Recycling is not the religion I practice. That's my answer to the recycling Nazis when the topic arises. Here's a post that gives you eight more answers to recycling myths.

(i changed the headline which cited 10 myths)

Britain dealing with worst flooding since 1947

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is blaming the flooding on climate change caused by carbon-fuel emissions and on the country's outdated infrastructure.

"Like every advanced industrialized country, we are coming to terms with some of the issues surrounding climate change," Brown said Monday.

I ask again, how do you explain the 1947 flooding? I also ask, why 1947? Was there worse flooding in the early 20th century? It would certainly appear so by the date chosen.

(cross posted at The London Fog)

Global Warming News So Stupid It's Funny

In st. John's, Newfoundland when you call the number listed in the phone book for the Mayors' Office, Mayor Andy Wells, the mayor , answers the phone. It's not his assistant or an automated operator, it's the mayor himself. Never a stranger to controversy he has now made a statement, which I consider to be one his least controversia, which is apparently causing some controversy:

Andy Wells, the outspoken Mayor of St. John's, pictured, has outraged Canadian environmentalists and physicians with his comments that David Suzuki and Al Gore are "junk scientists," and that herbicides in small amounts are safe. From St. John's to Ottawa, Calgary and Burnaby, B.C., communities across the country continue to debate cosmetic pesticide and herbicide use and whether it should be allowed. But while passions often come to the fore in the arguments over whether the chemical treatments for lawn care are safe, it's unlikely that many have stated the case as bluntly as does Mr. Wells. "I think there's a lot of junk science out there that's masquerading as true science,'' the Mayor said yesterday.

Yeah, it is junk science based on nothing. There is not a serious study to show any harmful effects but the fear mongerers continue to spread fear and line their pockets with suckers' money.

The sky is falling faster than ever! Run! Run for your lives!

So, once again, Al Gore presents a picture of the future that may come true, albeit in a few billion years. So what is his reasoning behind making such outrageous claims? Just to scare people. That's the problem with AGW alarmism, people become habituated (numbed) to the tales of catastrophe, so the prophets of doom, like Mr. Gore, David Suzuki, Laurie David and others, have to present ever bigger and ever scarier stories to keep the masses interested and frightened.

everyone agrees that the world is coming to an end except me.

The Sound Of Settled Science

world wrong, model right.

Australia

via Tim Blair, the statist greens are getting spanked:

Let me tell you, you Peruvian-hatted puritan apostles of grassy nihilism, the single hottest problem facing the planet is not global warming, but the viciously smug fundamentalist prohibitionists of the green movement. Those wholemealy-mouthed ecologists, who devoutly wish to reduce everyone else’s existence to a self-righteous nose-drip probity that never moves more than four miles from the communal yurt, never eats anything that hasn’t been grown in the communal dung and never thinks anything that isn’t collectively miserabilist, are going to destroy life as we know it faster than an equator of traffic jams, a continent of unlagged lofts and a squadron of circling jumbos.

Tim Blair again...

WARMING CAUSES DRINKING

U.S. Carbon Emissions Drop, Europe's Increase

Justin Trudeau...now there's a deep thinker ... Speaking to "adoring" high school students, he offered this:

Trudeau suggested to the students the capitalist "machine" that sustains modern existence may also become modern civilization's downfall.

The system promotes exploitation of natural resources without accounting for future consequences of consumption, he said.

"Our capitalist model has given us tremendous things," Trudeau said. "But the time has come for us to look at it critically and try to improve on it, given the accelerated pace of change and the fact that we have limited space."

Trudeau said Canada's environmental and social justice record have deteriorated.

"We consume more water per capita than anyone else on the planet. We produce more solid waste than just about anyone else on the planet. In terms of social justice, our treatment of our aboriginal communities are an absolute disgrace."

Tinkering with capitaism by placing state controls on the market have failed worldwide. Sure the civil servants make out like bandits, but the rest of us are left beholden to the state to maintain some sort of passable standard of living. Still, the juvenile question, why can't we all just get along, makes the idea of tinkering for the greater good desirable.

Trudeau seems able to spout his old man's conclusions, but I doubt he's given it much thought. For his information, we have more water than anyone else, per capita or in volume. Are we supposed to stop consuming water just because there is less water in Arizona? Stop Consuming out of guilt? Where is the water going if we don't consume it? I'm not talking about draining the rivers or anything, but water consumption is not exactly a priority for Canadains is it?  More solid waste? Huh? We are 30 million people with, in case you haven't noticed,  plenty of places to put it and the natural resources of Canada are found in alomst all of them. I guess we are going to run out of trees soon ...wait...the tree cover in North America is increasing .... never mind. The Liberal policy of throwing money at aborignals until they are all dead is something that Mr Trudeau can address with his party if and when he gets elected.

Another crank, this one with the dubious distinction of being the United States lead hurricane forecaster, says that computer modeling is a flawed way to view climate change...apparently, it's the ocean that is affecting the climate, not mankind:

THE United States' leading hurricane forecaster says global ocean currents, not human-produced carbon dioxide, are responsible for global warming.

William Gray, a Colorado State University researcher, also said the Earth may begin to cool on its own in five to 10 years.

.....

Earlier this month, he dubbed former US vice-president and 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore "a gross alarmist" for making the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which helped focus media attention on global warming.

Yesterday, Dr Gray said that politics and research into global warming had created "almost an industry" that had frightened the public and overwhelmed dissenting voices.

He said research arguing that humans were causing global warming was "mush" based on unreliable computer models that could not possibly take into account the hundreds of factors that influenced the weather.

He said little-understood ocean currents were behind a decades-long warming cycle, and disputed assertions that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as some scientists predicted.

What does he know? All the real scientists are unanimous in the belief that research money will flow more readily from man-made climate change.

Via Tim Blair: A John Howard speech:

AS A government, no doubt we've made our mistakes. All governments do.

But we have never lost sight of the big things that affect people's lives – jobs, decent healthcare, choice in education and a good social safety net.

We've also never lost sight of the need to strike a balance. That's not the same as always seeking consensus and always looking to please.

Hard choices imply trade-offs. When these are ignored, that's when costly mistakes are made.

Why do I dwell on this? Because my opponent pretends to have discovered a different brand of politics – a politics without hard choices.

Kevin Rudd argues that in this world Australians face one overriding moral challenge: climate change.

Now this is a major priority of the Government. At the same time, we know independent action will not materially affect our climate.

No one – not the IPCC, not Sir Nicholas Stern, not even Al Gore – makes this argument. Australia emits less greenhouse gases in a year than the US or China emit a month.

Do we need to lower carbon emissions over time? Of course we do. But to say climate change is the overwhelming moral challenge for this generation of Australians is misguided at best – misleading at worst.

It de-legitimises other challenges over which we do have significant control, other challenges with moral dimensions just as real and pressing.

Of course, Australia already has an emissions target through to 2012. And unlike many of the European countries that regularly lecture us on this issue, we are on track to meet it.

Any decision on a post-2012 long-term target will be the most important economic decision Australia takes in the next decade. It will affect every industry and every household.

I want to ensure any decision is made in a way that takes full account of jobs and investment in Australia, of climate change action by others and of technology developments.

Australia fully accepts its responsibility. We have committed more than $2 billion to climate change action involving regulation, economic incentives and voluntary measures.

But I will not subcontract our climate policy to the European Union.

Indeed, I worry about the consequences of Mr Rudd's policy of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent from 1990 levels.

Mr Rudd panders to the gesture politics of anti-capitalism. His environment spokesman Peter Garrett once said economic growth "almost always" leads to a worse environment.

Both are wrong. History shows economic growth and technological change have given mankind not just greater material wealth, but also cleaner air and water.

 The MapMaster: "...Environment Canada will be issuing a "be vewy afwaid" climate warning."

This, of course, marks the second alarmist release by the UN this year, both coming before its own scientific report on global warming is even out.

Just why would the UN release these teaser summaries before its actual scientific findings are available? It could it be that the science is becoming less alarming as scientists learn more, so the UN wants to maximize the public hysteria before its catastrophic forecasts for the future can be checked against the more moderate scientific truth.

We already know that the coming report -- the fourth by the UN in 15 years -- will say that maximum projected temperatures over the next century will not be nearly as high as projected in the last report in 2001; that man has contributed less to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than originally thought; and that sea level rise will be only a few inches, rather than the several feet once thought.

Yet the so-called "summaries for policy makers" are becoming more shrill each time: Species will be wiped out, crime will rise, starvation will kill hundreds of millions, disease will become rampant, islands will disappear beneath the waves, deserts will consume entire continents.

Science goes down, UN hysteria goes up. Curious, isn't it, how that plays into the UN's desire to be at the centre of a global effort to plan human activity?

Read the rest.

(Via Bourque)

cross posted at The London Fog

Via Tim Bliar ... this is funny:

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.

Read the rest.

Apparently not every "expert" is in on the "consensus" that the world is coming to an end. The latest UN report on climate change has been examined by Canada's own The Fraser Institute and the conclusion is ... don't panic. 

London, UK - An independent review of the latest United Nations report on climate change shows that the scientific evidence about global warming remains uncertain and provides no basis for alarmism.

In 2006, independent research organization The Fraser Institute convened a panel of 10 internationally-recognized experts to read the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draft report and produce an Independent Summary for Policymakers. The result, released today, is a detailed and thorough overview of the state of the science. This independent summary has been reviewed by more than 50 scientists around the world and their views on its balance and reliability are tabulated for readers.

“While a lot of effort goes into producing the large IPCC reports, its complex message is often obscured by its accompanying Summary for Policymakers. That summary report does not come from the scientific community. Instead it is developed through political negotiations by unnamed bureaucrats from various governments. Critics of past summaries point out they downplay and gloss over areas of uncertainty and data limitations,” said Dr. Ross McKitrick, coordinator of the independent review and senior fellow with The Fraser Institute.

“The debate around climate change has become highly politicized and alarmist. So we asked a team of highly qualified scientists to look at the IPCC report and produce a summary that they felt communicates the real state of knowledge. Our intent with this document is to allow people to see for themselves what is known and what remains highly uncertain within climate change science.”

...

read the rest

From Wikipedia... scientific heresy:

...Galileo was ordered to stand trial on suspicion of heresy in 1633. The sentence of the Inquisition was in three essential parts:

• Galileo was required to recant his heliocentric ideas; the idea that the Sun is stationary was condemned as "formally heretical".
• He was ordered imprisoned; the sentence was later commuted to house arrest.
• His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial and not enforced, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.

From Peaktalk ... scientific heresy:

Re-purposing the concept of hate speech, The Weather Channel’s (TWC) and well-known climatologist Heidi Cullen advocates that:

" ... that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming"

I've never been aware that TV-weathermen and women were 'certified', in fact I have always believed that they were just channeling whatever the meteorological reports said. So, engaging in a debate - scientific or not - is actually some good news. But according to Cullen any debate will have to start at a certain level of undisputed knowledge, hers to be precise:

Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy. If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns. It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement.

Crushing dissent or manipulating the global warming debate? Probably both.

From Dictionary.com ....

Note: Authorities of the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo to renounce his belief in the model of the solar system proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus. Galileo had to assert that the Earth stands still, and the sun revolves around it. A famous legend holds that Galileo, after making this public declaration about a motionless Earth, muttered, “Nevertheless, it does move.”

Via David Janes:

I’ve seen countless geology-department professors bury their integrity as they morph from respectable paleontologists or geologists from other specialties, to “climate change” experts, then watch the research funding roll in.

How are the polar bears making out these days?