Anything might happen

Just a bit of fun: An unfalsifiable New Zealand weather forecast that uses a lot of words to predict everything and thus says nothing at all. If only the Warmists were equally prepared to admit that no-one can predict climate events. The waffle below is at least harmless

Otago's weather is expected to return to normal over the next two months, with an occasional cold blast providing variation, the MetService's seasonal forecast says.

The northwest winds of spring are expected to be delayed this year while fronts are likely to mainly bring southwest wind changes, with occasionally showery conditions, especially along the coast. "Some fronts may be followed by chilling southerly winds with hail and or sleet," the seasonal forecast team said. In Central Otago and the southern lakes, the weather was also expected to return to normal, with long periods of dry weather expected. Fronts and troughs rolling in from the Tasman Sea were expected to bring a return to normal rainfall.

In August, these fronts might add to the accumulation of mountain snow, the forecast said. Computer models suggested there was a 75% probability of neutral conditions dominating the incoming spring, and just a 15% probability of a significant El Nino appearing. A close year with similar weather patterns was 2001, which remained neutral through spring and into summer. "Since there was no significant broad-scale influence on our weather patterns during the next few months, it opened the possibility for more variability and variety," the team said. "We do not expect any one particular pattern to dominate for any more than a week or two."

The northern Tasman Sea was slightly warmer than normal and was likely to continue to be a breeding ground for low-pressure areas that would move on to various parts of New Zealand, especially during August. Each of the systems was expected to bring periods of rain and some wind. There would also be interludes of sunny weather and light winds, with some passing anticyclones or ridges of high pressure, but these were not expected to last long. "Occasional polar blasts that bring chilling winds from the Southern Ocean are also on the menu."

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Claim: Drought is the silent and insidious killer associated with global warming

This poor old anthropologist obviously has not a clue about elementary physics. Warming oceans evaporate off more and thus produce MORE rain, not less -- though rainfall patterns may of course shift. But the overall effect will be LESS drought. And in a globalized world, shifting patterns of production will be quickly adapted to

Global warming is currently one the world's most pressing issues, but the phenomenon of climate change is not specific to the 21st century. A new book by anthropologist Brian Fagan takes a look at the global effects of climate change that occurred during the Medieval Warm Period and examines how subtle shifts in the environment had far-reaching effects on human existence.

In "The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations" (Bloomsbury Press, 2008), Fagan, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, focuses on the period from the 10th to 15th centuries when the earth experienced a rise in average temperature that changed the climate worldwide.

Some civilizations, including those in Western Europe and the Norse and Inuit of the North Atlantic, flourished as long summers brought bountiful crops, population growth, and a burgeoning cultural scene, Fagan notes. However, other long-established societies, such as the Maya and Indians of the American southwest, collapsed from prolonged periods of drought.

He describes the ways in which different civilizations adapted to the centuries of irregular warming. Mayans, for example, created huge water storage facilities while the Chimu lords of coastal Peru designed sophisticated irrigation systems. However, despite their efforts, they could not withstand the repeated multiyear droughts, which, according to Fagan, constitute the most dangerous element of global warming.

"When I began writing the book, I expected to focus on Europe," Fagan said. "But as I looked further afield I realized that for a lot of the world the Medieval Warm Period meant savage issues related to drought. With so much of the world currently suffering from the effects of drought, this struck me as a neglected problem."

While climate experts tend to focus on melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events such as Hurricane Katrina and the severe flooding it caused, Fagan believes drought is the greater threat.

Citing conditions in eastern and sub-Saharan Africa among other areas, he writes in his book, ".if you look at the warm centuries with a global perspective, the wide incidence of drought is truly striking and offers a sobering message about tomorrow's world. Prolonged aridity was widespread in medieval times and killed enormous numbers of people. Evidence is mounting that drought is the silent and insidious killer associated with global warming."

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The Greatest Hoax ever Perpetrated

Google "RECORD HEAT" and you will get 3,180,000 hits. Google "record cold" and you will get 5,110,000. Yes, that's right; and it's just the tip of the proverbial (not melting) iceberg. You see, the convenient truth about the theory of global warming is that you can blame anything on it. Record snows and snow cover in North America, record cold in Asia, snow falling in Baghdad. That's right. Snow in the desert. Clearly more signs of catastrophic global warming.

Not so fast. Pull up a chair, put your feet up, expel some evil CO2, and let's talk about how "settled" the issue of global warming really is. I know full well that writing this piece will cause me to be labeled a "global warming denier" and be lumped in with those that Al Gore said in March are, along with Dick Cheney, "in such a tiny minority view now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat."

Seriously? I can't question the people who are incapable of telling me what the weather is going to be for my tee-time this Saturday, but claim to know exactly how much warmer the entire globe will be, how much the sea will rise, how much the snow cover will recede, and how much the ice caps will melt in 100 years?

You're really going to implicitly equate me with a holocaust denier because I don't believe that your faulty computer models (designed by James Hanson, et al., a liberal NASA scientist with an agenda) prove that the globe is warming, or if it is, that it's our fault? You swear by the models, why don't you swear by the corrections that NASA very quietly released last summer that show the warmest year on record was not 1998, but in fact is 1934, and that five of the top 10 hottest years on record were all before World War II?

The Pope once had a problem with a "denier." His name was Galileo, and he thought that the earth was round and that it was not the center of the universe; that it actually revolved around the sun, not the other way around. The Pope did the same thing that Al Gore is doing now. With faulty data and conjecture, the Pope declared that the debate was over and that anybody who disagreed would be burned at the stake.

While we don't burn people at the stake these days, Gore claims we will all die in a ball of fire if we don't rally around this theory and devote all of our time, energy (both fossil and kinetic), and money to it.

OK, I am a skeptic. When every lunatic liberal leftist on the face of the planet says we need to close down the carbon emissions of industry (carbon caps) and spend trillions of dollars trying to fix something that (1.) we don't know if we caused it (the factual evidence says we didn't), and (2.) if we did cause global warming, is it really in our power to fix (reverse) it, red flags go up.

Many leading scientists firmly believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good for the planet. David Archibald, PhD, at the Biology Department of San Diego State University, is one of those leading scientists. In a lecture given at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, Dr. Archibald said that more CO2 in the atmosphere will give us a lusher environment and actually increase plant growth rates in addition to increasing the sustainability of crops in arid regions.

If you believe that liberal bastion of policy wonks and diplomats (and a couple of decent, and many not-so-decent, scientists), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we cannot reverse it. The IPCC closed its Fourth Assessment Report's (AR4) Summary for Policymakers with this: "[B]oth past and future anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to global warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the time scales required for removal of this gas from the atmosphere."

For those of you who do not know, the IPCC is more than just Gore's co-conspirator in the global warming fraud, they are co-recipients of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. And what does climate change have to do with peace anyway? Back to our favorite global warming alarmist, Al Gore. He recently announced that his Alliance for Climate Protection will embark on a mission to better educate the public on the dangers of man-made global warming and the dire necessity to make drastic (and prohibitively costly) changes in order to stop it. Oh yeah, he's spending $300 million to do it.

Maybe Gore subscribes to Gallup. A recent Gallup poll revealed that about the same percentage of people believe in man-made global warming as did when they first took the poll in 1989. Ironically, the propaganda machine that is Nobel Laureate Gore bans the media from his lectures. An odd contradiction for a man that wants the world to adopt his doomsday outlook and invest in his "green" funds. Gore's lecture contract, handled by The Harry Walker Agency, Inc., in New York, in addition to requiring non-disclosure of the terms and conditions of the agreement, says in section 9(a) that "the press is not invited or permitted to cover the event unless express written permission is granted by the Harry Walker Agency, Inc." Section 9(c) reads, "Vice President Gore will accept no interview requests."

Maybe if he allowed the press into his lectures, or gave an interview or two, he wouldn't have to spend $300 million on public awareness. In case you are wondering, yes, I have a copy. Are you at least a little bit curious why the free press is not allowed to attend his lectures? Read on, my friend.

GLOBAL WARMING HAS BECOME QUITE THE INDUSTRY. The U.S. alone spends over $4 billion per year on climate change research. That seems like a lot of money to spend on something that is so well settled and agreed upon by all but a few "flat-earthers."

Gore has started giving a disclaimer during his lectures. Gore, and Global Investment Management, LLP (GIM), the London-based private equity firm of which Gore is the founder and Chairman, stand to benefit in untold riches if we invest in the companies he recommends in his lectures. His disclaimers are no different than those of a stock broker or insurance agent. Gore is basically saying, yes, I own stock in these companies, but you should too if you want to save the planet from certain doom.

Doom-and-gloom has served Gore well. Like the other two shysters from his administration, he is reported to be worth north of $100 million. If you missed the media's passing mention last month, Clinton finally released her income tax returns. Turns out she's worth about $109 million. Civil servants, huh? Servants never had it so good. All the past presidents and vice presidents combined probably don't have the wealth of the Gores and Clintons.

As a side note, Gore closed GIM's second "green" fund, Climate Solutions Fund, in April at $683 million. The first fund, Global Equity Strategy Fund, has invested $2.2 billion in large companies judged to have, from an environmental, social and economic viewpoint, a "sustainable" business. I wonder, can any of the companies that Gore is investing billions in help him and his Nashville mansion use less than 10 times the amount of energy the average American household uses? But don't worry, he's using compact fluorescents in his house, so it's ok to use 10 times as much energy as everyone else.

Speaking of Gore's waste and gluttony, I wonder how ginormous his carbon footprint was while he was jetting around the world promoting his lie/movie and trying to convince everyone to invest in his companies. It was reported in April that An Inconvenient Truth used computer-generated footage from the movie The Day After Tomorrow to show a crumbling ice shelf. Those are the kinds of deceptions necessary when trying to convince the world of a lie. Just as Nazi Propaganda Chief Joseph Goebbels said, "[T]ell a lie enough and it becomes accepted as truth."

As well as that has worked for Gore, support for his "planet in peril" mantra is eroding faster than he claims the ice caps are. In 2007 a British court held that, in order for his lie/movie to be shown to school children, "eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of the [students]." Among those inaccuracies, the court ruled, was that rises in CO2 lagged behind temperature rises by 800-2,000 years; that despite the movie's claim, it is a scientific impossibility for global warming to cause the Gulf Steam to stop flowing; and that, while the movie claims sea levels could rise 23 feet, the evidence showed sea levels are expected to rise 15 inches over the next 100 years.

If you believe Gore, we shouldn't even bother buying green bananas, the end is so close at hand. Gore should have won his Oscar for the best mockumentary, not documentary, of 2007.

The idea of exposing the lies behind global warming in courtrooms is catching on in the U.S. also. John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, published an article in ICECAP last year in which he called global warming the greatest scam in history. Coleman added, "[S]ome dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long-term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the `research' to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus."

Coleman didn't stop there. On March 3, while attending the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York he said the following: "I have a feeling this is the opening. If the lawyers will take the case - sue the people who sell carbon credits, that includes Al Gore - that lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the witness stand and testified, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming." Well, it worked in Britain.

Another famous Albert (Einstein), this one with a background in math and science, however, once noted that the consensus of a 100 scientists is undone by one fact. Steve McIntyre and a team of volunteers noticed some inconsistencies and an unusual discontinuity in the US temperature data used for climate modeling. When they asked NASA's Hanson for the algorithm, he refused. (All in the name of science and consensus, I'm sure.) McIntyre and his team reverse-engineered it. What they found was a jump in many locations, all occurring around January 2000. As previously noted, NASA has released corrected data.

Hanson can't even fix the Y2K glitch in his climate model, and we're supposed to radically change global lifestyles and economics based on his numbers? Joseph D'Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chief of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecast, says that "carbon dioxide (CO2) is 0.000383 of our atmosphere by volume. . . Only 0.0275 of atmospheric CO2 is [man-made] in origin. . . We are responsible for 0.00001 of this atmosphere. If the atmosphere were a 100-story building, our [man-made] CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor."

Do we really want to spend a trillion dollars on linoleum? "We've been warming up about a degree per century since the Little Ice Age (LIA) in about 1600. We've been warming for 400 years, long before human-generated CO2 could have anything to do with the climate," says Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus Geology, Western Washington University.

Dr. Easterbrook is not alone in his opinion. Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, opines "[O]f course it's going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we're coming out of the LIA, not because we are putting more carbon dioxide into the air."

On December 13, 2007, 100 scientists (often referred to as the Bali-100) wrote an open letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, His Excellency Ban Li-Moon, in New York, NY. Among other things, the letter made three significant declarations: 1. "[R]ecent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability. 2. The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century fall within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years. 3. Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling."

The letter continued, "In stark contrast to the oft repeated assertion that the science of climate change is `settled,' significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But, because these IPCC working groups were generally instructed to consider work published only through May 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated."

In case you are wondering, these are not some lunatic-fringe, pseudo-scientists. Of the 100 signatories to that letter, 85 hold a PhD. They closed the letter by saying, "[A]ttemps to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems."

On March 4, at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, more than 500 scientists closed the conference with what is referred to as the Manhattan Declaration. In short, they declared that "global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life. . . There is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change. . . Now, therefore, we recommend that world leaders reject the view expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided, works such as An Inconvenient Truth."

How many of you heard or read about these declarations in the mainstream media? Is this the consensus that Saint Gore and his co-conspirators in the media speak of?

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Maine's tourism industry suffering due to 'unseasonably cool' weather

August is usually the busiest month of the year for Maine's tourism industry. With August off to a soggy start, there are a lot of long faces in Vacationland. Fleece and sweatshirts have replaced bikinis at Old Orchard Beach and no one's buying ice cream. Instead, it's rained 10 of the last 11 days and it's unseasonably cool.

Who's counting? Families on vacation, that's who. "A little depressing so far ha. It would have been nice to go to Aquaboggan today." Instead Dad had to break the bad news to Melanie, Alex and Nathan--the waterpark was closed due to weather. Staying closed on a lucrative 10-dollar Monday means 20 to 30 thousand dollars down the tubes..And in Aquaboggan's short nine week season, they can't make that money back.

While bad weather tends to scare off last minute travelers, vacationers who've booked ahead usually forge ahead. They string up the blue tarp at the campground and try to make the best of it.

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Global Warming Hoax: A Skeptical Beginner's Guide

When you landed on this site, you most likely made an effort to search for an alternate take on global warming - the one the mainstream media and Al Gore won't tell you. However, you may be new to the entire subject of the global warming hoax and need a primer without having to read the vast library of information contained on SkepticsGlobalWarming.com. There are several major subjects up for debate, unlike what Al Gore tells you, on the topic of climate change. This two-part article will attempt to provide guidance, from a skeptical point of view, of each subject trumpeted by the global warming activists.

Each of these talking points have been touted by the media and the global warming crowd as proof that the world is going to end and all civilization as we know it will be wiped from the face of the planet if we don't act soon. By "proof" they mean "possible observations at a specific point-in-time that may have changed to no longer support the global warming cause so we'll just keep repeating old data until you believe it." By "the world is going to end" they mean "sea levels are going to rise one foot over the next 100 years, but we'll say 20 feet just to scare them". "All civilization as we know it will be wiped from the face of the planet" really means "the poor that can't afford to move away from low-lying areas may have their homes flooded if there's a really, really high tide". And "act soon" really means "more taxes". Got it so far? Good. Let's move on to the talking points.

Global Warming Activist Point #1: Arctic ice is melting, which will force polar bears into extinction.

Global Warming Skeptic Rebuttal: If the Arctic ice is melting, a recent study found that it may be due to natural causes. However, the Winter of 2007-2008 showed that the Arctic ice refreezed at a record rate, but the records have only been kept for 25 years. Also, ice coverage between 2006 and 2007 went from 13 million square kilometers in the winter to 4 million square kilometers in the summer back to 13 million square kilometers the following winter. So no scientist can truly tell you that the Arctic ice, in an unprecedented move, is going to melt away and flood the world. There isn't enough data available to understand the median ice coverage. Oh, and polar bear thing? An global warming activist was caught passing off photos of polar bears clinging to shrinking winter icebergs when the photo was actually taken in the summer.

Global Warming Activist Point #2: Antarctic ice is melting, which will flood the planet.

Global Warming Skeptic Rebuttal: Antarctic ice is GROWING on three sides of the continent. They don't tell you that on the news. The best example of disputing this claim is the work of an early 1900's explorer that visited Antarctica. His claims state that parts of the continent that were water back in 1915 are now ice. With all of the carbon dioxide pumped into the air between 1915 and today, shouldn't the same area of Antarctica remain in liquid form?

Global Warming Activist Point #3: All of the warming has occurred since 1940, so it must be due to carbon dioxide output.

Global Warming Skeptic Rebuttal: Al Gore presented the now infamous "hockey stick" graph that depicted a relatively low temperature period before making a significant jump north during the era of industrialization. Unfortunately for Gore and the global warming activists, it's been warmer on this planet before as is evidenced in a graph on this website. The warming and cooling of the Earth appear cyclical and, over the long run, does not appear to have any direct correlation to CO2 levels.

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Australian property buyers not worried by global warming

The threat of rising sea levels caused by climate change is not putting off cashed-up Australians from spending big on blue-chip beachfront property. Real estate agents say that dire predictions about the hungry sea swallowing up coastal suburbs seem to be falling on deaf ears. Demand for high-end beach property is holding up despite overall market softness due to a slowing economy and tanking share market. Buyers are either ignoring the experts or don't believe them.

A record was set on the Central Coast when a deceased estate in Pacific Dr, facing Wamberal Beach, offered for the first time in 70 years, sold for $6.2 million. Another picture-perfect beachfront home at Narrabeen, earmarked by scientists as the Sydney suburb most vulnerable to rising sea levels, sold last month for $4.03 million -- 20 per cent up on the price it fetched three years ago.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report predicts sea levels will rise between 18cm and 59cm over the next 92 years, and another 10cm to 20cm if ice sheets melt faster. For every centimetre the sea rises, scientists say, the beach retreats 1m -- so, by the end of the century, the worst-case scenario is that properties within 80m of the beach will be under water.

But real estate agent Jack Elsegood, an expert in northern beaches property, said there was no sign buyers were worried. "They understand there is a threat but, while it exists, it's not going to be in their lifetime or maybe even in their children's,'' he said.

Oceanographer Dr John Hunter, from the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre in Hobart, said some people did not to want to face the problem. "People want to live by the sea and a lot of them will take these risks,'' he said. "They'll accept them, hoping a solution can be found. (They think) perhaps a sea wall can be built.'' Dr Hunter said it was wrong to think the problems posed by rising sea levels were years away. [Even though sea-levels have stopped rising recently?]

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