20071120 Marc’ Morano’s Round Up
UN Climate Blowback: Scientists & Studies Debunk UN IPCC Summary
Paper reveals goal of New UN Summary: 'Intended to launch a political process'
Excerpt: The document, summarizing the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change, will be distributed to delegates at a crucial meeting in Indonesia next month that is intended to launch a political process on international cooperation to control global warming.
http://www.redding.com/news/2007/nov/17/no-headline-a2dig17/
UK Scientist Mocks New IPCC summary - By Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography, University of London
Excerpt: What neither the IPCC, nor Mr. Ban, nor most media commentators seem to grasp is that the precautionary principle works both ways. Which is riskier, trying to follow the climate-change rhetoric of the IPCC and Green groups by warping world economics and politics to deal (impossibly) with climate change, or facing up to the economics and politics of the real world. Completely changing the world’s economic and political basis for something that actually may not happen - and will most certainly not occur exactly as predicted - is for me a much, much riskier proposition, especially when one takes into account the fact that there will be benefits, as well as problems, from climate changes. Just remember that, if one takes all the models that exist for climate change, not just those of the IPCC, the error bar is for a change of between -2 degrees Celsius to nearly 7 degrees Celsius (a nine degree Celsius error bar in all). Even I think that climate is likely to vary (all the time) within such a range. It tells us nothing. It is a tautology.
http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/iWeb/Global Warming Politics/A Hot Topic Blog/2C451496-B754-4C7D-A378-9A5FED7BE27F.html
More: UK Scientist predicts 'People will listen, (increasingly less over time' to alarmist climate predictions - By Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography, University of London
Excerpt: After 50 years of terminal decades, the world goes on, economies grow, CO2 rises, and more people become just that little bit better off. As I point out in ‘Reality, Rhetoric, and Risk’ (November 17, below), we shall no more land the IPCC’s snark than the pobble will find its toes. People will listen (increasingly less over time), and maybe, for a short period, even believe it to be ‘true’, but - “It’s a fact the whole world knows” - we can’t do a blind thing about it (as one senior Labour cabinet member was reported to me to have admitted in an aside at a Conference) http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/iWeb/Global Warming Politics/A Hot Topic Blog/CA1422FB-B3E5-4D06-B828-422738E3E832.html
More UN Fears Debunked: Global warming: Oceans could absorb far more CO2, says study
Excerpt: The ocean's plankton can suck up far more airborne carbon dioxide (CO2) than previously realized, although the marine ecosystem may suffer damage if this happens, a new study into global warming says. The sea has soaked up nearly half of the CO2 that has been emitted by fossil fuels since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The gas dissolves into surface waters and is then transported around the oceans. But a key role is played by plant micro-organisms called phytoplankton, which take in the dissolved gas at the ocean's sunlit surface as part of the process of photosynthesis. This plankton dies and eventually sinks to the ocean floor, thus storing the carbon for potentially millions of years.
http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/administration/afp-news.html?id=071111222653.p5c5mbiy&cat=science
Real Agenda: UN scientists urge carbon tax to fight global warming
Excerpt: All sources of carbon pollution - from flights to inefficient light bulbs - must become more expensive if the world is to tackle global warming, an influential panel of scientists and government officials will say today. Putting a price on harmful emissions from goods and services would require a fundamental shift in the world's economy, but "could realise significant mitigation potential in all sectors" according to a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). < > The IPCC does not recommend specific policies, but a draft summary obtained by the Guardian highlights the introduction of an "effective carbon price signal". It says a carbon price of between $20-$80 (£10-£40) per tonne by 2030 should be enough to limit the expected temperature rise. How such a worldwide price could be introduced will be one focus of the Bali talks. Europe favours cap-and-trade systems, which place a mandatory limit on pollution from countries, companies and even individuals, who must buy the right to pollute more.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/17/climatechange.carbonemissions
UN IPCC Scientist Says Politics Controls UN Climate Reports
Excerpt: Q: The media portrays the IPCC as an independent group of scientists that study the causes of climate change, yet their charter specifically states that they study only human influences on climate change. Are they really an independent group of scientists that study all possible causes of climate change? Dr Vincent Gray: Every word they write has to be approved by the Government Representatives who control the IPCC. < > The “Lead Authors” are chosen by Governments, and they are usually employed or financed by Governments.
http://glowarmers.blogspot.com/2007/11/breif-conversation-with-dr-vincent-gray.html
Flashback: Senator Inhofe Debunks UN “Consensus” In October 26 Speech (Only 52 Scientists wrote IPCC Summary in April)
Excerpt: There are frequently claims that the UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers is the voice of hundreds or even thousands of the world's top scientists. But such claims do not hold up to even the lightest scrutiny. According to the Associated Press, during the IPCC Summary for Policymakers meeting in April 2007, only 52 scientists participated. The April 9, 2007 AP article by Seth Borenstein reported: "Diplomats from 115 countries and 52 scientists hashed out the most comprehensive and gloomiest warning yet about the possible effects of global warming, from increased flooding, hunger, drought and diseases to the extinction of species." Many of the so-called "hundreds" of scientists who have been affiliated with the UN as "expert reviewers" are in fact climate skeptics. Skeptics like Virginia State Climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels, Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy, New Zealand climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray, former head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo, Tom V. Segalstad, and MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen have served as IPCC "expert reviewers" but were not involved in writing the alarmist Summary for Policymakers. < > Paul Reiter, a malaria expert formerly of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, participated in a past UN IPCC process and now calls the concept of consensus on global warming a "sham." Reiter, a professor of entomology and tropical disease with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, had to threaten legal action to have his name removed from the IPCC. "That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he said on March 5, 2007. "It's not true," he added. Hurricane expert Christopher W. Landsea of NOAA's National Hurricane Center, was both an author a reviewer for the IPCC's 2nd Assessment Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, but resigned from the 4th Assessment Report after charging the UN with playing politics with Hurricane science.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=595F6F41-802A-23AD-4BC4-B364B623ADA3
Flashback: UN IPCC Summary Created Like Political Party’s Platform Planks (Inhofe Speech of Oct. 26)
Excerpt: As if to further cement these allegations, the UN allowed a Greenpeace activist to co-author a key economic report in 2007. Left unreported by most of the media was the fact that Bill Hare, an advisor to Greenpeace, was a lead co- author of a key economic report in the IPCC's 4th Assessment. Not surprisingly, the Greenpeace co-authored report predicted a gloomy future for our planet unless we follow the UN's policy prescriptions. The UN IPCC's own guidelines explicitly state that the scientific reports have to be "change[d]" to "ensure consistency with" the politically motivated Summary for Policymakers. In addition, the IPCC more closely resembles a political party's convention platform battle - not a scientific process. During an IPCC Summary for Policymakers process, political delegates and international bureaucrats squabble over the specific wording of a phrase or assertion.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=595F6F41-802A-23AD-4BC4-B364B623ADA3
UN climate scientist rejects his share of Nobel Prize: 'I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame' (John Christy)
Excerpt: I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time. There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming -- around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.) It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days. Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'" I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer.
http://mobile2.wsj.com/beta2/htmlsite/html_article.php?id=1&CALL_URL=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
UN False Alarm: 'Significant period of global cooling by 2020-30'
Excerpt: The highest solar activity for over 1000 years is already coming to an end and the next 11-year solar cycle is running late. The scene is set for a significant period of global cooling by 2020-30, yet our policymakers heed the false alarm call of continued warming by an IPCC that admits to a 'low' or 'very low' level of scientific understanding (LOSU) of the link between solar factors and climate.
The UK Government has published a very foolish, unilateral climate change bill which aims to cut the UK's 2 per cent contribution to global man-made CO2 emissions by 60 per cent. King Canute must be turning in his grave.
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002564.html
Scientist explains that birds, fleas, trees produce more CO2 than humans
Excerpt: Human activity isn't the largest direct contributor to increased carbon dioxide levels of the Earth's atmosphere. It seems that humans attract more prolific rodents and insects, such as fleas, hence the animals of the Earth are producing a lot more CO2 than humans themselves do, according to information suggested during a discussion Thursday night sponsored by the American Chemical Society's San Gorgonio section. The meeting, billing itself as "Science Cafe," was sparsely attended in an area of an International House of Pancakes restaurant in Redlands. Those in attendance listened as San Gorgonio section councilor James Hammond listed several facts he gleaned from his research. Hammond, an older man with white hair and glasses, calmly said that a cow, for instance, emits about 1 1/3 tons of carbon dioxide a year, while a human on average emits 1 ton - though it depends on a person's size and diet. People who are active and do a lot of running will emit more; people who sleep a lot emit less. All humans and human activity, from driving cars to raising cattle, produce just 14 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions, according to Hammond. "Reasonable sources of extra CO2 would be all other life on Earth, including plants, animals and insects," he said. "As the Earth warmed, more food would grow, so people and animal populations could grow, thereby increasing greenhouse gas production. Dead and rotting plants, animals and people contribute carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ammonia, sulfurous gases and others that add to greenhouse gases. Data published during the past few years show that all other life on Earth contributes 1,000 times as much greenhouse gases as do people and all their activities." However, Hammond said, "CO2 is only one part of the problem. We're not looking at the whole picture."
http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/news/ci_7484285
Dennis Avery: The climate 'scare factory' ignores science (Co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming—Every 1500 Years)
Excerpt: Ho hum. Just another day at the scare factory. Point one: We've known for 20 years about the earth's moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle, which we discovered in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores. The ice shows seven previous global warmings in the past 12,000 years. Two of these—8,000 years ago and 5,000 years ago—were, for many centuries, substantially warmer than today. The Greenland and Antarctic ice caps didn't melt. Point two: This can't be global warming. 1) The Arctic was also warm in the 1920s; the Russians say it happens every 70 years or so. 2) The Antarctic Ice is now at a modern high. The Antarctic has been cooling since the 1960s, according to Peter Doran's 2002 paper in Nature. Thanks to warming's additional snowfall, the East Antarctic ice cap is currently gaining about 45 billion tons of ice per year. Neels Reeh of the University of Denmark says that another 1 degree C of warming would melt enough Greenland ice to raise sea levels perhaps half an inch per year—but added ice in the Antarctic would lower sea level almost that much. The net increase has been six inches per century, and it isn't expected to change. Why not? Cliff Ollier, well-known geoscientist from the University of Western Australia, writes to say that Hansen is just a climate modeler who doesn't understand either ice caps or their melting. He thinks the whole ice cap melting thing is a figment of the climate modelers' computerized imaginations, conjured up to ensure that we're properly frightened of global warming. Otherwise, the grant money might dry up. If the media only reported facts, who would be frightened about sea levels rising at the current rate of six inches per century? Who'd be frightened by the earth warming just two-tenths of a degree C over the past 70- years? < > By the way, even the southernmost polar bear population is doing fine in the Davis Strait, with higher numbers and some of the largest bears yet seen.
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1107/1107poles.htm
New Study Debunks Arctic Melt Fears
Excerpt: From 2002 to 2006, scientists and researchers from NASA and the University of Washington's Polar Science Center at the Applied Physics Laboratory observed a meaningful ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation. The cause is atmospheric circulation changes that vary in decade-long periods and the effect is, well, let the scientist who led the study explain it: "Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said the University of Washington's James Morison. But listening to the ecozealots and Al Gore acolytes, one would think the North Pole was melting because too many conservatives drive too many SUVs and don't have enough social responsibility to tame their wicked fossil-fuel burning ways. < > So how to explain the increase in the polar bear population from 5,000 in 1950 to 25,000 today, as documented by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service? The alarmists are noticeably quiet. Could it be that the facts don't fit with their campaign of exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies?
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=280022622136550
Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. New Peer-Reviewed Study on Alaska warming
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH: From the abstract: “Invasive shrubs and soot pollution both have the potential to alter the surface energy balance and timing of snow melt in the Arctic. Shrubs reduce the amount of snow lost to sublimation on the tundra during the winter leading to a deeper end-of-winter snowpack. The shrubs also enhance the absorption of energy by the snowpack during the melt season by converting incoming solar radiation to longwave radiation and sensible heat. Soot deposition lowers the albedo of the snow, allowing it to more effectively absorb incoming solar radiation and thus melt faster.” “The results of the simulations suggest that a complete invasion of the tundra by shrubs leads to a 2.2°C warming of 3 m air temperatures and a 108 m increase in boundary layer depth during the melt period. The snow-free date also occurred 11 d earlier despite having a larger initial snowpack. The results also show that a decrease in the snow albedo of 0.1, owing to soot pollution, caused the snow-free date to occur 5 d earlier. The soot pollution caused a 1.0°C warming of 3 m air temperatures.”
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/alaska-warming-from-arctic-tundra-shrub-invasion-and-soot-deposition/
More evidence of sun induced Global Warming
Excerpt: If CO2 emissions were the major cause of global warming then we would see constant increases in temperature across the day and night as the CO2 blanket keeps the heat inside our atmosphere. Scientific research has shown that this has occurred with both minimum and maximum temperature increasing. We have pointed out time and time again how minimum temperatures are not a good indication of night time warming, especially when it rarely occurs at night. But what about the rate of change of temperature anomalies between neighboring times? If CO2 was the major cause of global warming then we would see no significant difference in rate of change of temperature anomalies, in other words, all temperatures should increase equally. If the sun was a major cause of global warming then we would see no or limited changes at night, an increase int he rate of change approaching the middle of the day, and then a decreasing rate of change of temperature anomalies when the sun starts to lose its daytime strength.
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/2007/11/more-evidence-of-sun-induced-global.html
New Paper: Why the IPCC should be disbanded
Excerpt: The IPCC is not and never has been an organisation that examines all aspects of climate change in a neutral and impartial manner. Its internal procedures reinforce that bias; it makes no attempts to clarify its misleading and ambiguous statements. It is very selective about the material included in its reports; its fundamental claims lack evidence. And most importantly, its actions have skewed the entire field of climate science. Over the last 20 years and despite its dominance and manipulation of climate science, the IPCC has failed to provide concrete evidence of a significant human influence on climate.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/whytheipccshouldbedisbanded.html
UK's best known environmentalist labeled a 'heretic' for rejecting warming fears
Excerpt: Prof. David Bellamy is Great Britain's best-known environmentalist, and has been for most of the last four decades. He has written and presented some 400 television programs on environmental issues, written 45 books, and published more than 80 scientific papers, in addition to holding down teaching posts in botany at two universities. He has founded or been president of prominent national organizations such as The Conservation Foundation, The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, Population Concern, Plantlife International, British Naturalists' Association, and Galapagos Conservation Trust, in addition to numerous grassroots bodies operating at the local level. Among his many honours has been the United Nations Environment Program Global 500 Award, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award for Underwater Research, Diver of the Year Award and the Order of the British Empire. No mere academic and establishment man, this larger-than-life figure also has a striking record as an activist campaigner for green causes, starting with the 1967 Torrey Canyon supertanker disaster off the coast of England. He has led high-profile protests against needless road building and the loss of moors, and has been jailed for blockading the construction of a hydro dam that would have destroyed a Tasmanian rainforest. But Prof. Bellamy is not green enough for much of Britain's environmental establishment, not since July 9, 2004, the day a full-page article by him appeared in London's Daily Mail, disputing the conventional wisdom on global warming. Prof. Bellamy has since been stripped of some of his prominent positions and become an environmental pariah to many. The article, entitled "What a load of poppycock!," was written in Prof. Bellamy's characteristic no-holds-barred style: "Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we've had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere -- and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist -- will blame the weather on global warming," his article began. "But they will be 100% wrong. Global warming -- at least the modern nightmare version -- is a myth." Prof. Bellamy challenged the very premise behind global-warming concern, writing that "carbon dioxide is not the dreaded killer greenhouse gas that the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol five years later cracked it up to be. It is, in fact, the most important airborne fertilizer in the world, and without it there would be no green plants at all. ... "Increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, double it even, and this would produce a rise in plant productivity. Call me a biased old plant lover but that doesn't sound like much of a killer gas to me. Hooray for global warming is what I say, and so do a lot of my fellow scientists." The reaction to Prof. Bellamy's decision to challenge orthodoxy -- a quality in him that environmentalists had until then admired -- was harsh. Plantlife International, the United Kingdom's leading charity dedicated to protecting wild plants, announced it "would be wrong to ask him to continue" as president, a post Prof. Bellamy had held for 15 years. The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, which manages 2,500 nature reserves across the United Kingdom, likewise announced it would not renew his presidency. As The Sunday Times headlined it, "Wildlife groups axe Bellamy as global warming 'heretic.' "
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=0808f510-8577-44c4-bd13-af843c4d55c6
New Peer-Reviewed Study: FRAUD ALLEGATION AGAINST SOME CLIMATIC RESEARCH OF WEI-CHYUNG WANG (work used in IPCC process)
Excerpt: First, there is a serious lack of integrity in some of Wang’s research. Second, the insignificance of urbanization effects on temperature measurements has not been established as reliably as the IPCC (2007) assumes. Something else, more general, might also be argued: the failure of the scientific community to require data to be made available constitutes a serious departure from 988 Energy & Environment · Vol. 18, No. 7+8, 2007
http://www.informath.org/pubs/EnE07a.pdf
Weather Channel Founder (John Coleman) Discusses Global Warming Myth With Glenn Beck
Excerpt: [W]hen I looked at the hockey stick graph that was produced in Mann’s original report and it showed a steady line temperature through the millenniums and then a sudden rise global, I knew that that was incorrect. I knew it couldnt possibly be. And I started asking experts about it and I started digging into how that was produced, and I found out it was bogus science. It wasnt real. The numbers had been massaged. The whole thing had been created. What bothered me was that the other scientists had accepted it. Well, why did they possibly do that? And I think the real answer to that question is that they all have an agenda, an environmental and political agenda that says lets pile on here, were all going to make a lot of money, were going to get research grants, were going to get awards, were going to become famous. And I guess thats what happened. But in 20 years, we`ll have the last laugh. But of course, billions of dollars will have been spent. Policy will have been changed worldwide. People will have been scared. We will have reacted to a myth.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/13/weather-channel-founder-discusses-global-warming-myth-beck
Shocking Stanford Luncheon: ‘Is Global Warming a Myth?’
Excerpt: Don't weep for the youth of America, for about a week after the Harvard Crimson published a shocking editorial antagonistic to Nobel Laureate Al Gore, Stanford University held a luncheon entitled "Is Global Warming a Myth?" Adding to your likely surprise, the guest speaker was the world-renowned global warming skeptic S. Frederick Singer. Maybe even more astounding, the Stanford paper gave his speech a rather positive review (emphasis added throughout): The former space scientist and government scientific administrator, who is co-author of the bestselling book, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years," claimed that observed warming is produced by the sun and that "human contribution is negligible." Singer's research suggests that for the past million years, the Earth has gone through warming and cooling phrases that have lasted about 1,500 years each. He writes that these phases are in no way correlated with carbon dioxide levels....] The speaker explained that the recent warming the Earth has experienced is not dangerous and is not something humans could alter. Global warming activists such as Al Gore, Singer chided, are hyping the problem. He said that such activists have not come close to demonstrating that human-generated greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/15/shocking-stanford-luncheon-global-warming-myth
UK official compares global warming 'orthodoxy' to Da Vinci Code theory (Nigel Lawson, fmr. Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's Government)
Excerpts: "The more one examines the current global warming orthodoxy, the more it resembles a Da Vinci Code of environmentalism. It contains a grain of truth - and a mountain of nonsense.
"We appear to have entered a new age of unreason, which threatens to be as economically harmful as it is profoundly disquieting."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/feature/story.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10476415
Global warming 'threatens the existence of the travel industry'
Excerpt: Speaking at the Ministers' Summit on Tourism and Climate Change, broadcast live at WTM, Frangialli said: "Our industry must refuse to take the easy way out. We cannot delay and should not try to sidestep the issue by saying our contribution is relatively small." Frangialli hit out at airlines hostile to the principle of emissions trading and opposed to European plans to include aviation in a trading scheme from 2011. He warned the industry will have to make sacrifices. "Tourism must make bigger changes than other sectors because we have to reduce emissions when the number of travellers is doubling," he said. "We have a right to say to governments, 'Do not target tourism unfairly'." WTM delegates endorsed the declaration issued by the second International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism in October. It calls for the development of "truly sustainable tourism" and demands the sector responds to climate change by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to the changing climate and improving energy efficiency. Frangialli added: "It is in our interests to ensure it is possible to ski in the Alps at the end of this century, to dive at the Great Barrier Reef or experience the wildlife of Africa. To consumers, we say give priority to sustainable tourism and avoid wasteful choices."
http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2007/11/15/25886/global-warming-threatens-the-existence-of-the-travel.html
Ignoring A Climate Holocaust? 'Americans in 2007 are behaving a lot like the Jews of Sighet in 1942'
Excerpt: Americans in 2007 are behaving a lot like the Jews of Sighet in 1942. There is substantial evidence that a new holocaust is coming in the form of global warming -- the consequences of which could very well be terrifying beyond imagination -- and yet we refuse to acknowledge it and take action.
http://www.mcall.com/news/opinion/anotherview/all-left_col-a.6139338nov15,0,472712.story
Sociologist blames global warming skepticism on 'feelings of guilt' (BBC)
Excerpt: Information about climate change is deeply disturbing. It threatens our sense of individual identity and our trust in our government's ability to respond. At the deepest level, large scale environmental problems such as global warming threaten people's sense of the continuity of life - what sociologist Anthony Giddens calls ontological security. Thinking about global warming is also difficult for those of us in the developed world because it raises feelings of guilt. We are now aware of how driving automobiles and flying to exotic warm vacations contributes to the problem, and we feel guilty about it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7081882.stm
New Study Finds Natural Ocean Currents, Not Global warming to blame for warmer North Pole
Excerpt: Recent dramatic changes in the Arctic climate - melting sea ice, warmer ocean, green fields in place of icy wilderness, etc - might not all be directly related to global warming. The more clement Arctic climate of recent years could have been triggered by shorter term circulation changes in the oceans and atmosphere. According to a team of NASA scientists, decade-long variations in ocean circulation, known as the Arctic Oscillation, have an effect on the oceans' salinity. A very salty sea is heavier and circulates differently than a less salty one, the team says. This can affect the temperature of the water in the region and thus the local climate. The team monitored the Arctic Ocean's circulation between 2002 and 2006 using satellite data and deep sea pressure gauges. They measured the weight of columns of ocean water, and found that between 2002 and 2006, there was a 10-millibar decrease in pressure on the sea floor - equivalent to removing ten centimetres of water from the ocean. The distribution of the decrease, and its implications for the salinity of the water, suggests that the ocean has switched to a clockwise circulation - the same as was dominant before 1990, the team writes. In the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers attribute the change to a weakened Arctic Oscillation. This, they explain, reduced the saltiness of the upper ocean near the pole, making it lighter and changing its circulation. "Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said James Morison, lead researcher based at the University of Washington's Polar Science Centre Applied Physics Laboratory. "While some 1990s climate trends, such as declines in Arctic sea ice extent, have continued, these results suggest at least for the 'wet' part of the Arctic - the Arctic Ocean - circulation reverted to conditions like those prevalent before the 1990s," he added. Since the end of the period covered by the published data, Morison says the measurements of pressure are already swinging back to the higher levels at the beginning of the study. He offers this as evidence of just how short-lived changes in ocean currents can be. "It is too early to say, but it looks as though the Arctic Ocean is ready to start swinging back to the counter-clockwise circulation pattern of the 1990s again," he said. The Arctic Oscillation was fairly stable until about 1970, NASA says. >From then until the late 1990's it varied considerably, before settling into a strong counter-clockwise circulation. This changed the Arctic environment considerably, and induced changes in the upper ocean that have persisted into the 21st century.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/15/ocean_currents_melt_planet/
You can't make this stuff up!
UN funded report blames global warming for early marriages, high school dropouts and STDs
Excerpt: "In some cases, women and men elope to avoid famine and poverty. Some rich men are often ready to take young women," noted the report, funded by the UN environment agency, UNDP, Global Environment Facility and Environment Alert. The report titled: "Climate Change: Uganda National Adaptation Programmes of Action," stated that climate change increases early marriages, leads to high school dropout rates and exposes people to sexually transmitted infections. It identified 'famine marriages' as one of the measures employed by people to address the impact of climate change. 'Famine marriages' take place during dry and festive seasons, where families marry off their daughters in order to reduce on the number of people to feed and to obtain money and gifts paid in form of dowry.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711140057.html
Delay in spring in US due to global warming
Excerpt: A new research by scientists has revealed the negative effects of global warming in delaying the onset of spring in some areas of the US. This anamoly in nature was spotted by the Earth Resources Technology in Camp Springs, Maryland, after analyzing satellite images showing seasonal changes in vegetation colour across the US from 1982 to 2005. It was found that in latitudes above 40 degree north, plants came into spring bloom an average of 0.32 days per year earlier over the period. But below 31 degree north, plants bloomed an average of 0.15 days later. The tipping point, where climate change had no effect, was at 35 degree north. A similar pattern emerged when the records of lilacs flowering each year was examined. "It's really surprising because studies usually show plants greening earlier, " New Scientist quoted Xiaoyang Zhang of Earth Resources Technology as saying. "Nobody had noticed how warming temperatures can delay the green-up, " he added. "I think that some plants need to be exposed to a short cold snap to sprout, " said Zhang. "Plants at northern latitudes still get this, but those below 35° north do not, causing them to sprout later as the climate warms, " he added. (ANI)
http://www.topnews.in/delay-spring-us-due-global-warming-26070
Brit politician blames babies for global warming
A top British Liberal Democrat has proposed a solution to combat global warming – put a full stop on babies. Chris Davies has warned that halting population growth, as an answer to global warming, would prove to be far more efficient than trying to cut pollution. The North West England MEP added that families should be encouraged to have no more than one child in an effort to combat climate change. But he said he did not support "Chinese-like ideas of compulsion". "What's the single most effective thing couples can do to play a part in combating global warming? It is to have no more than one child,” the Mirror quoted him, as saying.
Davies added that he wants his plan to be considered by the EU. However, not all are convinced with Davies’ theory. Labour MP Sion Simon said: "This is a crazy idea."
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=407312&ssid=68&ssname=Out of Line&sid=LIF&sname=
BBC: Scientists find 'the Sun is the major driver of climate change'
Excerpt: “I think the Sun is the major driver of climate change,” said Henrik Svensmark. - The theory was detailed in a book, The Chilling Stars, written by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark and British science writer Nigel Calder, which appeared on the shelves a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had published its landmark report concluding it was more than 90% likely that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases were warming the planet. In truth, the theory was not new; Dr Svensmark's team had proposed it a decade earlier, while the idea of a cosmic ray influence on weather dates back to 1959 and US researcher Edward Ney.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7092655.stm
Laurie David on Tim Russert: 'Not once has he uttered the words global warming'
Excerpt: How bad have Tim's interviews been? Over the past ten months, presidential candidates have made 16 appearances on Meet the Press. In the nearly three hundred questions he has asked the candidates, not once has he uttered the words "global warming." Not once. At the two debates Mr. Russert has moderated, he has found time to discuss a national smoking ban, the drinking age, Bible verses, baseball, and even UFOs but not once did he ask how candidates would address the climate crisis. His lack of coverage of the issue has been so glaring that one can only wonder whether he still needs to be convinced that global warming is a problem. Of course, this failure is not his alone, but he is certainly the worst and most prominent example of it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david-and-gene-karpinski/did-tim-russert-get-the-m_b_72433.html
Scientists admit they 'have discovered as few as 10 percent of the species now living on Earth' - After 250 Years of Classifying Life, 90 Percent Remains Unknown
Excerpt: Most people can tell the difference between some types of berries, or bugs or trees, but much of the planet's life remains unnamed and unseen. A stunningly egotistical Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus, tried long ago to set humanity on track to remedy that. His book, "Systema Naturae," first published in 1735 at 13 pages long, proposed a hierarchical system for classifying plants, animals and minerals (we later chipped away minerals into the domain of geology) and launched an effort to identify and inventory all the world's living things.
Now 250 years after publication of the book's latter editions, scientists still have discovered as few as 10 percent of the species now living on Earth, said Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who spoke here last week at an event at the New York Botanical Garden to celebrate a visit of Linnaeus' personal copy of the book's first edition. "We live, in short, on a little-known planet. When dealing with the living world, we are flying mostly blind," Wilson said. "When we try to diagnose the health of an ecosystem, such as a lake or a forest, in order to save and stabilize it we are in the position of a doctor trying to treat a patient, knowing only 10 percent of organs." Linnaeus' launch of a global inventory of life was one of his most influential contributions to science, said Wilson, a proponent of a recent, similar contemporary effort, the "Encyclopedia of Life," an online reference source and database for the 1.8 million species known on Earth, as well as all those later discovered and described. The Encyclopedia is designed to help scientists, educators, students and the public gain a better understanding of the planet's inhabitants.
http://www.livescience.com/history/071113-linnaeus-book.html
UN official warns ignoring warming would be 'criminally irresponsible'
Excerpt: The U.N.'s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be "criminally irresponsible." Yvo de Boer's comments came at the opening of a weeklong conference that will complete a concise guide on the state of global warming and what can be done to stop the Earth from overheating. It is the fourth and last report issued this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace prize. Environmentalists and authors of the report expected tense discussions on what to include and leave out of the document, which is a synthesis of thousands of scientific papers. A summary of about 25 pages will be negotiated line-by-line this week, then adopted by consensus.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071112/ap_on_sc/climate_change_conference;_ylt=AlPdBBJS8jlu_fFfBuQpslqs0NU
Climate change to be declared a 'human rights abuse'
Excerpt: Small island states meeting in the Maldives in the Indian Ocean this week are working on a resolution saying that climate change is a threat to human rights. Is it? The idea of linking human rights and the environment — a strategy also adopted by the Inuit in the Arctic who have also launched a petition to the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights – is a way to put pressure on all nations to do more to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases. An attraction for petitioners is that it would work out a lot cheaper than the option of suing major emitters for doing too little to curb emissions from factories, power plants and cars – a charge most often aimed at the United States. Most small island states lack the cash to try the courts. And, even accepting findings by the U.N. climate panel that it is ”very likely” that human activities are the main cause of recent climate change, it would be hard to persuade a court to order countries to pay compensation or tighten curbs on greenhouse gases.
http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2007/11/13/is-climate-change-human-rights-abuse/
Climatologist says global warming skeptics being exiled to 'the depths of hell'
Excerpt: "Somehow I've been branded this horrible person who belongs in the depths of hell," he said. "There's just no tolerance right now." < > Arizona State University climatologist Robert Balling attended the premiere of Al Gore's global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He served on the United Nations' climate-change panel and studies how drought and warmer temperatures will affect the West. He bikes to work and eats organic food. But environmentalists hate him. Balling, 54, has spoken and written extensively against the widely held scientific view that the documented rise in global temperatures is the result of human activity and that serious consequences will result. Even if humans are warming the planet by causing the buildup of greenhouse gases, he says, the doomsday scenarios forecast by many climate scientists may never happen. His views have elicited outrage from environmentalists and scorn from some fellow scientists.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1111balling1111.html
Intimidation: Paper discusses removing Democratic lawmaker for holding one hearing skeptical of global warming fears
[Note: The reporter who wrote this seems mystified that the Democrats do not want to exile the skeptical lawmaker for daring to question climate orthodoxy by holding one hearing.]
Excerpt: But, despite the grumbling of some rank-and-file lawmakers, Democrats said, they don't plan to remove Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, as chairman of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, where he has defended the coal industry and stopped environmental reforms for years
http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/233398.html
ABC: Accept Global Warming or Violate 'Moral Imperative'
Excerpt: If you don't buy into a Goresque view of global warming, you're not just wrong -- you're immoral. That was ABC's implication this morning. The notion came from Good Morning America co-anchor Bill Weir at the end of his interview of Jim Gooch. The Dem state representative from Kentucky recently had the audacity to hold hearings with witnesses who cast doubt on global warming theories. You knew where GMA was headed by the set-up segment that preceded the interview. It was one long alarmist scare, with everything from the typhoon in Bangladesh to the wildfires in California being blamed on global warming. A scientist was shown advocating "forceful" government action to avoid disaster.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2007/11/18/abc-accept-global-warming-or-violate-moral-imperative
Czech president calls attempts to control climate change 'utopian' (Reuters)
Czech President Vaclav Klaus has criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel for her efforts to fight climate change, saying politicians, journalists and scientists are exploiting an unproven issue for their own advantage. In an interview to be published in WirtschaftsWoche business magazine in Germany on Monday, Klaus said many world leaders had privately congratulated him for doubting whether climate change was man-made in a Sept. 24 speech to a U.N. conference. "The unfair and irrational debate about global warming really annoys me," said Klaus, a leading climate change sceptic. "The issue is increasingly turning into the fundamental ideological conflict of our times. The climate protection movement represents a new ideology." Ahead of a U.N. climate panel meeting starting on Monday, Klaus compared it to the East-West conflict of the Cold War. He said he was surprised Merkel, a physicist who grew up in communist East Germany, would fall for such an idea without making a "critical examination of a controversial hypothesis". Merkel has taken a leading role in fighting climate change. "She's lived in a socialist society and she knows the dangers of ideologies that are aimed against freedom," said Klaus, whose Sept. 24 climate conference speech may also have hurt the Czech Republic's bid for a U.N. Security Council seat. "Utopia is an excellent escape for politicians because they can busy themselves with far-away goals and don't have to worry about immediate problems," added Klaus. "Climate change is an excellent issue for that escape."
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL11213678
Polar bears in danger? Is this some kind of joke? (Populations exploding fivefold in 50 years)
Excerpt: To claim, however, that they are facing imminent doom is stretching the truth. In 1950, let us not forget, there were about 5,000 polar bears. Now there are 25,000. No wonder Greenpeace had trouble getting polar bears placed on the endangered species list. A fivefold population increase isn’t exactly a catastrophic decline. But never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The doom-mongers certainly won’t. Despite evidence from organisations such as the US National Biological Service that in most places polar bear populations are either stable or increasing, Ursus maritimus will continue to top the eco-hysterics’ list of animals in danger because it’s so fluffy and white and photogenic. If you’re really that worried about their demise, I’d book yourself a ticket to Churchill, Manitoba, where the evil buggers (about the only creature, incidentally, that actively preys on humans) are so rife they’re almost vermin. And if things get really bad, we can always ship the survivors off to Antarctica where, unlike the North Pole, the ice shelf appears to be growing. Then the joke would be even less comprehensible. Why don’t polar bears eat penguins? But they do, actually!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2852551.ece
Elementary school students join fight against global warming
Excerpt: Third-grade teacher Debbie Robles made her acting debut before a packed auditorium of youngsters at Rancho Elementary School in Novato. She bombed. Playing the villain in a school assembly Wednesday aimed at educating the students about global warming, Robles - dressed in a witch's black attire and prancing around the auditorium as "Queen Carbon" - drew the biggest response from more than 500 students who attended two "Curb Your Carbon" assemblies. "My own daughter Hannah asked me, 'Do you have to be my mother today?'" Robles said. Teachers, parents and volunteers helped organize the assemblies and participated in the skits to help raise awareness about global warming and what people can do about it - exchanging traditional light bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs, for example. School officials distributed more than 500 CFLs last week. On Friday, Rancho students will be given bilingual "Cancel-a-Car" coupon books filled with ways they can fight global warming.
http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_7397013
Warming not global as southern hemisphere faces 'increasing cold' (AccuWeather Meteorologist Joe Bastardi)
Excerpt: The increasing cold in the southern hemisphere can not be denied or ignored for much longer. Reports of record sea ice, and now what is amounting to a mass cooling of the Pacific with what is looking more and more like a record La Nina means may mean the start of the turn around is underway.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
Meteorologist says Earth is Warming, But It’s Not Our Fault
Excerpt: As a certified consulting meteorologist who has written extensively about weather, I am compelled to address the spate of stories that appear almost daily in the Daily News. Almost without fail, weather and climate events are based on “global warming.” The offerings in the Oct. 21 paper were “Rising Seas, Sinking Land” (about Thailand) and “New England’s fading fall foliage colors blamed on climate change.” I was shocked not to find that the article on Georgia’s drought or the one on Cleveland’s Game 6 playoff loss weren’t linked to global warming as well. Long-term climate studies show that the Earth goes through large- and small-scale weather and climate patterns. These are based on solar energy output and solar flare activity, wobbles of the Earth’s rotation, changes in land locations (plate tectonics or continental drift, depending upon your age when the subject was taught), periodic melting and reformation of glaciers and much more. Humans are clearly affecting some of these typical variations, but we are not their cause. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore claim that humans are almost certainly the cause of the changes, I disagree. Regardless of global warming, there are many other reasons that we should be reducing dependence on oil and other fossil fuels, better managing Earth’s resources (including water supplies) and otherwise tending to our special place in the solar system. Read more here. H. Michael Mogil is a certified consulting meteorologist with B.S. and M.S. degrees in meteorology from Florida State University. Mike has earned the American Meteorological Society’s Television Seal of Approval and was recognized by the National Weather Association in 1988 for his “...outstanding efforts in weather education.”
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/oct/27/guest_commentary_earth_warming_its_not_our_fault/
UN scientist says climate reports hype alarmism (BBC)
Excerpt: At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient. After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol." Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7081331.stm
Renowned scientist finds planetary alignments control Earth's climate
Excerpt: The alignment of the planets, and especially that of Jupiter and Saturn, control the climate on Earth. So explained Rhodes Fairbridge of Columbia University, a giant in science over much of the last century whose accomplishments are perhaps unsurpassed for their breadth, depth, and volume. This one man authored or co-authored 100 scientific books and more than 1,000 scientific papers, he edited the Benchmarks in Geology series (more than 90 volumes in print) and was general editor of the Encyclopaedias of the Earth Sciences. He edited eight major encyclopedias of specialized scientific papers in the atmospheric sciences and astrogeology; geomorphology; geochemistry and the earth sciences; geology, sedimentology, paleontology, oceanography and, not least, climatology. Changes in sunspots and other solar activity, scientists have realized for more than two centuries, correlate closely with the climate of Earth, explaining the ice ages and periods of great warming. But what, Dr. Fairbridge wondered, causes these changes in our sun? The answer, he discovered with the help of NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lies largely in the solar system's centre of gravity. At times, the sun is at the solar system's centre of gravity. Most often, this is not the case-- the orbit of the planets will align planets to one side or another of the sun. Jupiter, the planet with by far the largest mass, most influences the solar system's centre of gravity. When Uranus, Neptune and especially Saturn -- the next largest planet -- join Jupiter on one side of the solar system, the solar system's centre of gravity shifts well beyond the sun. The sun's own orbit, he found, has eight characteristic patterns, all determined by Jupiter's position relative to Saturn, with the other planets playing much lesser roles. Some of these eight have orderly orbits, smooth and near-circular. During such orbits, solar activity is high and Earth heats up. Some of the eight orbits are chaotic, taking a loop-the-loop path. These orbits correspond to quiet times for the sun, and cool periods on Earth. Every 179 years or so, the sun embarks on a new cycle of orbits. One of the cooler periods in recent centuries was the Little Ice Age of the 17th century, when the Thames River in London froze over each winter. The next cool period, if the pattern holds, began in 1996, with the effects to be felt starting in 2010. Some predict three decades of severe cold.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=bfeddc8e-90d7-4f54-9ca7-1f56fadc7c2b
MIT Scienist Lindzen Calls Climate Fears ‘Baseless’
Excerpt: "The points of agreement [on warming] have no discernable connection to the alarm," Lindzen said. "If it turns out that we don't have warming or that it is not due to man, that has implications that the association of alarm with greenhouse gas emissions is baseless." His next point questioned both the derivation and meaning of the popular model of the "hockey stick" graph of weather change, which shows a dramatic increase in temperature rise in recent history. "Even if you call that [rise] unprecedented, it is still too small to suggest alarm," Lindzen said.
After bringing up the scientific inaccuracies in inferences Gore drew from a different graph in his book, Lindzen moved to a different argument against the catastrophic consequences that some predict will come as a result of global warming. "Any prediction of catastrophe is extremely unlikely," Lindzen said. He cited the panic in the 1970s over the prediction of catastrophic American famine in the 1980s, which turned out to be false, as well as the infamous prediction of the Y2K disaster. "These predictions of catastrophe come up episodically and they are always wrong because they have wrong linkages," Lindzen said. He then projected a model of the linkages leading from cause -- carbon dioxide emissions -- to effect -- disastrous warming effects -- in global warming and noted that the likelihood of each affecting the next was tiny, and that, in the end, the probability of any major effect of global warming was "astronomically small." Lindzen also brought up how the media has manipulated scientific fact and consensus to promote global warming. < > "There is nothing happening in nature that suggests anything urgent," Lindzen said. He then described all of the agendas of people who would be harmed "if you suddenly heard that there was no such thing as harmful global warming," including the Nobel Prize Committee, which recently gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore, the environmental movement and science, alternative energy, the United Nations, trial lawyers "looking to make carbon the next tobacco" and individuals who have adopted this issue as a personal cause. "The alarmist dogmas of the past 20 years are almost certainly false or misleading," Lindzen said in conclusion.
http://media.www.maroon-news.com/media/storage/paper742/news/2007/11/15/News/Linzen.Says.Chill.Out-3102692.shtml
Some more Greenie deception?
Excerpt: The NOAA website has a Caribou chart showing a big reduction in the herd birth rate. But if you click on the Taiga.net source link you will see a chart showing a rebound of the birth rate to near record levels in 2007. The question is, did NOAA just not update their site for two years or did they end in 2005 to hype fears? The Taiga net link explains that ups and downs in Caribou births are a natural fluctuation.Comment on the latest IPCC scare
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2007/11/some-more-greenie-deception-noaa.html
Emission impossible: Why Hollywood is one of the worst polluters (UK Independent)
Excerpt: Whenever I visit a movie set it, always amazes me how much environmental damage is wrought in the name of entertainment. From the generators to the caterers delivering food onto set, making a film eats up energy like no other art form. The activities of Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, George Clooney and Harrison Ford, to name a few, in promoting green issues and supporting bodies such as Greenpeace have, on the surface at least, made film-making seem environmentally conscious. But their time would be better spent helping to clean up the movie industry itself. A study into the environmental impact of film-making in Hollywood, conducted by the University of California, showed that, in the Los Angeles region, it made a larger contribution, in relation to its size, to air pollution than most major industries, including aerospace manufacturing, clothing, and the hotel industry. Only fuel refining belched more emissions. Researchers considered the emissions that were created directly and indirectly by the film and television industry. Factored into the equation were emissions created power plants providing electricity to a studio lot and the air miles run up by actors and directors. Film-makers rarely take the environment into consideration. < > The emissions of a film do not stop once the cameras stop rolling, especially for big-budget productions where journalists, stars and publicists will often fly around the world as part of promotion; though Sony, for one event during the last Spider-Man 3 tour, took measures to ensure that the production of all print material for the event was carbon neutral.
http://arts.independent.co.uk/film/features/article3164596.ece
Vegan Heather Mills: 'Why don't we drink rats' milk?' to reduce global warming
Excerpt: As part of her extraordinary tirade at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, Heather exhorted people to try drinking rat's milk instead of cow milk to help reduce global warming. The former model said eating meat and dairy was destroying the earth and insisted the milk of rats, cats and dogs would be more eco-friendly. Dairy intolerance: Heather Mills addresses a crowd at Speakers' Corner to launch a new poster campaign by animals charity Viva! Heather said that chopping down trees in order to breed lifestock was seriously damaging the environment and she suggested there were better alternatives to using cow's milk. "Why don't we drink rat's milk or cat's milk or dog's milk?" she asked. Ms Mills, 39, was launching a pro-vegan campaign for animals charity Viva!
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23421756-details/Vegan+Heather+Mills'+latest+bizarre+outburst:+'Why+don't+we+drink+rats'+milk'/article.do
Huckabee: God wants us to fight global warming
The Republican presidential candidate believes it's our biblical duty to stop climate change.
Excerpt: Should you heart
http://dir.salon.com/topics/mike_huckabee/
Huckabee? The jovial former Arkansas governor famously shed 100 pounds in two years and became an outspoken health and fitness advocate, and now he's focusing that can-do attitude on a much weightier problem: America's beleaguered energy system. "The first thing I will do as president is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence," he proclaims on his Web site. "We will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term." The goal may sound admirable, but even if it's achievable -- and many experts doubt that it is -- Huckabee's plan for getting there is light on specifics. Rather than spell out what steps he would take, he talks of creating a market environment that encourages innovation, and he praises just about every energy source you can think of -- nuclear, "clean coal," wind, solar, hydrogen, biomass, biodiesel, corn-based ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other untapped domestic areas, and, yes, conservation too. A conservative Republican and devout Christian, Huckabee believes he has a biblical responsibility to protect God's planet from climate change, even though he's not convinced that climate change is largely human-caused. But mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions make him squeamish.
www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/19/huckabee/print.html
Global warming splits Christmas tree
Excerpt: Christmas will be coming a little late to Belfast this year after a mini global warming disaster struck the city's Christmas tree. The 45ft Norway Spruce tree from Parkanaur near Dungannon, was cut down last week. However, it quickly began to split in two. A council spokesman said: "The wet summer and unseasonally dry autumn had a devastating effect on the tree but we hope to source another immediately.'' Time's running out for the council though, the big switch on of the Christmas tree lights is due to take place on Tuesday, November 20. About 15,000 people are expected to attend
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7090526.stm
Say what? Global warming caused by 'demonic consciousness'
Excerpt: Global Warming, is caused from a demonic consciousness that transcends individuals and organizations, and that appears to seek to consume our planet Earth like an army of locusts. M. It was the ancient Gnostics as critically presented by John Lash in metahistory.org, which further illuminates demons from the sky as being a parasitic lower-level but highly disciplined malevolent Extraterrestrial consciousness, that is interfering with Human Development on Earth. Global Warming, can be viewed to have been caused from humans making themselves vulnerable to a demonic consciousness, through the 'error' of greed, avarice, and of egomania. These demonic consciousnesses appear on Earth to be using the specific culture of a "War on Terrorism", and war in general; to help further turn humanity against each other, toward a point of irreversible planetary destruction. Global Warming though Greenhouse Gas emissions can be appreciated as the "smoke" of a Manipulative Extraterrestrial presence on our planet, that sometimes can be physically seen in various UFO and Manipulative Extraterrestrial encounters of the "Third Kind".
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/11/13/01939.html
Study finds Men have disproportionately large impact on global warming
Excerpt: EVEN climate change cannot escape the gender wars. Now Swedish men are being blamed for having a disproportionately large impact on global warming. The finger is squarely pointed at men in "A study on gender equality as a prerequisite for sustainable development" by Gerd Johnsson-Latham of the Swedish Ministry of Sustainable Development. She concludes: "The fact that women travel less than men, measured in person-kilometres per car, plane, boat and motorcycle - means that women cause considerably fewer carbon dioxide emissions than men, and thus considerably less climate change." She notes that 60 per cent of car emissions are created by the 10 per cent of drivers who use roads the most, and that men account for three-quarters of car driving in Sweden.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19626293.600-are-men-to-blame-for-global-warming.html