Representative Scalise (R, LA.) dares to question Al Gore

Al Gore does not stand up to scrutiny well.

This is from last year but pretty good. Red eye is pretty good. I don’t know if this went to court or not.

…but I thought that the crazy global warming nuts already said that there was a “consensus” that global warming was true.

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 10:39AM GMT 28 Dec 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming “energy gap” - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama’s US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

I must end this year by again paying tribute to my readers for the wonderful generosity with which they came to the aid of two causes. First their donations made it possible for the latest “metric martyr”, the east London market trader Janet Devers, to fight Hackney council’s vindictive decision to prosecute her on 13 criminal charges, ranging from selling in pounds and ounces to selling produce “by the bowl” (to avoid using weights her customers dislike and don’t understand). The embarrassment caused by this historic battle has thrown the forced metrication policy of both our governments, in London and Brussels, into total disarray.

Since Hackney backed out of allowing four criminal charges against Janet to go before a jury next month, all that remains is for her to win her appeal in February against eight convictions which now look quite absurd (including those for selling veg by the bowl, as thousands of other London market traders do every day). The final goal, as Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund insists, must then be a pardon for the late Steve Thoburn and the four other original “martyrs” who were found guilty in 2002 – after a legal battle also made possible by this column’s readers – of breaking laws so ridiculous that the EU Commission has even denied they existed (but which are still on the statute book).

Readers were equally generous this year in rushing to the aid of Sue Smith, whose son was killed in a Snatch Land Rover in Iraq in 2005. Their contributions made it possible for her to carry on with the High Court action she has brought against the Ministry of Defence, with the sole aim of calling it to account for needlessly risking soldiers’ lives by sending them into battle in hopelessly inappropriate vehicles. Thanks not least to Mrs Smith’s determined fight, the Snatch Land Rover scandal, first reported here in 2006, has at last become a national cause celebre.

May I finally thank all those readers who have written to me in 2008 – so many that, as usual, it has not been possible to answer all their messages. But their support and information has been hugely appreciated. May I wish them and all of you a happy (if globally not too warm) New Year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html

Looking through the 2008 Democratic convention schedule, two things came to mind.  One is that Michelle Obama is keynoting tonight, Monday the 25th.  This really got me thinking.  If my wife, who is an occupational therapist, were to give a talk at a therapist convention, could I give a speech also?  I mean, we talk about her work every day, so that should qualify me, right?  The interesting pivot here is that early on Obama shied away from the power couple meme because he was running against Hilary.

I guess I could understand a 10 minute introduction speech, but letting Michelle keynote.  I watched Michelle give a speech before, it was not pretty.  Must presidential wives give keynotes?  Theresa Heinz Kerry was disastrous, but at least she wasn’t inflammatory.  I fear that Michelle may very well put a dent in Baracks poll rating.  He may finish strong, but people will be paying attention to Michelle.

There are a couple of notable absences that caught my eye…Al Gore and Howard Dean.  The environment has been one issue without much traction this season.  Perhaps these people are hearing from their constituents about high gas prices.  See when you have real problems you don’t need to create imaginary ones.  Is Al Gore not willing to be kicked around anymore?  Perhaps all the attention from the academy and Nobel committee was all too much.  Well, Gore may be the best chance to prevent the ascension of Hilary in 2012, and maybe a self-imposed exile might do him some good in that regard.

The absence of Howard Dean is notable because he is the most outspoken critic of the war, and I guess with the success of the surge the dems don’t want to revisit that.  Along these lines, one might also wonder where Gavin Newsome is, that maverick in support of gay marriages.

A generic Democrat wins this election, and this convention is designed to appease Hilary (and set her up for 2012) and make Obama look like a generic democrat.  Unfortunately, he is by no means generic, and that is a double edged sword.

If you are a democrat and you want to win in November, wouldn’t you think it would be in the bag had you nominated Al Gore.  I’m fairly conservative, and I would consider voting for Gore over McCain.  But I won’t vote for Obama.  And there are a lot of GOP members that are frustrated with this administration and the party, but just aren’t willing to pull the lever for the most inexperienced and liberal member of the Senate.  The GOP will owe all those primary caucus types a debt of gratitude for overplaying their hand.

Well, I finally had to make the call to the school today. My daughter came home and said that she watched the first 10 minutes of An Inconvenient Truth today in honors science class, and that she would be watching the rest of the movie tomorrow, and writing a paper on the movie. I called the school and spoke to her science teacher, who had a “f*** you” attitude and said that the movie was educational and taught kids how to save the wetlands…and then she admitted that she had never actually seen the movie.

I then told her that I didn’t want my daughter watching the movie and that she was not going to write the required (indoctrination) paper about the movie. Nella and I will be enrolling her in a good private school at the end of this year. Below is the letter that she is carrying to school tomorrow to give to her teacher (not into having her name all over the Internet, so the name has been changed in the letter):

February 20, 2008

Dear Ms. Nick

Please excuse “A” from watching Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and from writing a paper about this movie. This movie is overtly political, and it has been proven inaccurate and purposefully misleading by many climatologists and weather experts. In fact, this movie amounts to little more than liberal propaganda designed to scare people, and I expected more from a Meisler education. Outside of a political science class, this movie is entirely inappropriate for a twelve year old student. In the future, please contact me if you plan on requiring “A” to watch any film that is remotely political. Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at (504) 555-5555.

Sincerely,

Michael W. Gahagan, Esq.

A news article in Nature highlights some encouraging developments among those willing to pursue alternative fuels: investment rather than coercion. Regardless what you think about global warming (I am a skeptic), the desire for most proponents of alternative energy policies to ration the allocation of electrical power or consumption of goods is spine-tingling for the average American and a political no-brainer. However, Laurie David and Al Gore and company have been trying to scare the hoi polloi into adopting such measures as using one sheet of toilet paper per bathroom visit and voluntarily restrict air travel, the result of which would only marginally change the temperature according to most models…

That’s why I’m glad to see the prophets of the secular church of environmental doom and gloom are finally willing to put their money where there mouth has been and invest in alternative fuels. Two weeks ago Google announced that it was unveiling a plan to develop a fuel technology that will be cheaper than coal. It’s called RE<C (renewable energy < coal) and it is ambitious. It must be noted that this enterprise is being run by Google’s philanthropic arm. Philanthropic arms can often be viewed as political marketing, when ADM advertises it’s investment in alternative energy on Sunday mornings, it makes people feel warm and fuzzy. Same thing as when the Ford Foundation sponsors free trips to the Art Institute in Chicago. Warm fuzzy feelings don’t always translate to profits, a point which is illustrated thus:

The clean-tech market is “fraught with pitfalls and not for the inexperienced or the faint of heart”, according to NVCA president Mark Heesen. It is fit only for investors ready to look long-term and with a deep knowledge of the sector, he warns. “Short-term ‘tourists’ should steer clear.”

I look forward to the day when solar power is cheaper than coal. I do not look forward to coercion of the public to stop using coal and inducements in the form of tax breaks to those who use alternative fuels by the federal or state governments, however.