An Inconvenient Conference

This weekend, my family and I (or should I just say my family?) travelled to Cedar Springs (15 miles or so North of Grand Rapids) to visit some college friends and to partake in the festivities of a first birthday party for their son Ethan. Good times for sure.

But during the festivities, I believe it was channel 8 news ended up on the TV and the weatherman proceeded to tell the viewing public that February 2008 was going to go down as the snowiest ever for Grand Rapids and only had 16% sunshine the whole month.

What a truly incovenient month it has been for Grand Rapids and really the whole left coast of Michigan. And I can tell you that Metro Detroit has not been much better at all. Probably right on the same track. And again today, 3-6 inches of snow.

It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather.

But stampedes and hysteria are no joke -- and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis."

They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that "all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis.

Their biggest argument is that there is no argument.

A whole cottage industry has sprung up among people who get grants, government agencies who get appropriations, politicians who get publicity and the perpetually indignant who get something new to be indignant about. It gives teachers something to talk about in school instead of teaching.
Those who bother to check the facts often find that not all those who are called scientists are really scientists and not all of those who are scientists are specialists in climate. But who bothers to check facts these days?

A new and very different conference on global warming was and is currently being held in New York City, under the sponsorship of the Heartland Institute, on March 2nd to March 4th -- weather permitting.

It is called an "International Conference on Climate Change." Its subtitle is "Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" Among those present will be professors of climatology, along with scientists in other fields and people from other professions.

They come from universities in England, Hungary, and Australia, as well as from the United States and Canada, and include among other dignitaries the president of the Czech Republic.

There will be 98 speakers and 400 participants.

The theme of the conference is that "there is no scientific consensus on the causes or likely consequences of global warming."

Many of the participants in this conference are people who have already expressed skepticism about either the prevailing explanations of current climate change or the dire predictions about future climate change.

These include authors of such books as "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years" by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, and "Shattered Consensus," edited by Patrick J. Michaels.

This will be one of the rare opportunities for the media to hear the other side of the story -- for those old-fashioned journalists who still believe that their job is to inform the public, rather than promote an agenda.

The subtitle of the upcoming conference -- "Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?" -- is also the title of a British television program that is now available on DVD in the United States. It is a devastating debunking of the current "global warming" hysteria.

Nobody denies that there is such a thing as a greenhouse effect. If there were not, the side of the planet facing away from the sun would be freezing every night.

There is not even a lot of controversy over temperature readings. What is fundamentally at issue are the explanations, implications and extrapolations of these temperature readings.

The party line of those who say that we are heading for a global warming crisis of epic proportions is that human activities generating carbon dioxide are key factors responsible for the warming that has taken place in recent times.

The problem with this reasoning is that the temperatures rose first and then the carbon dioxide levels rose. Some scientists say that the warming created the increased carbon dioxide, rather than vice versa.

Many natural factors, including variations in the amount of heat put out by the sun, can cause the earth to heat or cool.

The bigger problem is that this has long since become a crusade rather than an exercise in evidence or logic. Too many people are too committed to risk it all on a roll of the dice, which is what turning to empirical evidence is.

So why has no one heard about this conference? Why no news or reporting or a daily update from cable news networks? Why no "panel of experts"?

Because, it's a true inconvenience for those who have a big stake in global warming hysteria to show up at the conference in New York, and unfortunately that includes much of the media.

Gimme some of that New-Old Time Religion

[UPDATE] - I couldn't help it, while looking out my window at the blustery winter Sunday afternoon of single digit temps and below zero wind chills. Watching garbage blow away down the street, tree limbs bend oh so close to breaking and thankful for the ability to burn fossil fuels to stay warm.



Modern man has shucked off most of the restraints of traditional religion. While a majority of people still say they believe in God, or at least in some form of higher being, they have rationalized their belief system so as to owe no real tribute to their ill-defined deity.

No longer are they bound by the sanctions and rules dictated by the old-time religions.

But instead of enjoying their “liberation”, their “freedom” from the inconvenient "thou shalt nots," they're embracing a different sort of puritanism and welcoming equally suffocating restrictions in regard to the new gods of health and the environment.

These new faiths, in practice, are amazingly similar to the old.

They have their own schedule of sins and vices and are just as intolerant and judgmental of those who stray from the path of righteousness. They also will go to extremes to impose their doctrines -- witness New York City's recently-passed law forbidding city hospitals from sending new mothers home with baby formula, to push breast-feeding (it's amazing what news stories catch your fancy when a child is introduced into your life).

Skeptics are demonized as heretics. To question the causes and impact of global warming, for example, is blasphemous, and many in the scientific community are finding the price for expressing doubt is banishment.

The new religions are no more tolerant of non-conformity -- smokers are shunned the way libertines once were. And they are equally instilled with an evangelical zeal to spread the faith. "Fan the flame!!" (or should we say "put out the flame" or........)

Like their predecessors, the obsession of the new religions is controlling the behavior of the flock. The real agenda of the campaign against global warming is to achieve the longstanding goals of environmentalists to force people onto mass-transit, draw them back from far-flung suburbs and minimize their ability to profit from the earth.

The new religions give new interpretations to several of Catholicism's seven deadly sins, including:

• Pride . The vanity of individualism is discouraged as a threat to the collective good. Lifestyle choices must conform to the standards of propriety set by all-knowing spiritual leaders (think Al Gore).
• Gluttony . Consumerism and overconsumption are the great evils. Frugality is a virtue, and piety is attained by the Carteresque measure of living a smaller life, accepting less. Traditional religions reward sacrifice and self-denial with immortality (allbeit heretical in it’s own rite); it's not yet clear how the new faiths will incentivize deprivation.
• Greed. The notion that American ingenuity and productivity entitle this country to a bigger piece of the pie is unholy. We're expected to feel guilty about our prosperity, pressured to give away our wealth.
• Lust. While these new faiths don't meddle so much in your sex life -- nearly any sexual practice is OK, as long as it's "safe" and consensual -- if you hunger for big trucks, big houses, big cigars -- your wages are damnation.

Unfortunately, there is no rabid oppession and acceptance of a separation of church and state to protect non-believers from being pressed into observance as their is with the "Old-Time Religions". Canonical law is written by secular legislatures and enforced by public agents.

An agnostic -- or Mother Earth forbid, an atheist -- living in this new religious environment may find life as uncomfortable as did the “witches” of Salem.

Fearmongering!!

I'm Brian A. Maloney and I approve this message.

The earth is warming!

True – the earth is warming.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the global average surface temperature increased about 0.6 degrees Celsius over the twentieth century.

The earth is warming because of us!

Uhh…maybe

If our fossil-fuel burning is responsible for the warming, something doesn’t add up. Half of the global warming of the past century happened from 1900 to 1945. If man is responsible, why wasn’t there much more warming in the second half of the century? We burned much more fuel during that time. What about that? Huh? You don’t hear the environmental alarmists talking about it…

The planet is just in a gradual warming trend, coming out of what scientists call the “Little Ice Age,” which ended in the 1800s. Our climate has always undergone changes, and it’s presumptuous to think humans’ impact matters so much in comparison to the frightening geologic history of the earth. A graph of temperatures over the last four thousand years shows today’s warming isn’t such a big deal. We, humans, really need to get over ourselves.

There will be storms, flooded coasts, and huge disruptions in climate!

Probably not

FEARMONGERING!!!

Schoolchildren are being taught and are scared that America is dying in a sea of pollution and cities will soon be under water.

The National Resources Defense Council has lawyers (surprise…an environmental group with more lawyers than scientists) running around warning that sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas. Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. On and on and on and on and on and on……

WOW! We’re screwed!!

You thought Y2K was bad….

Wait it wasn’t…..

Exactly.

The Association of American Geographers has reported that melting Arctic ice won’t raise sea levels any more than the melting ice in your drink makes your glass overflow. The Arctic ice cap is a floating chunk of….ice. It’s not a land mass adding to water.

What about the melting glaciers of Greenland?

Glad you asked. In 2005 Norwegian, Russina, and American scientists issued a report that said Greenland’s ice was thickening, not melting.

Hmm…..

What about the scary claims about heat waves and droughts being brought about by all the high-tech computer models?

Ever watch the local evening news and watch the weather forecast? Ever see all their high-tech gadegtery and computer models and Doppler 23,000 X Viper Extravagaza 10 day forecast? How "accurate" and "right on" they always are?

Computer models are horrible at predicting climate because water vapor and cloud effects cause changes that computers fail to predict. Did you know in the mid-70s the computer models, warned us of a global cooling? The fundamentalist doom mongers also ignore scientists who say the effects of global warming may be benign. Harvard astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas says added CO2 in the atmosphere may actually benefit the world because more CO2 helps plants grow. Warmer winters would give farmers a longer harvest season, and might end the drought in the Sahara desert.

Responsible citizens of the globe doing our part to protect the earth and its resources?

Yes

Freak out and cry doom and gloom?

Ridiculous.

Paid for by the committee to stop the FEARMONGERING!!

In the basement.....

I'm Brian A. Maloney and I approve this message.



I'll be in the basement the next 24-36, maybe 48 hours (maybe over the whole weekend) pounding out another manifesto because I have a blog and feel it is important.

I'll be around sporadically offering comments (as always), but stay tuned for the post tomorrow (or maybe Saturday or even Monday) on Fearmongering.

I know, I know, your all on the edge of your seat waiting for it.

Trust me, it won't be much, I have a tendency to disappoint the more I talk something up, just ask Michele, I'm surprised we even have a kid.

Come on I had to say it!!!!!

So, the hammering, sawing, cussing, loud obnoxious noises you hear will be me in the basement trying to create something with my hands....

And keep commenting on all the blogs, just because I may not be there as much doesn't mean you can't continue bashing me and calling me uncompassionate and heartless and an idiot for being pro-Bible, pro-Church, pro-Bush, pro-Life, pro-Men, pro-My Wife, pro-beer, pro Conservative, pro-Libertarian, pro-Country Music pro-Do the Opposite and believing someone else's dogma over your dogma.



So.....

In the meantime, enjoy one of these oldie but goodies from back in the day (which was written almost a year to the day...and not sure I've changed any. Good? Bad?)

Paid for by the committee to tell you I'll be out of the blogosphere for a couple days but around enough to make some basic comments when I feel like and then proceed to piss you off, and rile you up, but by being out of the blogosphere for awhile I can avoid having to answer all your comments until such time that I can come up with real cool quips, comebacks, and logical thought to combat what you said.

Lions are to good football as Global Warming is to...

I'm Brian A. Maloney and I approve this message.

Al Gore has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor he shares with Yasser Arafat and Le Duc Tho. Gore has received a number of awards and honors from Europeans, who seem to wish to punish George Bush's policies by showering awards on his defeated opponent. (Gore would have been president had he carried his own state of Tennessee, but he couldn't manage it.)

Unfortunately for Europe, the United States has been independent now for more than two centuries. It's nice for Gore that he won the prize, but who now remembers Frank Billings Kellogg, who won the Nobel for co-authoring the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which outlawed war? How's that pact working out?

Americans have happily been ignoring Europeans for quite a long time, except when they have dragged us into their various wars between awarding people peace prizes.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee likely cares little about Al Gore's "moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity" or his green cult or its pagan Earth-god. Gore's Nobel is just the latest evidence of the committee's use of surrogates like the ex-veep and Jimmy Carter (in 2002) and Mohamed ElBaradei (in 2005) to embarrass the United States - a state of mind that says more about European elites' insecurity in the modern age than anything else.

But as much material as the Gore Nobel feeds people of like political mindness like myself, the dimunition of the prize's seriousness is a tragedy.

The Nobel can have real power in shining a light into some of the world's darker corners.

In Burma, courageous monks are defying a brutal military dictatorship. In Iran, men and women die for their civil rights at the hands of religious despots. International chess star Garry Kasparov and others have been arrested resisting that country's slide back to authoritarian rule.

The Nobel could help elevate these causes to international attention. Instead, preening Nobel leftists throw their baubles at a rich ex-politician so that he can assuage his guilt of flying on gas-guzzling private airplanes to green fundraisers in sprawling Hollywood mansions.

Paid for by the committee to stop the FEARMONGERING!!

Healthcare

Michael Moore loves government.

OK, he doesn't love a government headed by George W. Bush, but he believes that once the Democrats are in charge, government will do a better job providing health care.

In his new movie, "Sicko," he praises government-controlled health care systems in Canada and Europe. He suggests that Americans pay more for health care but have a shorter life expectancy than people in other countries because our health care is driven "by profit."

He is wrong in so many ways.

First, life expectancy is no measure of a country's medical system. Lifestyle and culture matter more, and Americans are different.

In a recent interview shown on ABC's News Magazine show 20/20, Moore was taken to task on this issue by John Stossel. Stossel said, "In America we kill each other more often. We shoot each other. We have more car accidents. Forgive me, more of us look like ... you."

Moore smiled at that, but still argued that that people live longer in Canada "because they never have to worry about paying to go see the doctor. That means at the first sign of being sick they go right away to the doctor cause they're not worrying about whether or not they can afford it."

Are you serious!!

Freedom brings anxiety, but its other rewards are so superior to passive care from a smothering government.

America's medical system has problems, but profit is the least of it. Government mandates, overregulation and a tax code that pushes employer-paid health insurance prevent the free market from performing its efficient miracles. Six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties. That kills the market. Patients rarely shop around, and doctors rarely compete on price or service.

But his ignorance doesn't end there. He would go on to say, "Government can do things right. ... My dad gets his Social Security check every month. Comes not only every month, it comes on the same day through the so-called 'dilapidated' U.S. mail. ... [A]sk your grandparents what they think of Medicare. Although it has its flaws, although it may be underfunded, it's a much better program than the HMO that somebody has."

Underfunded? Medicare has a 75-year $34 trillion unfunded liability! Its costs are growing faster than inflation. Social Security has a 75-year $5 trillion unfunded liability. These are schemes that will be bankrupt before Moore reaches retirement age. The U.S. mail manages to deliver his dad's checks, but compare its performance to FedEx or UPS. The Post Office said it wasn't possible to deliver packages overnight.

I want "FedEx" health care: innovation, new cancer treatments, hip replacements and pain relief. We get that from private-sector competition, not government lethargy.

Moore said, "You don't introduce profit into your city water department."

Stossel took that time to tell a story from one of his books "Give Me a Break", Basically it goes like this -- Jersey City, New Jersey's water tasted foul and failed safety tests. City workers said there wasn't much they could do. In fact, water prices would have to be raised ... just to maintain the lousy service they had.

So Jersey City turned its water system over to a for-profit company. Within months it had fixed the pipes government workers said couldn't be fixed, and for the first time in years, Jersey City's water met the highest cleanliness standard. And the kicker...


Taxpayers saved $35 million!!!!

The private company could do it better and cheaper because their skills were honed by constant competition.

Private competitors innovate or die. Government workers do what they did last year. That's why I want the private sector to provide my health care. Pursuit of profit will give us our best medicines and medical devices. I'll pay you $1,000 if you can name one thing government does more efficiently than the private sector.

Sometimes it's puzzling.

The same people who crucify government for Katrina and for bridge collapses want the same government to run health care. Remember Walter Reed?

Take your pick

Do you know why I don't join television news anchors, Al Gore and the San Francisco jobless, in a tizzy about the environment?

Because I think there are many more dire "events" that affect our world than turning your Michigan furnace on in June and August because of global "warming."

Case in point:

When a woman is pregnant with her third child and tells people "...I'm not pregnant. It's a cyst..." and then the baby is found in the garbage "...mixed with old papers, microwaveable food containers and junk..."

Hmmmm...now I wonder what has a more damaging effect on the "environment?"

Mothers murdering post-partum?

OR

Their home's carbon footprint?

Do Global Alarmist Cheer for Big Storms?

It didn't take long for the global warming alarmists to twist Hurricane Dean into their propaganda machine.

"The big picture is that global warming is putting hurricanes on steroids," writes Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist for the National Wildlife Federation. She goes on to warn the faithful that, as the oceans continue to warm in the decades ahead" (bold added) the storms will continue to get stronger than ever.

Any devestation and death incurred from natrural disaster is tragic not to be taken lightly.

But the alarmists predicted massive and numerous storms last year that never materialized and they blamed Katrina's destruction on climate change too (never mind the levee problems and people living below sea level). Hurricane Dean was a Category 5 storm off the Gulf Coast and slowed to a Category 1. It could have kicked back up, but scientists say it won't reach the intensity it had over the open waters.

Of course that's not important to those whose crusade is absolute. We'll wait to see what the next cause-and-effect relationship will be and there will be one, for sure.

Out of Thin Air - Sheer Genius

Click on the link below to watch a video from the newscast of Fox2 news here in Detroit. It's just a 3 minute or so video but it is pretty educational and kind of cool.

Click here to see it. I cannot find just the text form of this for you to read, so sorry that you have watch the video. But go do it and then come back here, or be like most people, ignore that, continue reading this post and then go watch the video if you want to after you read what I have to say.

Now this is pure genius. To quote the video, "amazing technology that is the wave of the future."

Electricity right out of the thin air, the most primitive of elements. Powering all the electricty your home could need.

But did you cacth that price:

$13,000 bucks. That's a lot. But it does pay for itself over time. It can lower your electric bill by 30% - 70% a month!!!

So an initial investment for long-term savings into the future.

Pretty basic, every month I'm saving money. I'm being more "green". I'm cutting edge and I'm a total idiot.

Do you realize how long it'll take to pay that thing off?

Most of us would probably have to finance a purchase like that. Which means interest and thus paying more than $13,000 for it. But it will save us 30% - 70% off our monthly electric bill.

Consider the following printout:

Are you serious! It would take over 22 years for someone with a $70/month electric bill to make back the $13,000! And that's assuming they get the maximum optimization out of the thing.

22 years?

22 years!?

22 YEARS!!!!

I'll be in my 50s, could be a great grandpa, could be looking at the 5th President since W and probably not living in the same home on the same half acre of land (half acres of land are readily available to all of us as it is, right) I would install it in.

This is the kind of crap that cracks me up about these environmental people. The sheer cost of a movement like this is absurd. You're going to pay $13,000 so that in 22 years you can say you start saving money and helped eliminate 0.000000000001% of a coal plants energy production?

Puh-lease

Also, this family, living in Monroe, MI gets their power from the Nuclear Powerplant located in South Michigan (Fermi). Not even from a coal factory. People in the big cities, where most of the supposed "death to the planet" is taking place couldn't even get one of these anyways. That's where the impact should be made if one needs to be made.

However, I am sure people will champion this cause and spread their fearmongering ways about the death of of our planet and expect us all to be drones and dish out $13,000 bucks for a high-tech windmill rather than feeding the poor or giving money to the my daughter so she can attend college and get her, for real, MRS. degree. Do not forget, they'll also bring the vehemence of the Crusaders when you start to poo-poo their ideology.

Wake me and waste my time when you've got something economical and hits home and addresses the real needs of the planet. Not a windmill for a farmhouse out in the country.