"Climate change" has lost its punch.  People now know it is just global warming with lipstick on

A summary from the Left below

There are few things more symbolic of our climate dysfunction than the strange idea that if only we gave the problem a different name, we'd be able to deal with it. Nonetheless, for years there have been intimations that we should cease saying "global warming" and instead say "climate change"—albeit for wildly different reasons.

The case for this phrase change dates at least back to an infamous 2002 memo by conservative strategist Frank Luntz, who argued that "while global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge." Luntz was giving this advice in the context of also advising Republicans to highlight the "lack of scientific certainty" about climate change. In a study published in 2011, however, researchers at the University of Michigan actually found that Republicans seem to be more willing to accept the reality of the problem when the "climate change" label was used.

Most recently, however—and as Media Matters documents in the helpful video below—conservatives have seized on the bizarre idea that the environmental movement is now saying "climate change" because it can explain anything, including "decades of global cooling," as one Fox News host claimed. In other words, the accusation is that this a sneaky way to cover up the reality that global warming is a sham.

But which term should we use from a public opinion perspective? What's the better frame? Riley Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University who is currently serving as the Gallup scholar for the environment, has just published a comprehensive polling analysis suggesting that basically, it's a wash. "The public responds to global warming and climate change in a similar fashion," writes Dunlap. For instance: When you show people a list of environmental problems and ask if they personally worry about each one "a great deal, a fair amount, only a little, or not at all," 34 percent say they worry a great deal about global warming, and 35 percent say the same about climate change.

The more pertinent issue, though, is whether ideological groups respond differently to different phrasings. Dunlap looked at that too. Breaking responses down by ideology, he found that only 16 percent of Republicans say they worry a great deal about "global warming"...and only 17 percent say the same for "climate change." In the other three possible response categories—a fair amount, only a little, not at all—the results were also quite similar

In sum, 36 percent of Republicans worried a great deal or a fair amount about "global warming," and 39 percent worried a great deal or a fair amount about "climate change." By contrast, 83 percent of Democrats worried either a great deal or a fair amount about both "global warming" and "climate change."

"While there are slight differences in the degree of partisan and ideological divergence in responses to global warming versus climate change," Dunlap concludes in his paper, "they are not statistically significant, and modest compared with the huge gaps in views of both terms held by Americans at the two ends of the political spectrum."

That's not to say there wasn't a time, perhaps as recently as mid-2009 (when the data were collected for the Michigan study cited above), when conservatives were indeed more open to taking the problem seriously if it was labeled "climate change" rather than "global warming." But if so, those days are long gone. Dunlap suggests that this is because conservatives have gotten just as used to dismissing "climate change" as they are to dismissing "global warming." Certainly, the name bestowed upon their favorite pseudo-scandal, late 2009's "ClimateGate," didn't help matters.

Nor does the right's cynical new idea that the climate crowd shifted to saying "climate change" in order to paper over a supposed lack of warming. "In recent years a popular meme on skeptic and conservative blogs is that climate scientists and climate policy advocates have shifted to climate change because it refers to abnormally cold as well as warm weather and is thus harder to dispute—even though climate scientists have used both terms from the late 1980s onward," comments Dunlap by email. "The result is that in conservative circles climate change has become as politicized as global warming, and the two terms now seem synonymous."

So, in sum: If you thought clever word-smithing was going to save the planet, forget about it.

SOURCE





Distinguished Swedish meteorologist, 78, terrorized by Warmists

Press Release from GWPF below

It is with great regret, and profound shock, that we have received Professor Lennart Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from his membership of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.

The Foundation, while of course respecting Professor Bengtsson’s decision, notes with deep concern the disgraceful intolerance within the climate science community which has prompted his resignation.

Professor Bengtsson’s letter of resignation from our Academic Advisory Council was sent to its chairman, Professor David Henderson.  His letter and Professor Henderson’s response are attached below.

Dr Benny Peiser, Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation


Resigning from the GWPF

Dear Professor Henderson,

I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF. I had not expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.

I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.

Under these situation I will be unable to contribute positively to the work of GWPF and consequently therefore I believe it is the best for me to reverse my decision to join its Board at the earliest possible time.

With my best regards
Lennart Bengtsson


Your letter of resignation

Dear Professor Bengtsson,

I have just seen your letter to me, resigning from the position which you had accepted just three weeks ago, as a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Academic Advisory Council.

Your letter came as a surprise and a shock. I greatly regret your decision, and I know that my regret will be shared by all my colleagues on the Council.

Your resignation is not only a sad event for us in the Foundation:  it is also a matter of profound and much wider concern. The reactions that you speak of, and which have forced you to reconsider the decision to join us, reveal a degree of intolerance, and a rejection of the principle of open scientific inquiry, which are truly shocking. They are evidence of a situation which the Global Warming Policy Foundation was created to remedy.

In your recent published interview with Marcel Crok, you said that ‘if I cannot stand my own opinions, life will become completely unbearable’. All of us on the Council will feel deep sympathy with you in an ordeal which you should never have had to endure.

With great regret, and all good wishes for the future.

David Henderson, Chairman, GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council

Via email





British meteorologist knocks W. Antarctic scare on the head

Piers Corbyn

NASA gives its most deluded Scare story Ever - “Unstoppable break - up of (SOME) Antarctic Ice due to (non - existent) Global - Warming threatens sea level Rise (in 200 years time)”

W. Antarctic highlighted

This alarmist USA pre-election year hype produced by the US Government Science Denial Fantasy Factory Dept of NASA uses cherry - picked speculation for part of West Antarctica (cherry - color) which is negated by facts for a much larger area – the whole Antarctic & South Hemisphere - and longer time, issued by a  respected USA body, the NSIDC (National Snow & Ice Data Center).

Even IF the somewhat controversial computer model (recall ALL the failed IPCC computer models!) assertion that part of the West Antarctica Ice - Sheet might break up (like it has in the past when there was less CO2) in the coming 200 yrs, does this automatically mean the end of Antarctic Ice &/or big sea level rise?

The graph says it all.  Ice cover is on an INCREASING trend

NO! FACT: Antarctic ice AS A WHOLE is increasing which reduces water in the sea. The NASA assertion is as brain - dead as saying a storm that blows down a load of trees means the end of trees. MORE ice (like tree s) will come.

But then the NASA - BBC - AlJazeera - NYT... aim is brainwashing the public into stupidity and then treat them as stupid.

More HERE



Of Mice and Men

Blame Barack Obama’s aggressive environmental agenda for the land-use fights that have broken out all over the West. The federal government has changed its polices in the last few months, passing over local governments and remaining stubborn on environmental policies. At least two new faces in the administration, both less than six months old, may have something to do with it.

John Podesta, a known “progressive” environmentalist, was brought on in December, in preparation for an environmental regulation push by Obama. And last November, Obama nominated Neil Kornze to head the Bureau of Land Management, which manages 13% of the total land in the United States, the bulk of which is in the West. Before taking the reins of BLM, Kornze advised Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and he also worked on the Western Solar Plan.

While the headlines were full of the standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch, another group seems to have made more headway against government overreach. The ranchers of Otero County, New Mexico, decided to petition the government through legal means, with the backing of their local government.

On April 25, the Otero County Commission called an emergency meeting. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) was erecting a three-foot fence that kept cattle away from water in order to protect the endangered meadow jumping mouse. The commission cried foul saying the ranchers had rights to the water, and they wrote a cease and desist letter to USFS. “This amounts to nothing short of criminal trespass by your personnel, potential animal cruelty and several other violations of state criminal or civil law,” the commission stated in the letter. “Otero County respectfully demands that the USFS immediately cease and desist from all such activities. We respectfully encourage USFS to take a step back and respect private property rights and state law which the USFS has thus far failed to consider.”

District 3 Commissioner Ronny Rardin added, “I guess we need to put the cattle on the endangered species list so you guys can work diligently to protect them.”

When that didn’t work, the commission ordered Sheriff Benny House to open the gates so cattle could access water. But House hoped it wouldn’t escalate. “What’s going to happen here is that we could end up with a Bundy situation,” he said. “Hopefully, we can resolve it without it getting out of hand.”

Meanwhile, state legislators across the West are meeting, discussing how the states can wrest control of federal lands, which take up vast swaths of their states. The local governments “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, may be the best tool for checking too much federal power. The Endangered Species List has become a favorite vehicle for abusing that power.

SOURCE




No open minds at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)



SOURCE




Marc Morano's hate mail of the day

Where's that "civility" Obama was advocating?

"I hope you choke on fracking water fall in a pit and die clown ...yeah that's right I'll say what everyone else is to afraid to say ... you kill people slowly by feeding that crap and they thinks it's alright well guess what I hope you get it bad one day"

One has to feel a little sorry for the dupe  -- JR

Via email




Five reasons voters don’t believe the White House about global warming

The White House released a third iteration of the “U.S. National Climate Assessment,” claiming it is “the most comprehensive scientific assessment ever generated of climate change and its impacts across every region of America and major sectors of the U.S. economy.” The report emphasizes the need for “urgent action to combat the threats from climate change.” Well, here are five reasons voters don’t believe what the White House says on climate change:

1. Overreach. The White House doesn’t just want it both ways, it wants it every way. Increasingly, when there is a topical weather event, be it a warm typhoon in the Pacific or a cold snap in the United States, we hear it is caused by global warming.  But non-events, such as fewer tropical storms becoming hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or the frustrating, inconvenient truth that there hasn’t been any warming in the past 15 years, are dismissed as meaningless because we are told you must evaluate climate change over the long term. On Tuesday, President Obama even took time to meet with local and national weather reporters as a way of emphasizing the effects of global warming on today’s weather. The left is inconsistent in its selection of what factors and events “prove” that manmade global warming is real.

2. Hypocrisy. Voters notice that the founding father of the global warming movement, Al Gore, has become fabulously wealthy by selling out to Middle Eastern oil and gas interests. Voters notice the mansions, private planes and the super-wealthy lifestyle.  And Gore is not the only global warming hypocrite. I would guess that after he leaves office, President Obama will never again fly on a commercial airline – and he will probably be traveling by Global Expresses, Gulfstreams and the occasional large Falcon, not even on the more modest, smaller private jets. Voters are on to the fact that the global warming crusaders want us to pay more and live with less — but, of course, the rules don’t apply to the politicians who want everybody else to sacrifice. Not to mention, the people who insult and belittle anyone who has a question about the “science” of manmade global warming are often the same people who categorically dismiss the scientific proof of the viability, safety and reliability of nuclear energy. I have a little test for the global warming crusaders: If you’re not for nuclear energy and against ice cream, your commitment to the cause is questionable.

3. The global warming cause fits too nicely with the president’s left-wing political agenda. The prescriptions for dealing with climate change are the same policy objectives the left has promoted for other reasons for at least the past 25 years. That is, redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, anti-growth, anti-development regulations, etc. Because they don’t have much support from voters, the left has to advance its cause through surreptitious maneuvering rather than forthright advocacy of its specific global warming policies. The left never answers the questions of who pays, how much and for what result.

4. A lack of faith in foreign cooperation. Absent any verifiable, enforceable global warming treaty, any unilateral moves by the United States would be pointless. After all, the left wants us to believe that global warming really is global and that fossil fuels burned in distant lands are every bit as harmful as they are when they are utilized here at home. I would love to see a poll that asks American voters if they think American tax dollars should be spent on global warming remedies in foreign lands. Of course, we all know the vast majority of Americans would say no.  Some say the United States should lead by example, but does anybody believe that if we affirmatively harm our own economy, others will somehow think that is a noble sacrifice and follow suit? The very notion is ridiculous.

5. This administration lacks credibility. For a long time, we have said in America, “If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we do X, Y or Z?”  Well, in the Obama era, that adage has morphed into, “If he couldn’t get a Web site right, how are we supposed to believe he knows how to control the climate?” Who really believes that a massive government tax and reordering of the economy in the name of stopping global warming or climate change or whatever will go as planned and the world’s thermostat will adjust to something the Democrats find more acceptable? Answer: Almost nobody. Voters don’t believe what the White House says on this issue in part because it has not been credible on so many other important issues. We’ve heard everything from “you can keep your health-care plan” to there is a “red line” in Syria. Why should anyone believe the White House now?

As I’ve said before, voters aren’t stupid. They know when they are not being leveled with. And all the bluster, intimidation and angry frothing won’t make their doubts go away or make the Obama administration any more believable.

SOURCE

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