Posted by
Sgt.Stryker on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 3:45:27 AM
Well, here I am, looking out the window from my office at the 2 inches of snow in central Kentucky. I think this is our 4th snowfall already, and we've had a number of days where the high temps didn't get out of the 'teens. I am guessing my bass boat is (regrettably) in dry dock for the next couple months. The northeast has already been pounded by an ice storm, with millions of people suffering from loss of power. The temps around the rest of the Northern Hemisphere have been brutal, with numerous locales reporting lows in the 20 and 30 below 0 range. I think it may be safe to say Global Warming is on hiatus this year. Evidently, the folks at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland, Hillary Clinton, and Henry Waxman feel otherwise.
According to this report from the Business Mirror Online,
"The two-week conference on climate change ended on Friday with significant disagreements on an equitable balance of emissions cuts between richer and poorer nations.
Nonetheless, UN officials said the talks kept the world on the path toward a new treaty to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 to roll back the threat of global warming."
Great...a new, worldwide treaty, managed by the UN, designed to "roll back the threat of global warming." Just what we need, the feckless UN taking more steps to ruin the world's economy. As if "Oil for Food" didn't show the world just how "effective" the UN can be managing major problems/issues.
But, hey, wait a minute. You may have noticed some disparity if you read the whole article linked above. Some of the folks at the conference, including the esteemed "expert" Al Gore (expert at self-promotion, maybe) were speaking about "climate change," not "global warming." Others were speaking about both in the same breath. Even the administrator's titles were ambiguous.
"“Rich countries need to demonstrate leadership by making deep, early cuts,” Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Heherson Alvarez, head of the Philippine delegation said."
Did you catch that little tidbit? Rich countries need to make deep cuts...that sounds ominous, even if they don't know if it's warming or just changing outside. Well, maybe if they could decide on the cause, that would help.
In the previously mentioned article, they talk about lowering carbon emissions worldwide. But what about methane? According to Earthsave.com, methane is 21 times more efficient at trapping green-house gases than carbon, and is only one of a multitude of greenhouse gases. I remember reading somewhere that Saint Al Gore, titular head of the Church of Global Warming/Climate Change, said that he loses people when he starts talking about other greenhouse gases besides carbon (I had actually bookmarked this for the quote in the past, but lost it). So, just because carbon is the lowest-hanging fruit of the greenhouse gases, we are supposed to revamp our whole global carbon-based industry and economy? Pure insanity.
"the current warming began 300 years ago, at the end of the Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period when there were very few sunspots on the face of the Sun. Between 1700 and 1735, according to the world's oldest instrumental temperature dataset, the temperature in central England rose by 2.2 degrees C, equivalent to 6.3 C/century, or about nine times the warming rate seen in the 20th century.
The warming of the planet parallels the increase in the Sun's activity between the end of the Maunder Minimum 300 years ago and the end of the 70-year solar Grand Maximum in 1998. During the Grand Maximum, the Sun was more active, and for longer, than during almost any similar previous period in the past 11,400 years".
During the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800's, Napoleon ran into one of the worst winters in human history during his retreat from Moscow. This period actually qualified as a "mini" ice-age...many believe we may be entering another similar period. So lowering our "carbon footprint" is supposed to do what, exactly??
It would be difficult to make any case for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) during the Grand Maximum, as the Industrial Revolution and carbon-based manufacturing didn't occur until the last century. This evidence seems lost on Saint Al the Goracle and his flock.
How about plain, old-fashioned cyclical climate changes? According to Science Daily,
"climate shows an appreciable natural variability - and that changes in the sun's output and volcanic eruptions on the earth may be the cause."
Even the Russians seem to be off the warming train. Pravda published an article earlier this month, stating that
"Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years."
Make no mistake, this is the issue that the UN and the Democratic Congress will use to "even the playing field" between the US and the less fortunate, less developed nations of the world. They are going to screw our economy into the ground with their cap-and-trade, carbon credits, and carbon taxes. Redistribution of the world's wealth is the goal, and the US stands to lose the most.
According to this article from Forbes, Henry Waxman, D-CA, head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee,
"Our environment and our economy depend on congressional action to confront the threat of climate change and secure our energy independence".
Nothing could be further from the truth, Mr. Waxman. Our very existence depends on Congress staying as far away from this issue as possible. Drilling in the US is what will secure our energy independence.
Similarly, Hillary Clinton, D-NY and our new Secretary of State, has already begun to increase the rhetoric and hyperbole, as noted by The Business and Media Institute, covering her confirmation hearing-
“You Mr. Chairman [Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.] were among the very first in a growing chorus from both parties to recognize that climate change is an unambiguous security threat,” Clinton said. “At the extreme it threatens our very existence. But well before that point, it could well incite new wars of an old kind over basic resources – like food, water and arable land.”
If you were watching the hearing, I'm sure you could hear the sucking sound while she was kissing Kerry's backside. The only threat to our security is you, Mrs. Clinton, and this leftist administration seeking to undermine our economy with your socialist policies.
So, keep your eyes open for the "Change we can believe in." This is just one of the games we can all expect to have to put some skin into.
Beware the Greenies, and WRITE YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE!!!