OK, OK — I’m a day late . . . sue me. Wait, this it LA, better scratch that.

If you read this blog much, you know that a reoccurring theme is chronicling the leftward bias that shows up in the pages of our local cat-box-liner The Los Angeles Times. Well, truth be told, I’m an abject piker when compared to LA County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Frey, whose blog Patericco’s Pontifications has been skewering those rascally Lefties at the LA Times for years — six to be exact. In this year’s wrap-up post, Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2008, the level of leftward bias, obfuscation and outright lying reached new heights — 2008 was after all an election year. Nothing like a presidential race to bring out the very “best” in the writers and editorial board of the LAT.

So grab a BIG cup o’ Joe and go read it all. If you’ve ever wondered, or kinda doubted, that our local rag wasn’t exactly tellin’ it to ya straight — this one from Patrick should lay your ears flat back!

Oh, ya betcha!

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK of course), former head and now ranking member of the Environmental and Public Works Committee [EPW], recently issued the report of 650 former Anthropogenic-Climate-Change believers that were part of the touted scientific “consensus” in support of ol’ Big Al Gore’s most wild claims and assertions having abandoned those beliefs. Finally coming out from under the spell of Climate Change Hysteria, or just finally getting out from under the iron thumb of needing to grovel for research funding, these 650 individuals have some pretty scathing words for those among us that wish to accelerate the tax and spend follies that have been proposed to make the whole world carbon neutral. Three days before Christmas the EPW Committee announced that another 11 scientists have joined the 650 and released their statements, led off by the Al-Gore-fired Physicist Dr. Will Happer.

WASHINGTON, DC – Award winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer, who was reportedly fired by former Vice President Al Gore in 1993 for failing to adhere to Gore’s scientific views, has now declared man-made global warming fears “mistaken.”

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer, who has published over 200 scientific papers, told EPW on December 22, 2008. Happer made his remarks while requesting to join the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environment and Public Works Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-OK) of over 650 (and growing) dissenting international scientists disputing anthropogenic climate fears. [Note: Joining Happer as new additions to the Senate report, are at least 10 more scientists, including meteorologists from Germany, Netherlands and CNN, as well as a professors from MIT and University of Arizona. See below for full quotes and bios of the new skeptical scientists added to the groundbreaking report, which includes many current and former UN IPCC scientists.]

“I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly,” Happer said this week. Happer is a Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Senator Inhofe said that the continued outpouring of prominent scientists like Happer — who are willing to publicly dissent from climate fears — are yet another strike to the UN, Gore and the media’s claims about global warming. “The endless claims of a ‘consensus’ about man-made global warming grow less-and-less credible every day,” Inhofe said.

Happer, who served as the Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy in 1993, says he was fired by Gore in 1993 for not going along with Gore’s scientific views on ozone and climate issues. “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy,” Happer explained in 1993.

“I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect, for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow,” Happer said this week. “Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth’s climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past,” he added.

“Over the past 500 million years since the Cambrian, when fossils of multicellular life first became abundant, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been much higher than current levels, about 3 times higher on average. Life on earth flourished with these higher levels of carbon dioxide,” he explained. “Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility,” Happer added.

In the same EPW announcement, Physicist J.K. Jim August, formerly of the Navy’s nuclear power program and former chair of multiple standards committees in both nuclear power and mechanical engineering, comments on Al Gore’s book, movie and his science of proof, or lack thereof:

The irony is, of course, the treatise that Mr. Gore uses to make his points, which could only have any value based on some scientific certainty basis, is not based on science nor the scientific method — nor can scientists even use science to review it, or follow its logic,” August explained. “Gore argues we’re morally obliged to support his conclusions, precluding objective review with the same scientific methods that he claims to have supported his work. Presenting consequences as facts, he categorically rejects their testing with the same scientific method. Should we be surprised, then when Mr. Gore says that anyone who doubts this must be morally corrupt?” August added. “Fighting religion with reason, we scientists sadly can’t contest. Mr. Gore even shared a Nobel Prize with the IPCC. So, isn’t it ironic? The only truth that’s inconvenient here is that Mr. Gore’s successfully sold his message as if it were science!”

Biologist and Neuropharmacologist Dr. Doug Pettibone makes his dissent loud and proud:

“There is currently no satisfactory answer to the central question: ‘What is the actual proof that humans are causing catastrophic global warming?’ All of the climate computer models in the world do not provide the proof,” Pettibone wrote to EPW on December 11, 2008. “It boils down to a matter of faith that the 30-year positive correlation between man-made CO2 and global temperature provides the proof. But correlations are not proof of cause-and-effect. Blaming global warming on human activity is terribly premature and any legislation designed to curtail CO2 will likely be misguided, costly and ineffective based on the available evidence. Since there has not been any significant increase in global temperatures in the last decade, it is not even clear where temperatures are going to go from here[.]”

Go over to the EPW page and read the statements from the rest of the 11. BTW — it’s not just on this side of the pond that scientists are calling for some sanity to be applied to Climate Change discussions. In Ireland, Environment minister Sammy Wilson is calling man-made climate change a con of high order.

Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said.

{…}

“I’ll not be stopped saying what I believe needs to be said about climate change,” he said.

“Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about it

“I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all. Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well.

“I mean I get it in the Assembly all the time and most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about climate change, not read one book about climate change, if you asked them to explain how they believe there’s a connection between CO2 emission and the effects which they claim there’s going to be, if you ask them to explain the thought process or the modelling that is required and the assumptions behind that and how tenuous all the connections are, they wouldn’t have a clue.

“They simply get letters about it from all these lobby groups, it’s popular and therefore they go along with the flow — and that would be ok if there were no implications for it, but the implications are immense.”

Minister Wilson believes that scare funds should be spent in areas and on programs that directly impact the conditions of folks in need, not spent on theoretical solutions to problems emanating from the dogmatic pursuit of the flawed thesis called Global Warming.

We here at the ol’ Okie Manor couldn’t agree more!

Technorati Tags: Senator Jim Inhofe, Climate Change Hysteria, EPW, Climate Change, Sammy Wilson

OK, let’s say that you’ve invested your all in a theory, had plenty of “scientists” work overtime to model and support said theory, been able to get some loopy ex-politicians to buy into it whole hog, as well as get Hollywood and all the fat-cat Leftists to swallow it whole — and then the natural order of things comes along and spoils your party. Whata ya gonna do? Why, if you’re a hard-core committed believer in the religion of man-caused Climate Change . . . you punt. From today’s Investor’s Business Daily:

The Earth has been warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. But guess what: Researchers say mankind is to blame for that, too.

Say what? Well, it takes them a bit to explain — first some background on the apparent “cooling” we’re experiencing instead of the expected “warming”.

As we’ve noted, 2008 has been a year of records for cold and snowfall and may indeed be the coldest year of the 21st century thus far. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October.

Global thermometers stopped rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature drop was not predicted by global climate models. But it was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since 2000.

When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop near zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. But this year, the start of a new cycle, the sun has been eerily quiet.

The first seven months averaged a sunspot count of only three and in August there were no sunspots at all — zero — something that has not occurred since 1913.

According to the publication Daily Tech, in the past 1,000 years, three previous such events — what are called the Dalton, Maunder and Sporer Minimums — have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called the Little Ice Age (1500-1750).

There’s that pesky “Little Ice Age” again. Of course, the Warmie-scientists and their model must have predicted that period of bitter cold, didn’t they?

The Little Ice Age has been a problem for global warmers because it serves as a reminder of how the earth warms and cools naturally over time. It had to be ignored in the calculations that produced the infamous and since-discredited hockey stick graph that showed a sharp rise in warming alleged to be caused by man.

Guess not. You’ve all met these kinds of folk. If reality doesn’t match or fit into their existence, then they ignore or warp it to their own perspectives. Touting a solid belief in “science”, they function purely as “believers” in the religion of their own creation. It’s those “F” words that keep tripping them up — fact vs. faith — and the other one, too . . . when “fact” trumps their “faith”, then they let their “faith” make them irrational. Here’s a prime example of that last one:

According to Bird and Nevle, before Columbus ruined paradise, native Americans had deforested a significant portion of the continent and converted the land to agricultural purposes. Less CO2 was then absorbed from the atmosphere, and the earth was toasty.

Then a bunch of nasty old white guys arrived and depopulated the native populations through war and the diseases they brought with them. This led to the large-scale abandonment of agricultural lands. The subsequent reforestation of the continent caused temperatures to drop enough to bring on the Little Ice Age.

Implicit in this research is that the world would be fine if man wasn’t in the way. We either make the world too cold or too hot, a view held by many in high places.

Once again the Climate Change Hysterics blame mankind for anything and everything that happens on this planet — like there wasn’t a history of many mass-extinctions before the appearance of man — and that leads them to gravitate to their ultimate “Final Solution” for saving Gaia.

Topping the list was “limiting population,” as if man was a plague upon the earth. This is a major tenet of green dogma that bemoans the fact that the pestilence called mankind comes with cars, factories and overconsumption of fossil fuels and other resources.

Ah yes, that “pestilence called mankind” . . . a virus on our precious planet that is worthy of nothing so much as eradication. Stuck records just keep on a playin’ the same ol’, same ol’ ad infinitum. Kinda grates on the nerves a bit, don’t it? As we’ve covered here in Okieland many times, there is a data set that actually correlates with the recorded warming and cooling periods of our planet — sun activity.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre of Canada’s Carleton University, says: “I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet.”

Indeed, a look at a graph of solar irradiance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows little solar activity during the Little Ice Age and significant activity during recent times.

Now, there may be some speculation as to just how the mechanics of this actually work, and whether cosmic rays in concert with sun activity do the majority of the work, but if one has an open mind one has to at least consider that Sol, and not little ol’ us, is the major driver of Climate Change.

Anything else is only a matter of faith.

Be careful what you believe in. False gods won’t be answerin’ any o’ your prayers.

And BTW — better get some woolens . . . looks like your gonna need ‘em!

Technorati Tags: man-caused Climate Change, Little Ice Age, sunspot count, limiting population, Timothy Patterson, solar activity

Here’s a little CGI gut check for all those poor souls that insist on worshiping at the alter of Climate Change Hysteria.

That’s what I’d call Global Warming. Where’s the Sierra Club when you really need em?

The AP and Reuters continue to revel in Obama exercise porn while the President-elect is spending 12 days vacationing in a Hawaiian “paradise” while his selected chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is hiding out in Africa.

And here’s the thing that, you know, you read it, and when you just get it, it’s 4:30 this afternoon, and it gives — and it gives you a headache. It’s so calculated. You know, to put it out now, it’s calculated to make the thing — Obama is in Hawaii. Rahm Emanuel is in Africa, so they don’t have to answer any questions.

Look, there are not big questions left, but there are some questions left, and they don’t want to answer any of them.

Meanwhile, actual news is happening all around us. Gee, I feel so safe and secure.

The Chicago Sun-Times isn’t feelin’ the love of a transparent Obama transition:

The Obama team, pledging the ”most open and transparent transition in history,” gets an ”A” for disclosing donors to the Jan. 20 inauguration and a ”F” when it comes to revealing transition meetings with groups. Contrary to its own ‘’seat at the table transparency policy,” meetings are not posted on a Web site.

I’m giving a ”B” to the Obama transition report on staff contacts with Gov. Blagojevich. The report was a summary narrative released last week of an internal inquiry into Gov. Blagojevich’s selling-of-a-Senate seat scandal. While the Obama team deserves credit for disclosure — including that President-elect Barack Obama and incoming White House staffers Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel met with federal prosecutors — offering some notes or transcripts to support the conclusions would have been helpful.

They’ve covered the Chosen One for years — they should know. Meanwhile, the Chinese have given the world and US a hard look and find some pretty large chinks in Uncle Sam’s armor:

The United States has been acting as the world’s only superpower in 2008, but the financial turmoil, which broke out in Wall Street in September, showed its vulnerability.

In addition, the country is still deep in trouble with its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has undermined its international image.

Some analysts attributed the waning U.S. strength to its policy of unilateralism and expansionism on international issues, and its practice of a laissez-faire free market economy at home. It remains to be seen what consequences of these policies will have on U.S. national strength.

Oh and by the way, for the first time ever, the Chinese and the Russian military have a direct phone link to each other. That should drive our President-elect to imbibe in his next couple of Mai Tais, oh, ya betcha! If not, then this should. Israel is kicking the livin’ crap out of Hamas in Gaza.

Israel bombed Gaza for a third day Monday in an “all-out war” on Hamas, as tanks massed on the border and the Islamists fired deadly rockets in retaliation for the blitz that has killed at least 318 people.

Anger over the mammoth bombing campaign spiralled in the Muslim world , UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon again deplored the violence, and efforts to hold talks between Syria and Israel were suspended as a result of the bombardment.

With Israeli tanks idling along the border of the battered Palestinian enclave , the army declared the area a closed military zone — a move that in the past has often been followed by ground operations.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who has warned of a possible ground offensive, declared that the Jewish state was in “an all-out war with Hamas and its proxies”.

The Congo is dealing with another Ebola outbreak. That probably made Christmas for University of Texas professor Dr. Eric R. Pianka.

Now that we’ve bailed out GM and Chrysler so that they can continue to pay the UAW highway-robbery wage rates that got their sorry tits caught firmly in the current financial wringer, it is wise to note that said UAW owns and operates a $33 million resort, complete with a $6.4 million golf course on the shores of Michigan’s Black Lake. I feel so much better knowing that they can still play golf and luxuriate at the resort on the public’s dime, don’t you?

Think that if you buy the politically correct high-mileage vehicle and limit your gasoline consumption that you will be rewarded by your state government? If you live in Oregon, better think again.

A year ago, the Oregon Department of Transportation announced it had demonstrated that a new way to pay for roads — via a mileage tax and satellite technology — could work.

Now Gov. Ted Kulongoski says he’d like the legislature to take the next step.

As part of a transportation-related bill he has filed for the 2009 legislative session, the governor says he plans to recommend “a path to transition away from the gas tax as the central funding source for transportation.”

What that means is explained on the governor’s website:

“As Oregonians drive less and demand more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is increasingly important that the state find a new way, other than the gas tax, to finance our transportation system.”

According to the policies he has outlined online, Kulongoski proposes to continue the work of the special task force that came up with and tested the idea of a mileage tax to replace the gas tax.

The governor wants the task force “to partner with auto manufacturers to refine technology that would enable Oregonians to pay for the transportation system based on how many miles they drive.”

Let’s face it folks. They want ALL our money! The sad part is that if we keep voting the way we have the last four years they’ll probably get it. To put some extra icing on this pre-New Year’s cake, Yellowstone is having a Quake swarm. Goody!

BTW — calling Dick Tracy! Your wrist phone awaits!

Buckle up buckaroos, 2009 is gonna be a bumpy ride!

Technorati Tags: Obama transition, Oregon Department of Transportation, ileage tax, Quake swarm

What we be talkin’ about, right here, right now!

Wordle.net

Heh!

[H/t: The Anchoress]

While our new President-elect Obama is gettin’ his chill on in a posh resort on Oahu, no doubt dreaming of big tax revenues from his Cap & Trade Global-Warming-fighting fantasies, across the pond Christopher Booker is writing in the Telegraph.co.uk that “2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved.” Booker takes a look back at his year ‘08 columns and finds that one of his major themes is neatly defined by two recent items in The Daily Telegraph. Uh, hello Barack — anyone on this side payin’ any attention to this?

The first, on May 21, headed “Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts” , reported that the entire Alpine “winter sports industry” could soon “grind to a halt for lack of snow”. The second, on December 19, headed “The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation” , reported that this winter’s Alpine snowfalls “look set to beat all records by New Year’s Day”.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the “hottest in history” and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to “natural factors” such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely “masking the underlying warming trend”, and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

It strains credulity when the Warmies insist that temps getting colder is definite proof that Global Warming is continuing apace. You have to be of the mind to parse the meaning of “is”, or “marriage” for that matter, to buy into that one. But, the Climate Change fanatics continue nonetheless, lead by their fearful leader ol’ Big Al Gore, high priest of the church of the Holy Order of Anthropogenic Climate Change and his “consensus” of scientific opinion. Uh, Booker has a few comments on that there ol’ “consensus”.

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence (sic) that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, (sic) based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

As well as to produce ever more reasons to promote higher and higher taxation to fight the global catastrophes headed our way. We noted here earlier in the month that at least 650 scientists that had previously bought into the U.N.’s official position on man-caused Climate Change have changed their mind. “The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.” Funny thing, these scientists were retreating from their previous pro-warming positions even before this fall’s economic declines. Now that money is disappearing almost everywhere at an alarming rate, even the politicians are asking themselves if they can justify promoting spending trillions of dollars on a problem that John Q. Public is seeing as not all that relevant, especially in comparison to being evicted from a foreclosed-mortgaged home or not being able to afford to eat properly. Hmmm, financial distress tends to focus the mind a bit, especially when what one can perceive is diametrically opposed to what the Warmies keep braying about.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for “emissions trading”, “carbon capture”, building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to “biofuels”, are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

Booker ends this part of his column with a warning to the people of Great Britain that what they had better do is to immediately begin building more power generating sources or else “within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt.”

We on this side of the pond need to face up to the same reality. Al Gore’s, and presumably also the President-elect’s fantasies of vast wind farms, acres of solar panels and switchgrass to bio-diesel refineries aren’t gonna generate the ever-increasing electricity needs of the good ol’ U.S. of A, let alone power our transportation needs. Not in my lifetime. Especially if more and more restrictions are placed on coal and oil production and processing.

How are the groveling masses supposed to properly admire Obama’s pectoral definition on their wide-screen HD TV’s if they can’t afford to pay their electric bills?

Hey Barack, you better be thinkin’ long and hard “carefully” about that one.