The Warmist press lives in an world of its own

On May 3rd, the NYT had a piece about Atlanta's new, subtropical climate and how warm-climate plants were moving North (Full article reproduced here).

But only a month before that, Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville all had big freezes -- on April 6-8. See here and here. The freezes set new records for the month of April. Much damage to foliage and trees. The apple trees in Henderson county, NC were reportedly losing 90% plus of the crop, with trees possibly lost.

So we had something of an ice-age occurrence bent into a "warming."






Griffin vs. Hansen: The Importance of Getting One's Facts Straight



Apologies for the spelling above. "Flows" should of course be "Floes"

In a recent interview broadcast on National Public Radio's Morning Edition program, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was asked if he was concerned about global warming. His response - "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with" - prompted a prominent NASA scientist, James Hansen, to tell ABC News that Griffin's remark was "an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement," and that it indicated "a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change." Equally upset was Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer, who said that he was "shocked" by the Administrator's statement and that he felt that he "ought to resign."

As a public service to help people better evaluate Hansen's characterization of Griffin, plus Oppenheimer's call for Griffin to resign, we are devoting this week's entire issue of CO2 Science to a comprehensive evaluation of Hansen's 26 April 2007 testimony to the Select Committee of Energy Independence and Global Warming of the United States House of Representatives, which Hansen entitled "Dangerous Human-Made Interference with Climate." Before any more calls are made for Griffin's resignation, our critique of Hansen's testimony should be carefully studied. It is very possible that Oppenheimer's invitation for Griffin to resign might more appropriately be extended to someone else.

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Is there anything that is NOT caused by global warming?



Just a few months ago, the "drought" in Southern Australia (and in England) was being blamed on global warming. Now that there is extensive flooding (again both in England and Southern Australia) it's floods that are being caused by global warming. Consistency and logic are clearly not Greenie virtues. The Australian nonsense below comes from the Leftist Premier of the State of Victoria

VICTORIA faces more bushfires and increasingly severe floods in the future because of climate change, Premier Steve Bracks says. As residents in Gippsland, in the state's south-east, mop up after devastating floods this week, Mr Bracks said today that evidence from climate change experts showed that extreme weather would become the norm.

"The evidence, which has been given to our government by the CSIRO, shows that we will have more bushfire events per year as every year goes on,'' Mr Bracks told Southern Cross Broadcasting. "That's more days over 35 degrees celsius with strong northerly winds, and that's because of the climate heating up and climate change effects,'' he said.

"The same with floods. We probably won't have more floods, but the severity of those when they occur will be greater. "And that is the product of climate change. "We have to prepare for that.''

Insurance assessors are still determining the financial extent of damage wrought by the floods while the cost to the Victorian government to repair civic infrastructure alone could top $40 million. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) expects to come up with a total damage bill in the next few days.

"The reality is that this is as big a flood that we have ever had in that region, certainly as big as 1998,'' [Only as big as 1998! Surely we can do better than that!] Mr Bracks said. "We've already had some 200 householders who've submitted to the government for relief, we expect that to go even further.''

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British weather panic

Last summer we were told not to flush the loo, because of global warming. This summer we are told half of Yorkshire has been flushed down the pan - because of global warming. If the drought don't get you, it seems, the deluge will. As if the weather was not bad enough, we now have to endure a flood of intellectual silt about how overflowing rivers are retribution for rising man-made carbon levels.

The notion that a flood is God's punishment for our sins went out with, well, the Ark. But it has been revived by born-again believers in high places. According to the Book of Genesis, after the great flood had cleansed the world of sinners, God assured Noah that "I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." , we have "a new God, with new priorities". So a former government adviser writing in The Guardian asserts that the latest floods are the fruits of global warming "long foretold", and concludes that: "Behind the gathering clouds the hand of God is busy."

Perhaps we should not be surprised to see the bible of the liberal intelligentsia spouting such religiosity on this issue. I recall that one leading Guardian writer welcomed the flooding in 2000 in the way that a zealot might a plague of frogs, as a painful lesson to unbelievers. She concluded: "The more floods, the merrier."

I predict that we will indeed have more floods in the future, just as we did in the past when nobody had heard of man-made global warming. As Weather Eye in The Times pointed out, yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the largest rainfall recorded in a June day. Back in 1917, however, many were less concerned about the weather than the shells raining down during the Great War and the wind of revolution blowing in from the East.

An obsession with the weather has long been seen as a trait of the more petty, boring side of the British character. Now it seems that reading the weather as a sign of the state of the nation and the planet is the stuff of serious debate, reducing high politics to the level of chatter at a (smoke-free) bus stop. This is not really about an irrational revival of belief in God, more of a loss of faith in humanity and its rational works.

Despite implying that modern man is as powerless as a peasant farmer in the angry face of nature, the new doom-mongers also express outrage at the failure of government to do more to stop the world so that they can get off in the dry. After new Labour, Noah Labour? Then again, Noah was supposed to be 600 years old when God told him to build the Ark. An old geezer like that would not get within 300 cubits of the Cabinet today - let alone the BBC coverage of Live Earth.

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'GERMAN GOVERNMENT'S ENVIRONMENTAL PLANS MAY COST 500,000 JOBS'

ThyssenKrupp AG's chief executive Ekkehard Schulz said the German government's plans to reduce emissions and exit nuclear power production may result in up to 500,000 jobs being lost as energy-intensive industries relocate abroad, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The government's aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 pct by 2020 are 'illusory,' Schulz told the newspaper. 'Excessive regulations can have serious consequences for Germany's economy,' he said. He said the government should take into account the reasonable doubts of the country's industrial players on the costs of shutting down nuclear power plants and reducing emissions.

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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 generally 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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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