found on cigarette packages and would act to warn users of the negative effects of fossil fuels.
"The future of the planet is literally in the palm of your hand (when you pick up the nozzle)," Shirkey, founder of Our Horizon, told an audience Thursday at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto.
"A lot of people won't like seeing them but the placement is important because it speaks to diffusion of responsibility," he said. "Collectively, we're endangering the planet."
Last month, a group of scientists headed by geologist Shaun Marcott launched the latest salvo in the global warming war. They announced that they had reconstructed the last 11,000 years of Earth climate history, based on various proxies, and had found that in the 20th century there was an unprecedented uptick in temperature. The Marcott paper was hailed by liberal media outlets; to cite just a few examples:
But when real scientists–that is, those who apply a skeptical, scientific approach rather than a religious attitude of fervor–studied the Marcott paper, it quickly fell apart. We wrote about the Marcott fiasco here and here. It turned out that Marcott and his colleagues had created the 20th century warming spike–which was, in reality, the sole purpose of their exercise–by changing the dates on some of the samples they used as proxies.
source: wikimedia commonsAs Obama campaigns in California to his liberal base, European companies are flocking to the U.S. to tap into our wealth of natural gas. He's still pimping his green energy future, still dithering on the Keystone pipeline that has been given the go-ahead by everyone in his cabinet, and taking credit for reducing "carbon emissions" in the U.S. (by shuttering coal-fired power plants and making it impossible to open new ones). All at the expense of the economy and jobs. So how much to have dinner with Obama? $34,200 a head. From ABCNews:
In the first fundraisers he’s attended since winning re-election, President Obama discussed climate change with California donors while opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline protested outside of one of the events.
“Despite a very aggressive agenda on the other side to block action, we’ve been able to double fuel efficiency standards on cars. We’ve been able to take mercury out of our air. We have been able to reduce carbon emissions in this country and have made not only this a healthier place to live, but have also begun to address in a serious way one of the biggest challenges of our time, and that is the challenge of climate change,” the president said at the first of two San Francisco fundraisers Wednesday night.
“The Earth has a fever,” we were told. “The science is settled and the debate is over. Scientists are unanimous - 97% of them agree: climate change is real, and is happening now, and we’ve got to act quickly.”
Over more than two decades we were told again and again that everywhere was warming faster than everywhere else – especially winters were warming up quickly. Snow was becoming a thing of the past and children soon weren’t going to know what it is. “The warm winters that we are seeing are just a harbinger of what’s to come,” the media declared just a couple of years ago. The scientists were cock-sure.
Today we are finding that precisely the exact opposite is happening. Winters in Europe have turned colder and more severe. Central Europe has seen its 5th consecutive colder than normal winter in a row – a record since measurements began in the 19th century.
Climate scientists first reacted by claiming, “One winter does not make a trend“. Then they said that the cold winters were a local phenomenon. Finally they were forced to recently claim, “Cold winters now fit the picture of global warming!”
‘Global temperatures are warmer than at any time in at least 4,000 years… and over the coming decades are likely to surpass levels not seen on the planet since before the last ice age.’ That was the pithy message offered by New York Times eco-columnist Justin Gillis, reporting on a new reconstruction of past global temperatures published in Science last month. The Atlantic was blunter: ‘We’re Screwed: 11,000 Years’ Worth of Climate Data Prove It.’
The news this week must have been very hard on Al Gore.
The Economist magazine notes it has been 20 years since there has been any evidence of global warming.
You remember global warming. It was the crisis that called for reordering the way the entire world works: No more gas and oil. Only alternative “green” fuels to keep down carbon emissions. Global taxes. World government.
Al Gore staked his reputation, such as it was, on this hoax.
Even more shocking was the way the scientific elite bought into the fraud. There were grants at stake. No one wanted to be a heretic. Those who dared to look at reality and actual facts were vilified as “climate-change deniers.”
Europe is in a quandary. For years, it has claimed to be a global leader in fighting climate change and slashing carbon emissions. Now it finds itself running out of conventional gas and turning back to dirty coal. With its conventional gas fields nearly depleted and gas prices four times higher than in the United States, Europe would like to develop a thriving shale gas industry, but that seems unlikely in the near term. --Arthur Max, Midwest Energy News, 3 April 2013
The EU’s energy commissioner warned Germany not to rule out fracking, a controversial method of drilling for natural gas – saying it could hurt the country’s competitiveness, in an interview published on Tuesday. Günther Oettinger, Germany’s designated EU commissioner, criticised his country’s scepticism of fracking, telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that research had fallen victim to the “emotional” debate over the issue. In his interview with FAZ, Oettinger said Germany must be prepared to take certain risks to remain competitive – and would be wise not to discount fracking altogether. --The Local, 2 April 2013
Like most of you, I yearn for shorter winters, more shirt-sleeve weather, less lashing from frigid winds. As a confirmed New Yorker, I’m not willing to do what millions have done: move to the sunbelt. I want warmer weather here in the Big City.
But I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather. It’s enough to make one doubt the “settled science” of the government-funded doom-sayers.
Remember 1979? That was the year of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, of “The Dukes of Hazard” on TV, and of “ Kramer vs. Kramer” on the silver screen. It was the year the Shah was forced out of Iran. It was before the web, before the personal computer, before the cell phone, before voicemail and answering machines. But not before the global warming campaign.
In January of 1979, a New York Times article was headlined: “Experts Tell How Antarctic Ice Could Cause Widespread Floods.” The abstract in the Times archives says: “If the West Antarctic ice sheet slips into the sea, as some glaciologists believe is possible, boats could be launched from the bottom steps of the Capitol in Washington and a third of Florida would be under water, a climate specialist said today.”
An Auditor General helps ensure that public money is being spent wisely. He or she is usually an accountant and therefore looks closely at numbers and dollar signs.
When John Doyle, the Auditor General of British Columbia, released a damning report last week he properly stuck to his narrow mandate (see my previous posts here and here). It wasn’t his job to second-guess government policy.
But reading his report as a layperson, I felt as though I’d tumbled down Alice’s rabbit hole. Even if the carbon offsets purchased by the BC government had been legitimate, the report was describing an absurd situation.
I’ve already suggested that there’s something narcissistic about a jurisdiction of 4.5 million people imagining that it can – and should – be a global leader in the fight against climate change. It’s cool to fancy yourself a general, but where’s the army?