Bloodthirsty Liberal

Shovel your walk!

I wonder if Al Gore can be arrested as an accessory after the fact:

“Climatologists” are a pack of liars who just made stuff up to fit this ridiculous notion that a minuscule increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide — maybe 1 part per million every 10 years — was causing the Earth To Burn Up.

The London Guardian reported: “Phil Jones, the beleaguered British climate scientist at the centre of the leaked emails controversy, is facing fresh claims that he sought to hide problems in key temperature data on which some of his work was based. A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.”

The London Guardian is as lefty as they come.

When it reports what a charlatan Phil Jones is, you know the Church of Global Warming is imploding.

In another report, the Guardian said: “It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China? But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN’s top climate science body.”

Who are the deniers now?

Something from China is counterfeit and tainted???

Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

Who will have the heart to tell the children that they’ll grow up just fine (except for the economy, which President Obama is crapping upon as I write)?

Who will have the heart to break it to them?

Hey, clean up your act, fellas, this is your close up.

That was then:

This is now:

“Constellation is dead,” the source told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to a program that envisioned returning to the moon by 2020 and using Earth’s nearest neighbour as a base for manned expeditions to Mars…

Reports added that the US space agency will work on finding a commercial solution to ferrying US astronauts to the International Space Station after the scheduled end of NASA’s shuttle program in September 2010.

Astronauts will be able to hitch rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but the United States will need a commercial alternative if Congress approves White House plans to scrap development of a successor to the shuttle program.

Put me down as agnostic. We get so much science from unmanned space missions (we’ve found water on Mars and the moon without benefit of humans on hand) that the geometric increase in cost to add people to the missions can hardly be worth it.

I get the value of human missions—the science, the technological advantages of low gravity—I just accept that there’s a valid debate. I think I even questioned President Bush’s doubling-down on human space flight when there was so much to be learned (for so much less money) from unmanned missions.

And there’s nothing wrong with a little competition from the private sector.

But canceling human space flight is one thing. What are they replacing it with? What is the vision?

In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change – and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the solar system possible.

There you go: that’s our mission. From “we choose to go to the moon” to “I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale”.

I would welcome NASA’s free and independent scientific inquiry into the issue, but that’s the last thing it would bring:

The real reason is that liberals have long viewed NASA as a global warming research entity rather than the exploration agency that President John F. Kennedy ably set on a course for the stars. And this is despite the recent discoveries that NASA’s global warming leaders, such as James Hansen, may have been manipulating data to suit their political needs for some time. While exploration enthusiasts wanted to see rockets lift for the heavens, environmentalists wanted to see satellites watching ice caps. President Obama will most likely face stiff congressional opposition from both sides of the aisle if he continues on this path towards charging NASA with a purely Earth science mission.

He’s politicized everything else, why not the Sea of Tranquility?

I think Osama has had a Jay Leno-like epiphany. Leno moved to 10 PM, and bombed. Osama got all quiet and moody, and everyone forgot he existed.

Leno’s going back to 11 PM, and now you can’t shut Osama up.

First he claims credit for the Fruit-of-Kaboom bomber (or No-nad the Barbarian, my new favorite name)—and now this:

“I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy, and I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future. Because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

Oops! My bad. That was President Obama in the STFU—sorry, SOTU. Here’s Osama.

In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.

He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for “drastic solutions” to global warming, and “not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change.”

Can you blame me for mixing them up? The political left and our nation’s enemies are too often indistinguishable from each other. Because… well, because they are too often one and the same thing.

PS: OMG, it’s even worse than I thought!

“Talk about climate change is not an ideological luxury but a reality,” Mr. bin Laden was quoted as saying in a report on Al Jazeera’s English-language Web site. “All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.”

…

“Noam Chomsky was correct when he compared the U.S. policies to those of the Mafia,” Al Jazeera quoted Mr. bin Laden as saying. “They are the true terrorists and therefore we should refrain from dealing in the U.S. dollar and should try to get rid of this currency as early as possible.”

Did anyone see Al Gore’s lips moving while Osama was speaking?

The fevered planet claims another life:

MIAMI Two elderly men struggled with hypothermia as they lay on the floor of their apartment barely clothed and without access to food or water.

One man, Wilfredo Arreyes, 77, died one day after Miami-Dade authorities rescued him and his 93-year-old roommate Miguel Aleman from their apartment on the 1000 block of Northwest Second Street in Miami.

Aleman is recovering at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

“The hypothermia set in and slowed the body down to the point where they couldn’t move,” said Ignatius Carroll, spokesman for the fire department. “They were struggling to survive in freezing temperatures.”

Temperatures in Miami dropped to the 30s over the weekend, some of the coldest temperatures the city has seen since 1927. According to authorities, no heating system was found in the apartment and the men were only wearing pajamas.

A caretaker that usually looks after the men was away for the weekend and had called the apartment to check up on them. When there was no answer, the caretaker called authorities, who arrived at the apartment on Monday afternoon, Carroll said.

Firefighters used tools to break through the iron bars on the windows of the apartment, making their way in and finding the two men laying on the floor, each in their own bedrooms, authorities said.

I’m sorry for his passing. No one should have to die so that Al Gore can add another wing to his mansion.

Maybe Al can ask one of the illegals who tends his grounds if he would consider changing his name to Wilfredo Arreyes as a tribute. One could do worse.

Reader Joe sends this article that amounts to a waving of the white flag—unless the white flag is a winter weather advisory:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

I got some of that Arctic sea ice in my back yard—the turf of which I won’t see again until April—heck, some of it’s down my boots.

Let’s see what the blokes at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have to say:

See that little red dot in the bulge on the right? That’s their red faces.

Just kidding! Their noses may be red and chapped, but not from shame. And as they’re not talking right now, we’ll have to ask someone else:

‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these [ocean temperature] cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.

‘They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.

‘The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.’

When Shakespeare wrote of England as a “precious stone set in the silver sea”, I guess he meant a diamond, i.e., ice.

No comment:

Bitter cold and snow sweeping into the eastern U.S were leaving part of New England under record snowfall and hitting Southerners with subfreezing temperatures that farmers fear could destroy crops.

The deep freeze was expected to last for at least the rest of the week. The National Weather Service said the mercury could fall below zero in St. Louis later this week for the first time since 1999.

The duration of the cold snap is unusual, especially in the South, where the weather is typically chilly for just a day or two before temperatures rebound into the 50s.

Waves of Arctic air pushed into central Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, where farmers were scrambling to save strawberries and tomatoes as temperatures dipped into the 20s and wind chills into the teens. Hard freeze warnings covered the region Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.

We get it already! Are you trying to make a point or something? Subtle as a block of ice falling from an overpass through a windshield.

This will take a minute. Sorry, but bear with me.

Took the Bloodthirsty Bairns to Boston’s Science Museum (me and the rest of humanity), and we took in a couple of live presentations. One was on the Top 10 science stories of the year (science as it effects society, to be specific, which ought to set alarm bells off). To be sure, the Copenhagen Conference was among the stories, even though no science was conducted there (in fact, it was as anti-scientific as you can get), and the presenter cheerfully admitted little of substance was accomplished.

But another story was about Titanoboa, with whom I was not familiar. You neither? Let me introduce you:

This big hunk of snake was over 40 feet long over three feet wide. For comparison, the largest modern snake is the reticulated python, which approaches 30 feet, but limply hangs its serpentine head in shame when it comes to thickness:

Anaconda vs. Titanoboa

All very interesting, BTL, but what has a [bleeping] big snake got to do with global warming? Here ya go.

The presenter sweetly informed us that scientists had never believed a snake of that size was possible. They are cold-blooded little buggers, and need an environment warm enough to support their metabolism. Big snake means hot earth—a whole hell of a lot hotter than now, or than we thought it was then. Try 90F+ as an average.

I don’t think she was even aware of the irony of her report that the earth has been far hotter, and that we had no clue about how much hotter until we actually found evidence.

But that’s how science works, or is supposed to. One theory fits the available data, but undergoes revision—or is tossed out entirely—with new discoveries. Whatever “truth” there is in global warming (I’m a skeptic; I don’t know), there is no science. Not according to the process defined above. None. It’s as dead as a dodo, or a titanoboa.

PS: Not that you asked, but the average temperature in Boston for 2009 was 50.9F, 0.8F below normal. The mean temperature was 212 degrees below normal. I’m just sayin’.

In European newspapers these days, they publish the weather report and the obituaries on the same page:

The bitterly cold weather across much of the continent combined with heavy snow in some areas has caused cancellations and delays at airports and forced train lines to close.

…

Road traffic in the UK was severely disrupted, including the south-east where roads were gridlocked late on Monday after numerous crashes in heavy snowfall.

Major roads elsewhere in Europe were blocked after some regions had snowfall of up to 50cm (20in).

…

In Poland, police appealed for people to help if they came across homeless or drunk people lying outside, as temperatures dropped towards -20C in some areas.

Most of the 79 people who froze to death in the country since the wintry conditions began were homeless, police said.

Cold-related deaths were also reported in France, where two homeless people died.

Damn. That’s 79 probable global warming skeptics we lost. Did anyone check to see if Al Gore was in town?

Oh no, of course not. Al was home:

(Another view here: choose “Aerial”.)

You can tell he’s home because three SUVs are parked in the driveway—and what empty-nest couple needs more than three SUVs?

It’s snowing here; has been all night, is expected to for most of the day. Nothing unusual about that here, even though it’s still autumn (technically).

But this is a bit out of the ordinary:

Eurostar passenger trains will remain suspended on Sunday after the wintry weather caused chaos.

More than 2,000 people were trapped in the Channel Tunnel for up to 16 hours after condensation caused a series of electrical failures on Friday night.

The closure of the tunnel left thousands of people stranded on either side of the Channel.

Further snow is forecast in western Scotland and Northern Ireland, where weather warnings are in place.

The snow is expected to spread across northern England on Sunday afternoon.

…

Five Eurostar trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel on Friday night, after the move from cold air outside into the warmer tunnel caused condensation which affected electrical systems.

Contrast that epic cluster[bleep] of megagovernment—designing an international train system that can’t operate in the cold—with this story of local government (the Scottish Highlands) in action:

Richard Guest is head of roads and community works at the Highland Council. And he’s a man with a plan.

“When snow is forecast our first priority is to treat main roads from 0600. Next we turn to bus routes. Then we do urban streets and school bus routes. And we aim to get them all covered by 0900.

“After that we do everything else, with difficult and steep routes being treated before the rest.

“And if it keeps snowing, we’ll go back and treat all the roads during the day until 2100.

“On the first day of snow we aim to grit all of the region’s roads.”

And that’s a lot of roads. Highland Council is responsible for 4,200 miles (6,700 km) of highways and byways.

The council has some smart ideas to get to grips with the weather.

Mr Guest said: “Some of our gritters take their lorries home with them at night so that they don’t get stranded the next morning.

“They use the same radio system as the police. So, if an officer wants to speak to his local gritter he can switch to the same radio network.

“Our gritting crews operate from local depots and they will know the bus operators.

“We make sure that we clear the route up to the bus depot entrances and we also ensure that places like hospitals and fire and ambulance stations are kept clear.

They talk to the police, they know the bus operators, they look after the hospitals and ambulances—they even take their trucks home with them so they don’t get stranded.

“Stranded”: you mean like this?

Many passengers were kept on the trains, where they complained of a lack of food and drink, power supplies and information.

…

“People will panic, which is why the contingency plan, to get trains out with people on, while they’re entirely safe, out as soon as possible. That’s what went wrong, it took too long to get the trains out.”

The trains had spare water, but it had run out, he added.

“I’m not saying it went well, I’m saying it went rather better than actually a lot of people say.”

“People will panic”: why, yes, they will, if they have to rely on large bureaucracies to bail their asses out of jams (see above, see New Orleans, 2005, etc.). The lessons of these disasters don’t have to be relearned in isolated pockets where they’ve never been forgotten.

Any contradiction between the efficiency of the Highland gritters and the Copenhagen twits (and the ObamaCare mutts) is purely intentional.