Tag: Global Cooling

The fastest ever collapse of any modern political movement

The latest links from Climate Depot via Marc Morano:
Flashback 2008: Scientist: ‘Global warming’ is sub-prime science, sub-prime economics, and sub-prime politics, and it could well go down with the sub-prime mortgage’ Paper: UN climate chief Pachauri used ‘bogus’ climate claims ‘to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds’ UN IPCC Exposed: ‘Dozens’ of instances where WWF reports have been cited as the sole authority for contentious claims, including one about coastal developments in Latin America’ Obama must call out the UN IPCC to keep his inaugural pledge to ‘restore science to its rightful place’ Australian Herald Sun: ‘Could the Nobel Prize be withdrawn’ from UN IPCC? ‘Al Gore needs to be leading this charge (for Pachauri’s resignation) in the US. Where is he, and why is he silent?’ Na na na hey hey hey goodbye! Pew Survey: Global warming ranks dead last as concern for Americans — 21 out of 21 – ‘Global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; just 28% consider this a top priority, the lowest measure for any issue tested in the survey’ ‘Pachauri must resign’ Calls for Pachauri to resign: ‘His position is becoming more and more untenable by the day…UN IPCC ‘will continue to leach credibility while he remains in charge’ Flashback 2006: Morano Debates Pachauri at UN Conference in Kenya — Calls UN an ‘echo chamber’ where ‘dissent was being suppressed and demonized’ Houston Chronicle Credits Climate Depot with Warming Movements Collapse!: Morano debating Scientists is ‘just a wipeout’ — ‘It’s an NFL team playing a high school team’ UN Climate Con is Ending! Shock Revelation: UN scientist admits fake data was used in IPCC report ‘purely to put political pressure on world leaders’ – UN IPCC Scientist: Phony glacier claim designed to ‘impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action’ – UK Mail – Jan. 24, 2009 UK Guardian: Global Warming Bubble Bursts: ‘Banks are pulling out of the carbon-offsetting market’ Flashback: 2009: Paper: ‘Don’t let Climategate melt down your portfolio…don’t get stuck with investments tied to global warming’ Flashback 2009: Carbon Bubble Fears! Asian Development Bank warns failure to ‘reach climate deal could lead to a collapse of carbon market’ ‘And now for UN’s Amazongate’: ‘Made false predictions’ on Amazon rainforest, referenced non-peer-reviewed paper produced by WWF Paging George Orwell: Stern Review ‘mysteriously changed’ – Prof. Pielke, Jr.: ‘As much as 40% of the Stern Review projections for the global costs of unmitigated climate change derive from its misuse of (extreme weather paper)’ The IPCC scandal: the African data was sexed up, too China surprises summit — Declares it has ‘open mind’ about global warming: ‘Alternative view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature’ Global Warming ‘is rapidly morphing into the greatest scandal in the history of science since the belief in a flat earth’

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As Global Warming Movement Collapses, Activists Already 'Test-Marketing' the Next Eco-Fear

By Marc Morano

Climate Depot Editorial As the man-made global warming fear movement collapses and the climate establishment lay in a Climategate ridden tatters, many are asking what next? (For latest on climate movement’s demise go to www.ClimateDepot.com)
As man-made global warming fears enter the ashbin of history, what will environmentalists, UN activists and politicians do to fill the void of a failed eco-scare?
Well, wonder no more….
Some forward thinking green activists and even the UN climate Chief have already taken up the task of test-marketing the next eco-scares to replace man-made global warming.
 One of the most prominent eco-scares now being quietly promoted behind man-made climate fears is the allegedly “growing” nitrous oxide (a.k.a. “laughing gas”) threat to the planet. See: Time for next eco-scare already?! ‘Earth’s growing nitrogen threat’: ‘It helps feed a hungry world, but it’s worse than CO2’The Christian Science Monitor – January 12, 2010 – Excerpt: Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide – considered the leading cause of climate change – and the third most threatening greenhouse gas overall. As man-made climate fears subside and the scientific, economic, cultural and political case evaporates for climate change “action,” expect more and more green activists to take up the mantle for “laughing gas” as a possible replacement eco-scare.
See also: Laughing Gas Knocks Out CO2 – By Doug Hoffman – Oct. 30, 2009 – Excerpt: “In the face of ever mounting evidence that CO2 is incapable of causing the level of global devastation prophesied by climate change catastrophists a new villain is being sought. The leading candidate is nitrous oxide (N2O), better known as laughing gas. A report in Science claims that N2O emissions are currently the single most important cause of ozone depletion and are expected to remain so throughout the 21st century. The IPCC rates N2O as 310 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 on a 100 year time scale. Is this a greenhouse gas bait and switch, or are the global warming alarmists trying to up the ante.”
Still can’t picture former Vice President Al Gore touting the “laughing gas” crisis as the “moral” challenge of our time in a Oscar-winning documentary? Not to worry, there are many more eco-scares currently being test-marketed.
Gore’s own producer of “An Inconvenient Truth” — Hollywood eco-activist Laurie David — is already test-marketing another eco-scare with potential promise.
“One Word: Plastics.” Yes, just 43 years after the 1967 film “The Graduate”, “plastics” just may be the future! See: AGW RIP? Is It Time for Next Eco-Scare Already? Gore’s producer Laure David touts plastic crisis: ‘Plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming’ – July 31, 2009
 “The rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.,” Laurie David wrote on July 31, 2009. Selected Excerpts From David’s blog post: “This insidious invasion of the biosphere by our plastic waste is in some ways more alarming for us humans than global warming. Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath. Plastic, though present in the biosphere from the nano scale on up, is too stable a molecule for any organism to fully assimilate or biodegrade. So we have a situation in which a vector for a suite of devastating chemicals, chemicals implicated in many modern diseases, is now invading the ocean, our bodies and indeed, the entire biosphere. The prognosis for improvement in this situation is grim.”
Still not convinced of either “laughing gas” or “plastics” as the next dominant eco-scare? Don’t worry, we are just getting started. Just how widespread is the test marketing of a new eco-scare to replace the flailing global warming movement? It now has the attention of the beleaguered head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri.
In a remarkable posting on his personal blog, Pachauri openly admitted that man-made global warming was not even the biggest eco-issue! See: Et tu? Head of UN IPCC Pachauri Now throwing global warming under the bus?! There is a ‘larger problem’ than climate fears?! – November 23, 2009
 Pachauri wrote on November 23, 2009: “The question is whether the additional time that the world would now have to arrive at an agreement at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico will give us time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom. Human society cannot continue to ignore the vital dependence that exists between human welfare and the health of our natural resources.” The UK Green Party and a UN advisor are already concocting yet another potential new eco-scare that may be an easy transition from failed global warming fears. See: UK Green Party: ‘There exists a more serious crisis than the ‘CO2 crisis’: the oxygen levels are dropping and the human activity has decreased them by 1/3 or ½ – By Peter Tatchell of the UK Green party – UK Guardian – August 13, 2008
 Excerpt: “In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes: Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.”
Wow. Imagine scaring school children with suffocation due to our modern way of life! Documentaries, text books and Hollywood could really instill fear in the kids and adults with scary predictions of Mom and Dad choking to death due to a lack of oxygen created by evil modern society. Mom and Dad turning blue and suffering fatal convulsions sure beats the emotional imagery of a Polar Bear drowning or a building be flooded to due to rising seas. Keep your eye on this one, it just may get some traction.

Ok. Let’s assume now that one of the above or yet another not ready for prime time eco-fear catches on, how would the environmental activists go about selling this eco-scare to the public?
For an answer, let’s review a few of the failed eco-alarms of the past 40 years.
The Global Cooling Scare of 1970’s offers vital clues about how the “search-and-replace” tactics are utilized by eco-fear promoters. See: 1974 CIA report on Global Cooling: ‘Embarrassing reading’: ‘All AGW scares are a search-and-replace job from ‘cooling’ to ‘warming’ – Dec. 3, 2009 & Climate Depot’s Factsheet on 1970s Coming ‘Ice Age’ Claims – Oct. 6, 2009
 Ever wonder how Gore and the UN would hype a “tipping point” for various new eco-scares? Newsweek Magazine first used the climate “tipping point” argument in 1975 to urge action to prevent man-made global cooling. Newsweek wrote April 28, 1975 article: “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”
Yes, quite literally “a search-and-replace job from cooling to warming.” Also See: Not again! Another 10-year climate ‘tipping point’ warning issued — Despite fact that UN began 10-Year ‘Climate Tipping Point’ in 1989! Climate Depot Factsheet on Inconvenient History of Global Warming ‘Tipping Points’ — Earth ‘Serially Doomed’ – Nov. 15, 2009
 Overpopulation Fears Overpopulation fears have jumped all over the place in recent years. See: Grist Mag. Going Down: Is too few people the new ‘population problem?’ – December 14, 2005 and Could Overpopulation Save The Earth From Global Warming? June 15, 2009. Overpopulation fears can be played any which way advocates would like. Even the guru of overpopulation fears eventually admitted his silliness. See: An Admission finally! ‘The Population Bomb’s’ Paul Ehrlich: ‘I wish I’d taken more math in high school and college. That would have been useful’ – ‘If he were writing ‘The Population Bomb’ now, he’d be more careful about predictions’ – Oct. 8, 2009 – Also see: Climate Depot’s Overpopulation factsheet – August 21, 2009
 Amazon Rainforest Scare The allegedly disappearing rainforest scare was the environmental issue du jour in the 1980’s and 1990’s, long before climate fears took center stage. In fact, In 2000, Climate Depot’s Executive Editor Marc Morano was producer and correspondent for a documentary debunking the myths about the rainforests. Morano’s “Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths” was greeted with massive controversy. But, just nine years later, the rainforest scare was kaput.

See: Jan. 30, 2009: New York Times: ‘Galloping jungle’: Farmlands revert back to nature as saving the rainforests becomes ‘less urgent’ – ‘For every acre of rainforest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing’
NYT Excerpt: Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s – and much larger swaths of farmland – are reverting back to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings. These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest – an iconic environmental cause – may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster. “There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.
Also see: ‘Save the trees’ more political myth than environmental truth – Jan. 2009
 Old eco-scares don’t die, they just fade away. The failed rainforest scare inspired this 2009 satire of the death of global warming movement. Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano
 Other eco-scares that did not pan out include the 1970 and 8190’s baseless scares about resource scarcity and predictions of famine. (Excerpt: The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Julian Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.) Plus other eco-scares like “ocean acidification” and others too numerous to mention.
It will be a compelling battle to try and replace the mother of all eco-scares — man-made global warming — but Climate Depot is confident that one of these test-marketed new eco-issues will catch on and you may soon see massive denials from environmentalists and UN officials that claims of a man-made global warming crisis never really existed (echoing the claims that there was no widespread concern about global cooling in the 1970’s) See: Spoof: NYT in 2019: Scientists Now Say Global Warming Fears Fading Away – Claim There Never Was Warming Consensus – By Marc Morano
 Already we have some of the most insulting attempts to shift the focus away from the “warming” aspect of “global warming.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) — in true “Climate Astrology” fashion — dismissed the lack of global warming on March 4, 2009 by declaring: “Climate change is not just about temperatures going up. It’s also about volatility.”
Not to be outdone, Sen. Stabenow followed up her climate analysis with this claim about touchy-feely warming: “Global warming creates volatility and I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile,” Sen. Stabenow explained in August 11, 2009.
No wonder, climate fear promoters are now openly demanding exaggeration and wishing for death and destruction to convince the public of man-made climate fears. “You have to find ways to exaggerate the threat,” Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Thomas Schelling said in a July 14, 2009 interview with The Atlantic.
Lest there be any doubt that desperation time has set in for the promoters of man-made climate fears, Schelling removed it.

Schelling continued: “I sometimes wish that we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening — you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth — that would get people very concerned about climate change.”

Let’s get this straight. A prominent promoter of man-made global warming is now openly wishing for death and destruction of Americans in order to convince them that man-made global warming is a threat? Climate Depot encourages Schelling and Sen. Stabenow to continue their utter climate silliness. Quite simply, alarmism leads to skepticism. No wonder more ‘More Americans believe in haunted houses than man-made global warming’.

In the end, science rules the day.
Related Links: Climategate Prompts UN scientists turn on each other – Nov. 27, 2009) Oct 2009: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears

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Deadly Earth, Deadly Humans

By Alan Caruba

The earthquake in Haiti is a perfect example of the arrogance of environmentalists who are always running around crying “Save the Earth” or making claims that any or all forms of life are going extinct.

For three decades we have listened to these charlatans claim that the Earth was heating up to a point where, if we didn’t cut back or replace all forms of energy, oil, natural gas and coal, it would become a vast desert devoid of life.

Then, in 1998, the Sun began yet another of its eleven year cycles of low sunspot activity, a diminution of magnetic storms on its surface, and the completely predictable result was a new, perfectly natural cooling cycle, a prelude perhaps to a predictable new ice age.

When I do radio, I like to remind listeners that Mother Nature has a message for humankind. It’s “Get out of the way. Here comes an earthquake, a volcano, a flood, a forest fire, a mudslide, a blizzard, a hurricane, et cetera.”

In an excellent book, “Devastation! The World’s Worst Natural Disasters” by Lesley Newson, she starts by noting that “The Earth is a rocky sphere nearly 8,000 miles in diameter. It is surrounded by a shroud of gases more than 60 miles deep. Sandwiched in between is a fragile layer, only a few miles thick, where humans are able to survive. It is perhaps not surprising that in this tiny zone of life there are occasional upheavals that make survival impossible.”

Haiti is the perfect definition of devastation. As bad as the earthquake’s damage has been, the aftermath will be testimony to the way those not killed in the initial quake will fall victim to the diseases that will ravage the area as well as the difficulty to provide immediate medical care. There are an astonishing number of ways humans can die and Mother Nature is utterly indifferent.

What makes matters worse, however, is the indifference of environmentalists who would deny everyone access to the energy sources needed to fuel a complex, technological, global society beginning with the provision of electricity. The Earth is not running out of coal or oil, only the right to mine it and drill for it.

The first thing to go in Haiti was its communications system. The next was the capacity to fuel means of transportation. The lack of a government was nothing compared to the long-standing failure to provide clean water and, worse, the failure to educate Haitians to compete in a world where literacy and modern skills are vital to survival.

Another factor that will kill many Haitian survivors is the spread of disease by insect and rodent pests. Environmentalists have striven to deny Americans and all others access to one of the greatest developments of the modern era, pesticides with which to control the mosquitoes, the ticks, the fleas, the rats and all the other creatures that constantly threaten humanity.

In April 2005, I wrote a commentary, “The Black Plague and its descendants” that was published in The Washington Times. It noted that the Black Death made its way from inner Asia and, in 1347, Yersina pestis arrived in Europe. What followed was the second greatest catastrophe in the human record. By the time it ended around 1352, a quarter of Europe’s population was dead.

Only World War II killed more people. And yet, as this is written, millions die of malaria in Africa and Asia because some bureaucrat in the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT.

History gives ample evidence that the Earth is a dangerous place, in addition to earthquakes, it is ringed by volcanoes and, in the U.S. the beloved Yellowstone National Park is one giant volcanic caldera which, when it explodes, will alter life as well as take it in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.

Scientists track the nation’s “hurricane season” and all manner of effort is made to anticipate them and warn residents, but even that was not enough when Katrina hit the Gulf States on August 29, 2005.

It is stupid to politicize this event, blaming former President Bush as if he either caused it or failed to respond effectively. No President and no government are prepared for a Category Five hurricane. It was just as stupid not to flee when told it was coming.

It is not for nothing that we call such events “an act of God”, but in reality they are an act of a huge planet, unique among all others in our galaxy because it has spawned all manner of life, including our own.

It is a planet subject to the action or inaction of the Sun. Nothing we do alters that simple fact. It is a planet that must hope to dodge any of the thousands of asteroids that threaten it. It is an Earth whose tectonic plates shift unpredictably. Its interior is unimaginably hot and whose circulation of molten rock carries the heat to the surface, allowing its mantle to keep the core stable.

What I am arguing for is a bit of humility, something that humans are not famous for.

There are six billion of us and the world’s intelligentsia scorns us and seeks ways to ensure as many as possible will die by thwarting the development of genetically modified crops to feed us, by stopping the building of more power generation plants, by making war in the name of a misguided belief in the superiority of a religion like Islam, or the evil desire to grow rich and powerful by ruling vast populations.

In Iran, ruled by certifiably insane ayatollahs, the people are in the streets to overthrow a brutal regime that is determined to create its own nuclear weapons and the world is standing by instead of uniting to destroy their means to do so. A so-called international organization, the United Nations, is shot through with corruption and both unwilling and unable to assert the sanctions to stop the inevitable outcome of doing nothing.

And here in the United States, we have fallen victim to a regime so dedicated to the destruction of the nation’s economy that we wait on the election process to save us from ourselves.

Cognitive Disconnect: Cold Equals Warming

By Alan Caruba

Over the course of Obama’s first year in office I have become convinced that he and his cronies think you are STUPID.

That’s why Nancy Pelosi could say the process by which Obamacare was put together and passed in the House and Senate was “open” and still think that doing it behind closed doors in both chambers while bribing every Democrat vote with public funds went unnoticed by the voters.

She thinks you’re STUPID.

It’s why Harry Reid may still hold onto his job as Majority Leader in the Senate after saying things about his favorite “Negro” that got Trent Lott removed from the same job in just under a month. We tend to forget that, from FDR to JFK, the Democrats thwarted civil rights legislation until they no longer could.

He thinks you’re STUPID.

The latest example of the complete disdain the White House has for the public is a response by press secretary Robert Gibbs who dismissed the worldwide cold snap as just another example of “climate change”, the new term for “global warming.”

On January 6, the Drudge Report headline links were as follows:

Winter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA…
CHILL MAP…
Britain’s big snow shuts cities…
GAS SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT IN UK…
Elderly burn books for warmth?
Army drafted to rescue 1,000 snow stranded motorists…
Vermont sets ‘all-time record for one snowstorm’…
Iowa temps ‘a solid 30 degrees below normal’…
Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years…
3 die in fire at Detroit home; power was cut…
Midwest Sees Near-Record Lows, Snow By The Foot…
Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade; Florida Gov Signs Emergency Order …
Cold snap spurs power rationing in China…

It’s “cognitive disconnect”, a fancy way of saying that the White House and Congress is under the impression that Americans actually believe that “warming” means “colder” and colder “proves” that warming is happening.

As the Drudge headlines then and since reflect, cold weather has historic implications. Indeed, if the Earth had not begun to warm at the end of the last ice age, some 11,500 years ago, the world would be a very different place than it is today. It only took one or two degrees Fahrenheit to bring about the advent of civilization, i.e. the spread of agriculture, the early cities, the movement of people to warmer climes.

The first warming era began around 4,300 BC when the Sahara bloomed with plants and forests spread over Northern Europe and Canada. Then, for a thousand years, cold returned until another short warming occurred around 1,450 BC. Then the cold returned and it wasn’t until the Roman Warm Era began in 250 BC that populations began to grow. When it got cold in Scandinavia, the Vikings climbed into their longboats and began to pillage and then colonize warmer southern lands.

There was a Medieval Warm Period that began around 800 AD which was a time of great achievement and prosperity. There was farming in Scotland and Norway. Greenland was colonized. Vineyards bloomed in England, in Prussia and in Norway.

Trouble returned with the Little Ice Age that began around 1,300 AD and brought with it famine and food riots. The Spanish Armada was destroyed by the horrid weather that afflicted Europe. During the frigid years of the Dalton Minimum (1790 to 1820 AD), Napoleon lost most of his army when he attempted to conquer Russia. In America, the Continental Army or what was left of it over-wintered in Valley Forge.

So weather and, in particular, long cold spells can have a dramatic affect on history. It was so cold in the 1970s that the environmentalists were all predicting a new ice age. Warm weather means farming and that ensures enough food. If you look around the world, people tend to congregate where it is warm.

Telling people that it is warming when it is demonstrably getting colder is STUPID. Assuming that people are stupid enough to believe you is a good way to get thrown out of office.

The collapse of the recent Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in the midst of a huge blizzard that hit that city and much of the northern hemisphere should mark the end of the huge fraud of “global warming.”

Now the U.S. and Europe has to walk itself back from all the idiotic laws passed that were based on the global warming hoax, not the least of which is Cap-and-Trade that is still waiting a vote in the Senate.

Has it occurred to anyone why President Obama took his winter vacation in Hawaii instead of Wyoming or the Dakotas? It wasn’t just because he was allegedly born there.

Temperatures drop, alarmism heats up

This is a strange time for the promoters of apocalyptic global warming – oops, they now prefer “climate change” since the Earth hasn’t been warming for a while – to assail skeptics (like me) as Sun columnist Tom Schaller did this week. (See “Climate skeptics are denying facts, not ‘theories'” on this page Jan 5.) He says “deniers” are caught up in absurdities and self-delusions.

It’s weird timing because, much to the dismay of the believers that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing what will quickly be cataclysmic warming that must be thwarted by any means possible (even though there is really nothing that can effectively reverse such a climate change if it is under way), the reality is we are in the grip of exceedingly cold temperatures throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere.

This is the so-called Gore Effect in hyper-overdrive. The Gore Effect is the phenomenon of chilly weather, up to and including blizzards, uncannily striking an area either shortly before, during or shortly after the former vice president makes an appearance there to drone on before enthusiastic true believers about how the “Earth has a fever” and all that rot.

To help understand that it is alarmists, not deniers, who are caught up in absurdities and self-delusions, consider some news headlines from recent days: “Over 1,200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in U.S.”; “Britain braced for heaviest snowfall in fifty years”; “World under arctic siege”; “Winter could be worst for 25 years in U.S.A.”; ” Vermont sets all-time record for one snowstorm”; “Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade”; “Seoul buried under heaviest snowfall in 70 years.”

This is just a brief sampling of such headlines. It could easily continue through the rest of my allotted space here. The point is we are not warming, we are now cooling – which in the absurd thinking of die-hard alarmists means global warming is the cause of this abnormal cooling.

The assertion of such nonsense in the face of what can be seen and felt by normal human beings no doubt helps stoke the palpable lack of interest they now have in the issue. The BBC managed, for example, to have five of its correspondents speculate on the important things the world faces in 2010, and there was a single, buried mention of climate matters. This would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.

Professor Schaller dismisses the importance of the leaked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. that revealed the efforts of leading climate-alarmist scientists to fiddle with data and stifle dissenting peer opinions (the Climategate scandal) saying deniers are misrepresenting the e-mails, which show nothing more than “a legitimate disagreement among scientists.” Most of Big Media would agree with that, having fervently embraced the global warming religion.

On this newspaper’s editorial page, we often read predictions of impending calamity unless we adopt the prescriptions of the alarmists, massively taxing carbon emissions, drastically curtailing the use of fossil fuels and otherwise shackling our already troubled world economy to address global warming, uh, climate change.

In a letter to Mr. Schaller, a listener of mine, a physicist, said this: “Climategate doesn’t prove that man-made climate warming doesn’t exist. But I’m pretty sure that is not the points that most make, and even if some make it, is that the viewpoint you should address? Shouldn’t you address the most valid point rather than the weakest ones? The main point is that Climategate undercuts the supposed strength of the case made that man-made climate warming is proved.”

Most people aren’t very much aware that climate changes naturally, sometimes quite drastically. What the well-funded proponents of climate alarmism have found most helpful is that the people can therefore be persuaded that natural change is actually unnatural and is caused by human activity.

So here we are, plagued by a severe winter, much like the ones in the 1970s that helped an earlier generation of alarmist scientists peddle the doomsday scenario of an impending ice age. I do believe there’s a greater danger to humanity from that possibility than from any warming trend. Bundle up.

Ron Smith can be heard weekdays, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., on 1090 WBAL-AM and WBAL .com. His column appears Fridays in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is rsmith@wbal.com.

Source

Over 1200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in the USA, more in progress

From the “weather is not c..c..cl..climate” department, cold and snow hits hard. Meanwhile, Hot Weather Convinces Media of Climate Change; Cold Weather Ignored.

click for source data

And it heads far south too. A hard freeze warning has been issued for the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area: And lest somebody say that this cold event isn’t significant, I’ll let the NWS do the talking here: Longest Stretch of Cold Weather in 15 to 25 Years Possible This Week …Longest Stretch of Much Below Normal Temperatures in 15 to 25 Years Possible… Temperatures are expected to remain much below normal over all of south Florida this week, with the possibility of even colder temperatures this upcoming weekend. For detailed information on expected temperatures, please follow the indicated links for our textual and graphical forecasts. For freeze/wind chill watches and warnings, please check our hazards page. It is not unheard of to have freezing or near-freezing temperatures in south Florida each winter. In fact, inland areas south and west of Lake Okeechobee experience freezing temperatures at least once a year on average. Over the metro and coastal areas of south Florida, freezing temperatures are less frequent, but even in these areas freezing temperatures have occurred about every 5 to 10 years on average. Temperatures drop to at least 35 about every 1 to 2 years in the Naples area, and about every 2 years in the outlying areas of southeast Florida. For the urban areas of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, temperatures drop to at least 35 degrees about 2 to 3 times a decade, At West Palm Beach, the average is about every 1 to 2 years. What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region. However, our current weather pattern is what is referred to as a “blocking pattern”. This means that weather systems that typically move from west to east at fairly regular intervals are instead remaining in place for several days. A strong low pressure system over northern New England and eastern Canada is being “blocked” by a large high pressure system near Greenland. This in turn is creating a stationary high pressure system over the western U.S. and Canada. The result of this blocked flow is an uninterrupted and prolonged flow of air from the Arctic region of Canada southward over the eastern two-thirds of the country, including Florida. Temperatures have dropped to below 50 degrees for three consecutive mornings over almost all of south Florida, with temperatures dropping to 45 or lower from Collier County east to Palm Beach County and points north. The latest forecast calls for lows to drop below 45 degrees over all of south Florida through Thursday morning. This would give 6 consecutive days of sub-50 and/or 45 degree-or-lower temperatures. Following are the dates of the last time we had at least 6 consecutive days of low temperatures below 50 degrees in southeast Florida: Miami and Fort Lauderdale: January 2001 Record is 13 days in Miami (January – February 1940) and 12 days in Fort Lauderdale in January 1956 West Palm Beach: January 2003 Record for West Palm Beach is 12 days set in December 2000-January 2001 and January 1956. Following are the dates of the last time we had 6 consecutive days of low temperatures of 45 degrees or lower in Naples; Naples: December 1989 Record for Naples is 8 days in January 1977. Following are the dates of the last time we had 5 consecutive days of low temperatures of 40 degrees or lower in Moore Haven; Moore Haven: January 24-28, 2001. Record for Moore Haven is 9 days from December 31, 2000 to January 8, 2001. Therefore, it’s been at least 7 years since we’ve had a prolonged stretch of temperatures in the 40s and 30s, with some areas going back as far as 21 years! Taking into account the daily average temperature, it’s possible that we’ll have up to 5 consecutive days of temperatures averaging at least 10-15 degrees below normal. For most of south Florida, the last time we had a stretch that cold was in 1995, with some areas going back to the mid to late 1980s. Here’s a sampling of headlines around the world: Temps Plunge to Record as Cold Snap Freezes North, East States
 Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years
Vermont sets ‘all-time record for one snowstorm’
Iowa temps ‘a solid 30 degrees below normal’
Power goes out at Reagan National outside DC
Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years
Peru’s mountain people ‘face extinction because of cold conditions’…
Beijing – coldest in 40 years
World copes with Arctic weatherWinter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA
Britain braced for heaviest snowfall in 50-years
GAS SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT IN UK
Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade
Northern Sweden on the way to 50 degrees below zero

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Great Britain Meets Cold Reality



There is a price to pay for imposing “global warming” policies on an entire nation as our English cousins have been doing now for decades; closing coal mines, building wind farms, believing nonsense about carbon dioxide causing warming, supporting the Kyoto Protocols and the recent UN Climate Change conference. Sooner or later reality imposes itself and, inevitably, innocent people die as a result.

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Life in extreme cold around the world


While extreme winter weather in parts of Europe, Asia and the US has brought normal life to a virtual standstill for millions of people, many other inhabited places manage to function where such sub-zero temperatures are routine.

In the north-eastern Russian Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the village of Oymyakon is commonly called the coldest populated place on Earth. Situated in an area of Siberia nicknamed “Stalin’s Death Ring” (a former destination for political exiles), Oymyakon boasts an average winter temperature of -45C, with a one-time world record low of -71.2C.
Yakutsk (file photo)
Welcome to Yakutsk

It is home to several hundred people, and until recently a single hotel with no hot water and an outside toilet. While a flurry of snow in Western Europe can cause schools there to close for days, Oymyakon’s solitary school shuts only when temperatures fall below -52C (the school has only enjoyed the luxury of an indoor toilet since 2008).

Most homes in Oymyakon still burn coal and wood for heat and enjoy few modern conveniences – mobile phones, even if a service was available in the area, would not work in such extreme cold.

Nothing grows there, a single shop provides the town’s provisions and with jobs in short supply most locals resort to reindeer-breeding, hunting and ice-fishing for their livelihoods. Ironically, Oymyakon means “non-freezing water”, situated as it is to a nearby hot spring.

‘Don’t wear glasses’

Oymyakon is a three-day drive away from the nearest population centre, Yakutsk, the capital of Sakha and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the coldest city in the world.

More than 210,000 people live there, despite a constant state of permafrost, and temperatures in the winter which average about -40C.

COLDEST RECORDED PLACES
Vostok, Antarctica: -89.2C
Oymyakon, Russia: -71.1C
Verkhoyansk, Russia: -67.7C
Snag, Yukon, Canada: -63C
Prospect Creek, Alaska, US: -62.1C

The city still manages to run, however. It is served by two airports and is home to a university and several schools, theatres and museums. Residents reportedly leave their vehicles running all day and warn visitors against wearing glasses outside, as they will freeze to a person’s face.

Yakutsk sits on the western bank of the Lena River, but winters can be so severe that even the river can freeze sufficiently thick to allow traffic to drive straight across to the other side.

Over in the Western hemisphere, extreme cold is also a perennial feature of many towns and cities. In the United States, International Falls in Minnesota, and Fraser, Colorado, with average mean temperatures around 0 to 2C, have for years vied for the title of Icebox of the Nation. The battle was only resolved in the courts, with the accolade being awarded to International Falls.

Of the two places, International Falls has recorded the lowest temperature, of -40C in 1967. Not one for decrying the cold, the city celebrates its wintry fame, with an annual four-day Icebox Days festival, which includes events such as frozen turkey bowling, snow sculpting and candlelit skiing.

Tourism is the city’s second most profitable industry, a side-product of freezing conditions not lost on other places which live year-round in the grip of the cold (such as in the Swedish village of Jukkasjarvi, which boasts the world’s largest ice hotel).

Call that cold?

The title of the consistently coldest place in the US has frequently fallen to the town of Stanley in Idaho, which had the highest number of coldest days between 1995 and 2005. While the town’s 100 or so residents enjoy rafting, hiking and fishing in the summer, outdoor pursuits in the winter are confined to snowmobiling and cross-country skiing.
Swimmers in Berlin, Germany (01/01/10)
For some, the freezing cold provides an opportunity for an edifying dip

In Europe, Scandinavia regularly sees some of the continent’s coldest weather and as such is well-equipped to deal with it.

Residents who contacted the BBC News website expressed astonishment at the television pictures and stories of the effect the snow is having in places not used to such conditions.

Maija messaged from Mouhijarvi, in western Finland, deriding the weather in Poland, where temperatures have fallen to as low as -25C.

“Ha! It’s 5pm in Mouhijarvi and the thermometer outside our kitchen window is currently reading -28C. With no cloud cover in sight I would expect the temperature to fall at least a couple of degrees during the evening. Not abnormal here at this time of year,” she said.

Briton Roger Hampton said he travelled 250km from his home in Oslo, Norway, without problems on Wednesday when it was -22C.

“In the town Roros, in central Norway, it has been -40C the last two nights. I have not heard of schools closing and the roads are for the most free,” he said.

In several European countries, including Norway, the use of winter tyres on vehicles is required by law. In contrast, in the UK, where no such law exists, during the wintry weather, drivers there are advised to use their vehicles for essential journeys only.

“Why do the English have this problem every year?”, asks reader Dario More in Germany. “Here, in Dresden, at -13C, I drive my car normally on ice and snow,” he says.

Full credit for this article goes to the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8445831.stm

Not by Fire but by Ice

By Alan Caruba

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

— Robert Frost, American Poet

Considering the thousands of absurd claims made about the discredited fraud of “global warming”, a recent National Geographic News story, “North Magnetic Pole Moving East Due to Core Flux”, struck me as potentially far more significant.

“Earth’s north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles a year due to magnetic changes in the planet’s core, new research says.” The article by Richard A. Lovett, noted that “The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field, but researchers can infer the field’s movements by tracking how Earth’s magnetic field has been changing at the surface and in space.”

Most people are familiar with magnetic north because that is where compass needles actually point. It is not the same as the North Pole and, currently, magnetic north is close to Canada’s Ellesmere Island on the edge of the Arctic. The movement has been erratic since first located by scientists in 1831. In 1904, it began to shift northeastward at about nine miles per year. In 1989, it sped up a bit and is now “galloping toward Siberia.”

If I hadn’t read Robert W. Felix’s latest book, “Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps”, I frankly would have paid little attention to the news, but I had to pause because Felix asks, “Could this movement be the beginning of the next reversal? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Why is this of interest? Because ice ages recur every 11,500 years and right now the Earth is at the end of the latest interglacial period, i.e., the interim between ice ages.

Since ice ages and magnetic reversals appear to occur together, it is entirely likely that what we’re really looking at is the next ice age and, to make matters much worse, a potential magnetic reversal.

“Among the many species of mammals now existing in Europe and Asia, all but six appeared during the past two million years, with no time to evolve,” says Felix, neatly dispatching Charles Darwin’s theory that species evolve over tens of millions of years.

At some point in the past 200,000 years Homo sapiens climbed down out of the trees, stood upright, and began their trek toward what we call civilization and civilization as we know it—the spread of agriculture and the rise of cities—is only about 5,000 years old.

The late paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, said, “We have not a shred of evidence for any genetic improvement since then. I suspect that the average Cro-Magnon, properly trained, could have handled computers with the best of us.”

The bad news about magnetic reversals is that they have often been accompanied by massive extinctions and, as noted, they return in a dependable, predictable cycle. “Mass extinctions,” says Felix, “have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 million years that life has existed on this planet.”

Many scientists maintain that the last magnetic reversal occurred about 780,000 years ago at the Brunhes/Matuyama boundary, but in addition to full-scale reversals, Felix includes magnetic “excursions” in his calculations.

Magnetic excursions are times when the earth’s magnetic north pole moved south for a short while–sometimes as much as 500 years–and then moved back. Magnetic excursions are apparently aborted magnetic reversals, says Felix. They recur about every 11,500 years. And they are deadly.

The last one, the Gothenburg magnetic excursion, took place about 11,500 years ago. Is it just a coincidence that some 40 percent of the large animal species, including the sabre-toothed cat, the mammoth, the mastodon, and the great Dire wolf went extinct at the time? “No,” says Felix. “That was no coincidence.”

Nor is it a coincidence that more than one million huge elliptical holes – some the size of a small city – were blasted into the earth at the same time. Today, those huge holes are sometimes known as Carolina Bays, Grady Ponds, Maryland Basins, or, in Texas, Salinas.

Then there was the Mono Lake magnetic excursion of 23,000 years ago, when the earth descended into catastrophic glaciation, and the mammoths were almost decimated. And prior to that was the Lake Mungo magnetic excursion of 33,500 years ago, when the Neanderthal went extinct and the earth descended into yet another period of glaciation.

If this cycle holds true, says Felix, the next magnetic reversal—–and extinction—-is due any day.

Solar scientists have been watching the sun with a fair amount of trepidation lately. As Felix notes, “At the beginning of each (geological) cycle, magnetic polarity on the Sun reverses and magnetic north becomes magnetic south. No one knows why.”

We are in the Holocene cycle that began about 10,000 years ago.

Anthony Watts, a climate scientist—-one of the many that did not buy into the global warming fraud—-recently reported that “The sun has seen a resurgence of activity in December, with a number of cycle 24 sunspots being seen.” That’s good news because sunspot activity seems to correlate with warming and cooling cycles. The fewer the sunspots, the cooler the Earth becomes.

“If the past two years have taught us anything,” says Watts, “it is that the sun can be tricky and unpredictable.”

Will the next ice age begin shortly? Depends on what you mean by “shortly” because it could be tomorrow or it could be another two centuries or so. One thing is sure; the Earth’s latest interglacial period is nearing an end.

A magnetic reversal would likely have a devastating effect on planet Earth and, frankly, I don’t want to be around when it occurs.

Editor’s Note: To learn more, visit www.iceagenow.com.