It's not a hurricane unless it has sustained winds of 74 mph which Irene did not have moving up the east coast of the US

8/29/11, "When Did Irene Stop Being a Hurricane?" Cliff Mass Weather blog

"On Sunday morning Anderson Cooper of CNN was asking about the strong winds that were being forecast and this brings up something that has really bothered me about the storm: there is really no reliable evidence

• of hurricane-force winds

• at any time the storm was approaching North Carolina or moving up the East Coast.

First, what is a hurricane? The official definition is that a hurricane is a tropical cyclone with SUSTAINED winds of 64 kt or more (74 mph or more). A gust of 65 kt or more does not indicate a hurricane unless the sustained winds reach 64 kt.

I took a look at all the observations over Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. Not one National Weather Service or FAA observation location, not one buoy observations, none reach the requisite wind speed.

• Most were not even close.

Surely, one of the observations upwind of landfall, over Cape Hatteras or one of the other barrier island locations, indicated hurricane-force sustained winds?

• Amazingly, the answer is still no."...

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

8/28/11, "Only Two Locations Had 85 MPH Gusts," Real Science

"http://www.digtriad.com/

NOAA said that maximum average wind speeds at landfall were 85 MPH, hurricane winds stretching outwards for 90 miles. In fact, only two locations even had gusts over 85 MPH.

The 115 MPH is a mathematical outlier from a “trained spotter” – which is not credible and should be thrown out. The nearby weather station at Beaufort, NC, had a

• max speed of 53 MPH and peak gust of 70 MPH.

http://www.wunderground.com/"

via Instapundit, via Tom Nelson

Texas wind energy fails again, state has spent $6.8 billion on wind energy transmission lines thanks to George Bush and Rick Perry

8/29/11, "Texas Wind Energy Fails, Again ," National Review, Robert Bryce

• "When the temperature rises, the wind slows down."

"As I wrote in these pages earlier this month, Texas has 10,135 megawatts of installed wind-generation capacity, which is nearly three times as much as any other state. And yet, on Wednesday, all of the state’s wind turbines

• mustered just 880 megawatts

of power when electricity was needed the most. Put another way, even though wind turbines account for about 10 percent of Texas’s 103,000 megawatts of summer electricity-generation capacity, wind energy was able to provide

• just 1.3 percent of the juice the state needed on Wednesday afternoon

• to keep the lights on and the air conditioners humming.

None of this should be surprising. For years, ERCOT has counted just 8.7 percent of the state’s installed wind-generation capacity as “dependable capacity at peak.” What happened on Wednesday? Just 880 megawatts out of 10,135 megawatts of wind capacity — 8.68 percent — was actually moving electrons when consumers needed those electrons the most.

Apologists for the wind industry point to a single day in February, when, during a record cold snap, the state’s wind turbines were able to produce electricity when the grid was being stressed. Fine. On one day, wind generators produced more than expected. But the wind industry’s lobbyists want consumers to ignore this sun-bleached truth: Texas has far more super-hot days than it does frigid ones. Indeed, here in Austin, where I live, we’ve already had 70 days this summer with temperatures over 100 degrees, and there’s still no relief in sight. And on nearly every one of those hot days, ERCOT’s wind capacity has been AWOL. Each afternoon, as the temperature — and electricity demand — soars, the wind dies down:

This summer’s high demand for electricity has caught ERCOT off guard. In June, the grid operator projected that Texas’s electricity demand would not set any new records this summer. But demand is already exceeding levels that ERCOT didn’t expect to see until 2014. Over the past few weeks, as demand has strained the Texas grid, electricity prices have risen as high as $3,000 per megawatt-hour on the wholesale market, and large industrial users have been forced to curtail consumption in order to avoid blackouts.

And yet — and yet — the state is spending billions on projects that focus on wind energy rather than on conventional generation capacity. As Kate Galbraith of the Texas Tribune reported recently, the Texas Public Utility Commission is preparing the state’s ratepayers for higher prices. Consumers will soon be paying for new transmission lines that are being built solely so that the subsidy-dependent wind-energy profiteers can move electricity from their distant wind projects to consumers in urban areas.

Galbraith reports that “the cost of building thousands of miles of transmission lines to carry wind power across Texas is now estimated at $6.79 billion, a 38 percent increase from the initial projection three years ago.” What will that mean for the state’s ratepayers? Higher electricity bills. Before the end of the year, the companies building the transmission lines are expected to begin applying for “rate recovery.” The result, writes Galbraith, will be charges that “could amount to

• $4 to $5 per month on Texas electric bills, for years.”

Imagine what the state’s grid might look like if Texas, which produces about 30 percent of America’s gas, had spent its money on natural-gas-fired electricity instead of wind. The latest data from the Energy Information Administration shows that wind-generated electricity costs about 50 percent more than that produced by natural-gas-fired generators. Thus, not only would Texas consumers be saving money on their electric bills, the state government would be earning more royalties from gas produced and consumed in the state.

Further, consider what might be happening had the state kept the $6.79 billion it’s now spending on wind-energy transmission lines

• and instead allocated it to new natural-gas-fired generators.
  

The latest data from the Energy Information Administration show that building a megawatt of new wind capacity costs $2.43 million — that’s up by 21 percent over the year-earlier costs — while a new megawatt of gas-fired capacity costs a bit less than $1 million, a drop of 3 percent from year-earlier estimates.

Under that scenario, Texas could have built 6,900 megawatts of new gas-fired capacity for what the state is now spending on wind-related transmission lines alone. Even if we assume the new gas-fired units were operating at just 50 percent of their design capacity, those generators would still be capable of providing far more reliable juice to the grid than what is being derived from the state’s wind turbines during times of peak demand.

Unfortunately, none of those scenarios have played out. Instead, Texas ratepayers are being forced to pay billions for wind-generation and transmission capacity that is proving to be ultra-expensive and redundant at a time when the state’s thirst for electricity is breaking records.

A final point: Keep in mind that the Lone Star wind boondoggle is not the result of Democratic rule. Environmentalists have never gained much purchase at the Texas capitol. In fact, the state hasn’t had a Democrat in statewide office since Bob Bullock retired as lieutenant governor, and Garry Mauro retired from the General Land Office, back in 1999. That same year,

• Gov. George W. Bush signed legislation that
  

• created a renewable-energy mandate in the state.

What about Rick Perry, a politico who frequently invokes his support for the free market? In 2005, he signed a mandate requiring the state to have at least 6,000 megawatts of renewable capacity by 2015. Perry’s support has been so strong that a wind-energy lobbyist recently told the New York Times that the governor, who’s now a leading contender for the White House, has

• “been a stalwart in defense of wind energy in this state, no question about it.”

And during his last election campaign, Sen. John Cornyn, one of the Senate’s most conservative members, ran TV ads

• showing pretty pictures of — what else? — wind turbines."

via Lucianne

Spring Lake, NJ boardwalk washed off its tracks by Irene

Spring Lake, NJ boardwalk washed off its tracks by Hurricane Irene. photo NJ Star Ledger, 8/28/11




.

Theory of global food crisis driven by drought and plant declines refuted by BU study published in Science Magazine, Aug. 2011

8/25/11, "NASA study refutes claims of drought-driven declines in plant productivity, global food security," Anthony Watts, WattsUpWithThat

"From Boston University, BU researchers find that modeling errors produced exaggerated claims"

"A new, comprehensive study by an international team of scientists, including scientists at Boston University in the US and the Universities of Viçosa and Campinas in Brazil, has been published in the current issue of Science (August 26, 2011) refuting earlier alarmist claims that drought has induced a decline in global plant productivity during the past decade and posed a threat to global food security.

Those earlier findings published by Zhao and Running in the August 2010 issue of Science (Vol. 329, p. 940) also warned of potentially serious consequences for biofuel production and the global carbon cycle. The two new technical comments in Science contest these claims on the basis of new evidence from NASA satellite data, which indicates that Zhao and Running’s findings resulted from several modeling errors, use of corrupted satellite data and statistically insignificant trends.

The main premise of Zhao and Running’s model-based study was an expectation of increased global plant productivity during the 2000s based on previously observed increases during the 1980s and 1990s under supposedly similar, favorable climatic conditions. Instead, Zhao and Running were surprised to see a decline, which

• they attributed it to large-scale droughts in the Southern Hemisphere.

“Their model has been tuned to predict lower productivity even for very small increases in temperature. Not surprisingly, their results were preordained,” said Arindam Samanta, the study’s lead author. (Samanta, now at Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc., Lexington, MA, worked on the study as a graduate student at Boston University’s Department of Geography and Environment.)"...

via IceCap

NJ Gov. Chris Christie, Friday, 4:00pm, I see people are still sitting on the beach in Asbury Park. Get the hell off the beach. Your tan is maxed out.

• At :36, Friday, Aug. 26, 2011, approximately 4:00pm, via Save Jersey Blog

• No southbound traffic to the Jersey Shore.

Monmouth County, NJ, hurricane prep. photos from More Monmouth Musings blog



.

American Jewish leftists provided Israel's media with the group-think template for hating Glenn Beck-Caroline Glick

• photo of Glenn Beck event, Jerusalem Post, Lange

8/25/11, "Column One: Glenn Beck’s revealing visit," Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post

"American media superstar Glenn Beck’s visit to Israel this week was a revealing and remarkable event. It revealed what it takes to be a friend of Israel. And it revealed the causes of Israel’s difficulty in telling its enemies from its friends.

Many world leaders, opinion-shapers and other notables protest enduring friendship with Israel. From Washington to London, Paris to Spain, policy- makers and other luminaries preface all their remarks to Jewish audiences with such statements. Once their declarations are complete – and often without taking a breath – they proceed to denounce Israel’s policies and to deny its basic rights.

US President Barack Obama exemplifies this practice. Obama always begins his statements on Israel by proclaiming his enduring friendship for Israel. Then he tells us to deny Jewish property rights, accept indefensible borders, or desist from defending ourselves from aggression.

The Israeli Left habitually embraces self-proclaimed friends such as Obama. Often leftist leaders encourage such friends to harm Israel in the name of helping it. For instance, in 2007, speaking to then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice – who had a habit of comparing her friend Israel to the Jim Crow South – then-Haaretz editor David Landau asked her to “rape” the Jewish state. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni recently encouraged Obama to increase pressure on Israel.

When anti-Semitic public intellectuals such as the late Nobel laureate Jose Saramago compare Israel to Nazi Germany, the Israeli Left makes light of their remarks. For instance, when at the height of the Palestinian terror war in 2002 Saramago said Israel was worse than the Nazis and that Jews had no right to speak of the Holocaust, Yediot Aharonot’s Ariella Melamed referred to Saramago as “one of the most beloved foreign novelists in Israel.”

On Thursday, Israeli Arab actor and filmmaker Muhammad Bakri was the subject of a two-page hagiographic profile in Yediot. Bakri’s libelous 2003 film Jenin, Jenin, in which he falsely portrayed IDF soldiers as murderers and war criminals, was brushed off as merely “controversial.”
Making no mention of Bakri’s family ties to terrorist murderers or supportive statements regarding terrorism and war against Israel, Yediot portrayed this foe as a hero. Bakri, who has used his considerable talents to criminalize and demonize the country and to support its terrorist enemies, was lionized as an unwilling culture warrior who would much rather be acting than fighting, but feels he cannot escape his duty to fight for the great causes he holds dear.

Also Thursday, Yediot ran a story about Beck’s Restoring Courage Rally beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The headline read, “Glenn Beck’s Messianic Show.”

In general, the Israeli media responded to Beck’s visit to Israel either as a non-event, or they distorted who Beck is and what he is trying to do. Thursday’s print edition of Ma’ariv sufficed with a photograph from Beck’s rally in Jerusalem the previous day.

By casting Beck’s visit as insignificant, Ma’ariv disserved its readers. Beck is one of the most influential media personalities in the US today.

Unlike the leftist public intellectuals such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman who are celebrated and obsessively covered by the Israeli media, Beck exerts real influence on public opinion in the US. His calls for action are answered by hundreds of thousands of people. His statements are a guidepost for millions of Americans. Aside from radio host Rush Limbaugh, no media personality in the US has such influence.

It is highly significant that thousands of Beck’s supporters followed his call and came with him to Israel for a week to express their support for Israel and the Jewish people. It is similarly significant that

• millions more of his supporters followed his actions on Internet.

Those media that did not seek to downplay the importance of Beck’s visit opted instead to distort who he is and what he is doing. As the Yediot headline indicated, the media portrayed him as an unstable messianic, or they castigated him as an extremist and marginal force in the US. Haaretz and Globes both ran articles attacking Beck as an anti-Semite.
These claims are outrageous and represent yet another gross disservice to Israeli news consumers who do not have an independent means of judging Beck, his message and his actions for themselves.

Beck came to Israel to launch a global movement of activists committed to supporting Israel, not in order to “rape” it, but in order to empower it to defeat its enemies and to stand up to an increasingly hostile world. In his speech under the Temple Mount, Beck roused his audience – which contrary to media reports was a mix of American Christians and American Jews joined by scores of Israelis – to action. With gripping prose, Beck told his audience to disregard the “convenient” lies about Israel and embrace the truth.
That truth, he said, is that “In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one Israeli soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds, against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true. Israel is not a perfect country. No country is perfect. But it tries, and it is courageous.”

From Israel he proceeded Wednesday night to South Africa to tell the true story of Apartheid and to dispel the popular falsehood that Israel bears any similarity to Apartheid South Africa. From there he will continue on to Latin America to meet with communal leaders and mobilize them to support Israel. And from there he will return to the US where he will launch his global movement to support Israel before a mass audience in Dallas early next week.

What was most remarkable about Beck’s message was its rarity. Beck did not say anything factually inaccurate. The vast majority of Israelis certainly would find nothing controversial in any of his assertions. Yet despite his honesty, and his reasonable interpretation of Israel’s strategic and diplomatic circumstances, Beck’s is a voice in the wilderness. One almost never comes across a foreigner – or even an Israeli – who is willing to speak such basic truths in public. Both the rarity of truthful assessments of reality such as Beck’s and the gross distortion of his message and importance by the media are the consequence of intellectual and social intimidation that has led to groupthink among members of the media and of the cultural elites in Israel and throughout much of the Western world.

As Beck put it, “The grand councils of the earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens.

• The grand councils are silent...

“These international councils, these panels of so-called diplomats, condemn Israel not because they believe Israel needs to be corrected.

• They do so because it is convenient.

“Everyone does it. In some countries, it’s a crime not to.

“The diplomats are afraid, and so they submit. They surrender to falsehood. The truth matters not. To the keepers of conventional wisdom, a sacrifice of the truth is a small price to pay. What difference does it make if we beat up on little Israel? These are the actions of the fearful and cowards.”

And in the face of this cowardice, Beck organized his visit to Israel under the banner “Restoring Courage.”

He told his audience, “I stand here to tell you this: Fear is the pathway to surrender. And to overcome fear, we must have courage.”

Beck is rare, because he refuses to bow to the intellectual intimidation and groupthink that plagues the discourse on Israel in Israel itself and throughout the world. He refuses to play by the rules in which friends of Israel are castigated as messianic crazies and extremists and Israel’s enemies are praised as friends and great artists and courageous dissidents. He is an exception to a demented rule.
Israel’s media didn’t come to their hatred of Beck on their own. Most of it is fueled by American Jewish leftists. Beck ran afoul of the liberal American Jewish establishment through his outspoken attacks on George Soros. In January, Beck ran several shows on Soros, the extremist leftist anti-American and anti-Zionist global financier who has given more than $100 million to radical leftist groups.

Among other things, Beck ran a 1998 interview that Soros gave to CBS News’s Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. During the course of the interview, Soros admitted that as a boy in Nazi occupied Hungary he collaborated with the Nazis in confiscating Jewish property. Beck dwelled on Soros’s statement and his stated lack of guilt for his actions. Beck considered its impact on the shaping of Soros’s personality.

For his actions, Beck was attacked as an anti-Semite by the Soros-funded Jewish Funds for Justice. The group which conducts community organizing in liberal Jewish congregations collected the signatures of several dozen rabbis and ran a $100,000 ad in The Wall Street Journal asking Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch to take action against Beck. According to JCCWatch.org, New York’s UJA-Jewish Federation has given more than a million dollars to the Soros-funded organization.

The Left’s attacks on Beck are fueled by the fact that he is a Christian Zionist. The Left’s default mode is to accuse Christian Zionists of a hidden agenda to convert Jews and a secret desire to see us killed in an Armageddon.

But in truth the media’s embrace of Israel’s enemies, their rejection of Beck, and most important Beck’s refusal to bow to their conventional wisdom that Israel’s enemies should be praised and its friends should be condemned all reveal the reason that Christian Zionists can be trusted and embraced by Israelis.

Christian Zionists – like Jewish religious Zionists – are unmoved by the media’s intimidation because of their faith in God, and their reliance on scripture. Their faith provides them with a means of judging reality that is independent of the largely post-religious intellectual commissariat that runs the media and the cultural elite in the Western world. They don’t seek or care about receiving the accolades of the New York Times or other post-religious totems for their actions. And Beck’s message to Israelis is that we shouldn’t care either.

For most Israelis, this message rings powerful and true. But for the media, in Israel and throughout the West, it is dangerous sedition that must be marginalized and destroyed.

Beck said that his movement will be one of individuals who work together to defend Israel and the Jews from those who seek our destruction. He argued that regular people are far more capable of understanding what needs to be done than the well-heeled experts who lead us down the garden path of weakness and demoralization.

And he is right.

And in bringing this message to Israel, he demonstrated his friendship. We should return the favor by taking his advice. We should trust ourselves and our instincts and

• stop listening to the “experts” who preach weakness and surrender."

via Lucianne.com

'Post-racial' Obama tells Philadelphia crowd Republicans "counting on black folks stayin' home" before Nov. 2010 elections

10/12/2010, "So much for the 'post-racial' president," UK Guardian, Lloyd Marcus







.

Obama diverted $60million US taxpayer 'stimulus' dollars to global warming 'climate change' projects including Maldives, India and Australia

8/22/11, "Stimulus Helped Equip Climate Research Facilities--In Maldives, India and Australia," CNS News, Penny Starr

"The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced last week that it has used $60 million of the $1.2 billion given to the agency in economic stimulus funds for purchasing “advanced-technology research instruments”

• to study climate change.

Some of this equipment was deployed at facilities in the Maldives, India and Australia.

The DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement, or ARM program, was launched more than two decades ago as a way to improve scientific models for climate research and weather prediction. In a statement released on Aug. 18 on the Recovery.gov Web site – the site tracking the $821-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- ARM is described by the Obama administration

• as a program focused on climate change.

“A Department of Energy program that studies global climate change has nearly finished deploying 143 advanced-technology research instruments bought with $60 million in Recovery funding,” the announcement states. “The instruments--some new, others newly upgraded--will provide more precise measurements for researchers to use in

• developing computer models that simulate the earth’s climate.”"...

via Weasel Zippers

Maldives has no income tax-no wonder they did underwater sob story to try and get global warming cash from US middle class

8/21/11, "Sri Lanka gives Maldives $10m import credit," BBC

"The government of Sri Lanka has granted a $10m (£6.1m) import credit to the Republic of Maldives.

Analysts say the agreement signed in Colombo on Thursday during a visit to the island by President of Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, is mutually beneficial to both countries.

The Maldives archipelago which mainly relies on the tourism industry is currently facing a foreign exchange crisis, according to Amal Jayasinghe, the AFP bureau chief in Colombo.

"Maldives is among few countries in the world that does not collect any income tax," he told BBC Sinhala service.

"It is therefore struggling to balance the government

• spending sheets.""

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



Maldives President working underwater to get US middle class cash for his allegedly sinking island near India.

11/2/2009, from the NY Times: "Last month, the cabinet of Maldives donned scuba gear and held an underwater meeting to highlight the threat of global warming to that nation, the world’s lowest." (last item in article)

(The NY Times has proven itself "unsustainable," and therefore, according to its own philosophy, is selfish, greedy and using up more than its share of the global commons. It survives today thanks to a bailout from Lebanese-Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim).


.

Experts agree, AP mistakes general "pollution" for CO2 because it's easier and more profitable to sell smoke to rubes than the truth

Politi-fact stands up for climate profiteers. Why not? The climate scam gives media outlets financial opportunities, tropical conferences, all kinds of benefits. Heck, AP's Seth Borenstein was even in the ClimateGate emails.

8/19/11, "AP crams three misleading assertions about global warming into a single paragraph," American Thinker, James D. Agresti

"Reporting upon presidential candidate Rick Perry's skepticism about man-made global warming, the Associated Press has just published the following passage, which is now being circulated by more than a hundred news outlets that are carrying this story:

But Perry's opinion runs counter to the view held by an overwhelming majority of scientists that pollution released from the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the planet. Perry's home state of Texas releases more heat-trapping pollution carbon dioxide - the chief greenhouse gas - than any other state in the country, according to government data.

From reading the above, one might think that very few scientists doubt the concept of manmade global warming, but this narrative is undercut by 3,805 atmospheric, earth, or environmental Ph.D. scientists who have signed a petition stating:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

As the petition's organizers point out, these are scientists "trained in specialties directly related to the physical environment of the Earth and the past and current phenomena that affect that environment." A few days ago, PolitiFact attempted to dismiss this with the wave of a hand by declaring that the "petition has been criticized for not checking the credentials of its signatories or proving that the signatories exist." However, PolitiFact does not provide a speck of evidence to substantiate this claim, which is dubious, to put it mildly. There were a few problems of mistaken identity in the past, but these have been corrected. As explained by the credentialed scientists who administer the petition:

Petition project volunteers evaluate each signer's credentials, verify signer identities, and, if appropriate, add the signer's name to the petition list. ...

Opponents of the petition project sometimes submit forged signatures in efforts to discredit the project. Usually, these efforts are eliminated by our verification procedures. On one occasion, a forged signature appeared briefly on the signatory list. It was removed as soon as discovered.

Moreover, the website of the petition lists the names of the individuals who have signed it. Thus, if what PolitiFact says is true, these fact-checkers should be able to cite the names of some Ph.D. signatories who don't exist, or whose credentials are erroneous, or who are demanding that their names be taken off the petition.

• Instead, PolitiFact played the role of activists
  

• by making an unsubstantiated allegation.

Getting back to the Associated Press, twice in the paragraph above, the word "pollution" is used in reference to carbon dioxide (CO2). The trouble with this choice of verbiage is that when most people hear the word "pollution," they think of scenarios like cancerous soot billowing from

• smokestacks or toxic chemicals

being dumped into waterways. In stark contrast, CO2 is a fundamental part of Earth's ecosystem, and natural emissions of CO2 outweigh man-made emissions by a factor of twenty to one. To cite academic literature, carbon dioxide:

• is "integral to both respiration and acid-base balance in all life,"
• is "an essential part of the fundamental biological processes of all living things," and
• "does not cause cancer, affect development or suppress the immune system in humans."

This is hardly the kind of substance one thinks of when hearing the word "pollution." In fact, carbon dioxide is a desired output of automotive catalytic converters, which the EPA describes as an "anti-pollution device" that converts "exhaust pollutants ... to normal atmospheric gases such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water." What's next, calling water a pollutant? Water vapor, by the way,

• contributes far more to Earth's greenhouse effect
  
• than CO2.

Journalists would likely respond that they are only following the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling (decided 5-4) that CO2 could be regulated under the pollution provision of the Clean Air Act, but these reporters are not writing for an audience of legal professionals-they are writing for the general public. Journalists are fully aware that the word "pollution" conjures up certain nasty images in the average person's mind, but yet they use it without regard for whether these

• images are misleading.
  

Finally, when the AP reporters label Texas as the worst CO2 emitter in the nation, they omit the fact that Texas is also the second most populous state, and on a per capita basis, it is not first but thirteenth in the nation for fossil fuel CO2 emissions.

Furthermore, certain states like California with lower CO2 emissions have quashed the development of power plants but buy a good deal of their electricity from other states that generate surpluses (such as Texas). Thus, "environmentally friendly" states are

• outsourcing their CO2 emissions to neighboring states
  

• as if this were the responsible thing to do.

In this case of dueling global warming rhetoric, it is not a politician but journalists who are out on a limb scientifically. They'd do the public a service and their own credibility a favor by crawling back closer to the root of truth."

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

Legitimacy of AP's side? How about the originator of the Polar Bear hoax was "peer reviewed" by his wife, the siting was never intended to prove 'global warming' to begin with, and polar bear images have been used to steal irreplaceable time and efforts out of a generation of humanity?

Then there are clowns like so-called GOP consultant Frank Luntz, a roaming parasite who sells himself to the EDF, telling them how to fool middle class, right of center Americans into buying global warming. He doesn't mention it makes billions for organized crime, investment banks and the UN. And Frank Luntz. Many on the left know the "climate" industry is fraudulent, but they'll never give up on it. They see it as their best chance for "social justice."

Reference: 1/21/10, "Frank Luntz On How To Pass A Climate Bill," The New Republic, Jesse Zwick

Luntz said you can sell it if you use the right words. His presentation is also sponsored by News Corp., (Fox News) per its title page. From the summation page, Jan. 2010:

• "it’s not what you say
• it’s what people hear""...

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

8/11/11, "Global Warming Link to Drowned Polar Bears Melts Under Searing Fed Probe," Human Events. Audrey Hudson

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

• 6/28/10, "Getting Help from the Press," Gloucester Times, Nancy Gaines

"For five days, esteemed scientists and elite journalists gathered on Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles, east of Aruba, to loll on the island's fine beaches, sip cocktails at the Tipsy Seagull and perhaps marvel at the flamingoes for which Bonaire is famous.

The official purpose of the October 2002 gathering of the

• Pew Charitable Trusts marine fellows was to train the scientists in the ways of the media, the better
  
• to market their message.

"Learn how to navigate the stormy waters of the media," read the description of one Bonaire workshop. "Packaging your message is a key to success — whether talking to the media,

• submitting a paper to Science or Nature (magazine), writing a grant proposal, or writing an op-ed for your local paper."

But it wasn't all business.

The workshops were followed by "barside discussions" as the sun-soaked setting setting

• blurred the line that usually separates reporters and those they cover. So, too, did it blur the line between trainers and trainees.

The scientists being trained on Bonaire had a ready pool of journalists on which to practice what they were learning about working the media. The list of reporters invited to Bonaire was a

• who's who of science journalism: Cornelia Dean of the New York Times, Natasha Loder of the Economist, Charles Alexander of Time magazine and Tom Hayden of U.S. News and World Report, among others.

Dean told the Gloucester Daily Times her trip to Bonaire was paid for by Pew, the powerful nonprofit that uses its multi-billion-dollar endowment to steer public policy on the environment and other issues.

• While the New York Times has strict standards against junkets, Dean said, an exception is made for "teaching," and that's what she was doing in Bonaire.

• "My goal was to help scientists to speak more clearly to the public," she said.

The scientists mingling with the journalists on Bonaire included beneficiaries of Pew money, like Steve Palumbi, Elliot Norse and Jeremy Jackson.

Another notable scientist on Bonaire was Daniel Pauly, the author last year of "Aquacalypse Now: The End of Fish," and

• a professor whose fisheries center at the University of British Columbia has received some $15 million from Pew.

Pauly is a longtime prophet of doom for commercial fishing.

In a 1998 article he co-authored for Science magazine, Pauly predicted that rapacious commercial fishermen would work their way down the marine food chain — eliminating predator fish such as tuna and swordfish, then setting their nets for the bait those fish feed on. In the end, nothing would be left on the menu but "jellyfish and plankton soup."

'Fished Out'

The Bonaire conclave is just one example of the symbiotic relationship that has developed between

• environmental advocates and scientists and some of the
  
• big-media journalists who cover them.

The journalists are wined and dined by the advocates

• and hired to train the scientists to use the media to advance their message.

The journalists, in turn, call on those same scientists as sources when writing about the advocates and their agenda.

• In June 2003, eight months after Bonaire, Tom Hayden warned of the cataclysmic consequences of overfishing in a cover story for U.S. News and World Report,

The story, "Fished Out," quoted 13 different concerned scientists and citizens coming to the same awful conclusion: Jellyfish might one day be fishermen's only catch.

Although Hayden was virtually unknown in commercial fishing circles,

• his story had the potential to influence the American public's view of the fishing industry.

Hayden did not mention to his readers that, of the 14 sources he quoted for the article, 13 received their funding directly or indirectly from Pew, as Pew fellows or the recipients of Pew grants. The 14th was a restaurant chef.

• Hayden's Pew-connected sources included Pauly, the godfather of the jellyfish scenario, and Jeremy Jackson, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography ecologist.

Both Pauly and Jackson were on Bonaire with Hayden, who did not return several messages for comment on this story.

• In fact, Jackson was on the agenda to go snorkeling with Hayden. Hayden's U.S. News and World Report cover story quoted Jackson on jellyfish:

"Jellyfish have become a commercial fishery in many places," Jackson says, "because that's all that's left. That and the bacteria."

• Hayden also quoted Jane Lubchenco, now head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

'Frame their messages'

Lubchenco, a Pew fellow and mentor of many other Pew fellows, wasn't on Bonaire. But she appeared in a PBS-produced film shown at the event titled "Empty Oceans, Empty Nets," another cautionary tale of overfishing, funded in part by Pew.

• Lubchenco for years has urged her fellow scientists to become activists in the debate over issues like global warming and overfishing and
  

• to help shape public policy through the media.

In 1997, as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Lubchenco called on fellow scientists to

• join her in a new "social contract."

Scientists must promote their ideas to politicians and the public in order to create a world that is "ecologically sound, economically feasible and socially just," she argued.

• A year after the speech, Lubchenco founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program to advance her activist vision.

The program trains chosen scientists in "talking points" to use with the media and other nonscientific audiences, according to its website. Through "role playing and small group interactive exercises,"

• the scientists learn how to develop "specific, appropriate messages to stakeholders."

Trainers hired to work with Aldo Leopold fellows have included

• reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post and National Public Radio, as well as leaders of environmental groups and
  
• White House and
  
• congressional staff members.

Lubchenco also helped organize two groups with a similar mission, SeaWeb and the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea — COMPASS.

• Lead trainer for all three advocacy groups — Aldo Leopold, SeaWeb and COMPASS — is Nancy Baron, a zoologist and former science writer.

Baron has boasted to colleagues about her success in manipulating the media message — and the media.

• In a 2005 e-mail — a copy of which has been obtained by the Times — she cited an article in The New York Times, and wrote:
  

• "We worked with these scientists to help them frame their messages and talk about their study so it resonates with the wider public. Note their quotes in particular which are not just off the top of their heads ..."

In 2008, referring to a story on damage to the ocean ecosystem written by Andrew Revkin for the Science Times section of The New York Times, Baron wrote: "This Science Times piece came out of AAAS (American Academy of Arts and Sciences) and our infamous marine mixer."

• The infamous mixer was a cocktail party hosted by COMPASS for members of the Academy and the press.

The networking that links activists and journalists was fully on display in the Washington Post story that broke the news of President-elect Obama's decision to nominate

• Lubchenco as head of NOAA in December 2008.

The story was written by the Post's environmental writer, Juliet Eilperin, who has been both a panelist and participant in COMPASS events.

• Eilperin cited "several sources" for the scoop and quoted one in praise of Lubchenco: Andrew Rosenberg.

The story did not mention that Rosenberg is an adviser to both Pew and COMPASS and has ties to Lubchenco that date to when she was a professor and he a grad student at Oregon State University. He lists Lubchenco as a reference on his resume.

• Rosenberg is also a former high-ranking NOAA official who
  

• now runs an environmental consulting company that has obtained
  

• more than $12 million in NOAA contracts in the past decade.

Last fall, Lubchenco made him a White House consultant on ocean policy."

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

Married to the mob, the Washington Post's 'environmental' "reporter" Juliet Eilperin is married to Center for American Progess 'Climate' Specialist Andrew Light whose work at CAP's Global Climate Network is

• patronized by wealthy UN climate boss/lobbyist/steamy romance novelist,

Rajendra Pachauri.

• Fittingly, Eilperin hubby Mr. Light's resume says he's an
  
• expert on 'ethics.'....

"Scientists must promote their ideas to politicians and the public in order to create a world that is "ecologically sound, economically feasible and socially just," she (Pew fellow Lubchenco) argued." (italics mine, ed.)

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

2/21/11, "Hackers target European carbon registries," USA Today, B. Acohido

7/16/10, "Carbon Trading Used as Money-Laundering Front," Jakarta Globe

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

12/13/10, "‘Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China," by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360

.

.

George Soros on the beach in his bikini, bonnet, with young lady he jilted

8/12/11, "Mogul George Soros lounged in luxury with Adriana Ferreyr (above) before dumping her for meditative Tamiko Bolton." NY Post, photo Splash News

"Ex suing George Soros living in same building as woman he gave apartment to," NY Post, Smith and Olshan, via Lucianne

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

UPDATE: 8/12/12, "Soros to marry again at 82," NY Post

"Billionaire George Soros is to marry again at age 82 after getting engaged to girlfriend Tamiko Bolton, Page Six can exclusively reveal.

The legendary investor — the seventh-richest person in America, worth $22 billion according to Forbes — announced to close friends and family last night that he’s engaged to the 40-year-old businesswoman as he celebrated his 82nd birthday at his Hamptons home.

A source told Page Six, “George planned a surprise announcement to his assembled friends and family at his birthday party last night. He told them he and Tamiko are engaged and plan to marry next summer in Southampton.” Guests at the party included Blackstone’s Byron Wien and the mogul’s son Alexander Soros.

Sources tell us the couple met at a lunch in New York in 2008, and, “Their relationship has developed over time.” While they have mainly kept a low profile as a couple, the hedge-fund titan recently stepped out with her in public in May at a Paley Center screening of “The Untouchables.”

We’re told George proposed to Tamiko on a recent weekend in the garden of his Southampton home. Sources say he presented her with a Graff ring, a brilliant-cut diamond in platinum setting on a rose-gold band with rare pink pave diamonds.

Tamiko, the daughter of a Japanese-American nurse and a retired naval commander, grew up in California. The attractive brunette has an MBA from the University of Miami and works as a consultant in health care and education. She started an Internet-based dietary supplement and vitamin-sales company and, more recently, a Web-based yoga-education platform.

Dad-of-five George has been married and divorced twice. He wed Annaliese Witschak in 1960, and they had three children before divorcing in 1983, when he wed Susan Weber Soros, 25 years his junior. They had two children and divorced in 2005.

When asked if there is a pre-nup, Soros’ attorney William D. Zabel said: “It is well known that Mr. Soros will leave the bulk of his estate to charity but he intends to provide generously for his wife.”"

Marion Curtis/Startraksphoto.com

Tamiko Bolton, photo Ariel Hanson, NY Post, 8/12/11

--------------------------
Ed. note: Please excuse bright white patch above, it was put there by hackers.

.

Time Magazine says keep 'climate' industry going even if global warming doesn't exist

7/26/11, "Fighting Climate Change by Not Focusing on Climate Change," Time Magazine, Bryan Walsh

Time Magazine's author would be out of a job if he looked more closely at this own words. Billions have been diverted from American taxpayers and a generation of lives wasted on a whim:

• "even if global warming wasn't real," these are all good things to do' ....

Better than starving people and wrecking lives?

Time, Walsh: "...Even as carbon emissions keep rising and the most of the U.S. sweats through a summer that feels like a trailer for global warming to come. What's needed in this long hot season is an oblique approach to climate change, one that sidesteps the roadblocks by taking advantage of popular, no-regrets

• actions that are worth doing
  

• even if global warming wasn't real."...

And making billions for organized crime can't be bad, along with references to a hot summer in the US-which is weather--not climate.

Time has a financial interest in the global warming "industry" and with at least one admittedly criminal company, Siemens:

Time Magazine website featured its partnership with Siemens on 7/5/10.

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

1/24/11, "Greece to seek damages from Siemens over bribes," Reuters

• Siemens plead guilty to massive bribery and kickbacks and paid a fine of at least $1.6 billion. Perhaps like BP, Siemens thought by hooking up with the "green" or "climate" industry, people would forget they were crooks.

1/6/2009, Siemens bribery judgment a "wake up call for the "global energy industry."....

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

• 12/15/2008, CNN/Money: "According to the SEC, the company also used bribes to develop mobile telephone networks in Bangladesh,

develop national identity cards in Argentina and medical devices in Vietnam, China and Russia.

• Siemens (SI) allegedly used kickback schemes to sell power stations and equipment to Iraq under the United Nations' Oil for Food Program. In all, the company engaged in more than $1.4 billion in bribes, earning more than $1.1 billion on its illegal transactions."...

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

• SIEMENS is mentioned in ClimateGate emails, 10/5/09 and 10/6/09:

Date, Oct. 5, 2009, a ClimateGate emailer expresses hope a company like Siemens will not see information disputing ClimateGaters' views on CO2.

• A day later, Oct. 6, an emailer says he's in talks with Siemens about money for CO2 research. (Phil Jones blames "right wing web sites" for their troubles):

Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 15:50:38 +0100
Subject: Co2 Data
From: Martin Lutyens
To: Andrew Manning

Dear Andrew,

I just came across an article in The Week, called "The case of the vanishing data". It
writes in a rather wry and sceptical way about your UEA colleagues Phil Jones and Tom
Wigley , saying that only their "homogenised" or "adjusted" historical data is
available, and the original, raw data has gone missing. Apparently some other
environmental gurus now want to look at the original data and were "fobbed off"....

Could you comment on this please, as someone (eg Siemens Corp.) may pick this up and I think we should all be forearmed by knowing what really happened and

• what to say if asked.

Many thanks, Martin

Martin Lutyens
+44 (0) 207 938 2387
+44 (0) 796 646 2661

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia"

==========================
****Date, Oct. 6, 2009, (Phil Jones getting fed up with allegations and blames "right wing websites." Emailer Andrew says he's in talks with Siemens):

"From: Phil Jones
To: Andrew Manning
Subject: Re: Fwd: Co2 Data
Date: Tue Oct 6 08:38:04 2009

Andrew,
Getting a bit fed up with these baseless allegations....

It is the right wing web sites doing all this, presumably in the build up to Copenhagen.
****

At 00:13 06/10/2009, Andrew Manning wrote:

Hi Phil,

Is this another witch hunt (like Mann et al.)? How should I respond to the below?

(I'm in the process of trying to persuade Siemens Corp. (a company with half a million employees in 190 countries!) to donate me a little cash to do some CO2 measurments here in the UK - looking promising, so the last thing I need is news articles

calling into question (again) observed temperature increases - I thought we'd moved the debate beyond this, but seems that these sceptics are real die-hards!!). Kind regards,
Andrew"....****

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

2/21/11, "Hackers target European carbon registries," USA Today, B. Acohido

7/16/10, "Carbon Trading Used as Money-Laundering Front," Jakarta Globe

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

12/13/10, "‘Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China," by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360

• Luntz's full report, The Language of the Clean Energy Economy, is available at http://www.edf.org/language."

• (That Luntz is a consultant anywhere shows why the GOP is what it is. ed.)

Reference: New Republic, "Frank Luntz on how to pass a climate bill," 1/21/10 by Jesse Zwick

• 1/23/10, Trueslant.com, "How to sell a climate change bill to Americans," by Eileen Zimmerman

10/6/10, "Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society," Hal Lewis, Emeritus Professor, GWPF
-----------------------------------------------------

• Carbon dioxide is not "soot." It is a colorless gas.

3/15/11, "ATI Says 'Stop Calling It Carbon'," ATI press release

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

EU agreed: 2/11/2008, "The European Commission said last month that... the drive for these fuels has done unforeseen damage, like endangering rain forests in Asia and causing a rise in food prices"...

• 2/11/2008, "Bloomberg slams US Energy law over corn ethanol" Reuters by Louis Charbonneau and Timothy Gardner

United Nations, "A new US energy law will cause an increase in global food prices and lead to starvation deaths worldwide because it continues to promote corn ethanol, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday.

"People literally will starve to death in parts of the world,

• it always happens when food prices go up,"
  

Bloomberg told reporters after addressing a U.N. General Assembly debate on climate change.

The new U.S. law, which came into force late last year, increased fivefold the required amount of blending of biofuels like corn ethanol -- creating higher demand for the grain that

• will push up corn prices."...

.