I DON'T THINK THE GREENIES WILL LIKE THIS IDEA!

A scientist has invented an artificial tree designed to do the job of plants. But the synthetic tree proposed by Dr Klaus Lackner does not much resemble the leafy variety. "It looks like a goal post with Venetian blinds," said the Columbia University physicist, referring to his sketch at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, Colorado.

But the synthetic tree would do the job of a real tree, he said. It would draw carbon dioxide out of the air, as plants do during photosynthesis, but retain the carbon and not release oxygen. If built to scale, according to Dr Lackner, synthetic trees could help clean up an atmosphere grown heavy with carbon dioxide, the most abundant gas produced by humans and implicated in climate warming.

He predicts that one synthetic tree could remove 90,000 tonnes of CO2 in a year - the emissions equivalent of 15,000 cars. "You can be a thousand times better than a living tree," he said.

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Katrina Exposes Media's Global Warming Bias

No sooner had Hurricane Katrina moved inland to spawn tornadoes, flooding, misery, and tragedy than global warming alarmists and some in the media began spawning junk science. "The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming," opined long-time alarmist Ross Gelbspan's August 30 op-ed in the Boston Globe. Gelbspan also blamed global warming for snow in Los Angeles, high winds in Scandinavia, drought in the Midwest, a heat wave in Arizona, heavy rainfall in India, and an ice storm in New England. Gelbspan offered no scientific arguments to back up his assertions. He instead blamed the media for "according the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that is accorded to the findings of the [United Nations]."

Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for "derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush's iron-clad promise to regulate carbon dioxide. "Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. ... Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children," wrote Kennedy on August 29 on the Huffington Post blog.

Kennedy at least tried to offer some scientific argument--a recent paper by MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel claiming hurricanes have intensified by 50 percent since the 1970s. But leading hurricane forecaster Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University told the Boston Globe Emanuel's claims aren't based on any direct measurements of hurricane winds. He described the study as "a terrible paper, one of the worst I've ever looked at."

A Baltimore Sun editorial on August 30, however, was in no mood for questions about Katrina's cause: "Such warmer waters fuel the formation and ferocity of hurricanes. Warmer oceans are an inseparable by-product of global warming, and it's foolish to ignore the link to the burning of fossil fuels."

The Washington Post presented only the views of researchers willing to link extreme weather and Katrina with global warming. "There's a clear signature of global warming in [Katrina]. While it's not the dominant factor, in some things it becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back," said Kevin Trenberth of the nonprofit National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to the Post on August 30. The Post didn't say what the alleged "clear signature" was, nor did it mention that NCAR is institutionally committed to global warming alarmism.

Not all major dailies, however, were quite so smug. "Katrina Hits the Gulf Coast: Storms Turn Focus to Global Warming; Though some scientists connect the growing severity of hurricanes to climate change, most insist that there's not enough proof," headlined the Los Angeles Times on August 30. The rest of the article was similarly balanced. The Times also offered a direct rebuttal to the global warming scare stories, from University of Colorado science professor Roger Pielke, who "attributed the losses to a simpler cause: more people living in harm's way in areas such as Florida and Louisiana."

A most welcome surprise was the New York Times' August 30 coverage, headlined, "Storms Vary With Cycles, Experts Say." The Times interviewed Gray, who pointed out that from 1995 to 2003, 32 major hurricanes with sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater formed in the Atlantic. Only one in 10 of those hurricanes struck the United States at full strength, whereas historically the rate has been one in three. Then last year three of six (one in two) major hurricanes hit the United States. Gray attributed last year's activity to chance. "We were very lucky in that eight-year period, and the luck just ran out," he told the Times.

"It is a contravention of science to attempt to link Katrina's intensity to global warming," said Pat Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "Since 1982 we have had weekly records of sea surface temperature," Michaels noted. "During this time period we can examine on a fine scale the relationship between hurricanes and sea-surface temperature. The threshold water temperature for category 3 hurricanes is 28§ C. Interestingly, for category 4 or 5 hurricanes, there is no statistical relationship with the amount of elevation beyond 28§ C. The Gulf of Mexico reaches 28§ C every year, whether or not the planet has warmed or is cold. "The most intense tropical cyclone to ever strike the United States was Hurricane Camille in 1969," observed Michaels. "Camille landed very, very close to where Katrina landed. Significantly, Camille occurred when the temperature of the northern hemisphere was at its low point for its last 80 years. Camille simply needed an ocean temperature of 28§ C. Clearly, it is irresponsible to link severe Gulf of Mexico hurricanes to global warming."

"We now know that Hurricane Katrina was no more than a Category 3 hurricane, and possibly only a Category 1 hurricane when it hit New Orleans, so all the talk about global warming making hurricanes stronger and thereby contributing to the disaster is revealed as the opportunistic cant it is," said Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Iain Murray. "For hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, sea surface temperatures need only get above 28§ C for them to help make the hurricane Category 4 or 5," Murray said. "Sea surface temperatures there regularly go above that level, and have done so for as long as we can remember."

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EUROPE WARNED OF THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE FROM "KYOTO"

"Europe's push to meet pollution targets agreed under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change could dent its economies and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2010, according to research published on Monday. Compliance with Kyoto's greenhouse gas reduction targets could hit gross domestic product in Germany, Britain, Spain and Italy as energy energy bills soar, said pro-business thinktank International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF). "The findings of our research suggest that an alternative approach (to climate change) is urgently needed for both the developing and developed world," said Margo Thorning, Managing Director of the Brussels-based ICCF.

ICCF predicted the loss of at least 200,000 jobs in each of Italy, Germany, Britain and Spain as governments chase greenhouse gas reduction targets set out under Kyoto, which came into force in February. Average increases of 26 percent in electricity prices and 41 prices in gas prices by 2010 were also predicted in the ICCF's study. Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) could be reduced by 0.8 percent from base case levels by 2010, with Spain and Britain suffering reductions of 3.1 percent and 1.1 percent respectively, the ICCF said. The United States has refused to sign up to Kyoto, saying it could damage the U.S. economy.

Thorning said the ICCF's findings supported recent comments by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said last week that the world may need to move away from target-based climate change policies after Kyoto's first phase ends in 2012. Later this month, United Nations talks on climate change will take place in Montreal, the first formal talks over how to approach the issue after 2012. "A cooperative global approach to reducing emission growth is more likely to produce real emissions reductions, without damaging economic growth in the EU and elsewhere," said the ICCF's Thorning.

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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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