As cold weather kills hundreds, Walter Russell Mead desperately seeks greens who know the difference between weather and climate and want to make this a better planet

12/26/12, "Cold Weather Across Europe, Asia Kills Hundreds," Via Meadia, Walter Russell Mead

"Cold weather in the past few days has sadly gone from severe to deadly. While unusually high snowfall has disrupted the travel plans of millions of Americans, freezing temperatures have taken the lives of hundreds of people from Central Europe to South Asia. The BBC reports that in Poland, 49 people have died; in Ukraine, 83; in Russia, 88; and in India, at least 93. 

The majority of those dead are the elderly and the homeless.

Besides being an obvious tragedy for many across the world, this is a reminder that "weather" is not "climate," unless it suits the needs of environmental hotheads to claim that it is. When there's a hot spell or a dry spell or a wet spell that can somehow be connected with the climate change narrative, the media resounds with panicky warnings. But when people die of frostbite in Punjab and temperatures hit -58F in Russia, 

•  the silence of the alarmists is deafening.

In the past few years we’ve seen climate change blamed for hot weather, for floods and for droughts. It’s been blamed for both the presence and the absence of storms. It’s been blamed for 

• excessive snow as well as for  
• the absence of snow. 

We don’t blame the smart greens for these recurring epidemics of media foolishness, but we wish they did more to focus the public discussion on practicalities and realities....

In addition to everything else, the continuing development of human technological capability and social productivity will also give countries beset with natural calamities the ability to protect their most vulnerable citizens. The path to that kind of safety and 

sustainability is not through Malthusian hysteria, 

but through economic growth and modernization.

The energy and the passion that greens have wasted on failed initiatives like Kyoto, ethanol, solar subsidies, the UN climate treaty process and other fiascoes could, if effectively harnessed, do a lot to make this a better world.

May 2013 see the start of an era of smart greens." via Tom Nelson





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Joe Romm seems to expect millions in free advertising to sell his personal view of US caused CO2, wants Colorado fires sold as proof of CO2 poison

The trillion dollar global man-caused climate change industry no longer exists if one believes Joe Romm. If one part of one country is warm one day, it proves man-caused global suicide:

6/27/12, "Hell And High Water Strikes, Media Miss The Forest For The Burning Trees," Joe Romm, Think Progress

"If a tree burns down in a globally-warmed forest but the media doesn’t report why, does it make a sound?

Record-setting heat waves, wildfires, and deluges – at the same time — just what climate scientists have been forecasting for decades. That’s why I titled my 2006 book Hell and High Water....

Dr. Kevin Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research told the NY Times, “It’s not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability. Nowadays, there’s always an element of both.” At the same time, 

• the wildfires in the west, which include the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history,

• are being fueled by climate change."...

[Ed. note: Joe Romm apparently thinks the mere fact of the Governor flying over the scene and saying it looks really terrible sells Romm's viewpoint of American caused CO2 poisoning:]

(continuing, Joe Romm): "UPDATE: After flying over the Waldo Canyon blaze, Governor John Hickenlooper said:

“It was like looking at the worst movie set you could imagine. It’s almost surreal. You look at that, and it’s like nothing I’ve seen before.“..."...

[Ed. note: Romm gives tips on how the media can better render free advertising for his views:]

(continuing, Romm): "ABC now even has an “extreme weather team.” It would be great if they included some experts discussing how global warming has “juiced” the climate, as if it were on steroids, as, for instance, ClimateWire (subs. req’d) did in its story, “Minn. floods, early tropical storms fuel questions about changing climate”."...

[Ed. note: Romm thinks American caused CO2 poisoning requires much more than the 13 US federal agencies now working on the problem and even more billions in tax dollars from the few Americans left who have jobs with much of the cash shipped to foreign countries. Apparently he sees the Colorado fires as an American created crisis and one that must be exploited to for the purpose of advancing his personal views. Billions of US taxpayer dollars are diverted yearly and have been at minimum since 1990 when George Bush the First enacted the Global Change Act. Americans are broke, jobless, and looking at worse ahead, but Romm believes more needs to be taken from them. Nothing will change his mind about that:]

(continuing, Joe Romm): "Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011


Trenberth on media miscoverage of extreme weather: “I find it systematically tends to get underplayed and it often gets underplayed by my fellow scientists. Because one of the opening statements, which I’m sure you’ve probably heard is “Well you can’t attribute a single event to climate change.” But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and  

it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.”...

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

TracFone cell phone coverage map shows lack of cell phone service in wildfire areas:

Man fled the blaze he started, couldn't immediately report the fire because there was no cell phone service in the area (parag. 6):

5/19/12, "Feds say Colorado wildfire started on camp stove," AP, via CNS News

U.S. Forest Service investigators say the 56-year-old Weber, a mental health counselor at Colorado State University, tried to stamp out the fire Monday but then fled as the blaze spread. He later reported starting the fire to the Larimer County Sheriff's Office, officials said. There is no cell phone service in the area where the fire started."

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8/24/11, "Feds charge 2 in devastating Wallow fire," AP, East Valley Tribune (Arizona)

2011's massive Arizona fire was set by humans and had nothing to do with CO2 poisoning. The two men ran away when they saw the fire raging from their abandoned campfire.

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7/2/12, "Giant Wildfire Started During Bachelor Party," TheSmokingGun.com

"The largest wildfire burning in Arizona was started during a bachelor party when one shotgun-toting celebrant fired a shell that promises to shoot “100 feet of fire, setting everything in its path ablaze,” The Smoking Gun has learned. The Sunflower Fire--which has burned nearly 18,000 acres of the Tonto National Forest and is not fully contained--began in mid-May."...

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Southwest US fires fed by undergrowth not 'climate change,' necessary thinning of forests has been legislated away by so-called environmentalists:

"On the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, where thinning is practiced, the tribal lands are in far better shape."

6/5/12, "Politician should check her research," Las Vegas Sun, Letter to the Editor, Sanford Cohen, Prescott, Ariz.




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Luxury Brooklyn condo building bans smoking, inspired by Bloomberg who has proposed law to require residential buildings to adopt smoking policies

12/24/12, "Luxury condo building in B'klyn bans smoking by owners and tenants," NY Post

"The condo board for one of Brooklyn’s most prestigious addresses has banned smoking throughout the glass-walled building — including in residents’ private apartments.

Condo owners at tony 1 Grand Army Plaza — a k a 1 Prospect Park, where residents are famous for parading around in the buff, giving parkgoers an eyeful through their floor-to-ceiling windows — will now face fines if they dare to light up in their multimillion-dollar pads.

The only area where residents can puff away is on their private terraces, which boast sweeping views of Prospect Park. 

More than two-thirds of residents in the Prospect Heights building designed by famed architect Richard Meier voted to allow the ban, which is believed to be among the first in Brooklyn.

Many said they were galvanized by Mayor Bloomberg’s crusade to make the Big Apple smoke-free. Bloomberg has proposed a law to require residential buildings to adopt smoking policies and disclose them to prospective buyers and tenants.

“Bloomberg inspired people to say, ‘It’s possible to ban smoking at home,’ ” said Steve Sladkus, the lawyer for the condo’s board."...via Free Republic





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California marijuana growers using poisons fatal to humans, killing bears, illegally siphoning millions of gallons of water from salmon when they need it most, mow down timber, grade mountaintops, leave filth-LA Times

"Each plant uses 5 gallons of water a day."...

12/23/12, "Pot farms wreaking havoc on Northern California environment," LA Times, Joe Mozingo

"Burgeoning marijuana growing operations are sucking millions of gallons of water from coho salmon lifelines and taking other environmental tolls, scientists say."

"State scientists, grappling with an explosion of marijuana growing on the North Coast, recently studied aerial imagery of a small tributary of the Eel River, spawning grounds for endangered coho salmon and other threatened fish.

In the remote, 37-square-mile patch of forest, they counted 281 outdoor pot farms and 286 greenhouses, containing an estimated 20,000 plants — mostly fed by water diverted from creeks or a fork of the Eel. The scientists determined the farms were siphoning roughly 18 million gallons from the watershed every year, largely at the time when the salmon most need it.

"That is just one small watershed," said Scott Bauer, the state scientist in charge of the coho recovery on the North Coast for the Department of Fish and Game. "You extrapolate that for all the other tributaries, just of the Eel, and you get a lot of marijuana sucking up a lot of water.… This threatens species we are spending millions of dollars to recover."...

The marijuana boom that came with the sudden rise of medical cannabis in California has wreaked havoc on the fragile habitats of the North Coast and other parts of California. With little or no oversight, farmers have illegally mowed down timber, graded mountaintops flat for sprawling greenhouses, dispersed poisons and pesticides, 

drained streams and polluted watersheds.

Because marijuana is unregulated in California and illegal under federal law, most growers still operate in the shadows, and scientists have little hard data on their collective effect. But they are getting ever more ugly snapshots.

A study led by researchers at UC Davis found that a rare forest carnivore called a fisher was being poisoned in Humboldt County and near Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada....

Mark Higley, a wildlife biologist on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in eastern Humboldt who worked on the study, is incredulous over the poisons that growers are bringing in.

"Carbofuran," he said. "It seems like they're using that to kill bears and things like that that raid their camps. So they mix it up with tuna or sardine, and the bears eat that and die."

The insecticide is lethal to humans in small doses, requires a special permit from the EPA and is banned in other countries. Authorities are now regularly finding it at large-scale operations in some of California's most sensitive ecosystems.

It is just one in a litany of pollutants seeping into the watershed from pot farms: fertilizers, soil amendments, miticides, rodenticides, fungicides, plant hormones,

diesel fuel, human waste.

Scientists suspect that nutrient runoff from excess potting soil and fertilizers, combined with lower-than-normal river flow due to diversions, has caused a rash of toxic blue-green algae blooms in the North Coast rivers over the last decade.

The cyanobacteria outbreaks threaten public health for swimmers and kill aquatic invertebrates that salmon and steelhead trout eat. Now, officials warn residents in late summer and fall to stay out of certain stretches of water and keep their dogs out.

Eleven dogs have died from ingesting the floating algae since 2001.
  
The effects are disheartening to many locals because healthier salmon runs were signaling that the rivers were gradually improving from the damage caused by more than a century of logging.

"Now with these water diversions, we're potentially slamming the door on salmon recovery," said Scott Greacen, director of Friends of the Eel River.

In June, Bauer and other agency scientists accompanied game wardens as they executed six search warrants on growers illegally sucking water from tributaries of the Trinity River. At one, he came upon a group of 20-somethings with Michigan license plates on their vehicles, camping next to 400 plants. He followed an irrigation line up to a creek, where the growers had dug a pond and lined it with plastic.

"I started talking to this guy, and he says he used to be an Earth First! tree-sitter, saving the trees," Bauer said. "I told him everything he was doing here negates everything he did as an environmentalist."

The man was a small-timer in this new gold rush. As marijuana floods the market and prices drop, many farmers are cultivating ever bigger crops to make a profit. They now cut huge clearings for industrial-scale greenhouses. With no permits or provisions for runoff, the operations

dump tons of silt into the streams during the rainy season.

Scanning Google Earth in his office recently, Bauer came upon a "mega grow" that did not exist the year before — a 4-acre bald spot in the forest with 42 greenhouses, each 100 feet long.

Figuring a single greenhouse that size would hold 80 plants, and each plant uses about 5 gallons of water a day, he estimated the operation would consume 2 million gallons of water in the dry season and unleash a torrent of sediment in the wet season.

"There has been an explosion of this in the last two years," he said. "We can't keep up with it."

Every grow has its own unique footprint. Some farmers on private land avoid pesticides and poisons, get their water legally, keep their crops small and try to minimize their runoff. Urban indoor growers might not pollute a river, but they guzzle energy. A study in the journal Energy Policy calculated that indoor marijuana cultivation could be responsible for 9% of California's household electricity use. Other producers, like the Mexican drug trafficking groups who set up giant grows on public lands right next to mountain streams, spread toxins far and wide and steal enough water to run oscillating sprinkler systems.

But it's not just the big criminal groups skirting the rules. Tony LaBanca, senior environmental scientist at Fish and Game in Eureka, said less than 1% of marijuana growers get the permits required to take water from a creek, and those who do usually do it after an enforcement action.
 
Responsible growers could easily get permits, with no questions asked about what type of plant they're watering, LaBanca said. They just need to be set up to take their water in the wet season and store it in tanks and bladders.

Fish and Game wants to step up enforcement, but the staff is overwhelmed, he said. The agency has 12 scientists and 15 game wardens in the entire four counties on the North Coast, covering thousands of mountainous square miles.

Until the last few years, dealing with marijuana cultivation was usually a minor issue. Now, LaBanca said, it is "triage."...

Deputies had severed the irrigation lines during the August raid, but when Higley returned in September to study the environmental impact, some of the line had been reconnected to sprinklers and plants had re-sprouted. He saw a wet bar of soap on an upturned bucket and realized workers were hiding nearby.

On this return visit, the site was empty, and he started picking through the rubbish. "That's d-CON rat poison right there, 16 trays."

At a dump pile next to the creek, he found propane tanks, more rat poison, cans of El Pato tomato sauce, and empty bags of Grow More fertilizer, instant noodles and tortillas.

A lot of the trash had been removed during the sheriff's eradication — dozens of empty bags accounting for 2,700 pounds of fertilizer and boxes for 10 pounds of d-CON (enough to kill 21 spotted owls and up to 28 fishers), as well as two poached deer carcasses and the remains of a state-protected ringtailed cat.

"It wouldn't matter if they were growing tomatoes, corn and squash," he said. "It's trespassing, it's illegal and it borders on terrorism to the environment."" via Free Republic
 

"Wildlife technician Aaron Pole surveys a forest trashed by growers. Carbofuran, an insecticide lethal to humans in small doses, is found regularly at large-scale pot farms. Also flowing into the watershed are rodenticides, fungicides, diesel fuel and other pollutants (Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times / November 15, 2012)".






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Why are kids going crazy and shooting up schools? 'For the last 20 yrs. kids have been taught the planet is dying, they're the cause, that they must act, must manipulate their parents. Kids are being driven insane in schools'-Rosa Koire

12/18/12, "THE WORLD HAPPINESS INDEX AND MASS MURDER," Democrats Against UN Agenda 21, Rosa Koire

"This is a graphic expression of one of the many Happiness Indexes floating around on the web.  Green is happy, red is miserable.   Looks like the Central Americans, Ecuadorans, and Mexicans have the lock on happiness from this map...  Have they had any school shootings? Or just wars and drug violence?

Everyone is asking 'Why are these kids going crazy and shooting up schools?' 

Let's consider some potential reasons.

For the last 20 years, with increasing frequency and intensity, children have been taught that the planet is dying and that they are the cause.

They're also taught that they have the power to save the planet.

Considering the fact that children are the most powerless of all people, this is an irresponsible thing to teach a child.  The pressure and responsibility of saving the planet is fierce.  

Children are fearful, stressed, and learning non-violent communication at the same time that they are playing violent computer games.  They are told that everyone is equal but that they are bad (unfair) if they have more than someone else. 
They're taught that bullying is bad and then they're uncertain about exactly what they can say and what they can't.  Children are taught to trust community, and are also told that there are people who would steal them away--strangers who look just like everyone else.

Children are taught sustainable development principles from the time that they're in kindergarten.  These principles are in every course and continue on until post-graduate school.  I was sent a book that is used in third grade: Rethinking Mathematics.  This book teaches students that every point of view is valid and should be considered, even when it is mathematically incorrect.  Is two plus two equal to five?  Let's give that some consideration because no one should be made to feel wrong.  What this does is to destroy certainty.  Mathematics is beautiful because no matter how many times you do a calculation, if it's done correctly you'll get the same answer every time.  Certainty.  The joy of certainty is destroyed for children, and 

rigidity is substituted in its place.  

Rigidity in thinking 'sustainably.' 
 
Just like most people, children are on drugs.  Mind altering, psychotropic drugs that many of them expect to be on for the rest of their lives.  Many of these anxiety drugs have 'side-effects.'  What is a side effect? The risk that psychological collateral damage may result from taking something to make you feel better---it's a mind-altering Russian roulette. 

And sometimes the guns are real.

The world is a dangerous place. Artificial scarcity, panic over global warming, fear that farmland and water sources are disappearing--all of this is UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development.  

Fear is a vital element of this plan.  

Panic is necessary to block your ability to think clearly and to question.  You must act.  How can you be happy when you're taught that children are starving in Ethiopia and baby wolves are being killed and it's because you're using too much water when you're brushing your teeth? Children are being used as levers to change society and manipulate their parents.

UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development is the green mask--the vision of the glorious future.  The joy of future sustainability--how beautiful it will be when we all ride bikes and take the train and live in apartments on the train line and work at non-profits that operate on the Triple Bottom Line: Planet, People, Profit.  We will no longer think about gross national product; we will think about our Gross National Happiness. Oh, glorious day when we will beat our swords into plowshares and return to peasantry.  Oh, the Neo-Feudal state we will enjoy when 'education' is openly and totally about behavioral modification and training.   

We are there.  This is the state of the 'educational system' now with Direct Instruction, Common Core, Mastery Learning, Outcome Based Education.  Children are being manipulated. 

Their open and impressionable minds are being taught to think in consensus, to be manageable and measurable and predictable and to answer the question the right way and to value sustainability above all else or the planet will die.   They must be HAPPY.  It's the New Poverty!  It's the Peace on Earth!  You must analyze every feeling and then share it with everyone in your class, children, because how will we know that you're HAPPY?    
 
Children are being driven insane in schools."...







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New Jersey town to station armed officer in each of its schools starting Jan. 2, fortify entrances and windows. Democrat Mayor favors stricter gun laws but says this is necessary for kids' safety

12/23/12, "Jersey town adopts schoolhouse Glocks," "Cops for Kids," NY Post, S. Edelman

"Don’t mess with Marlboro Township. The leafy, well-heeled New Jersey suburb will station a permanent armed cop in each of its nine schools starting Jan. 2.

It’s apparently the first district nationwide bent on packing heat in every schoolhouse since madman Adam Lanza gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14.

“We’ve made a collective decision as a town that we need armed security in each of our schools,” Mayor Jonathan Hornik told The Post. “With this new evil, you can’t just sit there and hope that it doesn’t happen in your town. We must protect our kids.”...

Besides putting a cop in each of its schools — one kindergarten, five elementary, two middle and one high school — Marlboro will consider fortifying entrances with steel doors and bulletproof glass and installing surveillance cameras “all over” to feed to the police department, Hornik said....

“This isn’t a luxury item. This is a necessity, based on what we saw happen in Connecticut,” said Hornik, a Democrat who supports an assault-weapons ban and stricter gun control.

The 40,000-resident Monmouth County town, home to many former Brooklynites and Staten Islanders, has taken groundbreaking safety measures before. In March 2001, it became one of the first towns in the nation to ban cellphone use while driving....

“If a district in New York state were to pursue that same solution — to bring armed police officers into the schools — we would support that decision,” said David Albert, spokesman for the New York School Boards Association.

But it won’t happen in New York City, said Department of Education spokeswoman Marge Feinberg, noting, “We are not considering having armed security officers in our buildings.”"...




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Hate speech by people like Piers Morgan, Chris Matthews, and others puts lives of law abiding Americans at risk

12/20/12, "Tartaro: Hate speech could spark violence against gun owners," Human Events, Neil W. McCabe

"The leader of the nation’s oldest gun rights legal foundation is concerned hate speech in the media will encourage violence against gun owners.

Statements made by broadcasters including CNN’s Piers Morgan and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, as well as comments on social media have contributed to an environment of hate directed against law-abiding Americans who are being demonized for a crime they did not commit, said Joseph P. Tartaro, the president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation.
 
Morgan called one national gun rights leader Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America: “an unbelievably stupid man,” he said.

Matthews suggested gun owners are, “..people on the far-right (who) never lose their passion…Normal people have other interests like their spouses, their lives, their children, and even their generalized politics isn’t driven by one issue,” he said.

A University of Rhode Island Prof. Erik Loomis tweeted, “Looks like the National Rifle Association has murdered some children,” he said. Loomis also called NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre’s “head on a stick.”

This comes as President Barack Obama launched an effort that could culminate in an attempt to ban semiautomatic sport-utility rifles and ammunition magazines, and impose other restrictions on gun owners who are not responsible for the actions of an obviously mentally disturbed individual, he said.

“The remarks become obscene after that,” said Alan M. Gottlieb, SAF executive vice president.

“We have received some vulgar e-mails from people that want us to vanish ‘for the sake of a civilized world,” he said. “This kind of rhetoric does not contribute to any rational discussion,” he said.

“Vitriol like this only promotes hate, but apparently it’s okay to perpetuate bigotry so long as you are an anti-gunner, and a liberal. If anyone is harmed as a result of this hate campaign, we expect them to be prosecuted under the hate crimes laws,” he said.

“If this hate speech leads to hate crimes,” Gottlieb concluded,  

“people like Piers Morgan and Chris Matthews will be partly responsible.”

Tartaro said he is glad the president is taking steps to address the issue of gun violence.

“Focusing on the instrumentality of firearms alone to the exclusion of possible other causative factors is doomed to failure and would do an injustice to the memories of the Sandy Hook victims and their families,” he said.

“Of course, we are pleased to see that by adopting a broad task force approach in search of solutions to prevent or reduce the kind of violence that was visited upon Newtown, Conn., last week,” he said.

“The president has sought the expertise of several cabinet departments that deal with mental health, educational administration, pharmacology, law enforcement and cultural issues in addition to firearms,” he said.

The task force, led by Vice-President Joseph R. Biden Jr., would be making a mistake by narrowing the focus to firearms and pushing a ban on popular semiautomatic firearms will only fuel the campaign of hate now underway on cable television and in social media." via RedState.com

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After Columbine school killings Pres. Bill Clinton put cops in schools. Where was the hate then?

4/16/2000, President Bill "Clinton Pledges Funds to Add Police to Schools," AP via LA Times

"Marking the first anniversary of the shooting deaths at Columbine High School, President Clinton announced $120 million in new federal grants Saturday to place more police officers in schools and help even the youngest kids cope with their problems.

"In our national struggle against youth violence we must not fail our children; our future depends on it," the president said in his weekly radio address."...

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Above, NY Daily News front page, Tues., Dec.18, 2012

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Above, NY Daily News front page, Sat., Dec. 22, 2012
Pictured is president of NRA, Wayne La Pierre

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12/22/12, "Wayne LaPierre's Newtown statement pilloried by US newspapers," UK Guardian, Matt Williams

"New York Times and Hartford Courant among publications to denounce NRA leader's response as 'almost deranged'"

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