Archive for June, 2009

Sen. Inhofe Calls for Inquiry Into ‘Suppressed’ Climate Change Report

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

When the Left fails to make its case via the facts — they either lie, or suppress any dissent from established Leftist dogma. OK Senator Jim Inhofe is going to expose the current Lies via Suppression about Global Warming, or better said, the fantasy of man-caused global warming.

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin’s report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

“He came out with the truth. They don’t want the truth at the EPA,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he’s ordered an investigation. “We’re going to expose it.”

Oh, heavens no! Then they couldn’t use AGW (anthropogenic global warming) as an excuse for the massive tax, Tax, TAX Cap & trade bill that passed the House last Fri.

About said bill, one wonders how suppressing the US economy via this enormous tax burden on energy will help with lower CO2 levels, when China and India sure aren’t gonna stop their rapidly expanding industrial growth. Oh, yeah — there are tariffs in the bill. However, Obama doesn’t like those — trade wars are such nasty things, don’t ya know? So, better to just decimate our economy — show the world the way to Gaia lovin’ redemption. Road to Perdition anyone?

BTW — The EPA has been busy! Along with suppression of the anti-AGW report they have now granted California’s waiver of the emission rules — so now the nutters at CA’s CARB can go bat-sh_t crazy and really stir up trouble for the car companies — like they need anymore headaches.

Hell, it’s just hammerin’ down on business — no biggie. It’s just what Lefties do! Makes ‘em feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The little fascist dears . . .

Sphere It

“Hey, people deserve to know what’s in this pile of s–t.” — Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio)

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Regular ‘Okie’ reader and frequent commenter, Oklahoma environmental chemist Glenn Speck contributed the following in response to my tirade against the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade Cap & Tax bill to which Minority Leader Boehner’s comment above was directed — Glenn’s comment deserves to stand alone as a post:


Here’s what my British friend ***Richard Courtney has to say about AGW:

The AGW-hypothesis asserts that increased greenhouse gases (GHG’s) – notably carbon dioxide – in the atmosphere will cause the globe to warm (global warming: GW) and that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing the carbon dioxide in the air with resulting anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW).

I think a clear distinction needs to be made between
(a) the science of AGW, and
(b) the perception of AGW – and the use of AGW – by non-scientists.

There’s no evidence for man-made global warming; none, not any of any kind.

The existence of global warming is not evidence of anthropogenic global warming because warming of the Earth doesn’t prove human’s warmed it. At issue is whether humans are or are not affecting changes to the Earth’s temperature that have always happened naturally.

But empirical evidence says the hypothesis is wrong.

  1. The anthropogenic emissions and global temperature do not correlate.
  2. Change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows change to global temperature at all time scales.
  3. Recent rise in global temperature has not been induced by rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
    Global temperature fell from 1940 to 1970, rose to 1998, and has fallen since. That’s 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming. Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990. But atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased at a near constant rate and by more than 30% since 1940. It has increased by 8% since 1990.
  4. Rise in global temperature has not been induced by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.
    Over 80% of the emissions have been since 1940 and the emissions have been increasing at a compound rate. But since 1940 there have been 40 years of cooling with only 28 years of warming. There’s been no significant warming since 1995, and global temperature has fallen since the high it had 10 years ago.
  5. The pattern of atmospheric warming predicted by the AGW hypothesis is absent.
    The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air at altitude in the tropics. Measurements from weather balloons and from satellites both show cooling at altitude in the tropics.

So, the normal rules of science say the AGW-hypothesis is completely refuted.Nothing the hypothesis predicts is observed, and the opposite of some of its predictions are observed.

But some people promote the hypothesis.
They’ve several reasons (personal financial gain, protection of their career histories and futures, political opportunism, and…). But support of science cannot be one such motive because science denies the hypothesis.


Trust me . . . I really couldn’t have said it better! ;-) Thanks Glenn.

***Richard Courtney
Energy and Environment Consultant

Richard S. Courtney is an independent consultant on matters concerning energy and the environment. He is a technical advisor to several UK MPs and mostly-UK MEPs. He has been called as an expert witness by the UK Parliament’s House of Commons Select Committee on Energy and also House of Lords Select Committee on the Environment. He is an expert peer reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in November 1997 chaired the Plenary Session of the Climate Conference in Bonn. In June 2000 he was one of 15 scientists invited from around the world to give a briefing on climate change at the US Congress in Washington DC, and he then chaired one of the three briefing sessions. His achievements have been recognized by The UK’s Royal Society for Arts and Commerce, PZZK (the management association of Poland’s mining industry), and The British Association for the Advancement of Science. Having been the contributing technical editor of CoalTrans International, he is now on the editorial board of Energy & Environment. He is a founding member of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF).

Sphere It

The Voices Of Glory

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

The Anchoress has both praise and caution for these amazing kids.

I hope these kids do well; they’re wonderful. And I pray that they cling to that good mother when the world begins to offer them too much, too fast.

What an amazing performance, what an amazing trio of kids — must be an amazing mom!

Sphere It

Pelosi Rams “Unread” Waxman-Markey Bill & 300 Pages Of New Amendments Through House

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

. . . or we'll kill this dog!I can hear it now, ol’ Nanny Nancy gettin’ up and screeching “Pass this bill or we’ll kill this planet!” Or something to that effect. The Waxman-Markey bill passed the House yesterday evening thanks to the defections of 8 Republicans and despite the “no” votes of 44 Democrats. Michelle Malkin has a wanted poster up for “The 8 cap-and-tax Republicans…and the 44 Democrats who voted no”, along with phone numbers so that you can call those 8 suckers and let them know just how much you are looking forward to paying out the wazzoo for so-called “green” energy in the not so distant future.

After all, they’re all like just saving the planet man, don’t ya know? Like Gaia has any trouble handlin’ her own stuff!

In “Voting For Economic Suicide” Hugh Hewitt puts it in perspective:

They could not have read the bill.

A 300 page amendment to a bill that greatly impacts every American and greatly burdens every American business was introduced at 3:00 AM Friday and passed 16 hours later.

The spectacle of the House voting for a massive tax increase and a 300 page amendment they could not have read is a low point for post-segregationist Congresses. Never have so few read so little about so important a proposal, and yet brazen forward oblivious to the the deeply embarrassing charade it presents to the world. Banana republics make a better show of governing themselves than did the U.S. House of Representatives today.

{…}

The country knows the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Democrats are drunk on power and lurching so far to the left as to stun even partisan Democrats. The Senate may stop this attempt at economic suicide, but independents and Republicans cannot allow the public to forget the recklessness of today’s abdication of responsibility by the hard left House leadership.

There is even a part of the bill called “placeholder”, which will deal with market associated financial derivatives that will have to do with carbon emissions — PLACEHOLDER????!!!!!! So, not only has no one actually read this monster but some of it isn’t even written yet???!!! — and they passed it anyway? And these are the same jokers that are full-speed freight-training a government-option health care bill that they say will be done this summer! Yeah, like we want folks like this to be in charge of our rectal exams! Sheesh!

The 2010 elections can’t come soon enough. The economy isn’t turning around, unemployment is getting higher, government is meddling more and more in our business and private lives — Guess that’s the “change” part of Obama’s hopichanginess he promised.

Perhaps it should have been called “Hopeless Change” . . .

Sphere It

Will The Democrats Shoot Us All In The Head With Cap & Trade? Hey, Why Not! [Updated]

Friday, June 26th, 2009

As the decidedly determined but utterly dishonest Democrats in the House of Representatives work feverishly today to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, better known as the Waxman-Markey bill — which, if it makes it through the Senate and is signed by Obama, will be the largest tax increase ever . . . as in EVER! — what these busy-beaver legislators won’t tell the American public is that their precious, so-called consensus on the science of Global Warming, or as they like to refer to it now, Climate Change, is falling apart faster than Humpty Dumpty hitting the ground at Mach 2! From Kim Strassel in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

Hmmmm, beat down informed dissent long enough and someone gets a bit irritated, irritated enough to actually do something about it — like come out and tell the world that the religion of anthropogenic climate change makes about as much sense as Scientology. Channel your inner “thetan” and save the planet? Dude! More from Strassel:

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Regardless of all this, the Dems are hell-bent on passing this legislation. Hugh Hewitt writes today:

The Pelosi Democrats will try and push through the massive tax hike that is disguised as “cap and trade” today, and the 1200 plus page bill is constantly changing and of course has not been read much less understood by the Democrats voting for it. If this bill or anything remotely like it becomes law, the American economy will be pushed into a deep recession that will make the past six months look like the good old days.

Moderates and conservatives are wrong to expect that the Senate will simply kill the bill, though all efforts will have to be switched immediately to the upper chamber if the Pelosi/Waxman/Markey radicals bribe enough Dems with special provisions to pass it today. The so-called Blue Dog Democrats are proving to be worthless as a check on the hard left of their party, and only a huge course correction in November 2010 will keep the country safe from the radicals currently running the Democratic caucus in the House. No one who votes for this bill can claim to be a “moderate Democrat.

Michelle Malkin’s syndicated column today exposes the Obama administration’s “willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of [Climate Change] “consensus.”

The Obama administration doesn’t want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they don’t want you to hear them, either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion-dollar, thousand-page “cap and trade” bill that no one has read, environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.

So, let’s see. We are in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression with really no end in sight at the moment, 800-billion in stimulus notwithstanding. The rest of the Western world is coming to its senses and moving to the right politically. Well-respected scientists are jumping off the Global Warming locomotive as it races toward the cliff of financial disaster and what does our Democratic-controlled Congress do? Double down, that’s what. They want our money folks, all of it! How else can they possibly hope to pay for the next exciting chapter of this Summer of Obamination — single-payer, government-controlled health care?

After nationalizing the banks and then two of the Big-3 auto makers, now they want control of the energy companies and then the health care industry. Not much left after that. Kinda makes ol’ Benito Mussolini look like a piker, don’t it? Better hope the Blue Dog Dems have some balls, ’cause otherwise we’re all screwed! Reading Hewitt — we’re screwed!

[Update -- Okie Congresswoman issues her statement] Yipes! The house.gov server is down!!! (Fri. 6/26, 12:30 EST)

Fallin Statement on Proposed “Cap and Trade” Energy Legislation

WASHINGTON — Congresswoman Mary Fallin (OK-05) issued the following statement today regarding her opposition to “cap and trade” enery legislation:

“The so-called ‘cap and trade’ bill amounts to nothing more than a gigantic tax on energy consumption, to the tune of over 600 billion dollars. The economic consequences of this enormous new tax could be catastrophic. Entire industries – including manufacturing, energy and agriculture—will suffer. Families will face a sharp spike in energy costs. Jobs will be lost. The National Association of Manufacturers has estimated this one piece of legislation could destroy over one million jobs in the coming years. All of this comes at the worst time: in the middle of a recession, when our national unemployment rate is already well over 9%

“Moreover, this bill is particularly unfair to Oklahoma. Our state is a large producer of both oil and natural gas, and the restrictions this legislation places on the production and exploration of these resources will devastate our energy producers. That will not only destroy oil and gas related jobs, it will also lead to a reduction in tax revenue, which in turn will affect our ability to maintain and repair roads, bridges, schools and other public works and services.

“Worst of all, this poorly conceived legislation is entirely unnecessary. There are better, cheaper ways to reduce our addiction to foreign oil and to protect and preserve our environment. The United States has an abundance of energy resources. We have a large amount of oil and clean burning natural gas. We have enormous potential to expand our production of wind, solar, and nuclear power as well as biodiesel fuels. Rather than stifle production of the resources with a massive tax increase, we need to encourage the environmentally responsible development of all types of American energy. Doing so will create jobs, boost tax revenue, provide for our energy needs in the near term and ultimately lead to exciting breakthroughs in energy technology that will one day provide us with cheaper, cleaner sources of energy.”

Sphere It

Iranian Butchers “Still” Invited For Dogs & Burgers????? Sheesh!

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

The Anchoress has a full set of links to posts and articles on the Massacre in Tehran! A sample from Threatswatch:

An Iranian blogger (whose URL I will not publish) live blogging from Baharestan Square in central Tehran today captures but brief glimpses of the unimaginable horror that took place today. Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by “black-clad police” and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime’s Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas.

Here is a picture of one of the protesters killed with an axe wound from Threatswatch, if you feel that you can handle it. Brutality from the legions unleashed by the mullahs of the religion of peace.

“The Obama administration is seriously considering not extending invitations to Iranian diplomats for July 4 celebrations overseas, senior administration officials tell CNN.”

Obama’s reaction would be hilariously stupid if it wasn’t so damn tragic!

Sphere It