THE GREENIES ARE GETTING DESPERATE

Through their most reliable mouthpiece, the once-great BBC, the Greenies have proclaimed a new "proof" of global warming -- the selected stories of a few elderly inhabitants of the arctic. Some excerpts below. The fact that weather-station records have already told us that some parts of the arctic are warming while others are cooling is not mentioned. Nor is it mentioned that arctic ice is almost all sea ice so whether it melts or not will not affect the sea-level one iota! Elementary physics my dear Watson but still too hard for the BBC

"For the past 20 years climatologists and ice and atmosphere scientists have been working in Alaska studying climate change. Now they have discovered a rich new source of records extending their knowledge back by decades through the oral history of native Alaskans. Barrow is the most northerly town in the United States, lying 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle.

And 92-year-old Bertha Leavitt is its oldest inhabitant. "When I was a child", she says, "it was so much colder and the winds in winter used to be fierce." She remembers her elders telling in their stories that the weather was going to change. And since her childhood she believes this has come true."





THE GREENIE SPACE AGENDA

The astronauts are trained to point out signs of environmental degradation visible from space but fail to mention that almost all the degradation is in the Third World -- which the Greenies are determined to keep undeveloped

Astronaut Eileen Collins is concerned about the environmental degradation she sees from space. On board the fragile spaceship Discovery, she lamented from her unique vantage point above the Earth: "Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can see how there is deforestation. It's very widespread in some parts of the world. . . .We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used."

The first thought that must have sprung into many people's minds was, "Who made her an expert on this?" Well, astronauts are actually given training in detecting major areas of environmental degradation that can easily be viewed from space. After all, we are approaching a half century of amassing detailed photos of the Earth's surface viewed from the heavens. They are trained to watch for areas of Amazonia and the Congo tropical forests and compare amounts of deforestation with photos from 10, 20, 30 years ago. Likewise, they watch for how far out into the oceans the silt plumes from the major rivers extend. Or for expansion of the great Sahelian Desert further south into sub-Saharan Africa.

After all, it was the early astronauts and Adlai Stevenson, inspired by the photographs they took, that first remarked how fragile was this tiny ball of blue and green, floating through the enormity of time and space, how this was our only home, and how important it was that we should take care of it. Thus was born "Spaceship Earth." There isn't anything wrong with that, but what is troublesome is more the attitude and what they are looking for. NASA, the EPA, and the Greens have been trying desperately to turn the space program into an Earth observation program - the Mission to Planet Earth - for almost 20 years, to justify perpetual funding as part of the nation's and world's environmental-protection mission. Conveniently, this means not having to constantly justify the massive expense of spacewalks, manned missions, moon landings, whatever.

The nonsense is that everything evaluated is done so simply in area extent. The desert is larger! And so man or development is evil. They never look at causes or incentives: Why do the tropical forests continue to decline? Does NASA or the White House science adviser ever suggest any institutional factors? No one owns the forests and people in many of those forested countries live in dire poverty in nations with no free-market economies, no jobs, no food. Thus their only choice is felling the forests, raising crops and livestock, and hoping they can sell some of the rare forest woods in the illegal markets that the G-8 and Tony Blair are so concerned about. Has anyone noticed that Amazonian states continue to urge the teeming populations of Brazil's coastal cities to move into border areas and clear forests to create boomtowns? Perhaps entire regions of Africa would not have to subsist on "bush meat" if their dictators would allow Frank Purdue to start up some chicken farms.

Astronauts might actually gather some useful data if they took extensive infrared photos of the U.S. forests to document the extent of unhealthy forests - the millions upon millions of acres of dead and dying trees - suffering from over-crowding, disease, bark-beetle infestations, whatever. All of those are results of failed environmental policies forced on our national forests by the Greens - all the things that the Bush Healthy Forest Initiative was supposed to start repairing. Of course, much of the nation still doesn't believe that the forests are ill, preferring to believe that the HFI was passed to pay off the Bush administration's Big Timber donors.

As for Eileen Collins's comments themselves, a moment's thought reveals them for the platitudinous claptrap we have come to expect from people who don't know all that much about Spaceship Earth. She has seen "widespread environmental damage," whatever that may be. "Sometimes you can see how there is erosion." Huh? That is one of the most fundamental and basic processes on the planet. There is uplift and there is erosion - the two big players in the geological game. What are wind and rain and freezing and thawing supposed to do besides erode? "And you can see how there is deforestation." Again so what? And why? Why do you suppose the trees get replanted in the vast clear-cuts of the giant timber companies, but not in mankind's common tropical forests?

She keeps on going: "We would like to see. . . people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used." What is that supposed to mean? Refill copper mines with more copper or start pumping crude oil into depleted reservoirs?

As for the comment, "We don't have much air," well. . . what is her concern? That people are using it all up by breathing? This is grade-school environmentalism at best, not the sort of thinking we should expect from the highly qualified scientists that astronauts are supposed to be. With the shuttle seemingly falling apart around her, Collins might spend a little time worrying about how she's going to get her crew safely back to terra firma, even if it is badly polluted. Home, sweet home - be it ever so humble.

Source





ANWR: Any Nitwit Will Rant ... And Lose?

Post lifted from Cheat-seeking Missiles

ANWR, formerly and correctly known as the Strategic Oil Reserve, may become an oil source soon, despite its disappointing exclusion from the recently passed energy bill. On tap is a fancy bit of filibuster avoidance that everyone on the Hill must have known was coming, but no one talked about until today (source):

[Sen. Pete] Domenici said he will include a provision authorizing ANWR drilling as part of a budget procedure that is immune to filibuster. A similar maneuver is being planned in the House, although the final strategy is still being worked out.

Unlike normal legislation, the budget process is not subject to filibuster, so only 51 votes will be needed in the Senate for it to clear Congress and be signed into law by the president. Just such a tactic was used a decade ago when Congress approved ANWR drilling as part of the budget process, only to see the measure vetoed by then-President Clinton, a drilling opponent.

Greeniedems pretended outrage:

It's "backdoor budget chicanery," complained Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., an ANWR drilling opponent. "By shoehorning the Arctic refuge into the budget, they are making an end-run around the legislative process, knowing it cannot pass the Senate any other way."

Note to Markey: You're a member of the minority party for a reason. It's called voters

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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