Think Progress misinformed about science, confuses general air pollution with CO2 endangerment and headline connects 'thinking' with 250 deaths

Note from editor: This post was criminally hacked. You can see lines drawn through most of the copy. Many of my posts have been vandalized in the past few years in various ways. The tiniest bit of free speech is too much for some people. ed.
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Think Progress unscientifically picks a quote from a UN climate guy who has equivocated numerous times on the topic of global warming. In this case, they pick a quote from the guy saying 'global warming is unequivocal.' Without global warming, the guy has no job.

4/28/11, "Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers," Think Progress, Brad Johnson

"Today, news agencies are still tallying reports of deaths from the most devastating storm system in the United States in decades:

Dozens of massive tornadoes tore a town-flattening streak across the South, killing at least 250 people in six states and forcing rescuers to carry some survivors out on makeshift stretchers of splintered debris. Two of Alabama’s major cities were among the places devastated by the deadliest twister outbreak in nearly 40 years.

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”

The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists."

Update: @weatherchannel:

Death toll continues to rise. Now stands at 267. Alabama accounts for 180 of these. #severe"

-------------------------------------

4/12/10, Global warming has stopped since at least 2003 per Nobel UN scientist, Kevin Trenberth: "'Missing' heat may affect future climate change," from Newswire, Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research

• Trenberth: "“The reprieve we’ve had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue." ... He warns now 'missing' heat will haunt us. "“The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later,” says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the lead author....Earth’s surface temperatures have largely leveled off in recent years....

• That means about half the total amount of heat is unaccounted for."...

===============================
To Think Progress: If it can't be reproduced, it's not "science." Sorry.

11/29/09, "Climate change data dumped," TimesOnline UK, by Jonathan Leake

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

• It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was

forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape —

• were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data. In a statement on its website, the CRU said:

• “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures.

• Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled.

That is now impossible. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records.

• “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.

• So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue.

• The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years. He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans.

Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity."
============================

11/19/09, "Climatologists baffled by global warming time-out," over 10 years, Der Spiegel, by G. Traufetter

• "Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years.
• 
  
• Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents."...

-----------------------------------------
There are other examples from Mr. Trenberth as well, but this is a start. ed.


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California water politics driven by powerful groups aiming to remove automobiles from the state (except for the rich)-Sac. Bee

"Those who prefer high-density urban growth, rather than low-density suburbs, believe that restricting water supplies will help their cause. They don't, in other words, want Californians to have an abundant water supply for both agricultural and non-farm uses."...

4/3/11, "Dan Walters: California's water flow squandered," Sacrmento Bee, Dan Walters

"Those who really believe California has a water shortage should spend five minutes standing in Old Sacramento, watching the Sacramento River.

Operators of the three major dams on the Sacramento and its tributaries – Shasta, Oroville and Folsom – have opened their gates widely, sending boiling torrents of water downstream. They must draw down reservoirs behind the dams to control anticipated

• runoff from one of the heaviest mountain snowpacks on record....

In a rational world, the extra flows in this and other high-water seasons would be diverted into what's called "off-stream storage," either into underground aquifers or into reservoirs such as San Luis Reservoir on the Pacheco Pass between Los Banos and Hollister.

However, San Luis, which holds more than 2 million acre-feet, is already full to the brim, and Southern California reservoirs are nearly full.

State water authorities have long called for more off-stream storage to capture high flows. For instance, had the proposed Sites reservoir in western Colusa County been built years ago, as it should have been, it would be absorbing another 2 million acre-feet of water for use in drought years and to stabilize flows on the Sacramento River.

If global warming has the widely predicted effect of reducing snowfall and increasing rain, off-stream storage will become even more critical. But Sites, like other aspects of California water policy, has been tied up in political stalemate for decades. It's not a conflict over water, but rather one of competing visions of how California should develop as it gains population in the 21st century.

Those who prefer high-density urban growth, rather than low-density suburbs, believe that restricting water supplies

• will help their cause.
  

They don't, in other words, want Californians to have an abundant water supply

• for both agricultural and non-farm uses."...

.

Muslim group says royal wedding logical target, Queen guilty of war crimes

4/27/11, "Muslim group claims royal wedding is legitimate terror target," Telegraph UK, photo AP

• European multi-culturalism is so sophisticated.

via WZ

Border taxes may be needed for 'hidden' CO2 emissions that sneak across state lines-BBC (state owned media)

(The UK government profits if people believe in CO2 endangerment)

4/25/11, "Carbon emissions 'hidden' in imported goods revealed," BBC, Roger Harrabin (employee of the state)

"The extent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions "hidden" in imported goods is growing, according to two studies.

Official data do not include emissions from making imported goods but both sets of researchers say they should.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports 26% of global emissions come from

• producing goods for trade.

The Carbon Trust found such "embedded" CO2 could negate domestic carbon cuts planned in the UK up to 2025....

"It raises questions about consumption patterns, and whether countries should consider border taxes on imports from countries with no controls on CO2 emissions… though this is controversial and will be some way down the line."

A UK think tank, the Public Interest Research Centre (Pirc), has been discovering how uncomfortable this issue is proving

• for rich nations.

A succession of Freedom of Information requests reveals a degree of frustration among some British civil servants that the UK insists on basing its emissions calculations solely on domestic emissions."...

-------------------------------------------------

The article notes Communist China as a likely source of goods with 'hidden' CO2, but says the UK can't wait around for China to be up front about emissions, that UK citizens must be the 'greenest.'

----------------------------------------------

In 2007 UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the carbon market was key

• "to the economic fortunes of the City of London.""...

-----------------------------------------------

10/24/10, "'It is wholly inappropriate that the Palace should have such a direct interest in a subject like windfarms, given Prince Charles's obsession with renewable energy. It raises the question as to whether he is seeking to increase his own

• investment portfolio
  

each time he makes a favourable reference to wind power.'"

----------------------------------------------------

Reference: 10/25/10, "Queen set to earn millions from windfarm expansion," UK Independent, Andy McSmith

Reference: 12/31/10, "One's in the money! Why Prince Charles's secret 20-year campaign could make him the richest king in history," UK Daily Mail, G. Levy

Reference: 2/9/11, "UK's Prince Charles blasts climate-change skeptics," AP

----------------------------------------------

The financial survival of the UK monarchy is dependent on the success of the global warming industry. The monarchy as reported has a new income arrangement which relies in part on wind turbine income. Prince Charles isn't technically with the government but he acts in a governmental role in pushing the global warming agenda part of which reportedly includes starving children.

---------------------------------------------------

Reference: 1/29/11, "In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale," UK Daily Mail.

.

Obama EPA uses taxpayer dollars to scare children about 'climate' with rap song, tells them 'MOSQUITOES will rule'

EPA lies to children, tells them floods and biting insects are taking over due to 'climate change,' via rap song:

EPA.Gov: "Create a new climate for action, Do your part for climate change and children's health"

"The USA is where we are to kick a new trend and to raise the bar. The climate is changing and that’s a fact, bears don’t know when to take a nap, On top of that it won’t be cool

• when the flood waters rise

• and mosquitoes rule.

It’s time to get off the couch and start to move."...
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Children trained to cheer for Mao and Stalin, above.
Below, Santa is used to sell the 'green' movement. 'Green' meaning the trillion dollar carbon dioxide endangerment industry which rests on the 'theory' that CO2 is murderous and mainly caused by evil Americans who must pay billions in reparations.






via Climate Depot

Global warming concern continues to wane in US and across Europe-Gallup Poll

Prince Charles might have to get a job some day.

4/20/11, "Fewer Americans, Europeans View Global Warming as a Threat," Gallup Poll

"In the U.S., a slim majority (53%) currently see it as a serious personal threat,

• down from 63% in previous years.

Concern about global warming has also declined across western, southern, and eastern Europe, and in several cases, even

• more precipitously than in the U.S.

In France, for example, the percentage saying global warming is a serious threat fell from 75% in 2007-2008 to 59% in 2010. In the United Kingdom, ground zero for the climate data-fixing scandal known as Climategate in 2009, the percentage dropped from 69% to 57% in the same period....
Gallup surveys in 111 countries in 2010 find Americans and Europeans feeling substantially less threatened by climate change than they did a few years ago, while more Latin Americans and sub-Saharan Africans see themselves at risk. "

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The 'Sustainable Development' hoax...Round up the usual suspects, all comfy in school curricula

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4/22/11, "The Sustainable Development Hoax," American Thinker, S. Fred Singer

""Sustainable Development" (SD) is basically a slogan without a specific meaning. Linked to Earth Day (April 22), it masquerades as a call for clean air, green energy, and suggests a pristine bucolic existence for us and our progeny -- forever. But in reality, it has become immensely useful to many groups who use the slogan

• to advance their own special agenda, whatever they may be.

The term itself was invented by Gro Harlem Bruntlandt, a Norwegian socialist politician and former prime minister. After her term there, she landed in Paris and, together with Club of Rome veteran Alexander King, began publicizing SD. Indeed, the concept is a successor to the neo-Malthusian theme of the Club of Rome, which began to take hold around 1970 and led to the notorious book "Limits to Growth." In turn, the "Limits to Growth" concept was developed a few years earlier by US geologists like Preston Cloud and King Hubbert. In a report published by a panel of the National Academy, they promoted the view that the world was running out of resources: food, fuels, and minerals. According to their views, and those of the Club of Rome and Limits to Growth, most important metals should have become unavailable before the end of the 20^th century.

(King Hubbert, of course, is best known for the concept of "Peak Oil" which achieved wide-spread popularity in the past few years. Princeton geologist Kenneth Deffeyes gained fleeting fame for his book "Hubbert's Peak," which predicted that world oil production would peak in 2008. Of course, it must peak sometime, but the date will be set by economic and technological factors that are difficult to predict.)

In turn, these neo-Malthusian concerns were opposed by the so called "Cornucopians." Their leading apostle was certainly the late Julian Simon, who went somewhat overboard in the other direction. Many will remember Julian Simon's famous bet with Paul Ehrlich, the noted Stanford University doomsday prophet, concerning the unavailability of minerals by 1990. Simon won the bet but he was certainly off-base in predicting that there would be no end to crude oil on this planet. Fossil fuels, of course, are essentially non-renewable. No matter how slowly they are used up, once used up, they are gone and not replenished over any reasonable time periods.

But in a certain sense this does not matter. Oil may become depleted -- at least low-cost oil -- but its essential function is to produce energy. And there we have a variety of ways to create energy for many millennia or even longer -- based on nuclear fission.

The debate between neo-Malthusians and Cornucopians came to a head in a 1969 symposium of the AAAS, published as a book titled "Is there an optimal level of population?" Both sides recognized that population levels and growth rates are equally important in discussing the possible depletion of resources. Those proposing larger populations, like Julian Simon, seemed oblivious also to the environmental costs that would rise rapidly as the natural ability of the environment to absorb waste is exceeded.

But all this is history. SD lives on because it is useful in selling various policies. Some examples are:

• 1) Restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, under the guise of "saving the climate"
• 2) Transfers of resources to less developed nations - now justified for climate reasons (but of course, quite contrary to resource conservation)
• 3) Striving for world government and UN sovereignty -- all for "sustainability",
• 4) Promoting a green energy future, using solar and wind,
• 5) Advocating negative population growth, etc.

Among the worst policies being pushed with the help of SD is a scheme called Contraction and Convergence (C & C). The idea is that every human is entitled to emit the same amount of CO2. This of course translates into every being on earth using the same amount of energy -- and, by inference, having the same income. In other words, C & C is basically a policy for a giant global income redistribution.

Since the SD concept has been popularized, it has become a fashionable topic for research papers, especially in the social sciences. We may yet live to see the day when trendy universities establish programs to teach SD -- and eventually even departments of SD and endowed academic chairs. Never underestimate the drive for expansion in the academic world.

For Earth Day 2011, the National Association of Scholars, composed mostly of Conservative-leaning academics, released a Statement that critiques the campus sustainability movement. NAS president Peter Wood said:

• "Sustainability sounds like a call for recycling and clean drinking water. But its proponents
  
• are much more ambitious.
  
• For them, a sustainable society is one that replaces the market economy with top-down regulation. They present students a frightening story in which the earth is on the brink of disaster and immediate action is needed. This is a tactic aimed at
  
• silencing critics,
  
• shutting down debate, and
  
• mobilizing students who never get the opportunity to hear opposing views."

Here are some excerpts from the Statement itself:

""Sustainability" is one of the key words of our time. We are six years along in the United Nations' "Decade of Education for Sustainable Development." In the United States, 677 colleges and universities presidents have committed themselves to a sustainability-themed "Climate Commitment." Sustainability is, by a large measure, the most popular social movement today in American higher education. It is, of course, not just a campus movement, but also a ubiquitous presence in the K-12 curriculum, and a staple of community groups, political platforms, appeals to consumers,

• and corporate policy.

The sustainability movement arrived on campuses mainly at the invitation of college presidents and administrative staff in areas such as student activities and residence life. That means that it largely escaped the scrutiny of faculty members and that it continues to enjoy a position of unearned authority. In many instances, the movement advances by administrative fiat, backed up by outside advocacy groups and students recruited for their zeal in promoting the cause. Agenda-driven organizations-such as the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) and the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment(ACUPCC)-have taken advantage of academic sensibilities to turn sustainability into what is in many cases,

• a campus fetish.

Sustainability also gets promoted by resort to pledges, games, competitions, and a whole variety of psychological gimmicks that bypass serious intellectual inquiry.

Some results are relatively trivial. For example, at certain institutions, cafeteria trays have been banned to save food, water, and energy, leaving students and staff to juggle dishes, cups, and utensils as they move between counters and tables. Many campuses have also banned the sale of disposable to reduce plastic waste. Yet however laughable, such petty annoyances have a sinister penumbra. They advertise a willingness to bully that creates a more

• generalized climate of intimidation, spilling over into other domains.

In practice, this means that sustainability is used as a means of promoting to students a view that capitalism and individualism are "unsustainable," morally unworthy,

• and a present danger to the future of the planet.

Fascination with decline and ruin are nothing new in Western thought. The sustainability movement combines a bureaucratic and regulatory impulse with an updated version of the Romantics' preoccupation with the end of civilization, and with hints of the Christian apocalyptic tradition. These are the "end times" in the view of some sustainability advocates-or potentially so in the eyes of many others. The movement has its own versions of sin and redemption, and in many other respects has a quasi-religious character. For some of the adherents,

• the earth itself is treated as a sentient deity; others content themselves with the search for the transcendent in Nature.

As a creed among creeds, sustainability constitutes an upping of the ideological ante. Feminism, Afro-centrism, gay-liberation, and various other recent fads and doctrines, whatever else they were, were secular, speaking merely to politics and culture. The sustainability movement reaches beyond that, having nothing less than the preservation of life on earth at its heart.

The religious creeds of faculty members and students are their own business, but we have reason for concern when dogmatic beliefs are smuggled into the curriculum and made a basis for campus programs as though they were

• mere extensions of scientific facts.

The sustainability movement is, in a word, unsustainable. It runs too contrary to the abiding purposes of higher education; it is too rife with internal contradictions; and it is too contrary to the environmental, economic, and social facts to endure indefinitely.""


Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service. His book "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1500 Years" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) presents the evidence for natural climate cycles of warming and cooling and became a New York Times best-seller.


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Illegal aliens in the slammer in California have been arrested an average of 7 times each. Each costs $34,000 to jail for 1 yr. in Calif.

4/21/11, "California's criminal alien population rises," Sacramento Bee, Capitol Alert

"The number of criminal aliens incarcerated in California rose to 102,795 in 2009, a 17 percent increase since 2003, federal auditors reported Thursday.

This isn't cheap. Nationwide, the Government Accountability Office reports, it costs well over $1.1 billion a year for states to imprison criminal aliens -- those who committed a crime after entering the United States illegally. California, moreover, is more expensive than other states. GAO auditors estimated California spends $34,000 to incarcerate a criminal alien for one year;

• in Texas, it's only $12,000.

The audit, requested by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, will provide ammunition for states' perennial effort

• to secure more federal reimbursement dollars.

More than one in four of the illegal immigrants imprisoned in California are behind bars for drug offenses. Many are also repeat offenders. GAO auditors say that, based on a survey, criminal alien inmates have been arrested

• an average of seven different times."

via Drudge Report

Obama GM cronies get rich, US taxpayers not so much, stiffed by Obama for $11 billion as investors head for the exits

4/19/11, "U.S. Hurries to Sell GM Stake," Wall St. Journal, Sharon Terlap

"The U.S. government plans to sell a significant share of its remaining stake in General Motors Co. this summer despite the disappointing performance of the auto maker's stock, people familiar with the matter said.

A sale within the next several months would almost certainly mean U.S. taxpayers will take a loss on their $50 billion rescue of the Detroit auto maker in 2009."...

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4/19/11, "GM stock lower amid report of quick govt sale," AFP

"At the current price, the government would lose more than $11 billion, but the Obama administration is willing to accept the loss in order to cut its last ties to the auto manufacturer, the newspaper said, citing unnamed sources.

The summer sale would make it more likely that the government could unload the remainder of its shares before the 2012 election season."...

via Drudge Report

Radical left counter protesters at Tea Party try to silence free speech of others they deem so important for themselves

Above, April 16, 2011, Madison, Wisconsin. Counter protester sign tells Tea Party to 'shut the F up' from Althouse blog.

"Liberals have more or less given up on winning arguments. They just want to

• shut the rest of us up." Powerline blog sums it up.

--------------------------------

4/16/11, "How animalistic, frenzied, loud, rude, and desperate was the Wisconsin Capitol today?" Ann Althouse, Althouse blog

"But today was distinctive because it was a Tea Party rally, and many people wanted to hear the speakers, especially Sarah Palin. The counter-protesters were there to drown out those speakers. Their earlier

• anti-Walker protests were about how

• they wanted to be heard.

Over the last 2 months, the anti-Walker protesters have said many times — often directly to me or Meade — that they felt the GOP governor and legislators had the obligation to listen to them, that it was terribly wrong for their voices to be excluded, and that

• dialogue is the essence of democracy.

They made a godawful noise saying that (and more), but what they did today was hypocritical, because today they showed up

• for the express purpose of denying other people the right to listen.

So today was loud and angry, but it was nowhere near as loud and angry as it has been on other days. Nevertheless, today was bad in a different way, a way that betrayed values the anti-Walker protesters had

• voiced many, many times."

via GWP

'Climate Refugee' hoax revealed, was key in demand for billions in 'reparations' from 'developed' nations

UPDATE: UN doubles down in face of flop 'refugee' claim: Now predicts 50 million 'climate refugees' by 2020, per Der Spiegel: 

4/18/11, "UN Embarrassed by Forecast on Climate Refugees, Feared migration hasn't happened," Der Spiegel, Axel Bojanowski

"Six years ago [2005], the United Nations issued a dramatic warning that the world would have to cope with 50 million climate refugees by 2010. But now that those migration flows have failed to materialize, the UN has distanced itself from the forecasts. On the contrary, populations are growing in the regions that had been identified as environmental danger zones.... 

Meanwhile a new forecast is doing the rounds. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February, Cristina Tirado, an environment researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles, warned of 50 million environmental refugees in the future. That figure was a UN projection she said -- for 2020." (last paragraph of article).

United Nations UNEP claim in 2005, "50 million climate refugees by 2010" [link dead, but map cached]

.

• Refugee claim was basis for which $100 billion was demanded at Copenhagen

4/13/11, "The Climate Refugee Hoax," IBD, Editorial

"Junk Science: Five years ago, the U.N. predicted that by 2010 some 50 million people would be fleeing climate change, rising seas, mega-hurricanes and so on.

• Instead, no islands have sunk and their populations are booming.

It's been said that when you make a prediction and provide a date, never give a number, and if you give a number, never provide a date. That way you can always claim to be right, even when you are wrong, and that it just hasn't happened yet.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) made that mistake in 2005 when it produced a map showing areas to be impacted by the effects of climate change. These areas would produce 50 million "climate refugees" driven out by rising sea levels, increased frequency and ferocity of hurricanes,

• disruptions in food production, etc.

As related by blogger Gavin Atkins, who unearthed the forgotten prophecy of doom, some of these areas have conducted censuses and if they are facing any problems at all, it's caused by their rapid and sustained population growth. If anybody is leaving any of the danger zones, it's because

• they are getting too crowded.

For example, the latest census report shows that the population of the Solomon Islands near Australia has passed a half-million, up 100,009 in the last decade. The Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, has seen its population rise from 81,755 in 2002 to 88,311.

The Bahamas, a favorite vacation spot for those rich capitalists plundering the earth, has added more than 50,000 people. China's six fastest-growing cities are in the middle of one of UNEP's climate change-affected danger zones, as are many U.S. coastal cities. At last report there was no mass migration inland. Apparently these endangered

• populations didn't get the memo.

In 2005, Britain's Guardian reported the refugee prediction by Janos Bogardi of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn. He spoke of "well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change."

• Well-founded?

The article noted that New Zealand had agreed to accept the 11,600 inhabitants of the low-lying Pacific island state Tuvalu if rising sea levels swamp the country. At last report,

• Tuvalu is alive and well and above water.

Apocalyptic changes forecast by climate change alarmists, according to Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the International Commission on Sea Level Change, are not in the cards. Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10 cm (four inches), with an uncertainty

• of plus or minus 10 cm."

Hurricane frequency and intensity are a natural cyclical phenomena, made worse only by growing numbers rushing to the coasts, not fleeing from them. Chalk up this latest fear-mongering next to the myth of Himalayan glaciers

• that were supposed to vanish by 2035.

If there is any disruption in food supplies, it's caused by rising food prices ironically caused by increased demand for biofuels to save the earth, and the diversion of cropland and even the

• clear-cutting of sacred rainforests to produce them.

The endless fraud perpetrated by the climate hucksters knows no bounds. Neither does the inaccuracy of climate models that cannot predict the past. Yet they keep trying, like the cartoon prophet carrying the sign

• predicting the world will end tomorrow."

==============================

4/15/11, "UN Caught Scrubbing Embarrassing Climate Refugee Prediction (Update: Gavin Links and Hotairalanche)," Patterico's Pontifications, Aaron Worthing
............
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.......................
1/24/10, "UN Wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters," TimesOnlineUK, by Jonathan Leake

"THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters

• such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny —

• and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters,

• has since become embedded in political and public debate.

It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the

• rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods — such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 — could be linked to global warming.

• Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn (2009): "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".

• The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s". 

It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming

• and cited the unpublished report, saying:

"One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim

• had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

• Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month.

It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts —

• but were ignored.

• The claim will now be re-examined and could be withdrawn."...

------------------------------------------
..........................

4/16/11, "The UN 'disappears' 50 million climate refugees, then botches the cover-up" Anthony Watts, Daily Caller


via Climate Depot. Top photo from Berlingske, Copenhagen, described as Bangladesh 'Climate Refugees' victims of industrialized nations appeared during Copenhagen climate summit.







..................

Much of Obama $5 billion 'stimulus' dollars redistributed from taxpayers to weatherstripping fraud auditors say

"Anytime you take a lot of money, like $5 billion, and you have to spend it as quickly as possible..."

4/14/11, "Obama's $5 Billion Weatherizing Program Wastes Stimulus Funds, Auditors Find," Fox News, Stephen Clark

"President Obama's $5 billion stimulus injection into a decades-old program to help lower energy bills for millions of low-income families by retrofitting their homes to improve efficiency has been plagued by cases of mismanagement, waste and fraud in several states.

The most dramatic example can be found in Delaware, where "gross mismanagement and potential fraudulent activity" that federal auditors found last year could affect hundreds of homes, a senior administration official told FoxNews.com. The subsequent repairs and inspections reportedly

• will cost the state a significant chunk of the $7.5 million remaining from $13.7 million of stimulus it received in 2009.

Delaware is the only state where the weatherization program has been suspended, but problems have surfaced in other states, including

• Florida,
  

• Illinois,
  

• New Jersey,
  

• Pennsylvania,
  

• Texas,
  

• Tennessee and
  

• Virginia.

"It's a complete cesspool of waste," Leslie Paige, vice president of Citizens Against Government Waste, told FoxNews.com. "When it's over, we will never know how much went down the tube. They cannot track the money. By the time they get to it,

• a lot of the money will be gone."...

The program works like this: Washington sends weatherization money to the states, where it is passed to local nonprofits that hire contractors to spread insulation and install efficient heaters in people's homes.

The $5 billion program was portrayed as the heart of the stimulus package -- a way to jumpstart the economy while encouraging people to conserve energy at home....

CAGW's Paige said the failure of the program is "a poster child for

• this entire stimulus program."

"This was not about really helping the economy because if you wanted to support the economy, you would have done more with tax breaks," she said. "Instead they have to jam this money

• through their political agenda.

"Anytime you take a lot of money, like $5 billion, and you have to spend it as quickly as possible, that should always be raising alarm bells because

there's no prudence going on.""...

via Climate Depot

Obama big drop in approval among independents, overall approval tied for lowest ever-Gallup

4/15/11, "Obama Job Approval at 41%, Tying His Low," Gallup

• "Independents' approval rating down to 35%"

"The latest Gallup Daily tracking three-day average shows 41% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. That ties his low as president, which he registered three times previously -- twice in August 2010 and once in October 2010.

Declining approval most apparent among independents

Obama's approval rating in April 12-14 polling is down most among independents when compared with his 2011 average to date as well as his term average among this group. Currently, 35% of independents approve of the president, nine points off his average from independents this year. Democrats' current ratings are also below what he has averaged thus far in 2011 (down four points), while Republicans' are the same.

Implications

President Obama is now as unpopular as he has been at any time since he became president....Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton all were similarly unpopular at this stage of their presidencies, but the last two were able to turn things around in time to win a second term in office."

.

US CO2 emissions show biggest drop on record, steady drop since 1999, China increase 175% since 1999--EIA

US CO2 emissions have dropped steadily since 1999. Assuming temperatures have been on the increase (just for this argument), they couldn't possibly be related to US carbon dioxide emissions. Congress needs to stop wasting precious American taxpayer money on global warming funding.

4/14/11, "Biggest Drop in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions," World Climate Report

"In 2009, greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. experienced their biggest drop since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began tracking them during the 1990-2009 timeframe.

The EIA’s latest numbers on greenhouse gas emissions can be found in their just released report “Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2009.”

The EIA starts out with this summary:

Total U.S. anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions in 2009 were 5.8 percent below the 2008 total. The decline in total emissions—from 6,983 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2008 to 6,576 MMTCO2e in 2009—was the largest since emissions have been tracked over the 1990-2009 time frame. It was largely the result of a 419-MMTCO2e drop in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (7.1 percent).

Why, pray tell, did such a large emission drop occur in 2009? According to the EIA:

The decrease in U.S. CO2 emissions in 2009 resulted primarily from three factors: an economy in recession, a particularly hard-hit energy-intensive industries sector, and a large drop in the price of natural gas that caused fuel switching away from coal to natural gas in the electric power sector.

In Figure 1 we show the history of carbon dioxide emissions—primary among the greenhouse gases—in the U.S. from 1990-2009. We also include the emissions history from China, for comparative purposes.

Figure 1. Annual carbon dioxide emissions from the United States (blue) and China (red), 1990-2009 (data source, EIA).

Notice several things:

• • U.S. CO2 emissions in 2009 were the lowest since 1995.

• • The trend in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions has been downward since 1999.

• • China’s CO2 emissions have increased by about 175% since 1999.

• • In 2009, China’s emissions were 42% greater than ours.

The trend in China’s CO2 emissions since 1999 is 508mmtCO2/yr—a value equal to about 1/10th of the U.S. total annual emissions.

• Think about this for a minute.

The plans that are kicked around in Congress from time to time (although certainly less so this year), typically call for a reduction in U.S. CO2 emissions roughly on this schedule: 20% in 2020, 40% in 2030, and 80% by 2050.

Now, consider that currently China adds to its total CO2 emissions an equivalent of 10% of the U.S. baseline emissions each year. So, if everything went according to plan, as the U.S. worked to reduce its emissions by 20% by 2020, China meanwhile will have increased their total by about quadruple that amount. And the numbers get worse from there.

So you can see the inherent silliness in using “climate change” as a reason for pushing for reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

In fact, U.S. politicians who are thinking that their first responsibility should be towards improving the situation for Americans here and now, ought to be seeking out ways to get the U.S. CO2 emissions

• heading upwards again.
  

We say this because two the three reasons given by the EIA for the recent drop in U.S. CO2 emissions have to do with the poor economic times. Turn around the economy

• and you will turn around emissions.

What about the third reason—increased electricity production from natural gas?

Burning natural gas reduce CO2 emissions per unit energy produced, but, in terms keeping the trend of total U.S. CO2 emissions in the negative territory, this effect is probably trumped by the hard economy. Further, there is a hot-off-the-presses new study that suggests that the carbon dioxide savings from natural gas acquired through hydraulic fracturing (a fast-growing technique to recover loads of natural gas domestically) may actually be (more than) offset by the by-product release of methane during the extraction process (Howarth et al., 2011). So the climate benefits of switching to natural gas (from coal) to produce electricity are perhaps not as great as they are being touted. We’re sure we’ll be hearing more about this—in fact, stay tuned to these pages because we are working through the Howarth et al. article and will post our findings soon!

So, what’s in store for 2010? Probably more of the same—that is, a relatively low level of carbon dioxide emission from the U.S.—as the circumstances that led to the low value in 2009 were pretty much the same as the situation in 2010.

Hopefully, for all our sakes, the trend won’t stay negative for too much longer—at least not for the current reasons."

"References:

Energy Information Administration, 2011. Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States, 2009. http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/

Energy Information Administration, 2011. International Energy Statistics, http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8

Howarth, R.W., R. Santoro, and A. Ingraffea, 2011. Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations. Climatic Change Letters, in press."

via Climate Depot