Man Made Global Warming

When it comes to man made global warming I am a skeptic.  In fact,when it comes to all claims by scientists I am a skeptic.  Why?  Because scientists are, most of the time, wrong.  For example, in the 1950s pediatricians and psychologists were saying kissing and holding babies was bad for them.  No one agrees with that now, but just 60 years ago it was a scientific "fact".  Many scientists today say life appeared spontaneously from non-living matter. They are completely convinced that this idea is true. However, no one has been able to produce life from non-living matter. Why is this important?  Because it shows that scientists are willing to ignore the rules of their profession in order to assert a conclusion they hope is true. And when it comes to weather, scientists are unable to predict the amount of cloud cover next week, or the number and severity of hurricanes.  Their predictions for the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season were laughably wrong.  So, when they predict droughts, and extinctions, and rising sea levels I am pretty skeptical.  Not totally skeptical, just 60% or so.  But when they go on to say people are responsible for global warming I am 99.99% sure they are just making stuff up.

Arbor Day: YES! Earth Day: NO!

I have fond memories of the Arbor Day of 1976, when my 1st Grade class planted a grove of trees on the school grounds. My uncle planted many trees on his land. I remember trees being planted by the men of my church in Palo Alto when I was 7 or 8. But I must admit that I have disliked Earth Day ever since I first heard about it in the early 1990s, it seemed to me that the people behind it disliked a lot of the things I think are important. A few years ago I discovered that the date for Earth Day is the same as V.I. Lenin's birthday. That sealed the case against Earth Day in my book. But here is an interesting article contrasting Earth Day with its predecessor tree loving holiday, Arbor Day.

Nothing reveals the essence of a people like their national holidays. This week marks the end of most Arbor Day celebrations across the United States. (Like many Victorian-era inventions, Arbor Day was individualized and idiosyncratic; most states observe it in late April and early May.) Earth Day was, of course, was always a top-down federal holiday set for April 22. (READ THE WHOLE THING HERE.)

Things aren't that bad.

Consider this...

A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negetive GDP growth. Have we had that? No. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis GDP has increased the last three quarters.

Q4 2007 GDP was up 0.4%
Q1 2008 GDP was up 0.9%
Q2 2008 GDP was up 2.8%

We have no banking crisis. We have had a handful of banks run into problems. And they were bought by larger healthy banks. Countrywide and Merrill Lynch have been gobbled up by BofA. Why? Because BofA plans on making money.

Lehman brothers is being carved up between several other firms. Barclays is buying Lehman's research division, Bain Capital is buying a hunk,Nomura hired about 2,500 of Lehman's British employees and bought Lehman's Asian operations. And of course, as we have all heard, Wachovia is buying $494 billion of Lehman's bad debt. Why? Because Nomura, and Wachovia, and Bain, and Barclay's are getting ready to reap a fortune in the investment banking business.

Citi just agreed to buy Wachovia's troubled retail operations. Why? Because Wachovia sucks at retail banking and Citi knows how to do it and make money. Citi plans growing, and Wachovia is well capitalized to compete in the investment banking sector.

Warren Buffet just took a $5 billion stake in Golman Sachs. Wells Fargo is strong. Citi is strong. BofA is strong. The land that backs up all of that "bad" debt isn't going anywhere. The U.S. produces more food than we can possibly eat. No one is going to starve. The U.S. Gov't holds 29,813 tons of gold bars. There are more than 700,000,000 barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Unemployment, which was over 10% in the 1980s is now barely over 6%. In inflation adjusted dollars we spend about the same for gasoline as we did in the 1950s.

I am astounded that anyone thinks these are hard economic times. We are rich rich rich. But we talk like the world is afalling apart. In the last 10 days I've heard some of my coutrymen express fear about overpopulation, another great depression, famine, global warming, run-away inflation, deflation, rising unemployment, high gas prices, and the price of cable televsion. I swear, people are nuts. Its like they don't have anything to wory about so they have to make stuf up.

And while I'm at it, I want to thank those 40% of House democrats and 66% of House republicans who voted against the Baking Bailout Bill. I am proud of you. It is probably the best thing Congress has done all year. Let bad banks fail so the healthy banks can eat them and make something useful out of them. Don't pick winners and losers. That's not your job. THank you for letting the market work.

I told you it was all about hating humanity

"With 60 million people already living in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the journal said, British couples should aim to have no more than two children as part of their contribution to worldwide efforts to reduce carbon emissions, stem climate change and ease demands on the world's resources." (Read whole Chicago Tribune article here.)

I say, "Just kill some termites".

Bunk Bunk Bunk. Global warming is bunk!

My good friend, brother in Christ, and kum, Ian (St. John of the Ladder) sent me a link to a fabulous article on global warming

Not only is carbon dioxide's total greenhouse effect puny, mankind's contribution to it is minuscule. The overwhelming majority (97%) of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere comes from nature, not from man. Volcanoes, swamps, rice paddies, fallen leaves, and even insects and bacteria produce carbon dioxide, as well as methane. According to the journal Science (Nov. 5, 1982), termites alone emit ten times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world.

You can read the whole article here. This, of course, doesn't mean I favor building coal-fired power plants plants all over the country(sulfur dioxide pollution still kills fish, even if the carbon dioxide doesn't warm the planet.), and it doesn't mean I favor drilling for oil off the coast of California (I swim in those waters).

What I think is that there is in man a knowledge that the Day of Judgement is coming, but because we, generally, hate God we don't want to acknowledge that He is coming to judge us. But the knowledge of Doom is is in us. It can not be expunged. Therefore, we make up global catastrophes to worry about. Global Warming is merely the Ragnarok, the appearance of Kali, the overthrow of Zeus, the Gotterdammerung of educated modern pagans. It is better to "repent and be baptized for the remission of sins", and thereby have a good defense on the in the Last of Judgment than to point fingers at SUV drivers and go to Hell.

Al Gore Must Hate This News. (And I Love It.)

Greetings, loyal readers.

The Global Warming Desk just received the following news alert from the home office in Firebaugh. (I bet you didn't know we had a home office around here. Neither did I until a few minutes ago. I'm still not sure its needed. Seems like just another useless level of management to me. But, I guess, everyone needs a job to go to in the morning.)

"The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming." (Read the whole story.)

In 5 years we all will look back at this time and feel deep embarrassment. Well, I won't. And you won't. And Al Gore, who makes a nice living by frightening people, won't. But all of those people who have fallen for the global warming lie will feel like... Hmmmm, what was it P.T. Barnum said?

This Just In from the Needless Fear, Oops! I mean "Global Warming" Desk.

"Normally, Anchorage has 14 or 15 days in the summer that reach the 70-degree mark, Albanese said. This year, there have been two. And the city didn't see 70 at all until July 2. That threshold typically comes in early to mid-June, according to weather records." (Read the whole story from the Anchorage Daily News)

Don't Tell Al Gore

OMAHA, Neb. -- Holt County snowplows were out Tuesday night clearing 8 inches of hail that fell during a storm.

Near O'Neill, pea- to marble-sized hail piled up on one stretch of roadway.

In Atkinson, there were reports of baseball-sized hail that broke out windows at the town's airport.

This Global Warming is really starting to scare me. How will I ever pay my air conditioning bill?

Global Warming?

"The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable." (Read the whole thing here.)

Who reports what, and why do they report it?

I have begun a new semester and one of my classes is a media criticism class. That requires me to keep a log of my media use and then do some research on what I log. I'll be posting some of that work here during the semester.

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This week I have had hardly any radio listening time, but have done a lot reading on line (also some design magazines). One of the things I've tried to pay attention to is who is reporting what kind of news.

For example, Investors Business Daily seems to report news and publish editorials that run counter to the popular global warming movement. (For example: http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175 )

I think there are two ways to view this:
1) IBD is in the hip pocket of the polluters who want to keep selling SUVs and building coal fired power plants.
2) Investors really need to know what the weather is going to be so they can plan for it. I, for one, wouldn't invest in a vinyard in Washington sate if I knew the weather there for the next century was going to be like the Yukon is now. But if global warming is real I, certainly, would make that investment.

Also, who is reporting news the other direction? I mean who are the people behind the the global warming movement. In general they are people I do not trust, but I have to keep that distrust in abeyance because on this issue they might know what they are talking about and investing in that vinyard in Washington might be a smart move. But since, as a class, these people, in my opinion, are not very interested in creating wealth, I have to keep that in mind, too.

Keeping everyone's motives in mind when I read something is not always easy. But Google helps. It took me less than five minutes of searching to discover that IBD is owned by the William O'Neil Company (http://www.williamoneil.com/) and that they are a data and information company that serves institutional investors. And Wikipaedia provides info on the founder and owner of the company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O'Neil).

Bunk, Bunk, Bunk

Yesterday my neigbor remarked how the weather forcast said 7 days of continual rain but we only had two. I said, "Whats remarkable is that they can't predict rain a week out but expect us to be afraid of global warming. She was shocked that I would say sometinglike that.

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"...Dr Renwick said his organisation was doing
as well as any other weather forecaster around the world. He was quoted
by the country’s leading newspaper, the New Zealand Herald as saying:
“Climate prediction is hard, half of the variability in the climate system is
not predictable, so we don’t expect to do terrifically well.” Later on New
Zealand radio, Dr Renwick said: “The weather is not predictable beyond
a week or two.”" Read the whole article here.

Global Warming is Bunk

On this day, when the Washington Times directs our attention to world-wide record low temperatures, I'd like to point out the following:

More than 17,000 scientists have signed the Global Warming Petition from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. The Petition says, in part:

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

I think Global Warming hype is just another way for the Humanity Haters to convince people to give up their property and liberty.

Global Warming

I have to admit that part of the reason I think global warming is bunk is because most of the people who are promoting the theory are people I regard as being enemies of liberty and haters of humanity; people who think population control (aka abortion) and socialism are the best ways to combat global warming. But part of my skeptecism is because very prominent scientists also regard it as bunk.

"ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works". (More here)

Global Warming (deniers) on the Wiki

"Our team ... has discovered that the relatively few cosmic rays that reach sea-level play a big part in the everyday weather. They help to make low-level clouds, which largely regulate the Earth’s surface temperature. During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up. ... most of the warming during the 20th Century can be explained by a reduction in low cloud cover." - Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center

Read (here) a long list of scientists who are skeptical of the "science" behind the current global warmong scare.

Global Warming

Hmmmmm. When I was a kid of about 6 or 7 I remember hearing warnings about global cooling. Now this: Snow in the United Arab Emirates So, come on, alarmist groups, whats it gonna be? I have a wardrobe to buy. Sheesh!

Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto! It always about Kyoto!

I really do not know what to think about global warming. But I do know that every socialist, and every America-hater I know (Yes, some are even my friends. Don't ask me how.) is sure it is happening and that it is the fault of human beings. This little article sheds some light on the subject. (Hint: the UN is involved.)