They were okay with the statue, but they drew the line at including an altar and incense

The Tennessee State Senate has, thankfully, rejected a Democrat lawmaker's attempt to have a statue erected in honor of Al Gore's Nobel "Peace" Prize. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports:

A resolution urging that the state Capitol Commission erect a statue on the Capitol grounds in honor of former Democratic Vice President Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize failed on the Senate floor today.

The resolution, which also urged a statue be erected for Nobel Peace Prize winner Cordell Hull, failed on a 15-14 vote with most Republicans voting no. It needed 17 votes to pass.

Earlier, the sponsor, Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, said the measure had “broad bipartisan support in the House.”

I say "thankfully", because we wouldn't want Gore to start thinking that his Nobel Prize actually meant something.

I am generally opposed to permanent public honors (statues, building/street/park names, etc.) of people who are still living. People -- especially politicians -- have a knack of doing things later that make us want to withdraw the honor.

Just as I believe that people will some day regret naming their kid after Barack Obama, so also I believe that some day -- as the alleged global warming "consensus" collapses like the West Antarctic Ice Shelf is predicted to do -- people will regret holding Al Gore in such high esteem.


(Photo credit: National Post)

Soy burgers: Ban them! (#3)

Where were the soybeans grown?

Food miles, people. Food miles!



(Explanation of the "Ban Them" series here)

Reusable grocery bags: Ban them! (#2)

Reusable grocery bags are an indispensable accessory for the eco-conscious shopper. But perhaps the true believers should reconsider the virtue of using them.

Not only do they increase your risk of food poisoning, I'd be willing to bet that your bag was not manufactured locally.

Vendors such as ECOBAGS like to trumpet the fact that their products are manufactured in the USA, but how many miles did the bag travel before it reached the store where you got it?

This very argument is used to discourage the consumption of food that is not locally grown, so aren't you being hypocritical when you use a shopping bag made who knows where?

There ought to be a law.


(Explanation of the "Ban Them" series here)

Water fountains: Ban them!

Yesterday I was taking a walk near my office to shake off my traditional midafternoon drowsiness. My route took me past this fountain, which is part of a retail development.

Somehow, I began to wonder how the global warming true believers would view this fountain. It occurred to me that if they were consistent with their stated beliefs, their reaction might be something like this:

This fountain is an outrage! What a waste of water, just to provide a little selfish enjoyment for people.

And the electricity! Every minute the pumps are running brings us another step closer to the destruction of the polar bear's habitat. I will find out who owns this shopping center and DEMAND that they shut the fountain down IMMEDIATELY.

Come to think of it... the problem is much bigger than this. There are fountains in towns and cities all over the country. If banning incandescent bulbs makes a difference, think about what we'll gain if we can ban water fountains!

I'll call my city council. No, wait. Local governments are a little too sensitive to the voters, and might be reluctant to take an action that is unpopular. Heck, they own a lot of the fountains. Going after this at the local level will yield spotty results.

We need a federal law. The environmental organization I'm a member of has a lot of pull in Washington. I'll give a call to the president of our local chapter and see if he can send my idea up the chain.

But what would we do with the old fountains once they're shut off? We can't let the space go to waste. Oh, wait -- we can let it go to waste! We should dedicate the fountain sites to community composting!

And so on. Absurd, perhaps, but my point is that if the true believers are going to follow their ideology to its logical conclusion, many things we take for granted in our society will have to go.

They might actually agree with the suggestion that water fountains are a wasteful extravagance, but we can go a lot further with this idea, and it's a matter of time before we come across something that even the true believers will be unwilling to surrender.

From time to time I will post candidates for things that should be banned. Look for the BAN THEM label.

Let's take the CoGW at its word and show its adherents what they need to do to avoid being called hypocrites.

Hoaxing the media: A parable

If you are inclined to believe whatever the mass media tells you about global warming, it might be worth your while to ponder this May 11 AP story:

When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's obituary-friendly quote-which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28-flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they'd swallowed his baloney whole.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

Why so many socialists love AGW alarmism

As many of you know, I also run a politics and culture blog. I usually post on the various toxic-but-popular "isms" (socialism, Marxism, communism, statism, fascism) over there, but every once in a while something comes along that blurs the boundaries between these blogs.

I've noted before that the manufactured AGW crisis is tailor-made for those who favor state control of people and resources. Today we see this principle in action in the form of a proposal by Mexico, as reported by Reuters (with a dash of TEOTWAWKI alarmism):

Global talks on combating climate change this year might progress best by focusing on Mexico's proposal for a world climate change fund, one of the European Union's top negotiators said.

The talks in Copenhagen to find a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol from 2012 are seen as the world's last chance to avert catastrophic climate change and the drought, famine and huge migrations of people it is expected to cause.

Jos Delbeke, number two in the European Commission's environment directorate, told Reuters the Mexican approach might offer the flexibility needed to unlock a deal.

"It's not a question of what we like, but of what may work, and the Mexican proposal gives flexibility that may be appreciated by the United States, Japan and by other donors," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a climate conference.

The proposal sees every country in the world contributing to a central pot, with the size of contributions based on a formula that takes account of each country's population, gross domestic product and level of greenhouse gas emissions.

That central pot would then be divided among all countries according to their needs for cutting emissions, building green technologies and adapting to the impacts of climate change -- with investments such as flood barriers or drought resistant crops.

Note in particular the last two paragraphs (highlighted). They can be summarized as follows:

From each according to his abilities
To each according to his needs

Now, where have I heard that before?

To no one's surprise, countries that have already traveled a considerable distance down the socialist road are warming up to the idea....

....especially since the United States, not they, will foot the bulk of the bill.

Deliver us from experts

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings
to fall down for the divine right of experts.

-- Harold MacMillan, British Prime Minister (1957-1963)

Congressional Democrats press their AGW propaganda offensive with expert testimony from... Ashley Judd

Democrats in Congress love to gin up popular support for their causes by bringing in demonstrably nonexpert celebrities to give high-profile, impassioned testimonies.

In this week's episode, we learn that if we don't Do Something Now, we face The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI). Let's meet the climate scholars who testified.

Actress Ashley Judd and TV personality Jeff Corwin are urging Congress to spend $7 billion a year to help safeguard America's wildlife from the impact of global warming.

An argument could be made for hearing from Corwin, whose college education is actually related to wildlife. Judd, however, has only a bachelor's degree in French to back her up. Oh, and she owns a farm in Tennessee, and she's certain that "evidence of global warming is already being felt" there.

She was there because of her celebrity status (which adds to the propaganda value of her testimony), nothing more. Kind of like when environmentalists used Meryl Streep as their front person in the effort to bully Congress into banning Alar back in the late 1980s. The Alar scare turned out to be unfounded as well, but the damage was done.

Corwin, for his part, did not disappoint. He warned that we risk the extinction of a third of all animal species on the planet if we don't Do Something Now. Nothing like some good, reckless alarmist predictions to provoke our legislators into reckless policymaking.

Why environmentalists may be to BLAME for recent warming

The Register reports on a study by NASA scientist Dr. Drew Shindell suggesting a strong correlation between the fight against acid rain in the 1970s and the abrupt reversal in northern hemisphere temperature trends.

Dr Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s - particularly in the Arctic - may have resulted from changes in levels of solid "aerosol" particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level - of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.

Shindell's research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.

So, the reduction in sulfate pollution meant the elimination of a significant counterbalance to increasing soot pollution.

Am I advocating the wholesale repeal of sulfate emission restrictions? Not really -- in fact, I'm not ready to concede any human influence in the climate cycle (hence the blog name). I do note, though, that those who believe in consequential human influence on climate must acknowledge that attempts to "fix" what is allegedly broken can often have unforeseen effects.

Al Gore didn't get the memo

Well, what do you know? Al Gore and I share at least one thing in common: We both left our lights on during Earth Hour on Saturday. World Net Daily reports:

Drew Johnson, the president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, decided to drive by Gore's mansion in Nashville at 8:48 p.m. and records that floodlights were on illuminating the driveway leading up to the main quarter.

"I pulled up to Al's house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48 p.m. – right in the middle of Earth Hour," he wrote on his blog. "I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on."

He added: "The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion. I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees."

100+ scientists call Obama out on his AGW alarmism

The Cato Institute has published a full-page ad in many newspapers politely accusing President Obama of being factually inaccurate in his climate change alarmism.

Over 100 scientists agreed to lend their names to the following statement (View complete statement in HTML | PDF):

"Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change.The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear."

— PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA, NOVEMBER 19 , 2008

With all due respect
Mr. President, that is not true.

We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events. The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.

Bravo to Cato and to the scientists who put their professional reputations on the line to challenge the "consensus".

How we observed Earth Hour

As many of you know, Saturday, March 28, from 8:30-9:30pm local time was designated as "Earth Hour". This event was devised by the World Wildlife Fund as a way for people around the world to show how much they care about the climate change crisis.

Its organizers acknowledge that an event directing people to turn out their lights for an hour is purely symbolic, but they believe that with widespread participation, an important message will be sent to the world's leaders:

This is not so much about saving energy. It is more a massive, global and overwhelming signal to our nations' leaders to say that climate change is important. That it matters a great deal. That we care. Now do something about it!

Climate change is important. It matters. We care. Now, leaders: get out there and send the global economy further into the abyss, all for the sake of unproven, questionable speculations about the role of carbon dioxide in the earth's climate! Yeah!

Not wanting to be left out, our family took care to show how much we care about the climate alarmism that is sweeping the planet. This picture shows how our house looked between 8:30 and 9:30 local time this evening.

Just kidding; I don't even know whose house that is. It's certainly not in our part of Texas.

But we did leave our lights on.

We didn't go out of our way to turn on additional lights, even though theoretically there was a lot of unused electricity out there at the time. We just went about our normal business of living our lives, not being deliberately wasteful, but also not feeling guilty for what we do use.

By now, the west coast of the U.S. is in the 8:30-9:30 zone, nearly completing the event's trek around the world. Interestingly, as early as 6:00pm U.S. Eastern time, Reuters was reporting that a billion people were participating in the event, a number which, as NewsBusters points out, could not possibly have been true at the time the article was posted.

So how does Reuters report that a billion people took part? According to the International Energy Agency, "Some 1.6 billion people, about one quarter of the world’s population, have no access to electricity today." The CIA estimates the world's population at 6.7 billion, so that would mean about 5 billion people in the world could shut off their lights in the global feel-good exercise. For Reuters to be correct in its one billion people claim, one out of five people would have had to participate. Since Earth Hour hadn't even arrived for much of the world at the time Reuters released its report, how can the agency already state as fact that there were a billion participants?

The obvious answer is it couldn't. Reuters made up a nice, round number to buttress its contention of massive worldwide support for Earth Hour. And no doubt it'll be picked up by mainstream media outlets across the country.

WWF did set a goal for 1 billion people to participate, so perhaps Reuters was engaging in a bit of hopeful speculation. Journalistic malpractice, sure, but all in service of a good cause.

Propaganda technique #21744: The misleading appeal to authority

Pet peeve time.

The article I cited in the previous post opens like this:

When it comes to global warming, hamburgers are the Hummers of food, scientists say.

"Scientists say". Perhaps you just breezed by that part of the sentence, but in my opinion it should immediately raise a red flag.

"Scientists say"? How many? Of what field? What are their qualifications? The article only mentions two (technically qualifying for the plural form of the word "scientist"), but the lede is written as if this is the -- wait for it -- consensus opinion.

This doesn't happen only with AGW stories. We also see this phenomenon in reporting on scientific research in many areas -- especially in the areas of food-that-is-currently-bad-for-you and things-that-currently-cause-cancer. The funny thing is that when Research Conclusion B totally contradicts Research Conclusion A just a few months later, the news will will present the story as if simply every scientist who matters now says Research Conclusion B is true.

By attaching "scientists say" to whatever the conclusion of the moment happens to be, the journalist seems intent on leading us to believe that there is no meaningful disagreement with said conclusion in the scientific community.

I could write an article entitled, "Scientists say Al Gore is full of it" -- but I would immediately come under withering fire by acolytes of the CoGW, even though there are certainly scientists out there who believe this.

This may seem like a nitpick, but I think that the continual use of this misleading appeal to authority is part of the reason that such a high percentage of news consumers have bought into the AGW hypothesis.

Al Gore is a poor substitute for Placido Domingo, bloggers say

Planet-hating beef eaters, cont'd.

Sigh. Another day, another article informing us that our meat consumption -- especially western beef consumption -- is killing the planet. This February 16 AFP article even manages to drag in a comparison with the Hitler of the automotive world:

When it comes to global warming, hamburgers are the Hummers of food, scientists say.

Simply switching from steak to salad could cut as much carbon as leaving the car at home a couple days a week.

That's because beef is such an incredibly inefficient food to produce and cows release so much harmful methane into the atmosphere, said Nathan Pelletier of Dalhousie University in Canada.

Pelletier is one of a growing number of scientists studying the environmental costs of food from field to plate.

By looking at everything from how much grain a cow eats before it is ready for slaughter to the emissions released by manure, they are getting a clearer idea of the true costs of food.

The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.

Even though beef only accounts for 30 percent of meat consumption in the developed world it's responsible for 78 percent of the emissions, Pelletier said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That's because a single kilogram of beef produces 16 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent emissions: four times higher than pork and more than ten times as much as a kilogram of poultry, Pelletier said.

By the way, that 1:16 ratio of beef to CO₂ emissions cited in the last paragraph seriously undermines the 1:36 ratio claimed by Japanese alarmists in another AFP article we highlighted back in July of 2007.

Kind of makes me wonder if they're just making stuff up.

Go ahead and have another child, you planet-hater

In 2007 we heard about Toni Vernelli, who saw getting an abortion as a moral duty in light of the AGW crisis. We also heard from an Australian researcher who proposed that any family having more than two children should buy what amounts to an excess-child carbon offset to atone for these kids' share in the destruction of the planet.

It's been more than a year, and you just haven't been paying attention, have you? Some of you have even gone ahead and made more babies, haven't you? And let's not even get started on Nadya Suleman, who just birthed octuplets.

Scott Kotler at Psychology Today's blog has a message for you: You're unbelievably selfish, you're a resource thief, and you're a murderer.

Kotler believes that a global population of 2 billion people is the utter limit of sustainability, and that we need to get right on to the task of reducing the human headcount to that level.

His solution: STOP HAVING KIDS FOR FIVE YEARS. Everybody, everwhere. This isn't quite as far-reaching as the solution of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, to wit, that we stop having kids forever, but it is extreme nonetheless.

We have spent the past 4000 years trying to shrug off the nightmare that is Biblical advice. We no longer sanction slavery or believe it okay to stone a woman to death for wearing sexy clothing or any of that other nonsense—but go forth and multiply?

Got to be the worst advice in the history of the world.

And sure, a five year ban won’t fix all of this and it raises some questions as well—like how do we insure that year six won’t produce an influx of offspring?

So here’s my answer: Personal responsibility. A grassroots movement means we mean it. It means people having children in year six would feel shame and embarrassment at their unbelievable selfishness.

And yeah, if you are having children right now you are being selfish. You’re stealing. Stealing from the future. Stealing from the rest of humanity. Stealing from every living thing on the earth right now.

[...]

We are soon going to be killing each other over resources, just like we’ve always killed each other over resources—only this next time it won’t be over something to put in our gas tanks. It’ll be over something to put in our belly.

And it won't be an isolated incident, it'll be a global catastrophe.

That’s our future. That’s what happens if we don’t stop having children. In fact, if we don’t stop having children then we’re going to get to meet another bad Biblical idea head on: the four horseman of the apocalypse.

Pestilence, War, Famine, Death.

How can he be any more clear? If you don't get with the program, the death of our planet from climate change will be on your conscience.


(Message cross-posted on C-Pol)