More Evidence for Global Warming

I know that you’ve all been holding off the attacks from them dirty “deniers” following the exploitation of the stolen emails and what is being nastily called “Climategate” … Well below is a video you can refer folks to proving that the climate is warming.

See!!! Proof!!!

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Global Warming Protest in South Dakota

Hundreds of committed individuals gathered in Oglala, South Dakota to protest global warming. As seen in the press photo, these are individuals with a serious stake in the argument. Their spokesperson said “we hope to maintain this vigil for as many months as it takes to stop the warming, even though we know it is inevitable the warming will come.”

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Agreement in Copenhagen … NOT!

Obama spoke today at the Climate Change Circle Jerk Conference in Copenhagen and in an unusual bit of specifics, committed us to the following:

First, all major economies must put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions, and begin to turn the corner on climate change.  I’m pleased that many of us have already done so.  Almost all the major economies have put forward legitimate targets, significant targets, ambitious targets. And I’m confident that America will fulfill the commitments that we have made:  cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050 in line with final legislation.

Do you have any idea what would be required to cut CO2 emissions in the US by 17 percent in the next 10 years? Further, where is the money going to come from to pay for the measures that countries would have to put in place? With the US debt at its current $1.5 to $1.7 trillion, our economy will not withstand the kind of taxation that would be needed to support such expenditures. Cutting our emissions by 80 percent would require that our emissions equal the US emissions at the beginning of the 20th century … when we had a population less than 100 million. Can you say stone-age?

However, Obama left a back door for himself:

Second, we must have a mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and exchange this information in a transparent manner.  These measures need not be intrusive, or infringe upon sovereignty.  They must, however, ensure that an accord is credible, and that we’re living up to our obligations.  Without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.

I don’t know how you have an international agreement where we all are not sharing information and ensuring that we are meeting our commitments.  That doesn’t make sense.  It would be a hollow victory.

China will never agree to the reduction verification regime envisioned by the other industrialized countries and Obama knew this was a likely outcome:

Obama, in his highly anticipated speech, declared: “The time for talk is over.” He acknowledged that the leaders were still far from a deal. “At this point, the question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. Whether we prefer posturing to action.”

But his eight-minute speech offered nothing new or concrete about America’s actions on global warming, and he was as indisposed to be conciliatory as China.

He, like France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, also used the speech to take a shot at China for refusing to bow to American and European demands to submit to inspections of its actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “I don’t know how you have an international agreement where you don’t share information and ensure we are meeting our commitments,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. That would be a hollow victory.”

Obama can promise anything as long as he can say “if only China would have … ” However, Obama remains disposed to use the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement a taxing policy based on our “carbon footprint,” but the money spent to reduce carbon output will not match the taxes imposed. However, all of this … Copenhagen, global disaster, human tragedy-in-the-making, and a global agreement (or lack thereof) is not what the whole Climate Change Extravaganza is about.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say that astronomers in several countries, just say the US, France, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Russia, Iceland and Indonesia among others all announce the discovery of a five kilometer diameter asteroid that was on a collision course with the earth. All also agree on the estimated date of collision to be three years hence. Let’s also say that this discovery is confirmed by a number of respected amateur astronomers. Now we can be fairly certain that this is settled science. Sure, we’ll get some people who disagree, but their position isn’t based on anything other than, oh, let’s say their religion.

Do you believe that under the above scenario the major countries of the world would be unable to come to agreement to collectively develop a strategy to somehow meet this grave threat? I doubt it. They may have difficulty agreeing on exactly what form the strategy should take … send nuclear weapons to blow the asteroid into small pieces, attempt to attach multiple rocket engines to one side to “push” it on another trajectory, whatever … it doesn’t really matter. Most everyone sees the threat and knows something needs to be done, otherwise some or all of us will not survive.

So why wasn’t an agreement reached in Copenhagen to do something about Global Climate Change? Why couldn’t the developed countries reach an agreement on what everyone will do to reduce the “cause” of the so-called “climate disaster?”

First, there isn’t one single overriding reason for attending for all the countries that in fact are participating. No one big purpose. Some countries of the developing world are there for no other reason than to see how much they can shake down the first world for. Others are there so that if there is a hand-out, they won’t miss theirs. Some first would countries are attending because their leaders feel guilty for their predecessors’ colonial adventures; they need to give away their citizens’ hard-earned money to anyone with dark skin and a hand extended. Others just want an excuse to increase taxes.

Second, I suspect very few of the conference participants truly believe there is problem needing a solution. They all spout the doctrine of climate change, but if in fact most of them believed it, they would have a much less difficult time developing an agreement to do something about it.

Third, many are there because of the money … vast amounts of money. In addition to the transfer of wealth that many third-world countries would love to be the recipient of, there will be massive amounts of money from a commercial perspective. Questionably effective green technology, shoved down the throats of consumers through regulation by pliable governments, will create many very wealthy people so long as they can buy the right politicians or bureaucrats.

Lastly, the elitist are there for power … more power over the lives of any country stupid enough to buy into this global warming/climate change clap-trap. These generally have a “UN” somewhere on their business cards, or at least wished they did.

In my opinion, Climategate did much more damage to this conference than any of the participants would ever admit. Was it the cause of the failure? Probably not entirely. Lack of a central purpose was probably the primary reason for failure. When the participants all want more than they are willing to give, it’s a recipe for failure.

Climategate will be the end of the Global Warming scam

The story of the recently “hacked” released documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Great Briton is exploding across the internet. Sites such as Climate Audit, Watts Up with That (which I’ve depended on for all things climate), ICECAP, Climate Science: Roger Pielke, Sr. and others have been sounding the warning bell for years on this scam.In this post I’ll discuss some of the background and details of this saga and then discuss what all this means to the average Joe … at least in the USA.

The Main Stream Media, as usual, has for the most part been MIA. Most within that august body (carcass?) long ago drank the koolaide … became Believers … sold out to the liberals … whatever phrase you want to use to characterize the loss of their so-called journalistic ethics.

A couple of MSMers have begun to realize the scam for what it is, most notably George Monbiot, a reporter with The Guardian in the UK. There are a couple of others, though not as well known in the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) reporting sphere. Two major news outlets have always been “deniers” of AGW or at least reported both sides; the Wall Street Journal and Fox News … shock!

More and more evidence is being found within the emails and documents that clearly demonstrate that:

• the data quality was poor, poorly compiled and poorly managed,
• computer models on which all the Believers hang their hat were at a minimum not robust and possibly used “tricks” to skew the results,
• some of the AGW scientists conspired to or actually did delete correspondence and data files that were subject to “freedom of information act” (FOIA) requests from skeptics,
• data and results were not truly peer-reviewed from an ethical perspective, and
• there were “respected” scientist actively conspiring to block recognition of other scientist that were skeptical of AGW.

The document that began to open the eyes of real-world programmers is a text file called HARRY_READ_ME.txt … a text file most likely written by an unidentified programmer named Harry over a period from 2006 to 2009. Within the document there are countless passages where he openly notes his frustration with the quality of the data files he is trying to integrate into the model he is charged with developing.

Examples from Harry are;

5. Currently trying to convert .glo files to .grim files so that we can
compare with previous output. However the progam suite headed by
globulk.f90 is not playing nicely – problems with it expecting a defunct
file system (all path widths were 80ch, have been globally changed to 160ch)
and also no guidance on which reference files to choose. It also doesn’t
seem to like files being in any directory other than the current one!!

6. Temporarily abandoned 5., getting closer but there’s always another
problem to be evaded. Instead, will try using rawtogrim.f90 to convert
straight to GRIM. This will include non-land cells but for comparison
purposes that shouldn’t be a big problem… [edit] noo, that’s not gonna
work either, it asks for a ‘template grim filepath’, no idea what it wants
(as usual) and a serach for files with ‘grim’ or ‘template’ in them does
not bear useful fruit. As per usual. Giving up on this approach altogether.

[snip]

This produces anomoly files even when given a normals-added
database.. doesn’t create the CLIMATOLOGY. However we do have
it, both in the ‘normals’ directory of the user data
directory, and in the dpe1a ‘cru_cl_1.0′ folder! The relevant
file is ‘clim.6190.lan.tmp’. Obviously this is for land
only.

[snip]

11. Decided to concentrate on Norwich. Tim M uses Norwich
as the example on the website, so we know it’s at (363,286).
Wrote a prog to extract the relevant 1961-1970 series from
the published output, the generated .glo files, and the
published climatology. Prog is norwichtest.for. Prog also
creates anomalies from the published data, and raw data
from the generated .glo data. Then Matlab prog plotnorwich.m
plots the data to allow comparisons.
First result: works perfectly, except that the .glo data is
all zeros. This means I still don’t understand the structure
of the .glo files. Argh!

[snip]

So.. we don’t have the coefficients files (just .eps plots of something). But
what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look,
there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And
that’s useless.. take the above example, the filenames in the _mon and _ann
directories are identical, but the contents are not. And the only difference
is that one directory is apparently ‘monthly’ and the other ‘annual’ – yet
both contain monthly files.

The note above ends on line 953 and the file goes on to a total 15,004 lines! Many of the web sites I noted in the opening paragraph have many more examples from of this file with comments on what they mean in layman’s terms. Some of Harry’s last notes of interest are found on lines 14,863 to 14,873:

Well, the merged database is written principally from dbm*, with dbu* chipping in ‘new’ stations.
I guess that new stations should be added to the wmo reference file? They are pan-parameter (well
the MCDW ones are) but I have an eerie feeling that I won’t experience joy when headers are
compared between parameters :/

Wrote metacmp.for. It accepts a list of parameter databases (by default, latest.versions.dat) and
compares headers when WMO codes match. If all WMO matches amongst the databases share common
metadata (lat, lon, alt, name, country) then the successful header is written to a file. If,
however, any one of the WMO matches fails on any metadata – even slightly! – the gaggle of
disjointed headers is written to a second file. I know that leeway should be given, particularly
with lats & lons, but as a first stab I just need to know how bad things are. Well, I got that:

It is astounding that the “results” of a model that is being used by governments around the world to tax their citizens into the stone age appears to be nothing more than a Erector Set construction, cobbled together by a bunch of elite socialists in an attempt to push their view on the citizens of the world.

One element of this unfolding scandal goes beyond scientific misconduct and broaches on illegality, both in the US and Great Briton (and maybe Australia and New Zealand). Several emails reveal some of the main players discussed deleting files that were being requested through FOIA requests.

For example, in file 1074277559.txt, Phil Jones, the head of CRU, writes to Michael Mann, Professor Director of the Earth Science Center at Penn State and creator of the infamous “hockey-stick graph” the following:

Mike,
This is for YOURS EYES ONLY. Delete after reading – please ! I’m trying to redress the
balance. One reply from Pfister said you should make all available !! Pot calling the
kettle
black – Christian doesn’t make his methods available. I replied to the wrong Christian
message
so you don’t get to see what he said. Probably best. Told Steve separately and to get
more
advice from a few others as well as Kluwer and legal.
PLEASE DELETE – just for you, not even Ray and Malcolm

Cheers
Phil

What is one to make of such behavior? There are many more similar examples among the thousands of emails “hacked” released.

Moving on, one of the celebrities most identified with AGW and climate change (besides alGore) is Ed Begley Jr. I heard Ed speak at an energy conference in Long Beach California last June, and he has been a a staunch supporter of doing whatever it takes to live “green.” I’ll be the first to admit that he, unlike alGore,  actually walks the walk. I’ve admired Ed for this, even though I’ve disagreed with many of his beliefs. Well, Ed was interviewed by Stuart Varney, standing in for Neil Cavuto on Fox News last Monday.

This interview can be used as a compendium of the arguments put forth by the AGW community. When Stuart asks Ed his view on where these Climategate revelations are going, he responds by saying ‘that “peer review studies” will determine what is the “truth.”‘ Within the thousands of emails released from the CRU servers, the evidence is becoming clear that the peer review process within the AGW community was a sham. The Believers were reviewing each others’ studies in a very incestuous cabal and not releasing the underlining data and methods into the public sphere, where skeptics of their work could see how the AGW Believers’ work was constructed.

Ed then goes ballistic when Stuart says ‘the science isn’t “in” … there are climate scientists that disagree with the “consensus” of AGW’. Ed goes on to say ‘we need to trust science publications such as Nature, National Geographic (a publication I used to love until they became so multi-cultural and liberal that I dropped my subscription) and says “don’t get it from me, don’t get it from Rush Limbaugh,” etc.’

Ed goes over the top when Stuart asks why he (Stuart) should allow the government to “demand” that his house be energy efficient and not allow the use of incandescent light bulbs. FYI … for those of you living in areas where the temperature routinely drops below freezing … compact fluorescent light bulbs (the acceptable alternative to the old standby incandescent) won’t work when the temperature drops below about 35F. Good luck when you expect company at 7:30 PM in January and want to make sure they can see so they don’t fall on the ice  patches on the porch!

Lastly, Ed says that you can only listen to “climate scientists” … not weathermen, physicists or others that don’t have “climate” in their title. So where does that put alGore? James Hansen (the NASA scientist most responsible for pushing the global warming sham on US politicians and citizens)? He ends yelling that we wouldn’t have such clean air in Los Angles were it not got the fight against global warming … as if smog-producing chemicals such as NOx and SO2 are the same type of air pollutant as CO2 … a compound we exhale in every breath and that all that green stuff out there that we call plants and trees require as food to grow!

There are more and more information being posted on line exposing additional details, such as the video below:

So what does all this mean to those of us who go about our day-today lives, not understanding how a tree ring could be related to the temperature here on earth?

I’ve written about alternative energy issues here and in other posts. In many States here in the US (California is, unfortunately, the “leader”) as well as countries in Europe and elsewhere, governments have or will soon mandate utilities install “alternative” or “sustainable” generation technologies (read solar and wind generation). While it is true that the “fuel” used to power these technologies is “free,” the cost to install them is far from free.

Electric energy costs are going to rise by 20 to 50% in order to pay for all of this wonderful “green” energy, and reliability will suffer as these technologies are not reliable in the sense that the wind doesn’t blow everywhere all the time, and the sun is sometime blocked by “unscheduled” clouds and does go down … if I’ve heard correctly … almost every night.

The cost for these technologies is three to five times as expensive as traditional coal or natural gas fired generation. In the US, Federal and some States provide various financial subsidies, up to or over 50% of the total cost to promote these technologies. We have paid for these subsidies through our state and federal taxes and will be soon paying for them when we pay our electric bill.

And for what?

To replace coal or natural gas-fired generation that emits that nasty CO2!  That’s it! Sham models “prove” CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by traditional generation “causes” global warming and we waste our hard-earned paychecks to replace it with less-than-cost effective technology! And there’s more!

We are also being forced to drive small, less safe automobiles so as to rid the world of those evil SUVs and pay for some other citizen’s desire (embarrassment?) to dump their clunker for a “fuel-efficient” car.

We are being told what type of light bulbs we are allowed to use in our homes, being required to purchase thermostats that can be controlled by government-mandated programs and turn off your air conditioning when the government decides. Electric rates in many areas are designed to “punish” you if you use too much!

On of the most intrusive programs being pushed here in the US, in Australia and already in place in parts of Europe and the UK is the Cap and Trade … and Tax and Tax and Tax programs. There purported primary “purpose” is to “cap” the amount of CO2 emitted by businesses and utilities each year, lowering the cap until reaching some magical number that is “sustainable.” In fact, it is nothing more than a new way of collecting more tax from everyone and gaining more control over our lives.

I could go on with many more of the crazy programs being pushed in the name of Global Warming, but I’m getting too angry. So … I’ll give you the chance to let us all you know about government and environmental programs where you live that do nothing more than take away your freedom and hard-earned cash.

Update: This link is to a very well done video that gives lie to the sham referred tp as the “peer-review” process.

Hide the decline ….

I couldn’t resist posting this video on the ongoing saga of Climategate. I’m still wiping the tears away!!!

Does CO2 cause warming or not?

An Associated Press article on Fox News this morning proclaims that CO2 has reached the “highest levels ever.”

GENEVA — Greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere reached record highs in 2008, with carbon dioxide levels increasing faster than previously, the U.N. weather agency said Monday.

Levels of greenhouse gases, believed to be responsible for global warming, have been rising every year since detailed records started being kept in 1998, the World Meteorological Organization said.

It follows a trend of rising emissions that began with the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, the agency said.

The report by the World Meteorological Organization comes as the European Union urged the United States and China on Monday to set targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions at next month’s climate conference in Copenhagen. The European Union said delays by those countries were hindering global efforts to curb climate change.

I find this very funny! Last week I came across an article that talked about how “some climate scientists are unsure of what is causing the cooling seen for the last several years.”

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Temperatures have gone up and temperatures have gone down globally … for millions of years, and we are not yet capable of causing either. If CO2 is up, and CO2 is the thing that CAUSES the global temperature to rise … WHY ARE TEMPERATURES NOT GOING UP?????

Poll on Global Warming

Just ran across a public opinion poll on global warming put up by Thomas Fuller at Examiner.com. The poll’s questions don’t start from a position of a AGW “believer” or “denier,” though some lean towards the believer side. Almost every question provides an opportunity to insert you own answer or opinion.

The poll is anonymous and doesn’t take but a few minutes, so connect to this link and have at it!

Lord Monckton on AGW

Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and a critic of global warming theories, appeared last night on Glen Beck’s show along with former UN Ambassador John Bolton. As I haven’t had cable TV for several years (which means no TV where I live), I watch YouTube instead. The first of seven videos of last night’s Glen Beck is here. If you missed the program, I strongly suggest you watch, because Lord Monckton discusses the treaty that is being developed for the forthcoming meeting of the UN Committee on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark that I discussed here.

In one of the videos, John Bolton tends to minimize the potential danger that treaty poses if signed by Obama or those he designates to sign on his behalf. Nevertheless, I along with many others believe the entire premise of so-called anthropogenic global warming is flawed to begin with, and it is this issue that needs to be raised above all of the noise of the Chicken Littles’ hand wringing and wailing. One way to expand the message that AGW is a fraud is containd in the five videos below.

Again Lord Monckton, on a Canadian TV program a couple of weeks ago, did an excellent job of bring all of the complex science down to a very understandable discussion.

There are so many important issues requiring our attention these days that it is sometimes difficult to believe we are going to be able to focus on it all. Well … if we don’t spend some of our time to fight the liberal encroachment on or freedoms … it won’t be long before we will have none for which to fight.

AGW’s may have their day in court

Interesting ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court yesterday, reported by J. Russell Jackson on his Consumer Class Actions and Mass Torts blog.

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit became the second federal appeals court in less than a month to reverse a trial court decision that had thrown out a climate change lawsuit for presenting a nonjusticiable political question.  See Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, 2009 WL 3321493 (5th Cir. Oct. 16, 2009).

(The Second Circuit previously had held that in the absence of comprehensive federal legislation regulating greenhouse gas emissions, states, municipalities and certain private organizations had standing to bring viable federal common law nuisance claims to impose caps on certain companies’ greenhouse gas emissions.  See Connecticut v. American Elec. Power Co., 2009 WL 2996729 (2d Cir. Sept. 21, 2009.  A good description of that opinion can be found here.)

Comer is particularly important because it is a private class action for compensatory and punitive damages, not a suit brought by states or municipalities for injunctive relief.  And that means contingency fees.  And thus the promise of copycat lawsuits.

The plaintiffs in Comer were property owners on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast who had suffered property damage in Hurricane Katrina.  Their causation theory sounds a little like the litigator’s equivalent to the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”  Plaintiffs sued a melange of energy, fossil fuel, and chemical companies, alleging that their greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions contributed to an increase in air and water temperatures, causing a rise in sea levels and adding to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which blew water and debris onto plaintiffs’ property, thereby causing property damage.  Plaintiffs asserted a variety of theories under Mississippi common law, including public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass, negligence, unjust enrichment, fraudulent misrepresentation, and civil conspiracy.

I especially appreciated his reference above to “Their causation theory sounds a little like the litigator’s equivalent to the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

While my first reaction was ‘great … finally the opportunity to bring science into the argument and show the world that the AGW’s are using innuendo and scare tactics to push their agenda’ … further reflection hasn’t been so gung-ho. When I think about some of the judgments that have been rendered by other courts and juries, I have to reconsider.

In some states and within some court rooms, the distinction between a legal setting and game show are blurred. Some juries base their verdict not on the evidence presented during the trail, but on the economic standing of the ‘poor’ plaintiff versus the ‘rich’ defendant.

There is more and more science surfacing that supports the theory that any climate change that may be occurring is a result of ‘natural’ causes; i.e. humans are not capable of causing changes to the world’s climate. The video below (part 1 of 4) by Professor Robert (Bob) Carter does an excellent job of laying out the evidence against CO2 as the sole cause of world-wide temperature changes.

In the second video, he expands on the ruse of choosing only selective time periods in order to “prove” warming and begins to build the case against AGW with data “torpedoing” the so-called proof.

In the third video, Professor Carter continues his torpedoing AGW.

In the last video, he discusses Anthony Watts’ SurfaceStations.org project, which I’ve posted about before, and Steve McIntyre’s finding the data error in NASA’s data.

He makes a very compelling argument, though I wouldn’t bet next year’s pay that any specific court would rule in favor of the science and against breathless sensationalism.

Global warming and the US Constitution

All of the AGW crowd are readying themselves for their convocation scheduled in December in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is their hope that the US will finally sign on to a new Kyoto Treaty to be adopted during this sacred gathering of the faithful (an early draft of that document can be downloaded here). They are especially encouraged now that The One is the Blessed Leader of the US and His followers control Congress.

Unfortunately, there is that pesky little document called the US Constitution that some of us believe is still the law of the land. Article 2 says that for a treaty to become law, it needs to be ratified by a 2/3 vote of the US Senate. It will be very difficult under the current membership to convince enough Republicans to vote with the Senate majority … close, but no banana.

Sure, Senator Snowe and possibly Collins (the two Maine Senators) will see this as an opportunity to preen in front of the news’ cameras, as Snowe did following the Senate Finance Committee’s recent passage of the Obamacare bill. However, the Dems would still have to pick up a minimum of four additional GOP votes and the only ones I’d be fearful of “moving across the aisle” would be Lindsey Graham (RINO-SC) and John McCain (RINO-AZ).

Graham recently announced he now supports John Kerry’s* Cap and Tax and Tax and Tax and Tax bill, so it’s not much of a stretch to extend that support to a treaty. Who ever knows what McCain will do! However, I also expect there may be a few (2-4) Dem Senators unwilling to sacrifice their political career to The One. It just depends on when/if a vote on the treaty comes to the Senate; I don’t believe there is any drop-dead date within the treaty for ratification by the US or any other country.

* – The former junior Senator from Massachusetts who, by the way, served in Vietnam.

Nevertheless, there is also another section of the Constitution that hypothetically prohibits the Senate from adopting the treaty in the first place; something called Article 6:

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

While a cursory read seems to give the impression that any treaties we enter into become the supreme law of the land, it is that last bit, “any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding” that throws the monkey wrench into things. Kyoto, Kyoto II (whatever it ends up looking like), and other similar treaties like the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child contain provisions that would supersede or override provisions of the Constitution. That’s the rub!

The Constitution is the Supreme law of the land. Our lawmakers cannot legally enter into a treaty that has provisions that make anything in the Constitution, the Amendments or Bill of Rights subservient to that treaty. Not that the Liberals in the Senate won’t try, mind you.

James Madison, the man viewed by most experts as the author of the Constitution, along with Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere that, essentially, the US cannot enter into any treaty with provisions that would supersede anything in the Constitution. As I am by no stretch of the imagination a lawyer nor have any legal training, I will not attempt to describe to the reader what Madison’s, Jefferson’s, or John Jay’s (the three authors of The Federalist Papers) perspectives were. I’ve found several good analysis of this issue, with links to three of those here, here and here. There are many others, but in my research I never happened upon any arguments for allowing treaties to supersede provisions of the Constitution (though truthfully … I didn’t bother to look specifically for the reverse).

Obama has pushed some sort of Cap and Tax and Tax and Tax and Tax bill since he joined the US Senate … and maybe before. His recent “award” of the Nobel Peace Prize was, in my opinion, a bribe from the internationalists to keep moving the US towards socialism and a one-world government. The document that will come out of the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen will do just that.

If the current crop of Cap and Tax and Tax and Tax and Tax bills making their way through both the House and Senate are ever passed and sent to The One for His blessings, it will put in place another stepping stone that will lead us to that one-world government. Don’t let them get their way!!!!

UPDATE: Publis Huldah noted an error as to the authors of the Federalist Papers. While Thomas Jefferson is generally acknowledged as the author of the Declaration of Independence, it was Alexander Hamilton and not Jefferson, that was the third author of the Federalist Papers. Thanks for the catch!

The temperature is what?

Anthony Watts just posted a new report on Watts Up With That? about the state of the world’s temperature recording stations. The report is by Joseph D’Aleo, the Executive Director of ICECAP.

Anthony has been instrumental in pointing out the poor condition of the system that is supposed to provide the data collected by NOAA. His creation, SurfaceStations.org has used volunteers to physically document the condition of over 80% of the 1,221 weather stations across the country and the resultant quality of the data provided. It was he who uncovered stations like the one at Marysville, CA:

Mr. D’Aleo’s report should cause anyone not completely given over to the religion of AGW (anthropogenic, or man-caused global warming) to rethink their position. I have never believed man could do anything to affect the weather world-wide; locally … sure. Man has been spoiling his own nest for eons. But humans are just not powerful enough to do what nature does.

My first inkling of issues with temperature records came when I read Michael Crichton’s novel, State of Fear. The book is loaded with temperature charts (all real) showing warming in cities and no warming in rural areas. The “heat island” effect (average temperatures steadily increase as more street paving, concrete and buildings are added to a city, creating an increasingly larger island of heat) is recognized by most scientist around the world, so there shouldn’t be much argument about the “warming” recorded by weather stations in and close to cities.

Couple the heat island effect with poor siting of weather stations, and then add the facts noted in Mr. D’Aleo’s report that the number of stations worldwide has significantly decreased, and how can anyone really say with certainty what direction the world’s temperature is headed?

Climate change? You bet! Changing climate is what has happened since the earth was created. Anthropogenic global warming? I have doubted its existence since I first heard the term, and the more I read, the more doubt I have. It is narcissistic to believe we are that powerful.

Cap and Tax and Tax and Tax and Tax ……

It has been a while since I last posted. A number of things have converged to the point that I just didn’t have the initiative to write … on anything! However, it’s time to pull myself up by my boot-straps (I always mentally image someone defying gravity as they lift themselves off the floor) and get back to it.

There are so many topics to muse on, so this evening I’ll post on Owe-bamacare. For now, I’d like to pass along the text of a speech Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) made in the last meeting of the Senate’s Environment & Public Works Committee prior to the August recess.

Climate Change and Ensuring that America Leads the Clean Energy Transformation

August 6, 2009

Madame Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing today. This is the last hearing on climate change before the August recess, so I think it’s appropriate to take stock of what we’ve learned.

Madame Chairman, since you assumed the gavel, this committee has held over thirty hearings on climate change. With testimony from numerous experts and officials from all over the country, these hearings explored various issues associated with cap-and-trade-and I’m sure my colleagues learned a great deal from them.

But over the last two years, it was not from these, at times, arcane and abstract policy discussions that we got to the essence of cap-and-trade. No, it was the Democrats who cut right to the chase; it was the Democrats over the last two years who exposed what cap-and-trade really means for the American public.

We learned, for example, from President Obama that under his cap-and-trade plan, “electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.”

We learned from Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) that cap-and-trade is “a tax, and a great big one.”

We learned from Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) that “a cap-and-trade system is prone to market manipulation and speculation without any guarantee of meaningful GHG emission reductions. A cap-and-trade has been operating in Europe for three years and is largely a failure.”

We learned from Sen. Dorgan (D-N.D.) that with cap-and-trade “the Wall Street crowd can’t wait to sink their teeth into a new trillion-dollar trading market in which hedge funds and investment banks would trade and speculate on carbon credits and securities. In no time they’ll create derivatives, swaps and more in that new market. In fact, most of the investment banks have already created carbon trading departments. They are ready to go. I’m not.”

We learned from Sen. Cantwell (D-Wash.) that “a cap-and-trade program might allow Wall Street to distort a carbon market for its own profits.”

We learned from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson that unilateral U.S. action to address climate change through cap-and-trade would be futile. She said in response to a question from me that “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.”

We learned from Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) that “there is no way the United States of America acting alone can solve this problem. So we have to have China; we have to have India.”

We learned from Sen. McCaskill (D-Mo.) that if “we go too far with this,” that is, cap-and-trade, then “all we’re going to do is chase more jobs to China and India, where they’ve been putting up coal-fired plants every 10 minutes.”

In sum, after a slew of hearings and three unsuccessful votes on the Senate floor, the Democrats taught us that cap-and-trade is a great big tax that will raise electricity prices on consumers, enrich Wall Street traders, and send jobs to China and India-all without any impact on global temperature.

So off we go into the August recess, secure in the knowledge that cap-and-trade is riddled with flaws, and that Democrats are seriously divided over one of President Obama’s top domestic policy priorities.

And we also know that, according to recent polling, the American public is increasingly unwilling to pay anything to fight global warming.

But all of this does not mean cap-and-trade is dead and gone. It is very much alive, as Democratic leaders, as they did in the House, are eager to distribute pork on unprecedented scales to secure the necessary votes to pass cap-and-trade into law.

So be assured of this: We will markup legislation in this committee, pass it, and then it will be combined with other bills from other committees. And we will have a debate on the Senate floor.

Throughout the debate on cap-and-trade, we will be there to say that:

According to the American Farm Bureau, the vast majority of agriculture groups oppose it;

According to GAO, it will send our jobs to China and India;

According to the National Black Chamber of Commerce, it will destroy over 2 million jobs;

According to EPA and EIA, it will not reduce our dependence on foreign oil;

According to EPA, it will do nothing to reduce global temperature;

And when all is said and done, the American people will reject it and we will defeat it.

Thank you, Madame Chairman.

There are many markets around the world trading in many different types of commodities. The so-called Cap and Trade legislation ostensibly creates a marketplace in which to trade in ‘carbon credits.’ There is however, a significant distinction between ‘carbon credits’ and every … every other commodity; the other commodities are tangible! Gold, silver, oil, pork bellies … anyone can see, touch, feel, horde, personally own and hold any of these. Not so for ‘carbon credits.’ A carbon credit is a pound (or kilogram) that someone, somewhere didn’t emit into the atmosphere. They are totally intangible!

Last month the British authorities made several arrests related to a scheme some less-than-honest folks had undertaken to financially enrich themselves in a less-than-honest way. On August 19th the Financial Times reported:

Fraud investigators arrested nine people on Wednesday over a suspected £38m [$62.6 million] carbon credit trading scam in one of the clearest signs yet of criminals targeting international schemes to combat climate change.

More than 100 Revenue & Customs officers raided dozens of properties in the south of England over an alleged cross-border fraud to evade value added tax, just weeks after the Treasury imposed emergency rules in an effort to curb the problem.

Trading in carbon credits – allowances for companies to produce greenhouse gases – has been dogged by problems, from legal but ethically dubious practices to alleged scams involving fictitious products.

“Fictitious products” … an understatement! There are many, many reasons to defeat the Cap and Trade legislation the Dems are trying to shove down our throats. The aspect of a market without tangible assets assures an unlimited number of ways to introduce fraud. The Heritage Foundation has many articles and studies on the subject; I highly recommend you educate yourself about this most important issue.

At a minimum, Cap and Trade will keep us in this recession for years and cause more people to lose their jobs as businesses adjust their strategies in order to account for substantial increases in energy prices.

Chicken … or Egg? Only Algore Knows

I ran across this story written by Scott Canon and published in the Kansas City Star on May 6th. The story notes the lack of sunspots over the past year and a half and asks what it means. I posted on sunspots previously here. Scott says:

New research suggests the sun might be calming, erupting in fewer solar flares and winds that send cosmic rays spraying out toward the planets.

That could mean colder weather. And although it’s not time to put away your Ray-Bans, the sun also could be dimming ever so slightly.

A similar phenomenon caused what’s often called the Little Ice Age that chilled Europe and North America enough to form an ice barrier around Greenland and freeze solid the canals of the Netherlands.

Scientists don’t yet know if the seemingly calmer sun will linger in this lull. It’s too early to tell.

He goes on to cite different ‘experts’ prognostications. However, further on in the article is this:

“The problem is if the sun is, indeed, going into a minimum, which we don’t know yet, people will think that we don’t have to act on climate change,” said Angela Speck, an astrophysicist at the University of Missouri. “The sun came back out of that minimum in the 18th century” — when the River Thames turned to ice — “and it will come back out of this.”

“I’m inclined to think the effects are real,” said Adrian Melott, another KU astrophysicist. “But the evidence is nowhere as solid as it is for the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere” and climate change.

“My worry,” he said, “is that it will lower temperatures and cause people to think it’s OK to burn all that coal and oil.”

My first reaction to the two comments was “but couldn’t it be as probable that the increase in sunspots since the Maunder Minimum be the cause of the average temperature rising to where it is today?” There have been a greater number of sunspots since the1950s than any time since sunspots have been tracked. Why is it that any increase in temperature since 1950′s be caused by AGW, but the current slight decease be attributed to the absence of sunspots?

Secondly, the author quotes Adrian Melott “But the evidence is nowhere as solid as it is for the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere” and then adds ‘and climate change’ without attribution. Did Mr. Melott actually say the evidence for climate change was a solid as the evidence for carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere, or did the author assume Melott meant that but just didn’t express that sentiment outright?

The reason issues of sunspots isn’t on the front page of every major publication is because  the study of sun spots is relegated to the realms of science, whereas Anthropogenic Global Warming is a core to the religion to those who believe. That religion is Environmentalism.

Michael Crichton delivered a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in September 2003 on Environmentalism as the fastest growing religion in the Western world. In his speach, Crichton described the tenets of the religion:

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let’s examine some of those beliefs.

There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?

The text of Michael’s speech can be found here and I encourage you to read the entire speech. It describes to a tee the fanaticism of those who espouse that the only possible explanation of recent temperature change to be the increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

It appears, based on the quotes attributed to them, both Angela Speck and Adrian Melott are followers of Environmentalism. They are both saying “well … the climate may be cooling because of less sunspots … but that isn’t important because once the sunspots start up again … it’s going to get REAL hot if we keep burring coal and oil,” i.e. “putting” carbon dioxide into the atmosphere! Do you think the occupants of those mid-evil castles around 1680 would have been disturbed by a bit of “climate change?”

And born-again Christians are called crazy!

So … what’s with the Sunspots?

I remember a Christmas … it must have been about 1952 or 1953 … my Dad had to work the graveyard shift and my brother and I had to wait until he got home before we were allowed to go out to the living room where the Christmas tree was and see what Santa had brought us. If you were anything like me, Christmas morning was the only morning you were awake long before the sun came up and the first thing you did was make a bee-line for the tree.

That Christmas I was hoping Santa would bring me a Buck Rogers Space Port, complete with action figures and everything else a seven year old that was completely captivated by the thought of outer space could dream of. My interest in things not of our planet and outside of our atmosphere has only deepened as I’ve gotten older. I was absolutely glued to the TV watching Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter again and again. Fascinating stuff!

That interest has not abated. I first subscribed to Scientific American in the mid-1980s (I have since dropped my subscription after SA’s abhorrent treatment of Bjorn Lomborg in a smear campaign that was pure political … reminiscent of the Catholic Church’s treatment of Galileo), even though I had no formal education in the sciences. I devoured everything I found on astronomy, astro-physics, radio astronomy, aeronautical engineering (at least related to space travel), anything space-related.

With that background, it wasn’t difficult for me to exercise my curiosity in the global warming debate. I’ve always been suspicious of the claim that humans are powerful enough to cause any global effect. For us to be at fault for causing a change in the temperature of the entire planet is giving us way to much credit … a rather narcissistic viewpoint. However, the one claim that the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) crowd made that confirmed my suspicion was that the Sun had no impact on the warming! The thing that warmed the earth and made it a habitable place for us to thrive … couldn’t have any influence on the temperature on earth rising or falling? What instrument did they use to confirm that fact?

Back to my interest in things space …

One interesting aspect of the sun is the sunspot cycle it goes through about every eleven years. Periodically, darker cooler blotches called sunspots temporarily appear on the Sun’s surface. Sunspots are areas where very strong local magnetic fields interfere with the normal convection activity that brings heat to the surface. The spots usually appear in pairs or groups of pairs.Each spot typically has a dark, circular center, called the umbra, surrounded by a lighter area, the penumbra. The umbras are about 2,000K (3,100°F) cooler than the photosphere around them (which means that they are still very hot). Sunspots vary greatly in size but are always small compared to the size of the Sun. When they appear in groups, they may extend over tens of thousands of miles. They last from tens of minutes to a few days or even months. All of this subject is much more complex than I’m portraying here, so if any of this peaks your interest there are many sites with much more detail than I discuss here.

The rise and fall of sunspot numbers are only one manifestation of the solar cycle. Solar astronomers traditionally label solar cycles from one minimum to the next, and assign them numbers, starting with the 1755-1766 cycle. We are just (hopefully soon) entering cycle 24. The graph below shows the cycles back to 1610.

During 2008, there were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year’s 366 days (73%). To find a year with fewer spotless suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. At these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.

Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31 2009, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year’s 90 days (87%), which adds up to one inescapable conclusion: “We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum,” says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

UPDATE: I got pulled away to a meeting and didn’t get to where I was taking this post, so let me continue.

The scientists most adamant that we are in a period of warming, specifically caused by humans’ burning of fossil fuel and the resultant CO2, are as adamant that the sun has nothing to do with any observed climate warming. Again, I’m not a trained scientist, but I have yet to hear any evidence, convincing or otherwise, that the sun couldn’t be involved in any supposed warming. The sun is the driver for 99% of the heat on the earth.

The last two winters were the coldest we’ve experienced in the last couple of decades and last summer was exceptionally mild as well. If Cycle 24 continues to be as low as its beginnings, we may well be able to determine how much influence the sun has on the earth’s climate. But then I forgot … it isn’t so until a computer model makes it so!

/sarc

BTW … I got the complete Buck Rogers Space Port … with extra fighters and a troop transport! Best Christmas ever!

Radicals Kidnap EPA, Declare Ransom Demands

Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bowed to environmentalist and Democratic politicians and declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant.” For those of you that can recall your fifth grade science class, CO2 is part of the natural cycle of life … remember? … animals take in oxygen (O2), exhale carbon dioxide (CO2), then plants take in CO2 and turn it into O2.

I follow a great science blog called Watts Up With That, edited by Anthony Watts. He posted on this very important development last night here. Anthony begins by providing the background on where this disastrous ruling came from:

On April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The Court held that the Administrator must determine whether or not emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare, or whether the science is too uncertain to make a reasoned decision. In making these decisions, the Administrator is required to follow the language of section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court decision resulted from a petition for rulemaking under section 202(a) filed by more than a dozen environmental, renewable energy, and other organizations.

While the initial focus is supposed to be on automobiles, when do you remember a government agency limiting their reach to their initial charge? Not that limiting regulations on automobile emissions of CO2 won’t be harmful enough … the auto industry is just getting back up on to its knees from the finance market crash and is not likely to recover for the next two or three years if then. I predict the EPA will immediately start developing regulations for stationary sources of CO2 emissions … like electric generating plants. Recall Obama’s campaign promise to destroy the coal industry?

While we don’t all own or drive a car, I don’t know anyone that doesn’t use electricity. The majority of electrical generation in the US is based on fossil fuel; coal and natural gas (very little oil is used today to generate electricity). Burning fossil fuel produces CO2. The most viable alternative to fossil fuel generation is nuclear powered generation. The tree huggers want us to generate all our power needs using solar and wind power sources. I’ll write a seperate post on these “alternative” energy sources in the near future.

In the meanwhile, I strongly recommend you click on the link to Anthony’s post and read what to do to send comments to the EPA, asking (respectfully!) that they not take their planned steps to implement regulations to try to control CO2 (more on the insanity of the US trying to control CO2 later).

Numbers are important, even to the EPA (we are still a democratic republic and the EPA is still required to follow procedures and read every comment), so the greater the number of opponents the more likely the chance of derailing this madness. The public comment period is open for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register. Please note that official comments on the proposed finding cannot be submitted until the Federal Register publication. I’ll track this and let you know when they are published.

If you are already familiar with submitting comments to a regulatory body, you can download a .pdf file with instructions here. When providing comments, please submit them with reference to Docket ID No.  EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171.

Please … submit your comments!