Executive summary: Al Gore’s new book and movie, both titled An Inconvenient Truth, have been hailed by environmentalists–despite being filled with false or misleading claims about the science of global warming and related issues. This page details errors in the book (2006, Rodale Books), which in summary include:

• Misleading links between weather events and climate      change: Climate is the average of      weather conditions over long time periods; because the climate system is      inherently variable, individual weather events are not indicative of      trends. Nonetheless, Gore overwhelms the reader with many individual      events, claiming this is global warming in action: a European heatwave,      record daily highs in U.S. cities one summer, hurricane Katrina, floods in      Europe and China, and more. To address the issue of climate change, all      such events must be considered over time. As it turns out, in several      cases such analysis refutes any claims of recent trends (for example, with      regard to floods).
  In other cases, the scientific community is engaged in much research and      debate. Gore claims that there is “an emerging consensus” that      hurricane activity is on the upswing due to global warming. The reality is      that this is the subject of much debate in the scientific community:      different researchers have produced contradictory conclusions, but the      factors involved are far more complex than Gore admits, and research is      continuing.
• Misrepresentation of data: Of the various graphs and other data Gore presents,      some of it is misrepresented. Gore presents one graph, said to be      temperature data derived from ice cores, to support the controversial      claim of one research group–Mann et al.–that current temperatures are      higher than anytime in the last 1,000 years. The graph is not the ice core      data, however, but the Mann et al. data derived from tree rings and other      proxies. The broader claim is questioned by many scientists as well–much      research suggests that temperatures around 1100-1300 AD were about as warm      as today–as well as the methodology used to support such claims. Gore      uses another set of ice core data to claim that carbon dioxide      concentrations have driven global temperatures for the last 600,000 years.      He admits the actual relationship is “complicated”, which is as      close as he comes to admitting the fact that the temperature changes came      first, and probably helped drive the carbon dioxide changes.
  These aren’t the only cases of sloppiness with data: Gore claims the      hottest year on record was 2005, but in reality existing observations      don’t have the accuracy to discriminate between, say, 2005 and 1998, a hot      year due to an extreme El Nino event. He claims that the increasing      closures of the barrier’s on Britain’s Thames River show sea level is      rising, but doesn’t mention that the British government recently changed      the rules for such closures, including closing the barriers to deal with low      sea level; and he claims that a particular bird species is “in      trouble” in the Netherlands due to climate change, but researchers      report no change in this bird population. He cites a peak in tornadoes in      2004 as further evidence, but this peak came from new technology      permitting the counting of more weak tornadoes than ever before;      comparison of consistent data shows no trends in tornadoes.
• Exaggerations about sea level rise: Gore claims that potential melting of ice sheets in      Greenland and West Antarctic will force the “evacuation” of      millions of people to escape sea level rise of 6 meters (20 feet). This      flatly contradicts even the worst-case scenarios described by the scientific      community. Most research indicates that such melting, even if it could      occur, would take 1,000 to 5,000 years; the minimum timescale described by      any researcher for such melting is still centuries. Even the United      Nations’ IPCC, source of the “consensus” analysis which still      overestimates future warming, only predicts sea level rise of 0.1 to 0.8      meters (4 to 30 inches) in the next 100 years.
• Misleading claims about effects of climate change: Gore claims that the emergence of new diseases is related      to global warming, but most of the diseases he lists have little or no      relationship to climate. Even in the case of malaria, a disease with a      stronger link to climate, health experts cite the management of human      infrastructure and health systems as far more important factors. In other      cases Gore neglects the strong influence of human resource management, as      with linking occurrence of wildfires or pest outbreaks to global warming.      He also claims global warming is causing a “significant” number      of polar bear drownings, based on a report of four drowned polar bears;      however, other researchers report the polar bear population is generally      unchanged. Melting of glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro and in Glacier      National Park are cited as consequences of global warming, but in both      cases these glaciers have been melting since the 1800s, when the Earth      emerged from a period of global cooling.
• Reliance on worst-case scenarios: An underlying problem is that Gore seizes upon      worst-case scenarios and presents them as fact–sometimes omitting      important qualifiers. Much of the claims about the consequences of future      global warming rely on climate models that Gore calls “evermore      accurate”, but significant questions about the reliability of these      models remain, and the effects cited by Gore presume that the worse-case      predictions of these models are the correct ones. More generally, climate      change should be considered at the regional or local level, where impacts      would variously be positive or negative–especially depending on how we      choose to respond. Gore consistently discusses the most negative impacts,      and even minimizes the possibility of positive change.
• False claims about scientific views on global warming: Gore asserts that the scientific community is in      essentially unanimous agreement with his interpretation of global warming,      and dismisses skepticism of global warming as an energy industry      conspiracy. Not only are such claims false, they severely misrepresent the      very process of science. Gore cites a flawed editorial from a science      journal to claim that all published research agrees with the      “consensus” view on global warming; in reality, much published      research contradicts Gore’s position on global warming, and a recent      survey of climate scientists found the community fairly split on the claim      that there is an imminent threat from human-caused global warming. Despite      the abundance of scientific research contradicting his position, Gore      instead concentrates on refuting a handful of skeptical claims from      outside the scientific community–and can’t even get the facts right on      those. To add insult to injury, Gore repeatedly impugns the motives of      scientists and non-scientists who question his “consensus” on      global warming. Rather than confront the scientific facts, he stereotypes      the critics and dismisses them based on imagined motives.
• Misleading claims about the responsibility of the      United States: Gore says the United States is      particularly to blame for the claimed global warming crisis, but doesn’t      give a fair view of the issues. He makes misleading comparisons of fuel      economy standards in the U.S. and other countries; also, he criticizes the      U.S. failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol without acknowledging the ways      in which the Protocol disproportionately targeted the U.S. economy. He      also understates the economic adjustments required to attain the goals he      sets.
• Conceptual errors:      Gore’s explanation of several topics, including the greenhouse effect, the      relationship of carbon dioxide and global temperature, decline in Arctic      Ocean pack ice, structure of the Greenland ice sheet, and ozone depletion,      contain conceptual errors. He may indeed have a correct understanding of      these issues, but what he communicates serves to perpetuate misconceptions      on these subjects. Combined with the low reading level of the text, this      tends to convey the lowest expectations of his readers.

Gore’s portrayal of the subject of global warming is scientifically unsupportable; even some scientists who accept the premise of global warming have been willing to call him on some errors. His portrayal of scientific skepticism regarding global warming is shameful; science requires healthy criticism to progress. The effect of attempts by Gore and others to silence dissent is harmful to scientific understanding as well as its application by society. The effort to use such twisted science to further a political agenda is such a harm.

Climate-change zealots have always seen the world through a warm and zany lens.  But as the Earth’s cooling becomes more obvious, the zealots  become more and more unhinged.

From the Daily Caller:

Hours after a massive earthquake rattled Japan, environmental advocates connected the natural disaster to global warming. The president of the European Economic and Social Committee, Staffan Nilsson, issued a statement calling for solidarity in tackling the global warming problem.

“Some islands affected by climate change have been hit,” said Nilsson. “Has not the time come to demonstrate on solidarity — not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming?”

“Mother Nature has again given us a sign that that is what we need to do,” he added.

Global warming enthusiasts have also taken to Twitter to raise awareness of the need to respond to the earthquake by finally acting on climate change. And the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Lee Doren compiled some of the best ones.

Some examples:

AliceTMBFan said “2 hours of geography earlier talking about Japan has left me thinking…maybe global warming is way more serious then we thought…”

Arbiterofwords tweeted “I’m worried that Japan earthquake, on top of other recent natural ‘disasters’, is a sign we’ve passed point of no return for climate change.”

MrVikas said “Events like the Japan earthquake and tsunami MUST keep climate change at forefront of policy thought: http://bit.ly/cZe8To #environment

Tayyclayy noted her frustration by tweeting “An earthquake with an 8.9 magnitude struck Japan.. And some say climate change isn’t real?!”

DanFranklin postulated “Never really believed all this global warming talk, but after the earthquake in NZ and today in Japan. Maybe we’ve ruined the world.”

And TeamIanHarding tweeted “While Japan witnessed an earthquake we were talking about the problems that global warming leads to in school. Think. Pray. And change.”

Do they have a point?

“Global warming alarmists will exploit any natural disaster to promote their anti-fossil fuel agenda,” Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Project told The Daily Caller, adding that the climate change reaction is a result of the “global warming spin machine.”

“First it’s global warming, then it’s climate change, now it’s probably tectonic instability — no doubt all caused by man,” he said.

When contacted by TheDC, Dan Weiss, Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress, also expressed skepticism at the link between global warming and the earthquake in Japan.

“I am not a scientist,” said Weiss, “but I have never heard of a link between global warming and earthquakes.”

Everything changes– including, perhaps especially, our weather.  Over the last couple years, climate change alarmists have realized that the facts regarding ‘global warming’ do not support their economic and political aims (which include income redistribution and larger government).  So they have seized upon a quirk of human nature to trick people into supporting their cause– the tendency to assign reasons for random events.

When a significant weather event occurs that supports a person’s ideas, those ideas gain strength.  Events that are inconsistent with those ideas are discarded, rather than being applied to the ideas to introduce change and knowledge.  This is just how we are, and how we will always be;  we are more comfortable with reasons– even incorrect reasons– than with randomness.

This quirk of human nature is what spawned the change in strategy by the left, from talking about ‘global warming’ to instead talking about ‘climate change’.  They recognized that there is one thing about climate that will always be true– it changes.  And with their new strategy, they can post headlines for any weather event.  Too hot?  Must be ‘global climate change.’  Too cold?  climate change!  Too wet?  Too dry, too….. perfect?  Climate change!

Watch for this strategy going forward.  And be aware of your own tendency to see reason for things that are random.  The following editorial presents evidence for a climate that is changing–just as it always has.

The Weather is Not Getting Weirder

By ANNE JOLIS

Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter’s fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December’s blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.

As it happens, the project’s initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. “In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years,” atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.”

In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. “There’s no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather,” adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don’t know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets’ gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

Given the unknowns, it’s possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change—as it always has.

That’s not to say we’re helpless. There is at least one climate lesson that we can draw from the recent weather: Whatever happens, prosperity and preparedness help. North Texas’s ice storm wreaked havoc and left hundreds of football fans stranded, cold, and angry. But thanks to modern infrastructure, 21st century health care, and stockpiles of magnesium chloride and snow plows, the storm caused no reported deaths and Dallas managed to host the big game on Sunday.

Compare that outcome to the 55 people who reportedly died of pneumonia, respiratory problems and other cold-related illnesses in Bangladesh and Nepal when temperatures dropped to just above freezing last winter. Even rich countries can be caught off guard: Witness the thousands stranded when Heathrow skimped on de-icing supplies and let five inches of snow ground flights for two days before Christmas. Britain’s GDP shrank by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010, for which the Office of National Statistics mostly blames “the bad weather.”

Arguably, global warming was a factor in that case. Or at least the idea of global warming was. The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation charges that British authorities are so committed to the notion that Britain’s future will be warmer that they have failed to plan for winter storms that have hit the country three years running.

A sliver of the billions that British taxpayers spend on trying to control their climes could have bought them more of the supplies that helped Dallas recover more quickly. And, with a fraction of that sliver of prosperity, more Bangladeshis and Nepalis could have acquired the antibiotics and respirators to survive their cold spell.

A comparison of cyclones Yasi and Nargis tells a similar story: As devastating as Yasi has been, Australia’s infrastructure, medicine, and emergency protocols meant the Category 5 storm has killed only one person so far. Australians are now mulling all the ways they could have better protected their property and economy.

But if they feel like counting their blessings, they need only look to the similar cyclone that hit the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Burma’s military regime hadn’t allowed for much of an economy before the cyclone, but Nargis destroyed nearly all the Delta had. Afterwards, the junta blocked foreign aid workers from delivering needed water purification and medical supplies. In the end, the government let Nargis kill more than 130,000 people.

Global-warming alarmists insist that economic activity is the problem, when the available evidence show it to be part of the solution. We may not be able to do anything about the weather, extreme or otherwise. But we can make sure we have the resources to deal with it when it comes.

Miss Jolis is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe

Don’t let them fool you– this is not ‘crazy climate’ or ‘global climate change.’  This is normal Earth temperature variability, which has been on the high side for the past decade and not is swinging back down, known by stats lovers as ‘reversion to the mean.’  The short version is that the ‘global warming zealots’ were wrong;  Gore and others predicted a hot Earth by now, and instead we are getting the cool-down predicted by ‘cooler heads.”

By the way, today we learned that the link between autism and vaccines was all part of a scam, including a leading scientist paid hundreds of millions of dollars to falsify data.  Who is getting rich off the craziness about ‘global warming?’  (Besides big Al, that is!)

From AccuWeather.com, January 6th, 2011:

January Could Be Coldest for US since 1985

Jan 6, 2011; 12:00 PM ET

Winter has only just begun, and many people across the country are already sick of the cold. On the heels of a record-cold December, frigid weather will continue seizing areas from coast to coast through mid- to late January.

Based on this forecast, AccuWeather.com Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi says this month could turn out to be the coldest January for the nation as a whole since 1985.

While there has been outstanding regionalized cold in January in recent years, Bastardi points out that the U.S. has not experienced this type of coast-to-coast cold since the 1980s.

Record-smashing cold already gripped a large portion of the West the first few days of the month with snow even falling in Las Vegas Monday. Bitter arctic air has also made a return to the northern Plains, while the East and South experienced a dramatic cooldown since the weekend.

More waves of arctic air will invade the country, starting late this week and continuing through next week and beyond. The period from Jan. 10-20 is when Bastardi expects the core of the cold to be in place, with the northern Plains in the heart of it.

He says places from Chicago to Denver could have one or two days with high temperatures below zero during this time. People in New York City may be looking at one day with highs in the teens, while temperatures potentially fail to rise out of the 20s in Dallas, Texas, and Jackson, Miss., for a day or two.

Bastardi also highlights the potential for rare snow in Seattle and Portland with the upcoming weather pattern.

The cold air coming to Texas starting early next week could affect the state’s citrus industry, according to Bastardi. He thinks Florida citrus, however, should be safe.

This past weekend, AccuWeather.com Expert Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski started warning about the severe cold that is coming and provided more details on just how bad it will be.

By MATT PATTERSON

If this keeps up, no one’s going to trust any scientists.

The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.

For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world’s governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium — and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to “save the planet.”

But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of “the best scientists and engineers worldwide” (as the group’s own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give “high-quality advice to international bodies,” has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices — and found them badly wanting.

For example, the IPCC’s much-vaunted Fourth Assessment Report claimed in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers were rapidly melting, and would possibly be gone by the year 2035. The claim was actually false — yet the IPCC cited it as proof of man-made global warming.

Then there’s the IPCC’s earlier prediction in 2007 — which it claimed to have “high confidence” in — that global warming could lead to a 50 percent reduction in the rain-fed agricultural capacity of Africa.

Such a dramatic decrease in food production in an already poor continent would be a terrifying prospect, and undoubtedly lead to the starvation of millions. But the InterAcademy Council investigation found that this IPCC claim was also based on weak evidence.

Overall, the IAC slammed the IPCC for reporting “high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach ‘high confidence’ to the statements.” The critics note “many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective or not expressed clearly.

Some IPCC practices can only be called shoddy. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “Some scientists invited by the IPCC to review the 2007 report before it was published questioned the Himalayan claim. But those challenges ‘were not adequately considered,’ the InterAcademy Council’s investigation said, and the projection was included in the final report.”

Yet the Himalayan claim wasn’t based on peer-reviewed scientific data, or on any data — but on spec ulation in a phone interview by a single scientist.

Was science even a real concern for the IPCC? In January, the Sunday Times of London reported that, based in large part on the fraudulent glacier story, “[IPCC Chairman] Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi, was awarded up to 310,000 pounds by the Carnegie Corp. . . . and the lion’s share of a 2.5 million pound EU grant funded by European taxpayers.”

Thus, the Times concluded, “EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognize as bogus.”
All this comes on top of last year’s revelation of the “Climategate” e-mails, which revealed equally shoddy practices (and efforts to suppress criticism) by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — perhaps the single most important source of data that supposedly proved the most alarming claims of global warming.

Al Gore and many other warming alarmists have insisted that “the debate is over” — that the science was “settled.” That claim is now in shreds — though the grants are still flowing, and advocates still hope Congress will pass some version of the economically ruinous “cap and trade” anti-warming bill.

What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who’ll produce the “right” results.

The warming “scientific” community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other’s papers — and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it’s a travesty.

In the end, grievous harm will have been done not just to individual scientists’ reputations, but to the once-sterling reputation of science itself. For that, we will all suffer.

Matt Patterson is editor of Green Watch, a publication of the Capital Research Center .

Alarmist warnings about the planet are falling flat, according to Washington Times’ editors.

The editorial below from the Washington Times nicely summarizes the state of the current debate over global climate change.  Thank goodness for history!  How fun it will be to look back on Gore’s ‘inconvenient truth’ and marvel at the folly of humanity– that half of a country’s population can be taken in by a politician posing as a scientist… a politician whose hypocrisy is on full display.  “How did he do it?” people will say…. 

The shame is that Gore and and his friends on the Left will likely find a way to convince the media that they NEVER predicted all of those things…  that is what the left usually does, changing stance with the wind and lying about former positions.  I’m keeping ‘inconvenient truth’ around– for laughs.  The article:

Switching terminology from “global warming” to “climate change” to newly favored “global climatic disruption” was supposed to help revive the environmental left’s plunging poll numbers. It hasn’t worked. Nature has, inconveniently, failed to cooperate, with dire predictions of upcoming catastrophes falling flat. Desperation pervades a propaganda effort that has finally gone too far.

The radical green movement is all about scaring the public into adopting unpopular policy initiatives, such as hefty taxes on important sources of energy and increased government direction of our lives through regulation. The Chicken Little strategy can work if the possibility of major disruptions such as a devastating Katrina-style hurricane push people into embracing protection from Washington. Unfortunately for the scaremongers, the disruptions just aren’t happening.

On Thursday, Florida State University researcher Ryan N. Maue updated his index of tropical cyclone activity to reflect the fact that worldwide hurricane activity has reached a 33-year low. The Western North Pacific has seen tropical cyclone activity at a level 78 percent below normal, proving those seas haven’t been calmer since detailed records were first kept in 1945. Accurately describing this period of global climatic tranquility isn’t going to compel action.

That’s why British screenwriter Richard Curtis released a video on Sept. 30 for the “10:10″ campaign, which is intended to encourage people to cut their personal carbon-dioxide emissions by 10 percent per year starting in 2010. The short “No Pressure” film used techniques right out of a horror flick to depict a schoolteacher blowing up two children who failed to show any interest in pestering their parents to install insulation or squiggly light bulbs to “keep the planet safe for everyone.”

The 10:10 campaign issued an apology for the shocking video, which critics now dub “Splattergate” in reference to the film’s excessive gore. The incident highlights the degree to which supposedly mainstream environmentalists think mankind is a blight on the planet. This is the same radical ideology that motivated last month’s hostage-taking incident at the Discovery Channel.

No less than President Obama’s own top science adviser, John P. Holdren, is a long-term adherent to this strange doctrine. In 1969, Mr. Holdren co-authored an article for the journal BioScience entitled, “Population and Panaceas: A Technological Perspective,” which essentially predicted we’d run out of food by the year 2000. He warned that “man’s present technology is inadequate to the task of maintaining the world’s burgeoning billions, even under the most optimistic assumptions.” Just to stay even, Mr. Holdren calculated global food production would have to double or triple – an impossibility, he claimed, requiring a mass-sterilization plan.

Mr. Holdren’s dire prediction never came true, as none of the left’s self-indulgent fantasies do. The clock is indeed ticking; time is running out for the alarmists in academia, Hollywood and the White House.

There goes el nino!

Politicians like to pretend that climate is pretty straightforward… especially when their climate predictions benefit their pet projects or campaign fund-raising.  This year especially, they like to pretend that there is such a thing as ‘big oil’– a faceless giant, destroying the planet, unless the President of the US sweeps in to save the day by ‘kicking ass.’  Of course, only OUR asses will end up being kicked, through the double-whammy of higher energy prices (from cap and tax legislation), higher unemployment (from higher business taxes and other expenses that stifle growth), and higher taxes at the gas pump and on April 15th.    Funny how something so unpredictable– like climate– is so closely paired with something so predictable– like the current administrations love for government and tax revenue.

I came across this paragraph this morning from the Browning Newsletter:  

Amazing. It was the vanishing act that completely changes this year’s climate. The El Niño disappeared!

More Amazing. Last winter’s El Niño has already been one for the record books. It usually takes a year or more for the Tropical Pacific to gradually warm up from a cool La Niña to a balmy El Niño. Instead, last year the ocean flipped from one to the other in only three months. By June, the trade winds had weakened, the ocean waters had warmed and the globe began to experience typical El Niño weather.

Amazing continues. Now, against all expectations, the Pacific waters have cooled equally rapidly.

To say that this development is a surprise is an understatement. It was completely unexpected. Until mid-March, most oceanologists were expecting the Pacific to cool and the El Niño to fade out by June. Most models then predicted that the Pacific would remain neutral for the rest of the year. Instead, the temperatures plummeted and the El Niño was gone by the end of March. By the end of April, the temperatures had dropped from above average to below average. By now, the temperatures are -0.9°C (-1.6°F) below normal – technically cold enough to be classified as a La Niña if the cool temperatures continue.

For the full report, click here.

You’ll note that the consequences of this dramatic cooling will include more intense weather in some parts of the country and world, and less intense weather elsewhere.  It’s complicated.  It’s too complicated, unfortunately, for reporters to understand, so it will be ripe for picking by those with an agenda.  The violent weather will be blamed on global warming– even when the actual cause is global cooling in another part of the world. 

Don’t assume, just because someone has a microphone, that he/she knows more than you;  If you read the Browning Newsletter, I promise you that you will know more than any newscaster you’ll see on television.

Speaking of Gore… apparently even his new California mansion doesn’t provide enough room for Tipper and Al to live amiably together, and they have decided to call it quits on their marriage.  Just wasn’t convenient.

Tipper has him fired up

Divorce pains the planet describes why divorce increases (by 100%) the carbon footprint of a couple.  Not that I’m all that concerned about carbon footprints.  But the actions of shameless hypocrites are always worth pointing out.

I have been too busy lately to do my part to keep readers entertained, and I am sorry for that. There is so much nonsense in the world lately that it is getting more and more difficult deciding where to start! There have been a number of events consistent with the things I have written about on my companion web site ’Warmal Globing’… for example, I write on one of the pages about the way science works, or more importantly the way scientific funding works. As a former scientist and former grant applicant, I know that one must apply for the right things if one is to get funded. The applicant ALWAYS looks at who is funding the grant, and what that agency ‘wants’ to find. Yes, the grants always come with wording like ‘unrestricted funding’, but all scientists know the ‘nudge nudge wink wink’ behind that statement! And sure enough– we recently found that a number of very respected scientists have engaged in ‘unscientific’ behavior by covering up or distoring data, hiding messages that admit to doubts caused by the REAL findings– the findings that they can’t report, for fear of losing the golden goose that is global warming. Just think about it– can you imagine how much money will be lost by so many people, if global warming turns out to be a crock?! And it is a crock, of course. And eventually the truth will come out, because as much as Al Gore wants it to happen, the low-lying areas of the world will not be inundated with the floods– beyond the floods that they have ALWAYS been inundated by.

Which brings up another point that is also on my web site… the global warming zealots get to blame everything on ‘warming’! We recently had a cold spell and nasty snowstorm across the southeast US– in fact, it shut DC down for several days, just as they were getting ready to pass more carbon taxes ‘to stimulate the economy’ (you truly cannot make this stuff up). One of the Kennedy clan had just penned an op-ed about the good old days when it snowed so much more…. suggesting that it snows less now because of ‘global warming’. BTW, even the smart people out there who are idiots about global warming will admit that what they refer to as the current ‘climate change disaster’ has nothing to do with the snow that a Kennedy is writing about– that all of the local phenomena people tend to point to as they nod their heads in reality have nothing to do with ‘climate change’. But as he pens this piece, this massive snowstorm hits. But what does the mainstream media do? They BLAME GLOBAL WARMING FOR THE SNOW!!! They truly get it both ways– because in their odd world, warming causes cooling. Yes, I understand what they are saying- that the contrast in temps and the increased ‘thermal energy’ somehow causes storms that include snow and ice….. but it is not reasonable for them to claim that warming causes less snowstorms (ala Kennedy) and at the same time say that the snow is FROM the warming. And besides– also on my web site there is a copy of the Newsweek article from the 1970′s about the coming disaster of global cooling, and in that article the same scientists who are cited now were saying that the Earth would have increased glaciers and tornados and snowstorms, all from ‘global cooling’.

The other thing that happened just recently was that another leading global warming alarmist announced ‘never mind’, admitting that the Earth’s temp has not changed significantly in over 15 years.  Never mind.  Think about all the money wasted over the last few years, and the raised taxes, the increased government control, the sagging economy, the disastrous election of Democrats–  all over something that doesn’t exist.  Can we sue Al Gore?  Maybe he and Obama can travel to Stockholm together and both give their silly awards back at the same time!  You know what?  They are both so shameless that they would each give a speech about why it is OK flying separately, now that ‘they were right all along that the Earth wasn’t warming’.  And people would actually believe them, and some would credit them for finding out that global warming is a myth.

Another realist’s thoughts on the issue of global warming were sent my way.  Here is the link:  75 reasons to be skeptical of global warming

I used to be quite Left in my thinking.  My views changed midway through the Clinton Presidency when I could no longer overlook the hypocrisy of my position.  People wedded to liberalism avoid the truth like subway-dwellers avoid the glare of bright sunlight, but at some point the light is bright enough to shine through the thickest sunglasses!  I am often surprised at how much hypocrisy the Left can ‘overlook;’ in the Clinton era a liberal needed only a bit of hubris to ignore the media double-standards, but now huge distortions of logic on the level of delusional thought are required in order to maintain the liberal argument!  As I try to understand how an entire country can fall victim to ‘folie a deux’,  I find order by dividing the delusional Left into two groups– the ‘low insight Left’ and ‘high insight Left.’   I will use a practical example to explain the difference.

Obama promised that HIS administration would be much more open than the Bush administration.  He said that all bills winding through Congress toward his desk would be debated and discussed openly on C-span (something that was already happening under Bush, by the way, but that has largely disappeared under the Democratic ownership of the government).  Obama promised there would be no back-door sessions, no private meetings with lobbyists, no kickbacks or bribes, and that every new piece of legislation would be published for at least 5 days on the internet for all citizens with a computer to see and review.  He promised to seek bipartisanship and to listen to the ‘middle’ of the country.  Of course anyone with even half a mind knows what has INSTEAD happened  (and if you don’t already know all of this, you must have quite a blind spot!!).  We can look at the ‘stimulus’ bill– a piece of legislation that spent more money than 99% of the bills that ever pass through the legislature.  Obama sent it to Congress demanding passage, without allowing time for even Congress or the Senate to review the bill– let alone the American people!  There was no bipartisanship, and no allowing for debate.  Anyone from private industry who stood in the way was called out publicly by the President in a way that I have not witnessed during my 50 years—and in a way I hope I never have to see again.  Obama literally provoked death threats against bankers and company executives—openly, without complaint by the media!  Given the way it was thrown together, it is not surprising that studies of the ‘Stimulus’ Bill show that most of the money goes to districts where Democrats hold power.  Even worse, more money goes to wealthy Congressional districts than to poor districts!  Secret meetings with lobbyists were not disclosed, and that the press did not asked about them.  The process was more secretive than ever before– forget ‘more open!’  The result was a mess;  pay-offs to liberal groups and spending that occurs years after the recession ends, rather than targeted stimulus.   And not surprisingly we have had no job creation beyond what happens after every recession– perhaps even lower job production from the fear of higher taxes for businesses instilled by Obama spending a trillion extra dollars.  It is one thing to avoid trimming government too far during a recession, but another thing to waste of massive sums of money, resulting in deficits four times higher than the worst deficits under Bush (Obama also promised to trim the ‘immoral’ Bush deficits, by the way). 

The low-insight Left can be divided again into ‘true believers’ and ‘simple idiots.’  The true believers WANT to tell the truth, and really mean it when they say they want things to be truthful and open– but they believe so strongly in their liberal principles that things that aren’t liberal causes don’t ‘count’.  They don’t consider it lying; they think that keeping our own money instead of paying it to the government is a selfish, silly idea– and so fair and open debate doesn’t need to include that opinion.  Similarly, they believe that the Earth is going to be destroyed, so the climate debate doesn’t need to be ‘fair’– in fact, they think that evil businesses fight dirty, so they CAN’T be fair in return– that NO serious, ‘good’ person would even EXPECT fairness when dealing with evil business people.  The minds of true believers simply dismiss opinions that differ from what THEY believe to be true, but still consider themselves open, honest and fair, even if every counter opinion is suppressed—because the counter opinions are not ‘valid’ enough to count.  If a respected scientist makes a discovery that causes his/her opinion to change to the counter-argument, the true believer actually believes that the person was paid off or became mentally ill– and so the ideas don’t deserve ‘fair and open’ expression.  The other half of the low-insight group– the idiots– believe whatever they hear without question, as long as the messenger fits a certain image.  Obama was the perfect messenger to appeal to this group, and they continue to buy into him hook, line, and sinker.  Emphasis on sinker.

The high-insight Left can also be further divided into the ‘manipulators for a cause’ and the power-hungry egomaniacs.  Rahm Emanuel is probably in the first group, and I would put some of Hollywood into this category— at least the few Hollywood and media types who have a decent education.  These people know they are being hypocritical, but justify their hypocrisy by believing that the ends justify the means.  Tom Daschl’s book about reforming health care displays this type of thinking very clearly.  The reform is needed, so lying, cheating, breaking promises, and double-speak are all OK as long as they lead toward the correct goal.  They cannot trust leaving such complicated decisions in the hands of regular people, because they consider regular people to be a bunch of fools that they push this way and that way around election time.  Their contempt for average Americans was obvious during the TEA Parties, when Nancy Pelosi literally cried at the thought of meeting up with those unwashed masses.  The insight of this group of liberals is somewhat limited, as they cannot see the self-righteousness that their position requires.  They see people as good or bad depending only on party affiliations.  When someone from the Right gets into trouble, these liberals scream from rooftops about hypocrisy.  But when someone on the Left does something far worse, the transgression is a ‘fluke’– devoid of any meaning or importance.  Packwood, to these liberals, was a ‘serial groper’.  Clinton on the other hand was ‘victimized by a right-wing conspiracy’.  Go figure!

Finally, there are the high-insight liberals who don’t even care about the cause; they only care about the power that the cause can bring.  We know that Obama is in this group because of his efforts to distort the meaning of words and phrases to try to look good, without any effort to really DO good.  Measures to prevent privacy while voting about unions are called ‘Free Choice Acts.’  Pay-offs for favors from unions are called ‘stimulus acts.’  Government takeover of health care is called ‘insurance reform’ or ‘healthcare reform’, depending on the polls.  Worst of all are the outright lies.  Obama is not an idiot, so he surely knows that the passage of his health care bill will raise insurance premiums and eventually destroy the insurance industry—and the competition that it brings.  Obama knows that the bill cuts Medicare spending, and he knows that it will reduce the freedom to choose one’s own doctor.  But his speeches claim the exact opposite!  He claimed that the bill will LOWER premiums (watch yours and see), PROTECT Medicare (watch that as well), and INCREASE choice (good luck!).  Everybody watching the game knows by now that Obama couldn’t care less about the content of health care legislation– he just wants a win.  He doesn’t care that all of his promises will be untrue, as long as people keep believing him.  I used to put him in the first group of high-insight liberals, thinking he was saving up his ‘honesty’ for something important.  Before that I even gave him credit as a ‘true believer.’  But we have seen him lie about pretty much every issue!  There are no more issues to ‘save up for.’  He does not care about the future of the planet, the future of the economy, or the future of health care in America.  He just wants his applause.  He goes to the Middle East and bends over, in order to get a roomful of people to stand up and applaud him– even if there are others in the basement of the same building working to destroy us.   Obama’s lies are too complete to be accidental.  He has become utterly reliable in what he says, as long as you just substitute the opposite.  If he says ‘I will cut spending,’ you know that he is planning on a major spending increase, and is simply preparing for the response. He uses the forgetfulness and ignorance of the American people to avoid being found out– and members of the press are true believers, so they don’t call him on it.  Obama could give a speech claiming that the sun rises in the West every morning, and the press would either ignore the comment or print it as true, boycotting any stories that claim the opposite.

Many of the climate types are in this group, by the way.  How else do you explain people like Al Gore living with Carbon footprints the size of Rhode Island, while selling books and movies about cutting back?  I chuckled at the stories about the shortage of limos in Copenhagen–  they were shipping limos in from thousands of miles away, rather than forcing attendees at the climate summit to drive hybrids– or take the bus!!  Many scientists have hopped onto this gravy-train for years, knowing that any research proposal with ‘warming’ in the title is more likely to win support than a proposal seeking only the truth.  I put Soros in this latter group as well.  Streisand and Huffington are probably true believers or simple idiots.  Pelosi is probably in the low-insight group somewhere;  I used to thing she was smarter, but after watching the ‘deer in the headlights’ look in response to the Town Hall meetings and TEA parties, I have to assume that the insight isn’t there.

With all of that as a background, some of the people who are trying to follow the truth have come to the opinion that the climate nonsense is a front for something else– namely for control.  This was certainly in evidence at the Copenhagen Climate Summit—people talking about seizing global power that made Obama’s selfish desires seem amateurish in comparison!  I supposed the ‘one global government’ folks have their ‘true believers’ as well– those who picture a world ruled by one leader, with all people believing together in the same, noble goals.  They are the same people who hate the US, and want us to pony up trillions of dollars for ‘past carbon sins’—ignoring the amazing advances in technology and medicine that came from our enviable Capitalist system, and that raised the standard of living for every person on Earth.  But take away the true believers– the peace fairies and blind idealists– and you have a frightening group of people who are to the current world, as Hitler was to Europe.

We are lucky that the modern Left as a whole lack the intelligence and insight to go very far;  the most insightful are also the most power-hungry, preventing any meaningful collaboration as each new leader is eaten by the others who want to sit on the throne.  But the power-driven efforts of the insightful Left combined with the sheer mass of ‘useful idiots’ can easily cause damage to our economy that will take decades to repair.  We are already at a point where half of the population pays no Federal income tax, opening the door to confiscatory tax policies.  It would be asking too much for a large number of idiots to recognize the hypocrisy of the President who they elected.  But the rest of us should at least keep OUR eyes open!  Please join me at my blog, where I do my best to read between the lines of the weakest and most secretive government to rule our country in decades. 

I’m tired of writing– you can read more about this issue in an article by a gentleman named Monckton, a member of the British Parliament, using the link below.

British Peer:  Copenhagen Summit Has Established A World Government;  “Institutional framework” paves the way for unelected international bureaucracy