Tag: global warming

‘Stop Obsessing About Global Warming’? …Good luck with that, TNR.

I don’t know whether the author is over-writing this piece or whether I’m just tired, but I’m finding this slightly dense reading.  The gist, however, is that environmentalists apparently are having trouble expanding their vision beyond a fairly narrow focus:

…the recent focus of energy thinking has been particularly concentrated on the ways and means of reducing carbon emissions and, linked with that, cutting down energy use, rather than taking energy use as essential for conquering poverty and seeing the environmental challenge within a more comprehensive understanding. There would appear to be an insufficient recognition in global discussion of the need for increased power in the poorer countries. In India, for example, about a third of the people do not have any power connection at all. Making it easier to produce energy with better environmental correlates (and greater efficiency of energy use) may be a contribution not just to environmental planning, but also to making it possible for a great many deprived people to lead a fuller and freer life.

The problem here is this: The New Republic has made the mistake – and many, many people make this mistake – as treating hardcore environmentalists as anything except devout religious believers. Frankly, most Greenies don’t care if India has an awful power distribution grid. If they cared they’d do something about it. Continue reading ‘Stop Obsessing About Global Warming’? …Good luck with that, TNR.

Washington Post (!) editorial writer (!!) slams administration over global warming hysteria.

Oh, this should generate some hate mail for the Washington Post:

The White House released a third iteration of the “U.S. National Climate Assessment,” claiming it is “the most comprehensive scientific assessment ever generated of climate change and its impacts across every region of America and major sectors of the U.S. economy.” The report emphasizes the need for “urgent action to combat the threats from climate change.” Well, here are five reasons voters don’t believe what the White House says on climate change…

Continue reading Washington Post (!) editorial writer (!!) slams administration over global warming hysteria.

Dear Democratic party: please campaign on the UN’s call to cut economic growth.

Please.

Please.

A United Nations science panel issued a sobering wake-up call to world policymakers Sunday, warning that countries must make dramatic changes in their energy consumption, their use of technology and even their ways of life to avert the catastrophic effects of climate change.

The only options that stand a chance of heading off the worst of the harm would require cutting at least slightly into economic growth in the coming decades, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. Nations may even have to make ambitious attempts to remove carbon pollution from the atmosphere — not just limit how much comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes.

Continue reading Dear Democratic party: please campaign on the UN’s call to cut economic growth.

Thank God for global warming: it’s apparently staving off glaciers in Maryland.

It’s goram snowing.

AGAIN.

Oh, well, at least it waited until the kids were off to school this time.  Even the Maryland school system would be hard pressed to turn half an inch of snow on the grass into a two hour delay when the students are already safely in their classrooms.

Oh, please, no more winter…

But apparently that is not an actual option.

 

I know that climate is not weather, but dammit: the global warming people promised me higher humidity, higher temperatures, and higher CO2. I was told “greenhouse effect.” So I want to see some goram warming around here. I had half a foot of snow dropped on me yesterday. In March. In Maryland. I feel that I have been lied to.

On the latest kabuki from Senate Democrats. #globalwarming

Three things to take away from this ‘talkathon’ on global warming planned for tonight by Senate Democrats:

  • Indeed, do not call it a ‘filibuster.’ Strictly speaking, the last one of those we had was from Rand Paul.  This will be more like Ted Cruz’s Obamacare session, except that there will be more individuals involved (largely because the Democrats do not have a single Senator that can match the rhetorical skills of Ted Cruz, let alone duplicate his stamina).
  • I betcha none of these people will take questions. Like the one about why all the climate models have been increasingly at odds with observed data for about the last, oh, twenty years or so*.
  • And this says it all, really: “Democrats have 28 senators scheduled to speak through Monday night, but some of the party’s most vulnerable senators facing re-election this year—Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kay Hagan of North Carolina—are notably missing from the lineup.”

Continue reading On the latest kabuki from Senate Democrats. #globalwarming

Al Gore: ALIENS! ALIENS causing global WARMING! They’re stealin’ our carbon!

OK, some quick science (explained well here at this site).  The atmosphere of Venus is utterly inhospitable for life as we know it: too hot, too much carbon dioxide, and almost completely lacking in water vapor.  And all three characteristics are due to a combination of two factors: the lack of a magnetic field on Venus, and the solar wind (which is also considerably stronger, that much closer in).  Because there is no magnetosphere, the solar wind interacts with the Venusian atmosphere much more strongly than it would otherwise; this has the effect of stripping out hydrogen from the atmosphere.  No hydrogen = no water vapor.  No water vapor = no hydrosphere, pretty much no opportunities to turn carbon dioxide into something else.

You’re probably remembering this situation as the ‘runaway greenhouse effect:’ an argument that we used to hear a lot more of in the context of global warming before it became clear that we were unlikely to replicate Venusian conditions* unless we first figured out how to turn off Earth’s magnetic field**. At any rate, that’s why Venus is so danged hot.

It is not because of aliens, Mister Gore. Continue reading Al Gore: ALIENS! ALIENS causing global WARMING! They’re stealin’ our carbon!

@SonnyBunch gives the whole game away…

…when it comes to the global warming crowd:

One of my smaller pleasures in life is joking during winter that, by now, I was promised flying cars and global warming. If you haven’t noticed, it’s really cold out! Where’s all this global warming that was supposed to deliver us from 7 degree weather? We’ve been bamboozled. Etc.

Whenever one makes a joke like this, the super serial types get super serial, put their scolding hats on, and start shaking their fingers. “Don’t do that! Just because it’s cold out, that doesn’t mean global warming isn’t real! The temps are going up! Dogs and cats, living together! Sputter sputter sputter!” See, for instance, this. Or this far less literate take (BOROWITZ WARNING). And that’s why these jokes are so fun to make. The global warming alarmists are the easiest people to troll in the entire world. You don’t even have to make a particularly good or original joke to set them off. Just say “Man, this cold weather sure does disprove global warming,” sit back, and watch the fireworks.

Continue reading @SonnyBunch gives the whole game away…

Spam Gore Spammity Spam Global Warming and Spam.

Oh, my, but this is funny.

In 2009, at its peak, Gore’s group [the so-called ‘Climate Reality Project’] had more than 300 employees, with 40 field offices across 28 states, and a serious war chest: It poured $28 million into advertising and promotion, and paid about $200,000 in lobbying fees at the height of the cap-and-trade energy bill fight on Capitol Hill.

Today, the group has just over 30 people on staff and has abandoned its on-the-ground presence — all of its field offices have since shut down — in favor of a far cheaper digital advocacy plan run out of Washington. Advertising expenses have decreased from the millions to the thousands, and the organization no longer lobbies lawmakers. Donations and grants have declined, too — from $87.4 million in 2008 to $17.6 million in 2011, and many of its high-profile donors have drifted away, one telling BuzzFeed she now sees the group’s initial vision as “very naïve.”

Slick and omnipresent television ads from the group’s early years, produced by the same agency that made the Geico Auto Insurance gecko famous, have been replaced by smaller web-based programs. One ongoing effort, “Reality Drop,” helps activists post boilerplate comments to blog entries written by climate change skeptics.

So, basically, Al Gore is now a spambot.

Moe Lane

PS: No, I don’t really think that I need to respond further. I mean. SPAMBOT.

PPS: I saw this on Twitter, but I don’t remember from whom, sorry.