The Daily Telegraph’s Christopher Brooks attended the Heartland Institute’s conference in New York: Global Warming: Was It Ever Really A Crisis? Not much coverage of this one by the MSM. Wonder why?

Led off with stirring speeches from the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the acting head of the European Union, and Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the most distinguished climatologist in the world, the message of this gathering was that the scare over global warming has been deliberately stoked up for political reasons and has long since parted company with proper scientific evidence.

Nothing has more acutely demonstrated this than the reliance of the IPCC on computer models to predict what is going to happen to global temperatures over the next 100 years. On these predictions, that temperatures are likely to rise by up to 5.3C, all their other predictions and recommendations depend, yet nearly 10 years into the 21st century it is already painfully clear that the computer forecasts are going hopelessly astray. Far from rising with CO2, as the models are programmed to predict they should, the satellite-measured temperature curve has flattened out and then dropped. If the present trend were to continue, the world in 2100 would not in fact be hotter but 1.1C cooler than the 1979-1998 average.

Yet it is on this fundamental inability of the computer models to predict what has already happened that all else hangs. For two days in New York we heard distinguished experts, such as Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Center, Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, authoritatively (and often wittily) tear apart one piece of the scare orthodoxy after another.

Sea levels are not shooting up but only continuing their modest 3mm a year rise over the past 200 years. The vast Antarctic ice-sheet is not melting, except in one tiny corner, the Antarctic Peninsula. Tropical hurricane activity, far from increasing, is at its lowest level for 30 years. The best correlation for temperature fluctuations is not CO2 but the magnetic activity of the sun. (For an admirable summary of proceedings by the Australian paleoclimatologist Professor Bob Carter, Google “Heartland” and “Quadrant”).

Yet the terrifying thing, as President Klaus observed in his magisterial opening address, is that there is no dialogue on these issues. When recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he found the minds of his fellow world leaders firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers. As I said in my own modest contribution to the conference, there seems little doubt that global warming is leading the world towards an unprecedented catastrophe. But it is not the Technicolor apocalypse promised by the likes of Al Gore. The real disaster hanging over us lies in all those astronomically costly measures proposed by politicians, to meet a crisis which in reality never existed.

I really like Ace’s take on all this:

What are you going to believe, actual data or models that are shown to be unable to predict actual events? How you answer that questions says all that needs to be said on where you stand on the whole issue.

So to sum up, we are going to destroy our economy by taxing and regulating it to death while starting a trade war with a major trading partner (who we expect to continue to finance our reckless spending) all in the name of solving a problem that doesn’t actually seem to be happening.

Yup!

Technorati Tags: Christopher Brooks, Global Warming, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Richard Lindzen of MIT

Once upon a time, the Obama administration told them-there Congress critters that his Global-Warming-Hysteria CRAP & TRADE plan to control carbon emissions would cost $646 billion spread out over eight years. Now it’s more like TWO TRILLION DOLLARS! Maybe he just misplaced a decimal place or two?

A top economic aide to Mr. Obama told a group of Senate staffers last month that the president’s climate-change plan would surely raise more than the $646 billion over eight years the White House had estimated publicly, according to multiple a number of staffers who attended the briefing Feb. 26.

“We all looked at each other like, ‘Wow, that’s a big number,’” said a top Republican staffer who attended the meeting along with between 50 and 60 other Democratic and Republican congressional aides.

The plan seeks to reduce pollution by setting a limit on carbon emissions and allowing businesses and groups to buy allowances, although exact details have not been released.

At the meeting, Jason Furman, a top Obama staffer, estimated that the president’s cap-and-trade program could cost up to three times as much as the administration’s early estimate of $646 billion over eight years. A study of an earlier cap-and-trade bill co-sponsored by Mr. Obama when he was a senator estimated the cost could top $366 billion a year by 2015.

A White House official did not confirm the large estimate, saying only that Obama aides previously had noted that the $646 billion estimate was “conservative.”

I have to agree with the House Republicans on this one:

“The last thing we need is a massive tax increase in a recession, but reportedly that’s what the White House is offering: up to $1.9 trillion in tax hikes on every single American who drives a car, turns on a light switch or buys a product made in the United States,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner. “And since this energy tax won’t affect manufacturers in Mexico, India and China, it will do nothing but drive American jobs overseas.”

Sounds like a bunch of crappin’ and tradin’ all over the American taxpayer.

More o’ that there CHANGE we can all believe in — Oh, ya betcha yo’ ass!

Technorati Tags: climate-change, cap-and-trade program

This is cool, very cool!

The question is, will the Chosen One deem it funds worthy, or just another candidate to be sacrificed so that the ACORNs of the world can have more of our tax dollars to push their socialist agendas?

Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time — paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.

In recent test-blasts, Pentagon-researchers at Northrop Grumman managed to get its 105 kilowatts of power out of their laser — past the “100kW threshold [that] has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for ‘weapons grade’ power levels for high-energy lasers,” Northrop’s vice president of directed energy systems, Dan Wildt, said in a statement.

That much power won’t get you a Star Wars-style blaster. But it should be more than enough to zap the mortars and rockets that insurgents have used to pound American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Only time will tell . . .

Technorati Tags: Electric lasers, Northrop Grumman

Not that any credit is given to President George Bush for any of this. I guess Iraqi democracy and an increasing quality of life just can’t hold a candle to life under Saddam with his rape rooms and plastic shredders. Not to worry. Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) isn’t going anywhere anytime soon as yesterday’s reception in Calgary, Canada showed. Hundreds protested the “war criminal” and “torturer” and threw shoes at a large image of Bush.

Bush, by the way, was telling his listeners that he refuses to berate the new U.S. President and said that it’s “essential” to help the new leader. Classy.

Hell of a lot better than what “he” ever got from the Dems and the Left . . .

Technorati Tags: George Bush

The D.C. Examiner’s Noemie Emery asks and answers that question:

Now that the Obama presidency is nearing the 60-day mark, it’s time to thank those fastidious scribes on the left and the right who worked so hard to warn us against Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the dire things that would surely occur if she ever got close to executive power.
How right they were to insist that she was unfit for high office. Let’s just imagine what she might have done:

As president, she might have caused the stock market to plunge over 2,000 points in the six weeks after she assumed office, left important posts in the Treasury unfilled for two months, been described by insiders as ‘overwhelmed’ by the office, and then gone on to diss the British Prime Minister on his first state visit, giving him, as one head of state to another, a set of DVDs plucked from the aisles of Wal Mart, a tasteful gift, even if they can’t be played on a TV in Britain. (Note, the Prime Minister, who is losing his eyesight, may even be blind in one eye).

As vice president, she might have told Katie Couric that when the stock market crashed in 1929, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went on TV to reassure a terrified nation. Or on her first trip abroad as Secretary of State, she might have, as the AP reported, “raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe…when she mispronounced her “EU counterparts names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe’s,” then gave the Russian minister a gag “reset” button, on which the word “reset” was translated incorrectly.

What a good thing that Palin, whom Christopher Buckley called “an embarrassment, and a dangerous one,” wasn’t in office to cause such debacles, and that we have Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton instead.

Shoot — if nothin’ else, the roasts, beer and coffee served at the White House would be a lot better!

And given that Jimmy Carter is in that mix, that’s sayin’ somethin’! It’s getting worse by the day, so much so that reacting to it is becoming painful in a way that makes one want to self-medicate with the strongest chemical available — tonight New Amsterdam gin will have to do. Consider these items:

It looks like the Obama White House will be pressuring his old cronies in the Senate to bypass the “filibuster”, not just for confirmation of judges, but for legislation, too. Remember when we were all urging our GOP majority to use the “nuclear option” to get Bush’s judicial nominees up for a vote? Hmmm, what would these Dem wits use this tactic to pass?

The legislative tactic is being considered to push through Obama’s global warming and health care programs, and perhaps his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Oh, by the way — our fearful leader Obama isn’t big on letting pilots of airliners carry guns. Remember after 9/11 that it seemed maybe a little bit of a good idea to have some way to ward off terrorists that were trying to take over an airliner before they flew it into skyscrapers full of innocent folks?

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots.

This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots. The 12,000 Federal Flight Deck Officers, the pilots who have been approved to carry guns, are reported to have the best behavior of any federal law enforcement agency.

Our new Defense Secretary is planning the Chosen One’s defense cuts:

Two defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Gates will announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet, and Army ground-combat vehicles, the offi cials said.

More cuts are planned for later this year after a review that could lead to reductions in programs such as aircraft carriers and nuclear arms, the officials said.

That ought to show the Russians who’s who. They are only planning to base long-range bombers off Venezuela and use Cuban bases. That One-World currency Putin is pushing? Not a biggie!

And to top it all off, for our military men and women wounded in their tour of service, Obama and Co. want them to pay for their medical treatment with their own private insurance. Commander David K. Rehbein, leader of The American Legion is not amused.

WASHINGTON, March 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The leader of the nation’s largest veterans organization says he is “deeply disappointed and concerned” after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.

“It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. “He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”

It’s either puke, or pour another gin and tonic. Hell, pour, drink and then puke! Kinda like Beach, Bar & Hotel — without the relaxation . . .

Technorati Tags: President Obama, pilot training program, Commander David K. Rehbein