Cancun 'Can’t'

“Cancun can.” That’s the catchphrase of this year’s United Nations’ “global warming” conference – a costly taxpayer-funded boondoggle being held at the tropical Yucatan vacation destination. Last December U.S. taxpayers shelled out more than $1 million to send a 106-person delegation to the UN climate conference in Copenhagen – where President Barack Obama pledged billions of American tax dollars toward a radical global wealth redistribution scheme.

How much will this latest junket cost us? Aside from the exorbitant travel costs, American “climate ambassador” Jonathan Pershing has already pledged $1.7 billion of your tax money to the effort – and that’s just to cover the scheme’s “fast-start” funding.

According to the agreement reached in Copenhagen, this wealth redistribution fund would siphon as much as $100 billion annually from developed nations like the U.S. beginning in 2020.

Fortunately last year’s non-binding “Copenhagen Accord” – much like Obama’s “cap and trade” energy tax hike – has stumbled upon a steely resistance in Washington. Even members of Obama’s party who went along with his multiple domestic bailouts and socialized medicine proposal want nothing to do with his climate crusade. Emissions targets agreed upon in Copenhagen have been dismissed by many of the administration’s key Democratic allies as economically impractical, and before Obama even departed for last year’s conference a sitting Democratic Senator blasted him for presuming to have the “unilateral power” to commit America to any of Copenhagen’s controversial provisions.

During the 2010 campaign, one Democratic Senate candidate went so far as to fire a bullet through Obama’s “cap and trade” bill to demonstrate his opposition to the president’s environmental policies.

As these political battles waged, the so-called “science” behind global warming was also dealt a string of setbacks. This process started (publicly, at least) with the November 2009 release of thousands of emails from a British University – documents which showed that “scientists” had manipulated and even destroyed data in an effort to trick the world into accepting the climate change myth. This University’s findings were among the central planks of the UN’s case for climate change – along with similarly-debunked claims about an impending glacier meltdown in the Himalayas.

In light of these political and scientific setbacks, the wealth redistributors have been forced to start from scratch with a new PR angle. In this recession-ravaged economy, it’s now all about dollars and cents. According to Danish bureaucrat Connie Hedegaard – the European Union’s “climate commissioner” – the fight against global warming is no longer a moral imperative or a prerequisite for the continued survival of the human race. Now it has conveniently become a “bottom line” issue.

“Those in the end who improve energy efficiency and improve innovation, they will save money,” Hedegaard said at a recent conference. At another recent event, Hedegaard encouraged several of the world’s largest corporations to assist her by spreading “the good example that [climate policy] is also good for the bottom line.”

Based on the current sovereign debt crisis that is confronting the Eurozone, Hedegaard and her peers are probably not the best people to consult for financial advice. Also, based on the results of last month’s election it is doubtful U.S. taxpayers would view it as “good for (their) bottom line” to pump billions of dollars each year into a global wealth redistribution scheme cloaked in fuzzy science and misleading rhetoric.

Unfortunately, Obama has made it clear in the past that he supports policies which “spread the wealth around,” and the UN is making no bones about its true intentions with respect to the climate issue. Last month, Ottmar Edenhofer – a German economist and one of the UN’s top climate leaders, told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung that “climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth,” adding that “it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization.”

Sounds like an economist after Obama’s own heart, doesn’t it? Armed with their new “pro-business” public relations spin, the forces pushing this debate are once again attempting to give your money away – the only difference is that this time they are concealing their socialist designs beneath “business-friendly” rhetoric.

Cancun can’t be permitted to get away with such a costly deception.

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Britain's Warmist Pope can't get to Cancun -- too much snow

Vicky Pope, head of the climate predictions programme at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, was stuck at Gatwick airport this week, a victim of Britain's brutal cold snap.

Ironically, she was on her way to Cancún to announce, together with the UN's World Meteorological Organisation, that 2010 had provisionally tied with 1998 as the hottest year on record.

Scientists from the Noaaa and Nasa, the two other institutes that provide data on global temperatures were wisely staying put in the US, having already stated that it looked like being the hottest year ever.

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Snow Used To Be Caused By Cooling, Now Caused By Warming

Last winter had the second largest northern hemisphere snow extent on record, after 1978. The 2010 snow was of course due to global warming, while the 1978 event was due to global cooling.

The trend line is completely flat, indicating the subtle transition from global cooling to global warming – which is only perceptible by climate experts looking for attention and funding. (The survival of the planet depends on these people being continuously hysterical about something or other.)

The global warming story has lost traction and I think they should seriously consider restarting the global cooling scare – of course they can start by blaming global cooling on global warming. Regardless of whether the planet is warming or cooling, it is 100% for sure the fault of Republicans.

SOURCE (See the original for links and graphics)




The latest on windmills from John Droz Jr. [aaprjohn@northnet.org]

As you know, in my view this wind controversy is largely a PR matter. As such it is critically important to win over other citizens. We simply have no chance without a modicum of public support! Toward that end I am sending you two new contributions:

1 - A short animated video I just finished today. It is still in it's draft form but I thought you'd like to see it. I'm sure that there are people out there that are more artistically creative that could come up with an even better video — so please do! See here. If I get motivated (and have the time) I might create part 2 of the story: that one showing Jane at the town board meeting, using some of the material from the next item.

2 - I wrote "What Not To Say" (a play on the TV program) to give citizens some guidance on what TO say when having an opportunity to speak in front of their town, county, state, or federal representatives. This is still the draft version, so if you have any good suggestions, feel free to forward them. See here

3 - Lastly, I’ve gotten many requests for information about the effects on home values due to nearby wind projects. Since there is a lot of information out there, and I think that this is an important area, I’ve created an addendum page to my website to list some of the better articles here. Please send any good real estate related studies to me, and I'll add them.

I was dismayed to see the blatant bias in the National Association of Realtor’s web page on home values and wind energy. See here I wrote to them, complaining. The end result was that they said that they would add a link to my new page. That's a slight improvement.

Above received by email




Obama and oil

The real problem with the White House's attitude toward oil, and energy generally, is how deeply ideological it is. Few presidents have talked a bigger game about pragmatism while pursuing a dogmatic agenda.

To be fair, the White House is hardly as radical as many of the Greens descending on Cancun this week for the next round of fruitless climate-change talks. For instance, Kevin Anderson, director of Britain's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, recently authored a paper in which he argues that Western nations should use WWII-style rationing to simply halt economic growth for the next 20 years in order to curb greenhouse gas production. There's a winning political agenda!

Obama doesn't advocate anything so stark, but that's not necessarily a point in his favor. Radicals like Anderson are honest about the trade-offs between climate-change policies and economic growth. To listen to Obama, however, dismantling our fossil-fuel industries would be an unalloyed economic boon, generating countless lavish, rewarding green jobs that would replace those dirty, icky carbon-intensive jobs. It's not just an argument for a free lunch, it's an argument for a magic free lunch.

Obama admits he has no idea how to get to this Brigadoon-like green economy, and his Energy secretary has conceded it will take quite a few Nobel Prize-worthy scientific breakthroughs to even get close. Details, details.

The only detail missing is evidence. A friend of mine once ran a painting service in college whose unofficial motto was "We may be slow, but we're expensive." That's the story of Europe's pursuit of green jobs. They're inefficient, producing meager amounts of energy at high costs.

It wasn't supposed to work like this. According to Al Gore, we were going to have an energy version of Moore's Law (though not actually a scientific law, Moore's Law refers to the trend of computers to get twice as powerful every 18 months). Gore argued that solar cells and wind power would get drastically more efficient very quickly. Nothing like that has happened or is likely to happen, as the University of Manitoba's Vaclav Smil has demonstrated at great length. Transitions from one form of energy to another, Smil writes at The American (american.com), are "inherently protracted affairs" requiring "decades, not years." And let's remember that Gore once insisted that ethanol subsidies were a fast track to a green economy. He said, in effect, "never mind" about that last month.

Obama won't admit it, but his moratorium is simply supply-side rationing. America should deny itself economic growth despite the fact it has potentially massive oil reserves. Democrats uniformly insist they are fixated on creating good jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. But they're intent on killing oil-industry jobs, which by definition cannot be sent overseas and also pay twice the national average.

Meanwhile, it's becoming clear that the U.S. could be the Saudi Arabia of cleaner-burning natural gas, with an estimated 100-year supply of the stuff (and possibly more). And yet roadblocks to natural-gas development grow by the day. We could make realistic progress on reducing our carbon emissions if we set about replacing coal with natural gas. (At minimum we could and should phase out mountaintop removal coal mining, which among other things would make natural gas more competitive.)

Of course, greens say that climate change trumps such considerations, and that's a principled argument -- flawed in my view but principled. But mainstream politicians and pundits with the courage to make the principled case for rationing are hard to come by.

I'd have a lot more respect for Obama if he came out and said, "You know all that stuff I said about doing everything possible to create good jobs here at home and get this economy moving again? Well, never mind."

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Proof of global cooling!

The Warmists told us for years that warming would cause drought, so ....

Note that Australia is a continent so this is not trivial



AUSTRALIA has recorded its wettest spring in 111 years of records as the Weather Bureau warns of heavy rain on Saturday for much of Queensland's southeast. The nation recorded an average 163mm over spring, up on the previous record of 140mm set in 1975.

It comes as Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority chairman Russell Reichelt raises concerns about the impacts of the wet on the reef.

Dr Reichelt said on Thursday that although cloud cover could help keep sea surface temperatures down and reduce bleaching, cyclones and flood run-off could cause damage. Environment Department staff and tourism operators would be involved in monitoring reef health. "Surveys will provide early warning of any problems such as coral bleaching and disease and damage from predators and storms," Dr Reichelt said.

Weather Channel meteorologist Tom Saunders said all states, except Tasmania, recorded heavy spring rain. "A moderate to strong La Nina weather pattern through the Pacific Ocean has delivered Australia's wettest spring in the 111 years of records we have available," he said.

"The wet spring follows a wet summer, autumn and winter. The nation has averaged 580mm so far this year, our third wettest January to November on record."

Mr Saunders said the La Nina showed little sign of weakening, so above average summer rain should continue along the east coast. "With catchments saturated following the spring downpours, there is a serious risk of further flooding," he said.

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Australia: No sign of summer in Queensland as 2011 draws near

They're dying of cold in the Northern winter at the moment and even in the Southern summer it is unusually cool. No matter how the Warmists try to explain it away, the cooling is GLOBAL!

As the holidays approach and the New Year inches closer, it is the question on many Queenslanders' lips: where is summer? With the state seeing its wettest spring in 111 years and no sign of clear skies, the normally hot and humid weather characteristic of a Queensland Christmas is yet to set in.

Information from the Bureau of Meteorology showed that in 2009, the average temperature for November and the dying weeks of spring was 29.5 degrees, with a top of 34.8. However, November 2010 saw an average of only 26.6 degrees and a top of 29.5; over five degrees cooler than this time last year.

And with showers predicted for the whole of next week and temperatures to remain in the mid to high 20s, it seems December is shaping up to be just as overcast.

Bureau of Meteorology climate meteorologist Xiankun Meng said the higher than average rainfall was causing the lower temperatures. “The increased rainfall causes more cloud cover. This means the average temperatures are decreased,” he said.

Mr Meng said the increased activity in the eastern regions of the Pacific due to El Nino effect was causing more weather activity and the excessive rainfall to southeast Queensland.

He said the Bureau predicted that the southern half of the state would experience below average temperatures over the summer period and a cooler minimum. And although some hot days are possible after the New Year, there were no available long-term predictions.

SOURCE

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