WhackyNation

I never thought I would see an American television network sink to the level depicted in Paddy Chayefski’s brilliant 1976 film “Network.”  But now I have.  And ABC has managed to sink even lower.

According to the Business and Media Institute:

Working with left-wing activists, the network is warning people that civilization is poised to go the way of the Roman Empire and the Mayan civilization. The Web site promo for “Earth 2100” discusses “100 years from now when New York is abandoned.”

On a special website ABC is asking its viewers to create videos depicting what they think is going to happen to the world the rest of this century.  These videos will be incorporated into the fall program.

We need you to bring this story to life — to use your imagination to create short videos about what it would be like to live through the next century if we stay on our current path. Using predictions from top experts, we will feed you detailed briefings from the years 2015, 2050, 2070 and 2100 — and you will report back about the dangers that are unfolding before your eyes.

Your videos will be combined with the projections of top scientists, historians, and economists to form a powerful web–based narrative about the perils of our future. We will also select the most compelling reports to form the backbone of our two–hour primetime ABC News broadcast: Earth 2100, airing this fall.

Now science fiction passes for news and public affairs.  And what’s more disgusting is that this show is being promoted and shown in the current election cycle as a blatant attempt to empower the global socialist environmentalists who control the left wing of the Democrat Party in the United States.

It’s clear that reputable news professionals no longer have influence and power at the ABC Network.  The network has gone to hell.

What can we do?  I suggest the only thing that will catch the attention of the Board of Directors is an income loss from advertisers and a clammering from affiliates such as KOMO-AM-FM-TV in Seattle.   What we can do is simple.  Don’t watch, don’t listen to ABC programming or programming aired by its affiliates.  Tell your friends and neighbors to turn off ABC and KOMO and let the business community know.  This crap has to end.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth produced as opera?  Yep, that’s what La Scala is planning to do for the 2011 season.

I suggest the composer Giorgio Battistelli consider the genre of the Italian farce.  Some sugested arias: “Don’t thinko, just panicko!”  “Passo the Kool-Aid-o”  and “Ignor-o, my ‘D’-o in science-o from Harvard-o.”

Boy, that man-made global warming is some powerful stuff.  Not only are the polar caps on Mars melting, but now Sicence Daily is reporting that Jupiter’s atmosphere is heating up as well.  Another red spot has shown up!

We better go stone age as fast as we can in order to keep the whole solar system from over heating.

By the way, if you want some laughs to explain why surface temperatures in the United States are rising check out www.surfacestations.org … Some of our official recording stations have air conditioners or trash burners next to the official thermometers.  What a hoot!

Author of Cool It, economist Bjorn Lomborg writes it the Wall Street Journal today:

The pain caused by the global food crisis has led many people to belatedly realize that we have prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of people. That is only a small part of the real problem.

This crisis demonstrates what happens when we focus doggedly on one specific – and inefficient – solution to one particular global challenge. A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself. The fortune spent on this exercise could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a lot less about.

Read more…

I attended Senator John McCain’s environmental panel held today at Cedar River Watershed Educational facility.

I heard a lot of common sense.  Sure, I heard McCain say he believes in man-made global warming because so many scientists say so.  And he also said we need to reduce our carbon pollution.

But then, the surprise to me, is that he didn’t say or advocate any solution that I wouldn’t support.  He promoted nuclear energy.  I’m okay with that.  He wants better batteries for cars.  I’m okay with that.  He wants an education program to encourage recycling.  I’m okay for that.  He said nuclear is more economical than clean-coal technology.  Makes sense.

Then he said he was wary of government subsidies, bringing up how he voted against the ethanol subsidy.  The subsidy ended up “distorting the market,” he said.  I’m okay with that.

Everything he said had a weight of economic evaluation, something you don’t get very much from Democrat candidates.  For instance, McCain pointed out that more attention should be focused on methane because that gas “is 25 times more polluting than carbon.”

Panelist Steve Litzgow, Mercer Island City Counilman and Republican candidate for the House in the 41st District, pointed out that greenhouse gas solutions are similar to what the internet was 15 years ago.  “One-third of the ideas work, another third don’t, and the last third will work in ten years.”  He added, “It’s a matter of priorities” because there is only so much money.  Again, a reasoned economic evaluation of attacking the problem.

Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland pointed out that Washington State should not be penalized by possible new laws by the date set for the baseline measurement for carbon emmissions.  Sutherland said the state has been doing a lot since 1990 to re-plant forests and protect the environment when other states have not.

Another panelist, Sally Jewel, CEO of R.E.I, pointed out that the average kid spends an amazing 46 1/2 hours in front of the TV each week and only 30 minutes in unstructured play.  That comment actually gave me less insight on the environment and more on the popularity of Senator Barack Obama among today’s youth.

Jewel told McCain that reducing automobile time of commuting employees would do a lot to reduce the carbon footprint of her organization.  She said she is seeing a steady growth in internet sales which she believes is healthier for the atmosphere than in-store sales.

All in all, I heard reasoned responses to protecting the environment.  I could live with what I heard today.  And McCain can go around saying that “global warming is real” if that’s what people want to hear.

Governor Dan Evans was also a panelist.  In the audience were many Republican leaders including Senator Slade Gorton and State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser.  Of course, big environmentalist and former Secretary of State Ralph Munro who heads up the Washington campaign for McCain, was there showing support.  

Republicans are providing the independent voter with reasoned environmental solutions.   The question is will the media talk about it?

Climate Crisis!!!!!! We need international answers!!!! We need a nationalized effort!!!! We need to do more than change light bulbs!!!! We must change the laws!!!!!

Gore’s latest slide show (cut down to 20 minutes) was shot last month and posted on Ted. Notice that references to Kilamanjaro and hurricaines are gone … but now the artic ice cap is going to be gone in five years!

Perhaps the most laughable part of the presentation is an advertisement that will be shown to scare Americans into action. The cartoon setting is a hot, traffic congested city where CO2 emmissions are visualized as falling blue elephants which land on people and cars and crush them.  Subtle, huh?

As I know most of you disagree with Gore’s hype, I think you all sure see the slide show to know what the high priest of climate crisis is up to.

The Goracle is not using the phrase “global warming” so much anymore.

Guess he’s noticed the news that temperatures seem to be cooling.

And “climate change” doesn’t pack the punch.  Hell, we all agree that climate changes.

But now his latest buzzword: “climate crisis!”  Get ready for every copycat liberal blogger to be using that phrase.

By the way, there is no “climate crisis.”

Remember the ozone-hole scare, a false alarm dreamed up by fanatics with no conception of honest science? Well, mercifully, it’s a thing of the past, and even the fanatics have indicated by their silence on the issue that there was absolutely no proof of a permanent ozone hole endangering earthlings.

Unfortunately, the fanatics moved on to another false alarm — global warming — and they are showing no signs of dropping that hot potato at this time. But they should look to the reckless days of their ozone-hole ravings to realize that their global-warming tantrums are just as ridiculous.

It wasn’t more than a dozen years ago that the question was being asked: Was the ozone layer being depleted? The answer then seemed to depend upon which scientists one could believe — the phony ones or the legitimate ones. The primary culprit in spreading the nonsense about an ozone-hole danger, was, of all agencies, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which certainly should have known better.

The ozone-hole alarm probably would have died an early and much deserved death if it hadn’t been for the periodic scare reports issued by N.A.S.A. Honest scientists and climatologists tried to clear the air years ago. First, they said, there was really no such thing as an “ozone hole.” An occasional thinning layer of ozone was discerned, they said, but there was no “hole.” Second, the protective layer has been shifting since the dawn of time, and it has been thinner in some places and with more concentrated ozone in others.

And third, they asserted, as in the past, the thinning layer observed (with alarm) by N.A.S.A. moved on in a few weeks or vanished altogether. ‘Twas ever this, and will continue to be so. Responsible scientists deplored the unwarranted alarms then, and they continue to do so today about the fleeting ozone hole — as they have tried to do with regard to global warming.

The unfortunate fact was that N.A.S.A. did not listen to the responsible scientists. Like other bureaucracies, the agency needed occasional scare stories to support its pet projects and to make sure that it could pad its budget whenever it had to go to Congress for money, something it continues to do today.

I remember that, at the time the ozone-hole scare was at its height, Stephen Schneider, a N.A.S.A. spokesman, made this pronouncement to the nation’s press:

“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

Honest! A federal-agency spokesman with a lot of clout said that and believed every word of what he had said. Yet, the print and broadcast news media failed, willingly or unknowingly, to challenge Schneider’s assertion that a federal scientific agency had to “offer up scary scenarios” to substantiate a phony belief.

Now, I submit, that statement from Schneider is truly a “scary scenario.” And, although the ozone-hole alarm has been shelved as an issue by the fanatics, the myth of global warming as a great danger to the earth continues to hold sway in the eyes of people like Al Gore and other fairy-tale proponents. How long must we wait for the scientific truth to prevail?

One of my heroes in the climate change debate is Chris Horner who today took on the Washington Post and the rest of the drive-by media for not getting the facts right.

Today he points out that all of the “cool” nations that signed onto Kyoto have NOT cut their rate of greenhouse emissions, but only the “uncool” United States HAS REDUCED its rate of emissions.

Its seems the “Kyoto” policies of the environmental socialists are not effective.  And it seems the majority of America’s news reporters are so biased towards the socialist camp that they cannot get the story straight.

Definitely worth a read.

Gallup recently asked Americans what the most important issue facing the country today.

Global warming didn’t even get a mention out of 27 different responses.

Governor Christine $pendmore, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and the state Democrats are a little out of touch for spending money on foolish global warming programs when Americans don’t give a rip.

Are you aware that Governor $pendmore is about to sign HB 2815 which directs government to combat the hoax global warming by wasting tax dollars and forcing you to change tour transportation habits whether you like it or not?

According to Lisa Stiffler of the P-I:

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in Washington, because electricity is generated mostly by low-emitting hydroelectric dams. To cut emissions, the number of cars and trucks on the road will have to drop.

The legislation calls for miles-traveled reductions of 18 percent by 2020, 30 percent by 2035, and 50 percent by 2050.

Democrats like Barack Obama talk about change.  The change they have in mind is absolute government control over you.

“Change is going to take place, and we need to prepare for it,” Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma, told her colleagues before Wednesday’s vote.

Hey, but it’s only money.

As if most consumers really care, the Democrat controlled legislature sent a bill to Governor $pendmore which

requires all new passenger cars, medium duty passenger vehicles, and light duty trucks beginning in model year 2010 to display a label that discloses comparative greenhouse gas emissions for that vehicle.

Senate Bill 6309 was sponsored by all the loon left including Senators Rockefeller, Kohl-Welles, Jacobsen, Regala, Oemig, Pridemore, Murray, Marr, Hatfield, Kline and Tom.

Don’t you feel good knowing how much carbon dioxide your beast will breath into the air?

According to Daily Tech:

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on. No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here.  The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Read more.

John Coleman also blasted the new ownership of the weather channel for being an outlet to global warming alarmism.

Read the article.

What on earth has gone wrong with the once reliable, objective Seattle Times? When I worked there for close to 20 years as a critic-at-large and a daily columnist, objectivity was the byword of reporting, whether the coverage was in politics, government, education, sports, and all the arts.

As an indication of what has happened, yesterday’s Times proclaimed at the top of Page 1 this most objectionable and unsupported headline in the form of a question: “Should roads have tolls to fight global warming?” By great coincidence, the headline immediately underneath read: “There was another side to the story.” It was totally unrelated.

However, I was immediately struck by the fact that the Times’ editors should have applied the sense of the second headline to the outlandish statement of the first. That takes some explaining, and I will do so with the internal pain brought on by the misguided tactics of a once great newspaper.

For reasons that are not easily explained, the Times has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the greatest hoax of the century, global warming. So have most other American newspapers, but that’s no reason for the Times to follow suit. When I worked there, every issue was examined by reporters and editors from both sides, pro and con.

Not so with global warming in this new age of one-sided reporting. If the Times operated on the same principles it employed years ago, it would have solicited the opinion of the great majority of honest, responsible scientists and particularly the opinion of the best climatologists in the U.S. and the world.

The “other side” of the issue would have alerted the Times’ staff to the fact that stratospheric warming trends have come and gone for centuries without harming the earth — and that the extreme environmentalists’ claim that the warming is caused by mankind is totally untrue.

All the Times’ reporters had to do to discover the truth was to take a relatively short ride down to the small town of Cave Junction, Oregon, and interview one of America’s brightest scientists, Dr. Arthur Robinson, president and research professor of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

A few years ago, Dr. Robinson sent out a petition to climatologists across the U.S. and in foreign countries, asking them their opinion regarding climate change. At last count, 22,000 of them signed the petition, stating that global warming was a hoax and that man has had nothing to do with the occasional warming periods.

That’s why I said the Times should have applied the sense of the second headline, “There was another side of the story,” to its lopsided global-warming view. The second headline referred to a local murder, but The Times should have adopted something like it to investigate the other side of the global-warming fantasy.

Incidentally, the first headline referred to the completely wacky notion that the Legislature is considering placing tolls on new road construction to pay for the “damage” vehicular emissions are doing by “contributing to global warming.” What a farce! But it will be an expensive farce the state’s taxpayers are going to feel in their wallets!

Can’t make this stuff up.

You global warmers are just idiots.

Once again another scientist has published a paper proving global warmers like Ron Sims just don’t know what they’re talking about.

Håkan Grudd says tree-ring data

show generally higher temperature estimates than previous reconstructions based on Torneträsk tree-ring data. The late-twentieth century, however, is not exceptionally warm in the new record: On decadal-to-centennial timescales, periods around ad 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were equally warm, or warmer. The 200-year long warm period centered on ad 1000 was significantly warmer than the late-twentieth century (p < 0.05) and is supported by other local and regional paleoclimate data. The new tree-ring evidence from Torneträsk suggests that this “Medieval Warm Period” in northern Fennoscandia was much warmer than previously recognized.

When are the global warmers going to admit that temperatures fluctuate normally over the years and that current temperature trends are nothing to be scared of?

The Democratically controlled Washington Legislature and Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire are not only playing strange games with the state budget and failing to find ways to curb spending and the growing pressure on taxpayers. Now they also are proposing to soak the state’s citizens with the millions needed to support a terribly misguided and unscientific approach to non-existent global warming.

One wonders if the state’s citizens are aware of the skullduggery being hatched in the minds of the Demo leaders. They certainly are not getting the dangerous message from the Liberals in the state’s print and broadcast news media. The media’s Liberals seem to be quite satisfied with the errant plans of Gregoire and the Democratic Party.

In recent days, for example, the House gave its OK to the governor’s proposal to create limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. The Associated Press characterized it as “another step in the state’s long-term drive to curb the causes of climate change.” In case you weren’t aware of it, the term, “climate change,” is the Liberals’ motif to soften what they are really talking about — global warming.

Like the Left-leaning news media, the Democrats have completely ignored the other side of the global-warming issue — the side represented by the great majority of honest and reputable climatologists, who have been trying to warn the public that global warming and climate change are a hoax and that it would be folly to damage the nation’s economy severely by spending billions trying to check a danger that doesn’t exist.

Whatever happened to the news-gathering tradition I remember so well and practiced constantly as a reporter, columnist, and, eventually, as managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer? That tradition required the presentation of both sides on every issue and total objectivity in reporting the news.

If the news media, as well as the Liberal Democrats, were interested in seeking the truth about global warming, they could find it quickly and emphatically just a short distance south of Washington State’s southern border in a small town called Cave Junction, Oregon.

There resides one of the finest, most intelligent scientists of America, Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, president and research professor of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. In an effort to find the truth about the global warming or climate-change issue, he sent out a petition a few years ago to thousands of bonafide scientists in the U.S. and abroad.

At last count, more than 22,000 of the respondents, most of them acclaimed climatologists, signed the petition, saying that global warming was a hoax, that stratospheric warming conditions have come and gone from the time the earth was born, and, specifically, that mankind was not responsible for the occasional warming.

Nevertheless, Governor Gregoire and the Democrats prefer to believe the unscientific, idiotic bleatings of a global warmer like former Vice President Al Gore — as well as the Europen contingent of misguided global warmers, including the Nobel board members who voted to give Gore a Peace Prize.

In the meantime, the flawed global-warming bill passed by the House resides in the State Senate, where it will most assuredly be passed by the Demos, who aren’t interested in determining the truth about a major worldwide hoax called global warming.

Lorne Gunter of the National Post reports:

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

This is so good.  Read more, you global warmers!