Another Leftist false prophet

We all roasted in the year 2000, apparently

Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago.

Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public's attention.

There is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide content will rise 25 percent by 2000, Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo. "This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit," he wrote. "This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter."

Moynihan was Nixon's counselor for urban affairs from January 1969 – when Nixon began his presidency – to December 1970. He later served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before New York voters elected him to the Senate.

Moynihan received a response in a January 26, 1970 memo from Hubert Heffner, deputy director of the administration's Office of Science and Technology. Heffner acknowledged that atmospheric temperature rise was an issue that should be looked at.

"The more I get into this, the more I find two classes of doom-sayers, with, of course, the silent majority in between," he wrote. "One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise."

Heffner wrote that he would ask the Environmental Science Services Administration to look further into the issue.

Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and had an interest in the environment. In one memo, Moynihan noted his approval of the first Earth Day, to be held April 22, 1970.

More HERE





Down with Doom: How the World Keeps Defying the Predictions of Pessimists

By Matt Ridley

When I was a student, in the 1970s, the world was coming to an end. The adults told me so. They said the population explosion was unstoppable, mass famine was imminent, a cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was beginning, the Sahara desert was advancing by a mile a year, the ice age was retuning, oil was running out, air pollution was choking us and nuclear winter would finish us off. There did not seem to be much point in planning for the future. I remember a fantasy I had - that I would make my way to the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, and live off the land so I could survive these holocausts at least till the cancer got me.

I am not making this up. By the time I was 21 years old I realized that nobody had ever said anything optimistic to me - in a lecture, a television program or even a conversation in a bar - about the future of the planet and its people, at least not that I could recall. Doom was certain.

The next two decades were just as bad: acid rain was going to devastate forests, the loss of the ozone layer was going to fry us, gender-bending chemicals were going to decimate sperm counts, swine flu, bird flu and Ebola virus were going to wipe us all out. In 1992, the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro opened its agenda for the twenty-first century with the words `Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being.'

By then I had begun to notice that this terrible future was not all that bad. In fact every single one of the dooms I had been threatened with had proved either false or exaggerated. The population explosion was slowing down, famine had largely been conquered (except in war-torn tyrannies), India was exporting food, cancer rates were falling not rising (adjusted for age), the Sahel was greening, the climate was warming, oil was abundant, air pollution was falling fast, nuclear disarmament was proceeding apace, forests were thriving, sperm counts had not fallen. And above all, prosperity and freedom were advancing at the expense of poverty and tyranny.

I began to pay attention and a few years ago I started to research a book on the subject. I was astounded by what I discovered. Global per capita income, corrected for inflation, had trebled in my lifetime, life expectancy had increased by one third, child mortality had fallen by two-thirds, the population growth rate had halved. More people had got out of poverty than in all of human history before. When I was born, 36% of Americans had air conditioning. Today 79% of Americans below the poverty line had air conditioning. The emissions of pollutants from a car were down by 98%. The time you had to work on the average wage to buy an hour of artificial light to read by was down from 8 seconds to half a second.

Not only are human beings wealthier, they are also healthier, wiser, happier, more tolerant, less violent, more equal. Check it out - the data is clear. Yet if anything the pessimists had only grown more certain, shrill and apocalyptic. We were facing the `end of nature', the `coming anarchy', a `stolen future', our `final century' and a climate catastrophe. Why, I began to wonder did the failure of previous predictions have so little impact on this litany?

I soon found out. Like others who have tried to draw attention to improving living standards - notably Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg - I am beginning to be subjected to a sustained campaign of vilification by the pessimists. They distort my argument, impugn my motives and attack me for saying things I never said. They say I think the world is perfect when I could not be clearer that I advocate progress precisely because we should be ambitious to put right so much that is still wrong. They say that I am a conservative, when it is the reactionary mistrust of change that I am attacking. They say that I am defending the rich, when it is the enrichment of the poor that I argue for. They say that I am complacent, when the opposite is true. I knew this would happen, and I take it as a back-handed compliment, but the ferocity is still startling. They are desperate to shut down the debate rather than have it.

I now see at firsthand how I avoided hearing any good news when I was young. Where are the pressure groups that have an interest in telling the good news? They do not exist. By contrast, the behemoths of bad news, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and doom is their best fund-raiser. Where is the news media's interest in checking out how pessimists' predictions panned out before? There is none. By my count, Lester Brown has now predicted a turning point in the rise of agricultural yields six times since 1974, and been wrong each time. Paul Ehrlich has been predicting mass starvation and mass cancer for 40 years. He still predicts that `the world is coming to a turning point'.

Ah, that phrase again. I call it turning-point-itis. It's rarely far from the lips of the prophets of doom. They are convinced that they stand on the hinge of history, the inflexion point where the roller coaster starts to go downhill. But then I began looking back to see what pessimists said in the past and found the phrase, or an equivalent, being used by in every generation. The cause of their pessimism varied - it was often tinged with eugenics in the early twentieth century, for example - but the certainty that their own generation stood upon the fulcrum of the human story was the same.

I got back to 1830 and still the sentiment was being used. In fact, the poet and historian Thomas Macaulay was already sick of it then: `We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason.' He continued: `On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us.'

Indeed.

SOURCE







Observed Global Temperature changes as a Random Walk

A recent refereed journal article from China shows that global temperature changes from 1850 onwards fit a model of purely random changes. Summary below. Full paper here

Cause of Temperature Change

The cause of temperature change is hard to determine because humans cannot create another earth without humans as control as the common experiments do. Therefore the cause of temperature change is more or less likely to be determined by using models to fit the recorded temperature: the underlined cause for the model, which fits the recorded temperature best, would be the cause inducing temperature change.

Current Modeling

Recently when we studied the possible impact of global warming on the evolution of protein families from influenza A viruses [see, publications], we noticed the fluctuations in recorded temperature. These fluctuations cannot explained by the current climate models because their outputs are smooth curves representing the temperature trend. This leads us to consider whether we need to consider a random model, of which the random walk model comes first.

Fitting of Global Temperature using Random Walk Model

Very recently, we used the random walk model to fit the temperature walk, which is the conversion of recorded temperature, and the recorded temperature, and we got a relatively good fit (see the following figures) although we cannot compare our results with the results obtained from other models because they are not available.

Cause of Temperature Change

If the underlined cause of a fitting model is the cause of temperature change, then our fittings would suggest that the temperature change is mainly due to the random mechanism, which however could be the combination of all the known and unknown factors because some of them are difficult to explicitly present.

SOURCE





China’s 2,000 Year Temperature History

More pesky findings from China. Chinese scientists are clearly not in the (Greenie) club of the righteous and the holy

We constantly hear that the warmest years on record have all occurred in the most recent decades, and of course, we are led to believe this must be a result of the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases. In most places, we have approximately 100 years of reliable temperature records, and we wonder if the warmth of the most recent decades is unusual, part of some cyclical behavior of the climate system, or a warm-up on the heels of a cold period at the beginning of the record. A recent article in Geophysical Research Letters has an intriguing title suggesting a 2,000 year temperature record now exists for China – we definitely wanted to see these results of this one.

The article was authored by six scientists with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, the State University of New York at Albany, and Germany’s Justus-Liebig University in Giessen; the research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the United States Department of Energy. In their abstract, Ge et al. tell us “The analysis also indicates that the warming during the 10–14th centuries in some regions might be comparable in magnitude to the warming of the last few decades of the 20th century.” From the outset, we knew we would welcome the results from any long-term reconstruction of regional temperatures.

The authors begin noting that “The knowledge of past climate can improve our understanding of natural climate variability and also help address the question of whether modern climate change is unprecedented in a long-term context.” We agree! Ge et al. explain that “Over the recent past, regional proxy temperature series with lengths of 500–2000 years from China have been reconstructed using tree rings with 1–3 year temporal resolution, annually resolved stalagmites, decadally resolved ice-core information, historical documents with temporal resolution of 10–30 years, and lake sediments resolving decadal to century time scales.”

However, the authors caution “these published proxy-based reconstructions are subject to uncertainties mainly due to dating, proxy interpretation to climatic parameters, spatial representation, calibration of proxy data during the reconstruction procedure, and available sample numbers.”

Ge et al. used a series of multivariate statistical techniques to combine information from the various proxy methods, and the results included the reconstruction of regional temperatures and an estimate of uncertainty for any given year. They also analyzed temperature records from throughout China over the 1961 to 2007 period and established five major climate divisions in the country

The bottom line for this one can be found in our Figure 2 that shows the centennially-smoothed temperature reconstruction for the five regions of China. With respect to the Northeast, Ge et al. comment “During the last 500 years, apparent climate fluctuations were experienced, including two cold phases from the 1470s to the 1710s and the 1790s to the 1860s, two warm phases from the 1720s to the 1780s, and after the 1870s. The temperature variations prior to the 1500s show two anomalous warm peaks, around 300 and between approximately 1100 and 1200, that exceed the warm level of the last decades of the 20th century.” The plot for the Northeast shows warming in the 20th century, but it appears largely to be somewhat of a recovery from an unusually cold period from 1800 to 1870. Furthermore, the plot shows that the recent warming is less than warming that has occurred in the past.

The Central East region also has a 2,000 year reconstruction and Ge et al. state “The 500-year regional coherent temperature series shows temperature amplitude between the coldest and warmest decade of 1.8°C. Three extended warm periods were prevalent in 1470s–1610s, 1700s–1780s, and after 1900s. It is evident that the late 20th century warming stands out during the past 500 years. Considering the past 2000 years, the winter half-year temperature series indicate that the three warm peaks (690s–710s, 1080s–1100s and 1230s–1250s), have comparable high temperatures to the last decades of the 20th century.” No kidding – the plot for the Central East region shows that the warmth of the late 20th century was exceeded several times in the past.

Commenting on the Tibet reconstruction, Ge et al. state “The warming period of twenty decadal time steps between the 600s and 800s is comparable to the late 20th century.” In the Northwest, they note “Comparable warm conditions in the late of 20th century are also found around the decade 1100s.” Unfortunately, no long-term reconstruction was possible for the Southeast region.

In summarizing their work, Ge et al. report :

The warming level in the last decades of the 20th century is unprecedented compared with the recent 500 years. However, comparing with the temperature variation over the past 2000 years, the warming during the last decades of the 20th century is only apparent in the TB region, where no other comparable warming peak occurred. For the regions of NE and CE, the warming peaks during 900s–1300s are higher than that of the late 20th century, though connected with relatively large uncertainties.

We get the message – the recent warming in at least several regions in China has likely been exceeded in the past millennium or two, the rate of recent warming was not unusual, and the observed warming of the 20th century comes after an exceptionally cold period in the 1800s.

Declaring that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have pushed modern temperature beyond their historical counterparts disregards the lessons of 2,000 years of Chinese temperatures.

SOURCE (See the original for links, graphics)






Global warming: Interview with John Christy--Models, sensitivity, the PNAS paper and more

John Christy is an atmospheric scientist and Professor of same at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and winner of achievement awards from NASA and the American Meteorological Society. He was a lead author of the IPCC's 2001 Assessment Report, but in 2007 was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see."

The awards he received were for his work in helping develop a temperature dataset based on satellite measurements, and one of the major datasets used in climate science is just known as UAH. He is commonly perceived as a skeptic, but as has been the case with every interview I've done in this sector, the truth is far more nuanced. Professor Christy was kind enough to respond to my request for an interview very quickly, so without further ado...

Examiner: You are commonly labeled as a 'skeptical' scientist who does not agree with the IPCC consensus regarding human contributions to climate change. How accurate is that, and how would you describe your own beliefs regarding this?

J.C. I am mainly skeptical about those who claim to be so confident in understanding the climate system that they know what it is going to do in the next 100 years. This is my main complaint - overconfidence. We of all professions should be the most humble because there is so much about the climate system that we simply do not know. See my testimony given to the Inter Academy Council in June concerning these ideas - I think you will appreciate it.

(In his June testimony to the Inter Academy Council, Christy testifed that he felt the IPCC's overconfidence in climate models was not justified. He also said: "The first objection I raised regarding the Third Assessment was that the fabled Hockey Stick was oversold as an indicator of past climate change. This was well before the critical work of the Wegman Report, National Academy of Sciences, McIntyre’s papers and the East Anglia emails. Indeed, I urge you in the strongest terms to engage Stephen McIntyre in your deliberations at a high level as he has accurately documented specific failures in the IPCC process, some of which I can attest to, as I was there.")

Examiner: What unresolved issue or issues should the scientific community be focussing its gaze on with regards to climate change in 2010? Atmospheric sensitivity to a doubling of CO2?

J.C. Evidence is building that the sensitivity is less than models assume.

Examiner: The role of the oceans in exchange of CO2 and heat?

J.C. This relates to sensitivity.

Examiner: The role of the clouds?

J.C. This is directly related to sensitivity, i.e. how do the reflective clouds respond to an impulse of warming - evidence indicates they expand (reflecting more sunlight) and counteract the warming. This has also been shown for cooling events, i.e. that clouds contract when a global cool spell occurs to let in more sun and warm the planet.

Examiner: The accuracy of the historical records?

J.C. This is an ongoing effort - to build an archive of raw observations in which all parties have confidence.

Examiner: What are you personally focussing on in your work?

J.C. Measurements of all types. I just recently had a paper on snowfall in the southern Sierra published showing no trend in the last 94 years which indicates natural water resources in the San Joaquin Valley are fine, so that shortages are clearly a function of management and law (see attached). I am still building temperature datasets of the surface and upper air to document the response (temperature is a good response variable to forcing) of the atmosphere to forcings of all types.

Examiner: What are your beliefs about what is happening to the Earth's climate?

J.C. Natural variability is still the major driver of the climate changes that create challenges for society. The one confident conclusion we can make about added CO2 is that the biosphere has clearly been invigorated - plants love what we do with carbon-based energy because its by-product is CO2 - plant food. (I can hear the shrieks of horror all the way here in Alabama from California, my home state.)

Examiner: What do you think governments and their citizens should be doing to protect our environment and our future?

J.C. In my experience, the wealthier the country is, the better is its environment (mainly because energy in wealthy societies is produced in high density processes like power plants rather than gathering of wood and biomass which destroys habitats.) Policies that allow human wealth and security to be enhanced are policies that can sell. The wealthier a society is, the greater emphasis it can put on protecting natural habitats, cleaning the air and water, and protecting its citizens from threats of all kinds (i.e. disease, weather disasters, etc.) This wealth building occurs best in democratically accountable societies which establish human rights for all citizens, including women and children.

Examiner: Paul Krugman recently took up a current argument that in the face of uncertainty our actions should be more vigorous, not less. How would you respond to this?

J.C. Will these actions advocated by Krugman cause economic decline, lower standard of living, etc? If so, they don't have a chance in a democratically accountable society. I think we are creating more certainty about the idea that the climate is less sensitive to CO2 than promoted in the past 2 decades. We are not all going to die on a roasting planet. The real challenge today is to prepare for the unquestionable continued rise in energy demand. Energy makes life much, much better in countless ways, so it's demand will only increase, especially in poorer countries. At some point, even carbon-based energy won't meet the demand, so new and voluminous sources of energy are needed ... and the sooner the better.

Examiner: Stephen Schneider recently co-authored a paper published in PNAS exploring the level of expertise found in scientists who support the consensus position on climate change compared to those who do not agree with the consensus. What is your reaction to this paper?

J.C. I was one of only three scientists who made both the "good guy" and the "bad guy" lists. Quite an honor I suppose. However, I think the study was pathetic. It basically says, "Those of us who agree with each other like to cite the work of our friends and not the other guys." Duh. (One of my fellow scientists calls this "tribalism" - an appropriately primitive description.) I think the more sinister motive was evident in that the paper chided the media, such at the SF Chronicle, to stop investigative-reporting and just "trust us" (the guys on the "good guys" list) when it comes to climate change. It really was an attempt to make a blacklist. In that sense, I guess I ended up being gray, which fits my hair color now.

Examiner: The IPCC accepts the submission of general circulation models from all participating countries. I think there are 23 or 24 of them right now. Is that a useful number of models to analyze?

J.C. What you want is a set of models that at least represent the real atmosphere (which none of these do faithfully relative to tests we've performed.) This does seem like a high (and expensive) number.

Examiner: Does an average derived from an ensemble of models tell us anything useful? If so, what? If not, what are the defects of looking at an ensemble of models.

J.C. Probably not. Cloud processes and responses are particularly off the mark (or at least widely varying). The question here addresses a fault with consensus - over time, individuals tend to drift toward consensus (a human foible) whether it is right or wrong. Many of the parameterizations in the models are very similar and could be very wrong, so agreement with each other is often a dangerous result as it confirms one's prejudices and gives one a false sense of success. I deal in the world of observations - i.e. what does the real world show. What we find is that models have a long way to go, which is a little ironic because they modelers have a legitimate reason to clamor for more funding to improve their poorly-performing models.

Examiner: Human emissions of CO2 declined 2.6% in 2009, although concentrations didn't change. How hopeful are you that our actions can reduce emissions further?

J.C. It is very clear that economic decline means less energy is used, and people are poorer as a result. So, one should congratulate those who created the recent economic collapse for the "good" news on emissions. However, I don't see economic decline as a long-term strategy for society to follow. The most useful option to slow the decline in emissions is to proceed on a massive construction initiative in nuclear power (which has other defensible reasons to back it up - not just alleged climate change.) In this way, gigawatts of power can be produced with little emissions. Alternatives (wind, solar, animal methane) will be just an expensive and unreliable blip on the world-wide scale of emissions growth.

Examiner: What is your best guess or opinion on what will happen to the Earth's climate over the coming decades?

J.C. The climate will throw some surprises at us and the interannual variations that we've always had will continue to cause the greatest developmental challenges. As I said 22 years ago my general rule of climate is: "If it happened before, it will happen again ... and probably worse." Are we prepared for the variations we have already experienced (i.e. 1930's, 1950's droughts, 1993 floods, any hurricane, freeze of 2007, snow of 2009-10, etc.?"). If we are prepared for those, anything induced by humans on top of the climate system's large natural variability will be manageable in my view.

SOURCE






A Green vote is madness

From Andrew Bolt in Melbourne, Australia

ENOUGH'S enough. If you're really this keen to vote Green in the state election, why not prove you're serious? Why not live the life you apparently want the Greens to inflict on the rest of us? Go turn off your own lights first. Kill your fridge. Cook your roast over a solar-powered candle.

Then go to work and turn off the machines. Junk the computer. Tell your hospital to switch off the machines that go "bing". And harness some donkeys to pull our trains. Can't find donkeys, you say? Nonsense. Look at yesterday's Newspoll, which reports a record 18 per cent of Victorians plan to vote Green. Plenty there. Hook 'em up.

I laugh, but dear God, we're drowning, up to our necks in unreason.

"There, there," coos my wife, when I sob that even some of our frequent-flyer friends vote Greens. "They wouldn't vote Greens if they actually thought they'd win ... "

No? Well, they're winning enough already, like the battle for our brains.

And who knows what desperate deal Premier John Brumby will now do to win the Greens preferences that are critical to Labor getting the 51 to 49 per cent edge over the Coalition that Newspoll assumes?

We've already seen what depths of insanity Labor will cater to, to prove it's as green as the next idiot. Why else has this great city been on water restrictions for an embarrassing seven years? Why this insane ban on a new dam for our fast-growing capital?

Why did the Government wait until it was almost too late to even start building its new $3.5 billion desalination plant, at three times the price of a dam for a third of the water? Madness, and the Greens promise yet more of it - and less of everything else.

Take just one of their policies, one that 18 per cent of shiny-eyed Victorians evidently now support.

The Greens demand the instant closure of Hazelwood power station to save the world from global warming. It's a noble policy, which sounds warm and fuzzy, until you realise it will leave us cold and shivering, while making not a spit of difference to the planet.

Hazelwood - and I know this is an irrelevant detail to a planet-saver - happens to produce a quarter of this state's electricity. You know, the stuff that powers your home, your factory, your office, your hospital, your computer, your trains, your airport, your street lighting, your cinema, your trams, your traffic lights ...

Now I don't want to seem like a spoilsport, but I would just like to be reassured on one small point: how the hell do the Greens then plan to power our state? After all, they don't plan to stop at Hazelwood, either. Their policy is to shut every coal-fired plant, leaving us with just 5 per cent of the electricity we now use - with nuclear power banned, new hydro power banned and wind power as reliable as, well, the wind.

It's madness of the kind you get from a child who wants her fifth ice cream but not the upchuck that goes with it. Still, you'd think the Greens would have worked out by now these small details about how to keep the lights burning....

If you think this is remotely possible, dear Greens voter, consider first that this state is actually predicted to need 50 per cent more power by 2030, even though many companies, hit with higher power bills, have tried for years to cut their use.

Then go around your home - and, more importantly, your factory - and switch off half the power. With all appliances off, look proudly at the appalled people around you in winter and say, "Isn't it great we're all freezing to death for the planet?" Or, in summer, for variety, ask: "Isn't it lovely to be sweating in this furnace now that I've switched off the aircon?"

And then, by the kerosene lamp at home, try to figure out the next step. After all, you're still only halfway to replacing the 95 per cent of electricity the Greens plan to ban.

Let me just try to get it through your cable-knit beanie how impossible that is without reducing this state to the standard of living endured by people who burn cow dung for their cooking.

For Earth Hour this year, the zealots at Melbourne University tried especially hard to cut their power. The university exhorted staff and students to do their best to save the planet from their electricity, and to "turn off all lights and appliances". All of them. And the result? Read the University's boast: "Electricity consumption on the Earth Hour weekend dropped by 5.51 per cent compared with a 2010 business as usual weekend."

Less than 6 per cent? After all that special sacrifice? For just one weekend? Whoopee do. And that's from a mere university, mind, which runs no heavy industry or essential services, and had almost no one in the joint over that weekend actually wanting to work or switch on so much as a toaster or kettle. Just 90 per cent to go, guys, before you live the Greens' dream.

But there I go, trying to marry consequence to action, like I was an adult or something. Don't I realise the times have changed? After all, this is the Age of the Use Less, in which our brainless and godless rich resent their own wealth - well, resent the wealth of everyone else, at least. And then, for penance, suggest ingenious ways to make us poor again.

Example: remember how this Labor Government told us for years we didn't need more water supplies, claiming we could get by if we just Used Less? And so our ovals turned brown, our gardens died and we broke our backs carting buckets to the most precious of our plants. Use Less, heaven!

Ah, but you think I exaggerate this madness of our times. So let me introduce you to the latest guru of this Use Less creed, "anti-poverty crusader" Richard Fleming, as featured this week in the Herald Sun and on Channel 7's Today Tonight.

He, too, preaches Use Less, or eat less, actually. He's promoting his $2 a day "Live Below the Line" diet, which restricts you to eating the very cheapest of foods - hummus, watery soup, dahl, rice, marmalade and peanut paste.

No real reason for this torture, other than to make you realise what it must be like to be some starving Bangladeshi, wishing you were lucky enough to live in a country where you had so much to eat that you'd, er, starve yourself instead. Out of sheer, mindless guilt.

"There's a level of stupidity in all this," Fleming admits, but he should be less hard on himself. He's the poster boy of a state in which so many finger-waggers want to deny the rest of us the harvest of our science and ingenuity - cooling on hot days, heating on cold ones, water for green gardens and food for a feast.

Fine, if that's what you want for yourself. But, please, before you vote to inflict this on the rest of us, first try living as the Greens prescribe and see if it truly suits even high-minded you. Lights out. Heating, too. Starve and shiver for your faith. At least live as miserably as you plan to vote.

SOURCE

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

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