Wednesday, June 06, 2007
From The Star
Greens' climate plan sees 12-cent tax at the pump
Carbon toll is to avert climate "catastrophe", says May
Leader Elizabeth May is boasting that her party is the only one politically brave enough to call for carbon taxes that would discourage automobile use and finance other tax cuts that would allow consumers to make smarter environmental choices.
"Right now, the Green Party of Canada is the only Canadian political party prepared to state this obvious reality," May said yesterday. "We will use those carbon taxes to reduce taxes elsewhere."
May rolled out her party's environmental plan yesterday in part to coincide with the G-8 meeting starting today in
The Green leader had harsh words for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his announced intentions to be a "bridge" between countries that have signed on to the Kyoto air quality accord and the United States, which hasn't.
"If we stop being with the rest of the world and start siding with George Bush, we are global saboteurs and that's what Mr. Harper is doing right now in Germany," May said.
The environmental challenge is similar to the space race about 50 years ago in which then-president John F. Kennedy said the
"He couldn't prove it when he said it. He could mobilize the resources, fix the political will, and engage the public's spirit and imagination in a bold, collective venture," she said. "Surely we can do the same thing for purposes of survival."
I’ve seen this silly comparison so many times before. It’s really getting old.
“If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we……cure cancer?”
..find a cure for AIDS?”
...stop hurricanes?”
...keep earthquakes from happening?”
...eliminate world hunger?”
...eliminate poverty and ignorance?”
and now
...stop global warming?”
So all we need to do is throw a bunch of money and engineers at any problem and it will magically be solved. Well, that actually can work if you already know the solution to the problem. We had all the science needed to put a man on the moon by the 19th century. The equations were all known and solved. The “space race” in the 1960s was just a matter of developing the technology needed to implement the solutions. The Apollo 13 astronauts themselves, when asked by
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
This is not at all likely:
This is:
These things won't kill you:
These will:
This will take care of itself with no effort on your part:
This won't:
Well?
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Sweeping changes to global climate seen by 2100: study
Note: all of the links in the following article were put in by Breitbart.com, not me
Many of the world's climate zones will vanish entirely by 2100, or be replaced by new, previously unseen ones, if global warming continues as expected, a study released Monday said.
And what kind of study is this? Wait for it.............
Rising temperatures will force existing climate zones toward higher latitudes and higher elevations, squeezing out climates at the colder extremes, and leaving room for unfamiliar climes around the equator, the study predicted.
The sweeping climatic changes will likely affect huge swaths of land from the Indonesian rainforest to the Peruvian Andes, including many known hotspots of diversity, disrupting local ecological systems and populations.
"Our findings are a logical outcome of global warming scenarios that are driven by continued emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases," said Jack Williams, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of the paper.
"The warmest areas get warmer and move outside our current range of experience and the colder areas also get warmer and so those climates disappear."
Williams and colleagues from the University of Wyoming based their predictions on computer models that translate carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions into climate change. The emissions' estimates were taken from a report issued by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in February.
Bingo!!!!The models suggest that the climate zones covering as much as 48 percent of the earth's landmass could disappear by 2100.
Classic weasel wording.
By that point, close to 40 percent of the world's land surface area would also have a "novel" or new climate, according to the climate models.
New (or "novel") in terms of what? The climate of the central US has been shallow inland sea, semi-tropical swamp, glacier, temperate forest, and semi-arid grassland depending on what part of the past 70 million years you look at. Which of these is novel, again?
Even if emission rates slowed due to mitigation strategies, the changes would still affect up to 20 percent of the earth's landmass in each scenario, the authors said.
As a geographic phenomenon, the disappearing climates would likely affect tropical highlands and regions near the poles including the Colombian and Peruvian Andes, Central America, African Rift Mountains, the Zambian and Angolan Highlands.
???????????????? What does this even mean? Climate changes all the time, but it never disappears.
The trend poses the greatest threat to areas of rich, but threatened, animal and plant life, in regions such as the Himalayas, the Philippines and African and South American mountain ranges. The changes could threaten some species with extinction and also displace or fragment local human populations.
All areas, I might add, that are extremely active tectonically, and thus subject to rapid changes due to earthquakes and volcanic activity.
As for new or novel climate zones, the phenomenon will largely affect the tropics or sub-tropics, such as the Amazonian and Indonesian rainforests, where even subtle temperature variations can have far-reaching effects, Williams said.
Such as ?? Come on, you can scare us more than that!
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Who should be thouroughly ashamed of themselves.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The intimidation seems to have already begun.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
the following is probably a reaction to this (the Great Global Warming Swindle program on Britain's channel 4)
See the video here
from AP news
Warming Report to warn of coming drought
By Seth Borenstein
WASHINGTON (AP) - The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in
At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.
Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.
But as long as we’re indulging in doom and gloom, let’s not forget the other horrible effects of “global warming: the increased shortage of prostitutes in
For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.
Not scarey enough yet, I guess.
"Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the
The draft document says scientists are highly confident that many current problems - change in species' habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs, and increases in allergy-inducing pollen - can be blamed on global warming.
Not quite the same thing as their earlier certainty. Don’t worry, they’re back to that in the next paragraph.
For example, the report says
But the present is nothing compared to the future.
This report - considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research - focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposed to the more science-focused report by the same group last month.
Excuse me. I just spilled coffee all over my computer. “Science focused”???????? I missed the science in the Summary for Policymakers last month. It’s supposed to be in the full report, which hasn’t been released yet. “Emotional heart”?????????????? I don’t dispute that scientists have emotions or that they should express them, but they should confine that sort of thing to their friends and families. I don’t CARE how they feel about global warming. This is science. Stick to the facts. Oh, I forget, they don’t have any.
"This is the story. This is the whole play. This is how it's going to affect people. The science is one thing (and obviously not a thing we agree with – ed.) This is how it affects me, you and the person next door," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver.
YAY! Somebody has it right! It is just a story, a work of fiction. As far as horror stories go, it’s not nearly up to the standards of Poe or LeFanu, but I would rate it as middling science fiction, maybe on the level of Asimov.
Many - not all - of those effects can be prevented, the report says, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. (News flash – methane already has been stable for several years- ed.) If that's the case, the report says "most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur."
The United Nations-organized network of 2,000 scientists was established in 1988 to give regular assessments of the Earth's environment. The document issued last month in
So we’re supposed to torpedo the world’s economies, including those that are just getting developed in
Again, for the sake of humanity, someone PLEASE take the computers away from these people.
Friday, March 09, 2007
from CNS news
Here Comes 'Climate Crisis Action Day'
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
March 08, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Environmental activists and liberal politicians will join forces in Washington, D.C., on March 20 for the first "Climate Crisis Action Day," which is billed as a "carbon-neutral global warming event."
Snicker.
Speakers at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol will include Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and others concerned about climate change.
"Visuals will include a giant inflatable earth on fire, hybrid cars, and thousands of advocates in crimson T-shirts," the news release said.
Environmental groups that are sponsoring the event expect thousands of Americans to come to the Capitol to meet with their senators and representatives -- and "urge them to support swift, steep reductions in global warming pollution and protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Are they all going to walk to DC? Will they stay only in buildings with no concrete in them (concrete production is a large source of CO2) and only eat food grown in DC that doesn't have to be transported? Will they refrain from (ahem) eliminating? (CO2 and methane emissions!) If one of them gets injured or ill, will they refuse to be transported in an ambulance or to be treated by people who drove in one? I'll bet the red t-shirts they'll all be wearing weren't made by hand, either. And I'll also wager that the Park Police or whoever gets to clean up after this event will end up with bags and bags full of plastic water bottles. Do 'environmental activists' have any clue at all how the world really works?
Questions (and answers) to be addressed at the event include:
- Why must we act now to fight global warming?
Activists' answer: "Science tells us that we can prevent the worst effects if we cut emissions enough to keep temperatures from rising more than 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit above today's levels." (Skeptics say the science has been hyped beyond what the facts support.) ; - If ALL the restrictions in the Kyoto treaty were implemented, not only would the US and European economies be destroyed, we would possibly save 0.06C (0.11F) worth of warming. And that's only if the climatologists have got the warming effects of CO2 right to begin with, which I doubt.
- What is at stake?
Answer: "The Arctic and other pristine public lands face thawing, drought, forest fires and other warming effects. Sea level rise could create millions of 'eco refugees' as people flee coasts." (Scaremongering, some Americans insist.) ; And they would be exactly right. - What can we do?
Answer: "Support investments in efficiency and renewable energy, reduce global warming pollution, and protect the Arctic wilderness." (Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will "shut down the machine we call America," says Sen. James Inhofe, a leading critic of the argument that human activity is causing climate change.) He's also exactly right.
If these people are really serious about being 'carbon neutral' (whatever that means) and reducing CO2 emissions, they should stop getting themselves all riled up. That only makes a person's breathing rate go up and causes him to release more CO2. Fortunately, all this angst is just plain irritating to sensible people and it doesn't make any difference at all to the earth. No matter how much the 'climate activists' whine and stamp their little feet, the earth is going to go through its natural cycles of warmth and cold until the sun exhausts its hydrogen supply, goes into the red giant stage and consumes the inner planets of the solar system. I wonder if anyone will claim that human beings cause THAT.
Many other groups are listed as "supporters."
See title of post.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Staff shortages in brothels!
Brothel owners in Bulgaria are blaming global warming for staff shortages.
They claim their best girls are working in ski resorts because a lack of snow has forced tourists to seek other pleasures.
Petra Nestorova, who runs an escort agency in Sofia, said: 'We have hired students, but they are temps and nothing like our elite girls.'
Why was this not foreseen in either "An Inconvenient Truth" or the IPCC Summary for Policymakers? I'm sure the UN wouldn't have any trouble finding volunteers to investigate the situation.
