If All You See…

By William Teach September 30, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is a deluge from extreme weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on the military being degraded by Obama.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | Comments Off on If All You See… | Trackback URL

Hurricane Joaquin Is #ClimateChange Or Something

By William Teach September 30, 2015 – 10:25 am

I’m actually surprised that so few members of the Cult of Climastrology have linked Joaquin to climate change, but, hey, it just reached hurricane status, so there is plenty of time for them to trot out their stale talking points. So far, here’s the winner

This brings to mind a question: if that warm blob is so bad, why are we only at the 10th named storm in late September? Remember, we were told that Hotcoldwetdry would mean more hurricanes, that the massive 2005 season would be the new normal. Yet, the US has only seen one landfalling hurricane since 2008, and few tropical storm landfalls. That’s not to say even tropical storms, heck, depressions, can’t be dangerous. But, we certainly aren’t seeing even normal land strikes from tropical systems.

We also have

Read More »

Read: Hurricane Joaquin Is #ClimateChange Or Something »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Russia Tells Obama To Stop All Military Flights Over Syria

By William Teach September 30, 2015 – 7:17 am

Is this “leading from behind”?

(Fox News) Russian officials have demanded that American warplanes exit Syrian airspace immediately, a senior U.S. official told Fox News early Wendesday.

The official told Fox News that Russian diplomats sent an official demarche ordering U.S. planes out of Syria, adding that Russian fighter jets were now flying over Syrian territory. U.S. military sources told Fox News that U.S. planes would not comply with the Russian demand.

“There is nothing to indicate that we are changing operations over Syria,” a senior defense official said.

Well, at least we’ve said “no”. For the moment.

The move by Moscow marks a major escalation in ongoing tensions between the two countries over military action in the war-torn country and comes moments after Russian lawmakers formally approved a request from the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, to authorize the use of troops in Syria.

On the bright side, at least it will be Russians dying, rather than US troops. On the down side, this could mean even more Russian influence in the region. It certainly means Syrian leader Assad is going nowhere. Thanks to Obama’s fecklessness, American credibility and leadership in the Middle East has waned. Remember his “red lines”?

Read: Russia Tells Obama To Stop All Military Flights Over Syria »

Posted in Barry Obama | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Report: Many UN Sustainable Development Goals Have No Pathways To Success

By William Teach September 30, 2015 – 7:03 am

Supporters of the United Nations and Progressive goal were thrilled when the UN released their Sustainable Development Goals, which are kind of about everything

These replace the Millennium Development Goals, which, unsurprisingly, failed, and were more of a monetary boondoggle with little direction. How about the SDGs?

(Fox News) When the United Nations approved a massive agenda of sustainable development goals last week, it over-rode pointed warnings by two international science councils that the program is in many ways uncoordinated, unmeasurable and unrealistically ambitious.

Managers of the vast exercise in setting the global, progressive agenda for the next 15 years known as the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) decided it would be “too dangerous” to reopen the sprawling package to improve it, according to Anne-Sophie Stevance, lead coordinator of the critical analysis and a science officer with the International Council for Science (ICSU), the most prominent voice of the international scientific community. (snip)

“Many sets of goals and targets do not provide any pathways to how to achieve them,” Stevance declared. “Nor do we know if we will achieve global prosperity if we do meet them.”

Oops?

The virtually unaltered SDGs were hailed by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as “a defining moment in human history” as he opened the summit meeting on Sept. 25 that introduced the goals, as well as a “universal, integrated and transformative vision for a better world.” Two days later President Barack Obama pledged U.S. support for the effort “whatever it takes.”

“Whatever it takes” is likely to be very big challenge. A better description of the SDGs than a “transformative vision” might be a sprawling and shapeless bid to establish a truly global socialist and progressive agenda, not to mention a blank check required for trillions of dollars annually in development spending to achieve—if even achievable.

Article writer George Russell editorializes a bit more than should be acceptable for a straight news story, but, he hits the nail on the head. If your goal is to lose weight and get in shape, how are you going to do that? Having goals is laudable. Not having a plan to achieve them, and having no idea if you will achieve them if you put your plan in place is not. Spending trillions of Other People’s money is, likewise, not.

There are 17 goals and 169 targets (which all seem to demand that More Government is the answer). What do they look like?

Among the 169 targets, for example, the report’s authors—40 of them, from 21 countries—declared that only 49, or 29 per cent, could be “considered well developed (i.e. thought out), 91, or 54 per cent, required more specificity, and 29, or 17 per cent, required “significant work” to be useful.

In other words, well over two-thirds of the targets that are supposed to reorganize much of the world’s sweeping self-improvement over the next 15 years are not deemed particularly useful or specific as currently laid out and approved.

And, as noted in the article, many contradict each other. And, again, follow the MDGs, which, according to Elham Seyedsayamdost, “the data indicates that the MDGs did not necessarily translate into real changes.” How much did the MDGs cost? $61bn? $152bn? Or was it “the only correct answer to questions about the cost of the MDGs is “more””? What do we think will happen with the SDGs?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Report: Many UN Sustainable Development Goals Have No Pathways To Success »

Posted in Progressive Goals, UN | Comments Off on Report: Many UN Sustainable Development Goals Have No Pathways To Success | Trackback URL

Warmists Are Very Upset Over AP Changes To Using Phrase “Climate Denier”

By William Teach September 29, 2015 – 3:23 pm

Especially ultra-Warmist Eric Holthaus

Doubt Denies Denial

Words matter, and in journalism, what the Associated Press says matters the most. Thousands of publications around the world use its style guidelines, so last week, when AP announced it was scrapping the terms climate deniers and climate skeptics to refer to those who don’t accept human influence on climate change, the decision immediately became controversial, and for good reason.

Instead of denier or skeptic, the news outlet now prefers the term climate doubters, or, for the long-winded: those who reject mainstream climate science. The problem is, while this terminology is well intentioned, this change is a step backward. And the choice ofdoubters, specifically, is wrong.

As Denise Robbins, a researcher for Media Matters for America, a progressive science advocacy organization, pointed out on Twitter, the people who deny climate change “are NOT doubters. They are VERY certain that human-caused global warming isn’t happening.”

Wow. Who new that Media Matters is now a “science advocacy organization”? But, yes, we are very certain that mankind is not mostly/solely causing global warming. The argument is not over warming, but causation. As I’ve said many times, and, heck, you’re welcome to check my Twitter feed from the past couple days, those who say there has been no warming since 1850 I’ll refer to as deniers, or, better yet, idiots. There has been warming.

Most of the Republicans running for president are opposed to any effort to slow America’s emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Climate-denying conservatives have tried for decades to deliberately change public perception on the issue while at the same time raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. This is not “doubt.” This is vested interest. (ThinkProgress has a good overview of the background of the AP’s decision, and Science magazine has a roundup of other reactions to the changes including, notably, praise by noted climate science deniers Anthony Watts and Marc Morano.)

Vested interest, eh? The COC has tens of billions on the line yearly. They receive massive funding from government, NGOs, left wing orgs, etc, not mention all the glowing support from government and the media. Yet, for all that, they still haven’t proven that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for the current warm period, in part or whole.

Read: Warmists Are Very Upset Over AP Changes To Using Phrase “Climate Denier” »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach September 29, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrendous downpour caused by carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Lonely Conservative, with a post wondering if Obama’s Internet plan is unconstitutional.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | Comments Off on If All You See… | Trackback URL

Cult Of Climastrology RICO Letter Disappears Into Memory Hole

By William Teach September 29, 2015 – 10:06 am

Too bad the Internet is forever

Via Bishop Hill, who notes “You can imagine the horror on the signatories’ faces when they realised that some very determined people were about to take a close interest in their financial arrangements and those of their colleagues at IGES.”

That letter is already out there, and has been published by many, many outlets.

Judith Curry has an Op-ed about the letter itself, and notes

The demand by Senator Whitehouse and the 20 climate scientists for legal persecution of people whose research on science and policy they disagree with represents a new low in the politicization of science.

The role of these 20 scientists is particularly troubling. The consequence of this persecution, intended or not, is to make pariahs of scientists who are doing exactly what we expect of researchers: to critically evaluate evidence and publish that work in the scientific literature. (snip)

What these 20 scientists have done with their letter is the worst kind of irresponsible advocacy. Attempts by powerful people to silence other scientists, especially in this brutal fashion, is a recipe for stifling scientific progress and for making poor policies.

Cultists do not care, because this is politics for them.

Read: Cult Of Climastrology RICO Letter Disappears Into Memory Hole »

Posted in Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Warmists Super Enthused By GOP Megadonor Who Believes In ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach September 29, 2015 – 8:45 am

While belief in anthropogenic global warming, natch, ‘climate change’, is primarily a Left wing belief, their are certainly a few Republicans who believe that the current Holocene warm period, or at least parts of it (depends on the argument of the day) is mostly/solely caused by Mankind. Folks like Lindsay Graham, Jon Huntsman, Chris Christie, and Mitt Romney. It’s fine for them to have those beliefs, no matter how misguided. It’s not OK to force those beliefs on other people and attempt to solve it by implementing massive government projects, taxes, and controls. Here comes another, which brings to mind the phrase “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, or, “beware of megadonors bearing money”

(AP) Republican businessman Jay Faison says his party should stop fighting science and start talking solutions to climate change. He has $175 million in potential political donations to help inspire them. And if that’s not enough, he’s commissioned a survey, released Monday, that he says shows voters agree.

“I’m pretty frustrated about the political divide,” Faison said. “This is too important to leave to the Democrats.”

Faison made his fortune in 2013 with the sale of his majority stake in his audio-visual equipment company, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He sank much of his profit into the ClearPath Foundation and a separate politically active policy group; both are devoted to moving Republicans beyond saying that the climate is not changing — or, if it is, that humans have nothing to do with it.

I’ll give him this, he’s doing this in smart manner in attempting to push clean energy in a manner that Conservatives can believe it. Heck, I believe it. Do we want clean energy? Sure. 72% of Republicans “support accelerating the development of clean energy”. That comes from a poll at the ClearPath Foundation. We just want it done in a wise manner, one that makes monetary sense, one that is not based on political payback, and ends in companies taking vast sums of taxpayer money, pocketing it, then closing the doors. One that doesn’t replace existing energy methods with costly ones that provide limited power.

We also do not want vast solar and wind farms despoiling the landscape, killing wildlife, and, yes, driving down property values.

That all said, at the end of the day this is first all about fighting Hotcoldwetdry for people like Faison, not pushing clean energy, and, Faison can say all he wants that this won’t increase the size and scope of the government, but, it will. He yammers on about “free market values”. The free markets have mostly decided that these energy forms are not worth it at this time.

In his personal story, Faison writes

Since then, liberals have claimed the energy and climate issue as their own. This was hard to watch. Why weren’t conservative solutions being offered up? Why weren’t more people like me involved? I saw the issue as one that should be owned by conservatives. What could be more conservative than energy independence and freeing up energy markets that were controlled by monopolies?

He’s doing the right thing for the wrong reason. One has to wonder if he has given up all use of fossil fuels in his own life. And, many on his advisory board sure seem to have the same opinions as far left Warmists, ones such as Jeremy Oppenheim, of McKinsey and Company, who is super thrilled by Naomi Klein’s views on totally changing economies to a far left type.

For all his talk about being a Republican, he sure seems unwilling to allow competing views

(NY Times) Democrats, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sought to paint Republicans who question climate change as deniers of science who are out of touch with the mainstream.

Mr. Faison and the Republican pollsters said that in order to avoid that characterization, Republicans need to move beyond questioning and start offering solutions.

Interesting. We’re supposed to solve something we don’t believe in, something based on junk science, flawed and failed computer models, modified data, and left wing hysteria. And, yes, Faison does very much want a “carbon tax”, yet another left wing proposition. I won’t call him a stealth Republican, but he sure seems to be very squishy.

Read: Warmists Super Enthused By GOP Megadonor Who Believes In ‘Climate Change’ »

Posted in Global Warming, GOP | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Man Who Lives Behind Layers Of Security Whines About Building Border Wall

By William Teach September 29, 2015 – 8:12 am

When push comes to shove, never bet against Mr. Obama demeaning Americans and America, especially when speaking in front of the United Nations. Powerline writes of his whole speech “The tone is professorial, patronizing, obnoxious, and unmanly.” It’s just Obama being Obama

(Breitbart) President Obama, who appears increasingly annoyed by presidential candidate Donald Trump, pointedly denounced the themes of the billionaire candidate’s campaign for president during his speech to the United Nations.

Referring to the “most advanced democracies” in the world, Obama admitted to the world leaders that there was opposition from the “far right” on trade agreements and immigration.

“We see greater polarization, more frequent gridlock; movements on the far right, and sometimes the left, that insist on stopping the trade that binds our fates to other nations, calling for the building of walls to keep out immigrants,” he said.

It was Democrats who were mostly against the recent trade agreements. That said, Obama lives behind “walls”. The White House has a fence, separating Obama from everyone else, which is constantly monitored by people with guns. Sure, it isn’t perfect, a few people get through now and then, but, it stops 99.999% of the people. He has a wall of people constantly surrounding him when he is out and about. Of course, he’s being completely disingenuous, as usual, in calling people who illegally cross our borders/overstay their visas “immigrants”.

Obama continues on in that paragraph

Most ominously, we see the fears of ordinary people being exploited through appeals to sectarianism, or tribalism, or racism, or anti-Semitism; appeals to a glorious past before the body politic was infected by those who look different, or worship God differently; a politics of us versus them.

In other words, he’s saying that people aren’t entitled to their opinions. Who’s opinions should be allowed? Well, that’s easy to guess, is it not?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Man Who Lives Behind Layers Of Security Whines About Building Border Wall »

Posted in Barry Obama, Illegal Immigration | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: “Limited Progress Seen Even as More Nations Step Up on Climate”

By William Teach September 28, 2015 – 3:13 pm

Would you be shocked that the Cult Of Climastrology wants even more? So says the NY Times, which provided the headline. Without the “bummer”, of course

The pledges that countries are making to battle climate change would still allow the world to heat up by more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit, a new analysis shows, a level that scientists say is likely to produce catastrophes ranging from food shortages to widespread extinctions of plant and animal life.

Yet, in the world of global climate politics, that counts as progress.

Nothing says progress like massive government regulations and restrictions which do nothing. Well, nothing according to computer models this mularky is based on.

The planet has already warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the temperature that prevailed before the Industrial Revolution, representing an enormous addition of heat. Virtually every piece of land ice on Earth is melting, the sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, droughts and other weather extremes are intensifying, and the global food system has shown signs of instability.

First, it’s just 1.5F over a period of 160 some odd years. The temperature is not going to suddenly explode.

Second, not every bit of ice is melting. Many glaciers are growing. Only certain portions of the Antarctic are melting, and real science is showing it’s more due to volcanic activity than any warming. The Arctic is much stronger than it was years ago. Same with Greenland. And, anyhow, none of that would prove anthropogenic causation. Just a low level Holocene warm period.

Third, even the UN IPCC refuses to dive into the extreme weather meme, which science shows is just a fantasy talking point. Remember when tornadoes and hurricanes were supposed to get worse? How’s that working out?

At a meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010, climate negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed that they would try to limit the warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial temperature, a level that would require that emissions from fossil fuels largely cease within a few decades.

Wait, I thought Warmists said they weren’t calling for an end to Everyone Else using fossil fuels?

Bruising fights are still expected at the Paris conference, especially over money. Poor countries that have had little to do with causing global warming, but are likely to suffer the worst effects, are demanding billions from rich countries to help them manage.

As they say, whenever the question includes “why?”, the answer is “money”.

Read: Bummer: “Limited Progress Seen Even as More Nations Step Up on Climate” »

Posted in Global Warming, New Climate Deniers | 9 Comments | Trackback URL
Pirate's Cove