"Die-hard" Californian environmentalists helping to "destroy planet"

Are "die-hard environmentalists" in California helping to "destroy the planet"? That could very well be the case, if one is to believe IPCC scientist Evan Mills, who has published the paper “Energy Up In Smoke: The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production.”

indoor pot consumes an estimated 8 percent of all electricity generated in California and 1 percent of all electricity generated in America. Its greenhouse emissions equal that of six million cars. Growing just one joint indoors emits two pounds of CO2.
Indeed, marijuana, once synonymous with all that is green, has become anything but in the region that gave birth to the environmental movement. Residents in the liberal Bay Area routinely elbow past each other to buy cage-free eggs, free-range beef and organic strawberries, and yet their weed habit costs a Fukushima’s-worth of power every year.
Why? Because medical cannabis users seem to prefer the high they get from indoor-grown pot, not to mention the way it looks, smells and tastes–even if it’s helping to destroy the planet.
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Mills’ analysis also turned the stomachs of many die-hard environmentalists in Humboldt County. Because, in a way, they knew they helped create the problem.

Read the entire article here


While one should not be too worried about alarmists´worries about the pot smokers´ contribution to the "destruction" of our planet, there is, however, another question with regard to the "die-hard" warmist environmentalists, which Mills does not address: Could the use of pot actually explain much of their often strange antics?

It could very well be true, when we remember how marijuana affects a person´s behavior:

Since marijuana drastically effects short-term memory, it is not uncommon for the user to often forget what he is doing or talking about.

PS

Sometimes one has a feeling that these symptoms are not uncommon among many warmist climate scientists, either.

President Sarkozy deserves some credit for his Libyan policy

Taylor Dinerman lauds president Nicolas Sarkozy for his Libya policy. The victory over Gaddafi belongs to the Libyans themselves, but Sarkozy also can take some credit for the success:

Much of the credit should also go to the world leader who, early on, decided to bet on the rebels: France's President Nicolas Sarkozy. After some prodding from the celebrity intellectual, Bernard Henri Levy, Sarkozy began to lobby the rest of the West, especially US President Barack Obama and a few Arab governments,against Gaddafi.
While there were some political reasons for Sarkozy's actions, including the need to make everyone, in Libya and elsewhere forget about the ill-considered 2008 arms sales to Libya, the French government's motives were less cynical than one might have come to expect, based on past performance from past regimes. This is to Sarkozy's credit, and may presage an enduring shift in France's overall foreign policy towards a less automatic anti-US and anti-NATO posture.
It was Sarkozy's decision in June to airdrop a massive supply of weapons, including especially the Milan wire-guided anti-tank missiles, for the Arab and Berber rebels in the Jebel Nefousa mountains south of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, that future military historians will probably see as the decisive move that broke the back of Gaddafi's military forces. France's traditionally intimate knowledge of Berber tribal politics may have been one of the reasons behind this move; also, the fact that French intelligence believed, correctly as it turned out, that, if well armed, the Berbers would prove formidable fighting men.

But Sarkozy´s Libyan success may not be enough to get him re-elected:

His poll numbers are far worse than those of any other Western leader. In one recent survey roughly 50% of Frenchmen said they would not vote for him under any circumstances. His job approval rating hovers consistently around 25%.

Read the entire article here

One must hope that Dinerman is right about the shift in French foreign policy "towards a less automatic anti-US and anti-NATO posture". That would be most welcome from a transatlantic/NATO point of view. There have not been too many positive developments in that area during the last few years.

Warmist Kevin Trenberth: Come rain or come shine - always blame it on global warming

Nobel Laureate (shared) for Nobel Peace Prize 2007 (as part of IPCC) Kevin Trenberth has made the the following announcement about the connection between climate change and recent disasters:

 "Given that global warming is unequivocal," he said, the assumption 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.' "

Now we have it from the highest possible authority: Irene, Katrina, heatwaves, coldwaves, floods, droughts, you name it - global warming is always to blame. "Science" is as simple as that - on the Nobel Peace Prize level.

Flashback 1821:
In 1821, a major hurricane passed directly over New York City, probably a strong category 4. Historical records show it caused a 10-foot storm surge at low tide. At that time, not that many people were living in New York, so people didn't pay a lot of attention to it.
But William Redfield, the "father of hurricane science", observed the 1821 storm. Just as a debate goes on today over whether global warming causes more frequent or more intense hurricanes, the mid-19th century debate was over "the law of storms".

Cary Mock, Associate Professor of Geography, University of South Carolina

Australian study: 18% reduction in log availability in 2050 due to global warming

        There will be 18% less logs and 19% fewer loggers in Australia by 2050


The flow of new studies about the impact of  (bogus) human caused global warming/climate change seems to be endless. One of the latest comes from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics. The bureau has released a report on the effects of climate change on forestry in six Australian regions.

The main finding of the ABARES report appears to be that there will be an 18 per cent reduction in log availability by 2050 with increasing global temperatues of on average 1.5 per cent.

Graph projections also show that that there would be an average drop in production of 21 per cent, with employment down 19 per cent.

Read an article about the study here

The report can be downloaded here

PS

The (probably quite large) ABARES team of researchers seem to have made good use of the various models created by alarmist climate scientists. However, knowing the widely known amazing accuracy of these models, it is somewhat surprising that the Australian researchers have not actually been able to give the exact number of   logs missing due to human caused global warming in the year 2050. Or maybe the logs are numbered in an appendix? 

Professors and fools

Michael C. B. Ashley is a Professor in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, whose "main research interest is in conducting astronomy and making measurements of atmospheric properties from the Antarctic plateau". He has also taught "several undergraduate courses of relevance to climate science".

This academic giant also is "teaching" Australians that "the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change is rock solid". Scientists - and others - who are not convinced about human induced global warming are "fools":

The problem is that on one side of the debate you have 97% of the world’s published climate scientists and the world’s major scientific organisations, and on the other side you have fools.
Excuse my bluntness, but it is past time to acknowledge that the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change is rock solid. The sceptics have had the time and opportunity to come with up a convincing case, but their best efforts read like arguments that NASA faked the moon landing.

Read the entire article here

PS

If you would like to remind the professor about who is the real fool, here is the address:

m.ashley@unsw.edu.au

"Battery apathy" - Car buyers do not want ineffecient and expensive electric cars

Car buyers are rational people. That´s why they don´t buy into their governments´ battery car hype. Detroit News columnist Neil Winton explains:

Governments in Washington, Berlin, Brussels and Beijing have decided that battery-only cars are the path to the future, and are using taxpayers' money to make it happen.
The trouble is car buyers aren't cooperating.
Governments see battery-only cars as a way of cutting greenhouse gases, which many think cause global warming, and a route to lessening reliance on foreign oil. Car buyers see vehicles that cost about twice as much as they should, and which go about a quarter of the distance they want.
A recent survey in Germany by technology consultancy Gartner Group showed just how high the barrier manufacturers must climb if consumers are willingly going to buy battery cars.
According to the survey, only 16 percent of Germans would consider buying a battery car, compared with 52 percent who want gasoline power, 43 percent hybrids, 37 percent diesel and 25 percent natural gas motors. Of course, Germans don't necessarily speak for Europeans, but the country is Europe's biggest market, accounting for roughly 25 percent of car sales. There's no reason to think their car preferences will be much different from other Europeans, or Americans for that matter.

Voting in the US 2012 presidential election

Ari Berman, writing in Rolling Stone:

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008.
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Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters.

Read the entire article here

Another professor caught spreading disinformation about natural disasters

Here we go again! Another famous "expert", Jeffrey Sachs, director of  the Earth Institute and the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at the Columbia university, gives us a list of all recent international natural disasters and then proclaims that "we are definitively in the midst of human made natural disasters":

“I’m not saying Hurricane Irene is an example of that, but I am saying that when you look around the planet, every month you are seeing more shocks, more frequently, more severe than at any time in modern history,” Sachs said in a “Bloomberg Surveillance” radio interview with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt. “We are definitely in the midst of human-made natural disasters.”

Hurricane Irene killed at least 40 people as it moved from the Caribbean through New England, left an estimated $2.6 billion in damage and cut power to almost 8 million homes and businesses along the U.S. East Coast. Tropical Storm Katia, about 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers) from the southernmost Cape Verde Islands, may be declared a hurricane later today, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

“Can one say that Katrina, or Irene or the massive floods in Pakistan or drought in the horn of Africa are examples in that instance of the long-term human induced change?” Sachs said. “That is extremely difficult but on occasion it can be done because the event is so extreme that one can say with a very high assurance that that is human induced -- like the massive heat waves that hit Europe a few years ago.”

Read the entire article here

Professor Sachs is here using the same trick that most of his fellow warmists have been using already for some time: First claim that we are living in a time of human made disasters, then make a connection to global warming by mentioning recent natural disasters. Sachs (and other warmists) is at the same time forced to acknowledge that is "extremely difficult" to prove that the disasters are caused by human induced global warming/climate change. However, "on occasion it can be done", according to Sachs. As an example he mentions "the massive heat waves that hit Europe a few years ago". Unfortunately, Sachs does not mention where he has found proof for this claim. Of course, there is no such proof . However, for people like Sachs, the guesswork done by some alarmist climate modelers is "proof" enough.

Jeffrey Sachs and all the other academic scaremongerers do not seem to realize that by continuing to mislead and deceive the public, they are seriously damaging the reputation of real scientific study. Obviously that is not a concern if your interests are foremost in promoting the religion of global warming/climate change.

Greenpeace targets the US with "Grotesque Anti-Tuna Fishing Video"

Even sympathetic environmentalists criticize the Greenpeace propaganda video:

Greenpeace Misses the Boat with Grotesque Anti-Tuna Fishing Video
"the video is violent and gross, without actually telling us why tuna fishing is so bad"

Greenpeace has launched a huge propaganda campaign with lavish videos and urgent fundraising letters against canned tuna in the US. This comes at a time when all scientific and medical experts - including the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture - say that people eat far too little seafood. Besides, the species used in canned tuna are in no danger of extinction, according to a leading expert, Ray Hilborn, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington.

But, as John Connelly, President of the National Fisheries Institute, writes, "encouraging consumers to eat for optimum health is not on the Greenpeace agenda":

After campaigning against canned tuna in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, Greenpeace is targeting the United States — the biggest tuna market of them all. As it has done in all its previous efforts Greenpeace has launched a national campaign that vilifies tuna companies through lavish videos, accompanied by urgent fundraising letters.
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Consumption for the most widely available, inexpensive and nutritional fish like tuna is dropping. Although two servings of fish per week is optimal for a healthy diet, most Americans get nowhere near that amount — which is having a measurable, negative impact on public health.
A recent Harvard University study found that some 84,000 deaths could be avoided each year simply by eating the recommended amount of fish. Another long-term study showed that children whose mothers cut back on seafood during pregnancy had lowered developmental and IQ outcomes

Encouraging consumers to eat for optimum health is not on the Greenpeace agenda. What is, however, is a campaign to coerce retailers to stock only canned tuna caught one fish at a time with poles and lines or with methods that abandon other modern fishing technologies. Perhaps next Greenpeace will suggest America's farmers till their fields only with yoke and oxen. Should retailers comply, shoppers' access to — and choice of — affordable canned tuna would all but disappear. And as any shopper knows, limited supply comes at an exorbitant price.
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Ray Hilborn, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington and former member of the President's Commission on Ocean Policy, declared that the species used in canned tuna are nearly as plentiful as they were 60 years ago. The hard facts prove that with responsible fisheries management, ecosystems will continue to thrive and produce huge economic benefits, not to mention healthier diets.

Connelly also tells us what Greenpeace actually is:

Environmental activism is big business. Organizations like Greenpeace are no longer run by naïve college kids; they are global operations as big and as complex as many of the corporations they target. Today, Greenpeace is an anti-business business. It is a global enterprise overseen by a board of directors, run by vice presidents and attorneys, and functionally organized by marketing, media experts and a sales force.
And like a business, it has operating expenses. Keeping Greenpeace flush costs more than $700,000 every day. Keep in mind that Greenpeace doesn't manufacture or sell anything — save fear, perhaps.
The most successful fundraising campaigns promote a provocative claim about an easily recognizable product, like canned tuna. Such an attack is guaranteed to get publicity — and more publicity equates to bigger donations. Thus, Greenpeace isn't so much concerned with what's on Americans' plates as what's in its coffers.
Greenpeace has nothing to lose, but Americans certainly do. Tuna is popular, affordable and healthy — one of the few bright spots in the typical high-fat, high-sodium American diet. Fortunately, there are plenty of these fish in the sea. And with ongoing smart management, there will continue to be.

Read the entire article here

PS

People should realize that Greenpeace - together with such doomsday prophets as NASA´s James Hansen and the Earth Policy Institute´s Lester Brown - is  part of the global enviro-fundamentalist movement, with a clear anti-business and anti-democratic agenda. These people do not shy away from anything in order to promote their doomsday propaganda for a world totally controlled by environmental extremists.

Will the US finally stop financing UN waste of money?

After the popular uprising in Libya, the country was finally suspended from the UN Human Rights Council. Only last year madman Gaddafi was warmly welcomed by a number of other members (whose own human rights credentials are less than outstanding)


The US has always been the main paymaster of the United Nations. This has continued, inspite of occasional grumbling of several US administrations about UN profligacy. Finally, it appears that we will see some serious action to prevent unnecessary waste of  US taxpayers´ money:

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican chairwoman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has introduced a bill, the U.N. Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act, which should make the UN bureacracy think twice before introducing expensive new projects (e.g. with regard to (bogus) climate change :

The Ros-Lehtinen bill stipulates that the lion’s share of the U.N. budget be moved from mandatory to voluntary funding. This would fundamentally alter the current system, under which the United States simply is informed what it must pay each year. Under the one-country, one-vote procedures at the United Nations, the United States has no more say over the budget than does tiny Tuvalu. The budget can be passed by two-thirds of the U.N. General Assembly (129 nations) that collectively could pay less than 1 percent of all dues over the objection of the United States, which pays 22 times that amount. Moving toward voluntary funding would lessen the likelihood that United States taxpayers’ dollars could be used to support anti-Israel initiatives such as the Durban conference or the notorious Goldstone report.
Moreover, voluntary dues would encourage more efficiency at U.N. agencies that have become accustomed to automatic funding and lack any real incentives to economize or compete. On Monday, a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Joseph M. Torsella, complained that plans to increase the salaries of U.N. employees by 3 percent were “inappropriate at this time of fiscal austerity.” Apparently, no one at the United Nations understands the meaning of the word “austerity.” Incredibly, the U.N.’s budget has increased faster than the federal government’s in the last ten years, despite the United States’ bearing the majority of the cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bill would also withhold funds from the embarrassing Human Rights Council until it removes from its committee those nations listed as human-rights abusers, known sponsors of terrorism, violators of religious freedom, and those currently under sanctions — a commonsense initiative that could only possibly be controversial at the world body, which sees nothing amiss in North Korea’s serving on the proliferation committee.

Read the entire National Review article here

ECB´s Trichet: The euro is safe and stable - forever

The euro in good hands (official ECB image)

ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet again has used the same old trick in defense of the euro:

The euro is a strong currency that has managed to maintain its value over time while European governments have been trying to cope with the effects of the global economic crisis, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said Tuesday.
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The euro zone is facing credibility problems because of the problems of some of its member states and not because of a euro-zone-wide issue, Trichet said.

Read the entire article here

PS

Trichet´s (and the other euro propagandists´) way of reasoning is quite revealing. In reality it means, that whatever happens in the real world, it can always be blamed on individual members states. The euro as such is safe and stable - forever.

Greenpeace on thin ice

        The thick winter ice on the Baltic also is part of "climate change"

In an article titled "Into thin ice", Greenpeace Nordic´s "ocean campaigner" Frida Bengtsson reveals why Greenpeace switched from global warming to "climate change":

At Greenpeace, one of the reasons we use the phrase “climate change” and try to stay away from “global warming”, is that the changes are not happening in unison across the world. Climate change can mean colder winters in parts of Europe, increased temperatures in sub-saharan Africa and more floods in other parts of the world.

What Bengtsson really means is:

Because there has not been any real warming in over ten years, Greenpeace decided to start using the phrase "climate change" instead. "Climate change" comes in very handy, because it can be used for all imaginable types of weather events, e.g. colder winters in Europe, temperature increases in sub-saharan Africa or floods in other parts of the world. Thus Greenpeace is in a position to further mislead people and continue its scaremongering and fundraising, even if the actual warming has stopped.

Golden eagles and half a million of other birds killed every year by wind turbines

"Each year, about 70 golden eagles are killed by the rotating blades of Altamont Pass's nearly 5,000 wind turbines.

L.A. Times

"If you shoot an eagle, or birds die in an uncovered oil company waste pit, fines and possibly prison terms are meted out. But wind farms slaughter bald and golden eagles, falcons, hawks, curlews, bats and other threatened, endangered and just plain majestic sky dwellers with no consequences. They even get fast-tracked through the environmental review process by the same Interior Department and EPA that routinely delay or deny oil and gas applications"

Paul Driessen

The Washington Post reports about the latest case involving bald eagles:
Six birds found dead recently in Southern California’s Tehachapi Mountains were majestic golden eagles. But some bird watchers say that in an area where dozens of wind turbines slice the air they were also sitting ducks.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating to determine what killed the big raptors and declined to divulge the conditions of the remains. But the most likely cause of death is no mystery to wildlife biologists who say they were probably clipped by the blades of some of the 80 wind turbines at the three-year-old Pine Tree Wind Farm Project, operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

As the Obama administration pushes to develop enough wind power to provide 20 percent of America’s energy by 2030, some bird advocates worry that the grim discovery of the eagles this month will be a far more common occurrence.

Windmills kill nearly half a million birds a year, according to a Fish and Wildlife estimate. The American Bird Conservancy projected that the number could more than double in 20 years if the administration realizes its goal for wind power.

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Over nearly 30 years, none of the nation’s 500 wind farms, where 35,000 wind turbines operate mostly on private land, have been prosecuted for killing birds, although longstanding laws protect eagles and a host of migrating birds.

If the investigation by the Fish and Wildlife Service’s law enforcement division results in a prosecution at Pine Tree, it will be a first. The conservancy wants stronger regulations and penalties for the wind industry, but the government has so far responded only with voluntary guidelines.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s voluntary,’’ said Robert Johns, a spokesman for the conservancy. “If you had voluntary guidelines for taxes, would you pay them?

Read the entire article here

It comes as no surprise that the American Wind Energy Association, which represents the industry, disputes the conservancy’s projection, and also the Fish and Wildlife count. It is saying that the current bird kill is only about 150,000 annually. The wind industry´s numbers are almost certainly much to low, but even 150,000 is a lot of dead birds. Why are the WWF, Greenpeace and the other major wildlife NGO´s that always are eager to attack industry for all kinds of environmental abuse not campaigning against this brutal killing of bald eagles and other birds?

The answer is pretty clear: If birds get into the way of the warmists´ holy "renewable" energy agenda, their lives suddenly lack any value for these "nature lovers".

EU ambassador wants to increase budget support to corrupted Ugandan government

The Uganda Revenue Authority is listed as the seventh most corrupt institution in the region

The ranking of key public service delivery agencies, for instance the police, judiciary, immigration departments, local authorities, power utility companies, water ministries and hospitals shows that the public service in East Africa is riven with corruption.
Transparency International

The new European Union ambassador to Uganda, His Excellency Roberto Ridolfi has given an "exclusive interview" to the Ugandan Sunday Monitor. In the interview the European top diplomat defended direct budget support to the Ugandan government and called aid critics "a little bit obsolete":

The EU is a big donor to Uganda but what do you have to say to foreign aid critics who argue that aid simply makes recipient countries lazy and dependent?

Critics of aid should know a little bit more on aid. I would say not aid but development cooperation. A bunch of us with some experience in economics we know the detrimental effect of subsidies, grants, give-outs. But we know the good program approach in agriculture, infrastructure, energy, health, and education can assist the government to internalize the good use of resources and therefore delivery good results. The image of aid critics you are reporting to me today is a little bit obsolete. It is something they were saying 45years ago. We have done a lot of calculations and I can tell you without aid, the situation in many countries would be much, much worse. Yes, aid is not perfect. But you have to imagine today a country like Uganda has benefited a lot from aid, not only in terms of money but in terms of governance.
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What sort of interventions if any has the EU put in place to bolster a shift in the status quo?

Budget support. I hope to release the tranche of budget support for 2011/2012. We have done our due diligence and I think that should help both in terms of Euros entering the system and solidity of the treasury.

Read the entire article here

Reality check:

Budget support:

Last August, the EU sent out a press release, proudly announcing that it had just released 23 million Euros of budget support to Uganda. Five months later, we learned that the Uganda government is broke because the coffers were drained to fund President Museveni’s re-election campaign. This is not to even mention the millions of Euros and Pounds that were given by the 12 or so other budget support donors in Uganda.

In the chart below, you can see the the European Commission increased the amount of funding it gives through General Budget Support from 0% to 42% over the last 12 years (the 10th EDF – European Development Fund – goes from 2008 – 2013)
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Budget Support Dollars are Easier to Steal
Once the donor dollars make it into government accounts, it is extremely difficult to track it, or to stop it from disappearing. European donors know full well that their money was taken and used in this election, and even before that they were aware of a certain amount of it getting siphoned off. Donor countries simply have to make a calculation as to how much corruption is acceptable. I have a feeling, though, that the taxpayers who actually contributed the money might have a different standard for what is “acceptable.”

Read the entire article here

The effects of aid:

It is one of the great conundrums of the modern age: More than 300 million people living across the continent of Africa are still mired in poverty after decades of effort -- by the World Bank, foreign governments and charitable organizations -- to lift them out if it. While a few African countries have achieved notable rates of economic growth in recent years, per-capita income in Africa as a whole has inched up only slightly since 1960. In that year, the region's gross domestic product was about equal to that of East Asia. By 2005, East Asia's GDP was five times higher. The total aid package to Africa, over the past 50 years, exceeds $1 trillion. There is far too little to show for it.

Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia and a former World Bank consultant, believes that it is time to end the charade -- to stop proceeding as if foreign aid does the good that it is supposed to do. The problem, she says in "Dead Aid," is not that foreign money is poorly spent (though much of it is) or that development programs are badly managed (though many of them are). No, the problem is more fundamental: Aid, she writes, is "no longer part of the potential solution, it's part of the problem -- in fact, aid is the problem."
In a tightly argued brief, Ms. Moyo spells out how attempts to help Africa actually hurt it. The aid money pouring into Africa, she says, underwrites brutal and corrupt regimes; it stifles investment; and it leads to higher rates of poverty -- all of which, in turn, creates a demand for yet more aid. Africa, Ms. Moyo notes, seems hopelessly trapped in this spiral, and she wants to see it break free. Over the past 30 years, she says, the most aid-dependent countries in Africa have experienced economic contraction averaging 0.2% a year.
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Given that aid has been, in Ms. Moyo's words, "an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster," why has it continued? One reason, she says, is that there about 500,000 people "in the business of aid," and their livelihoods are dictated more by the size of their lending portfolios than the effectiveness of their programs.

Read the entire article here

PS

It is worth noting that the EU top diplomat in Kampala is openly propagating for more budget support, in spite of the fact that the Ugandan government went broke last year because the money had been spent on president Museveni´s re-election campaign. Neither is ambassador Ridolfi´s criticism of aid critics very convincing. But His Excellency is an excellent (and highly paid) representative of the 500,000 people "in the business of aid". 

One wonders, how long will the European taxpayers accept this enormous waste of money while at the same time facing all kinds of austerity measures at home?

A Supplicant’s Prayer to Earth - recommended reading for global warming believers

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation has, in the aftermath of  the somewhat hypted storm Irene written a "Supplicant´s Prayer to Earth" that should be read by all people worried about the purported effects of climate change/global warming:

Oh great and powerful Mother Earth, I humbly beseech you to forgive this wayward human occupant of your perfect natural paradise.

I fully accept responsibility for the sins that led your servants, the tropical winds of Hurricane Irene and the towering pine tree of Backyard Hood, to wreak havoc on my suburban Wake County home.

Only your divine intervention, Oh Green Goddess, could have broken my healthy tree so near the ground and propelled it, precisely aimed, at my bedroom. When it crashed into the house, cracking the rear wall and punching several holes in my roof, the sight and sound of your judgment was terrible to behold – as surely you intended it to be.

I know now, blessed Gaia, and that I have strayed far from the True Faith. I should have remembered that you are a jealous goddess, and that the weed of environmental crime bears bitter fruit.

In my arrogant belief that maximizing human happiness and well-being should be the goal of any sound regulatory process, I overlooked the equal natural rights of the snail darter, the paramecium, and the slime mold.

In my misplaced belief that people benefit from low-cost sources of energy to light their homes, run their machines, transport their families, and protect their communities, I overlooked the aesthetic value of the windmill, the aromatic value of biomass, and the psychic benefits of the photovoltaic cell.

In my foolish belief that climate change must be materially harmful to human beings and reversible at a reasonable cost to justify draconian “cap and balance” style regulation, I overlooked the social benefits of returning mankind to the servitude of unelected authoritarians – the bureaucrats who staff the regulatory agencies of their respective developed countries.
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I’ve learned my lesson, oh wise and beneficent Mother of Winds. No longer will I question the theological pronouncements of your cardinals in Berkeley and Brussels or the liturgy of your priesthood in Asheville and Chapel Hill. I am reformed – or perhaps counter-reformed is the right term. Anyway, I’m really sorry.

I throw myself upon your mercy. Please, please do not send my chestnut tree through my garage door, or my oak tree through my music-room window.

Read the entire Earth Prayer here

Climate change/Global warming blamed for crumbling stages

Whenever something bad happens, writers get their stories published if they blame it on climate change/global warming. Now it´s about music festival stages, which have began crumbling:

For the fourth time this summer, a stage has crumbled during an outdoor show. This time it was at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium. The most recent official tally seems to be three people killed and 60 injured, with 11 of those injuries serious, though reports keep varying. Earlier this month, five people were killed when the stage collapsed during the Indiana State Fair, where country group Sugarland was performing.
The Smith Westerns were on stage when it went down. They tweeted, “Stage collapsed max almost got crushed by the tress. I hope pukkelpop has insurance bc all our shit is broke” and “Praying no one got hurt. Wtf.” In addition to Pukkelpop and the Indiana State Fair, a Flaming Lips stage fell apart during a storm in Oklahoma, damaging about $800,000 worth of equipment, and Cheap Trick narrowly avoided disaster when their stage collapsed during the Ottawa Blues Festival.
Like all the other collapses this summer, Pukkelpop happened when a massive storm blew into the area. It seems like climate change, shoddy construction, or some combination of the two has made outdoor festivals downright scary and dangerous.
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Is it all part of Thomas Friedman “Global Weirding” phenomenon of unusually intense weather as a byproduct of climate change?

Read the entire article here

PS

It is, of course, sad if badly built festival stages crumble, but it has nothing to do with climate change/global warming. There have always been storms and floods, and any temporary outdoor constructions have to be sturdy enough to be able to withhold them - or, alternatively, the event has to be cancelled. It´s just as simple as that.

Ai Weiwei speaks out about his time in detention and life in Beijing

In an article published in Newsweek, China´s dissident artist Ai Weiwei has written about his time in detention and life in Beijing:

“You’re in total isolation. And you don’t know how long you’re going to be there, but you truly believe they can do anything to you. There’s no way to even question it,” he wrote of the experience of being detained.

“You’re not protected by anything. Why am I here? Your mind is very uncertain of time. You become like mad. It’s very hard for anyone. Even for people who have strong beliefs,” he wrote.

Entitled “The City: Beijing”, the article appears to use Ai’s dark vision of modern Beijing – a city, he says, of power and money, filled with desperate, hopeless citizens – as a metaphor for his own troubled state of mind.
As well as attacking the opaque workings of China’s judicial system, he also attacks business-hungry foreigners for being hoodwinked into believing Beijing is like any other western city by suit-wearing Communist Party officials while “they deny us basic rights”.

With black understatement, Ai extols the positives about living in modern China – “People still give birth to babies. There are a few nice parks”. – and then wonders out loud why his fellow citizens are so cowed, urging them not to be so.
“Last week I walked in one [park], and a few people came up to me and gave me a thumbs up or patted me on the shoulder,” he writes, “Why do they have to do that in such a secretive way? No one is willing to speak out. What are they waiting for?”
Despairingly, Ai concludes: “This city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare.”

Read the entire article here

Ai Weiwei, was formally investigated for alleged tax avoidance, but in reality he was arrested for speaking out about the lack of human rights in China. It remains to be seen, how Chinese authorities react to Ai´s article. The release conditions are understood to have forbidden him to give interviews, but they do not specifically state that he cannot write articles.

It would not be at all surprising if China´s communist leadership would decide to arrest him again. The corrupted, authoritarian regime is not likely to shy away from any measures if it feels threatened by demands for freedom and human rights.

It is also worth remembering that communist China is the home of the largest network of gulags anywhere, providing slave labour for the fast growing Chinese economy.

Australian alarmist "study": Global warming makes people mentally ill

Global warming doomsday scaremongering is a likely reason for mental health problems

We all know that alarmists blame global warming/climate change for almost any imaginable bad things. Their latest "finding" is that (bogus) human caused climate change also affects the mental health of people - at least in the Australian bush:

If we don't start tackling climate change, Australians will be increasingly depressed, anxious or stressed.... and more prone to substance abuse, a new report says.

Read the entire article here

A study out today has found that climate change is impacting negatively on mental health in the bush.

The report found that, during the recent drought, serious mental health episodes like self-harm and suicide increased by 8 per cent.

John Connor, CEO of the Climate Institute, says the bulk of scientists believe we'll see more extreme weather events.

"It's a risk management issue, dealing with the consequences and trying to avoid the worst impacts of climate change," he said.

"The evidence is growing, with studies in EU with a longer data base, which is directly linking climate change to the floods in the UK and doing term studies of ocean temperatures.

On the mental health side, Dr Suzie Burke, a senior psychologist with the Psychologists Association of Australia, says the long-running nature of the drought has had lasting and devastating impact on rural communities.

Their research has been looking at the different impacts on communities and families, isolation, self esteem, self harm and suicide and they found an 8 per cent increase in mental health issues in areas affected by severe weather events like drought.

Read the entire article here

PS

Of course, it has not occurred to the alarmists that their climate change/global warming doomsday scaremongering is a much more probable reason for mental health problems than droughts (which are due to natural weather variation). To study the impact of global scaremongering - particularly on children and young people - would be important, but this kind of research will most certainly not get any financing from governments and academic institutions, which are almost totally dominated by the supporters of the global warming religion.  

Gingrich and Pelosi "pop up" in warmist propaganda movie

Watch Gingrich "pop up" in the trailer to the climate change propaganda movie "Climate Refugees"

The Gore ad with presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi on a sofa is by no means not the only time the former speaker of the House of Representatives has joined forces with Pelosi and other global warming alarmists. Gingrich is also one of the "stars" in the scaremongering propaganda "documentary" "Climate Refugees" together with Pelosi, senator John Kerry and doomsday prophets R.K. Pachauri, Lester Brown and Stephen Schneider (late), just to name a few.

Gingrich and the rest all share the same bogus alarmist message: human caused climate change is already here, and it is wreaking havoc from Lousiana to China.

This is how warmist  Variety describes Newt Gringrich´s, Nancy Pelosi´s and John Kerry´s contributions:

"The fact remains, our climate is changing." With leading researchers and high-profile political figures (including John Kerry, Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi) popping up at regular intervals, "Climate Refugees" presents a swell of compelling opinion about the challenges such change puts on the global population.