quote Originally posted by avengador1: We are really screwed if this crap passes. Energy sources will be shut down, jobs will be lost, fuel costs will skyrocket. We will have a real crisis on our hands. It's time to consider going off the grid, it will cost less to do so in the end, and look for alternate transportation, as we won't be able to afford driving our own cars.

I'm already making plans for solar power. We get enough sun around here that it should be viable to be off the grid, at least most of the time.

Ontario Canada is bringing in Smartmeters also. It is not an energy saving plan.The "off" hours are such that you'd have do your laundry at midnight and for the average family that just ain't gonna happen.

The real reason for Smartmeters is a collosal tax grab. This is a plan to increase energy costs directly into the government's pocket.

Arn

How about the power company controlling your power remotely?

http://earth2tech.com/2009/01/26/faq-smart-grid/

Sensus Metering Systems: Raleigh, N.C.-based Sensus announced last month that Hawaiian Electric, which provides electricity for 95 percent of Hawaii’s residents, plans to install Sensus FlexNet smart meters for 430,000 residential and commercial electric customers, subject to approval of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission. The technology provides automated meter reading, data collection, voltage monitoring, notification of outages and remote control of customer loads.

Here is an industry site talking about remote disconnect capability
http://cleantech.com/news/2...about-smart-metering

OK, here's something from the California Public Utilities Commission that confirms they have remote disconnect capability

CPUC RESPONDS TO PG&E CUSTOMER CONCERNS
ABOUT SMART METER INSTALLATIONS IN BAKERSFIELD

Smart Meters allow PG&E customers to access their energy usage on a real-time basis, rather than receiving such information at the end of a billing cycle. The improved system also incorporates a remote connect/disconnect device on all meters, eliminating the need for PG&E to visit the location every time a customer moves in or out of their home. This provides significant operational savings for the company, which ultimately gets passed on to consumers. Demand response joins energy efficiency as the state's preferred way to meet electricity demand, as outlined in California's Energy Action Plan.

I bet they still charge to reconnected, even if it is done remotely by the meter itself.

OK Bear, here is the Chinese take on what they are willing to do about climate change.
And by the way, thanks for the effort in this post and for keeping things real.
When I go over there I watch a show every night about life in China.
It is hosted by a Chinese version of Pelosi, same hair do and liberal view.
One night she had on the heads of the two agencies that oversee their environment.
Both were on the same page and no scripts.
She asked if China was serious about reducing green house gasses by 40% like was stated.
They said that is what they would like to do, but in all likelihood it would be 5-10%, as 40% was not achievable because of the cost. And the government would not make their people suffer economically when cleaning up the environment.
They said the amount they were willing to spend was 5-7% of the GNP. But because of the economy it would be more like 2-3%.
Also stated; We will not loose our position in the world market, and we will not buckle under pressure as long as our third world competitors were not held to the same standards.
She said; Aren’t you willing to spend what the US spends?
Reply; We are not the US, and we feel they are hurting their economy and their people because of the amount they are spending, we will not do that.
I do know from the time I have spent there they will not bend on these issues; they seldom bow to outside pressures.
I do know that BO will need to beg them for more money and he may get that.
But they will not concede on the climate change issue.
He will have to be careful as the Chinese president will NOT be intimidated.
But I fear BO will be intimidated by him.
They detest Americans who are arrogant, so if he shows any, forget any friendship.
The Chinese know how to bargain; get what they want, and you get empty promises.
It will be interesting if he gives up too much.
He is in way over his head and that can really hurt us.
Cap and Trade is his next big push.
If he starts spouting Chinas willingness to clean up 40% and now it is our turn, it will be BS BO style.
Hope he knows how to bow Chinese style.
I cannot believe he has no Chinese Americans guiding him. You have to understand their culture and how they think in order to even stand a chance with them.

[This message has been edited by partfiero (edited 11-14-2009).]

Brief (almost) sigh of relief...

No world climate deal at Copenhagen

Rick Moran
We can all breathe a little easier. It appears the enormously complex climate treaty being negotiated that would cede vast amounts of authority to the UN over sectors of the US economy will not be ready in time for the meeting in Copenhagen early this December.

Helene Cooper of the New York Times reports:

At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.

"There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days," said Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. "I don't think the negotiations have proceeded in such a way that any of the leaders thought it was likely that we were going to achieve a final agreement in Copenhagen, and yet thought that it was important that Copenhagen be an important step forward, including with operational impact."

With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it has, for several months, appeared increasingly unlikely that the climate change negotiations in Denmark would produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming, as its organizers had intended.

The agreement on Sunday codifies what negotiators had already accepted as all but inevitable: that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks would not resolve the outstanding issues in time. The gulf between rich and poor countries, and even among the wealthiest nations, was just too wide.

The next climate treaty will almost certainly give the UN power to regulate at least some elements of the world energy industry. This ceding of sovereignty will be pushed as the only hope to save the world from global warming.

Good thing it's proving more difficult to figure out how to do this than anyone thought. Pushing this "grand bargain" down the road means that there's still time to head it off.

From Newsmax.

quote 'Consensus' on Climate Change Is 'Fake,' Scientists Say A team of scientists has sent a letter to all U.S. senators warning that a claim there is "consensus" in the scientific community on the climate change issue is false. The letter dated Oct. 29 reads in part: "You have recently received a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), purporting to convey a 'consensus' of the scientific community that immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe. . . "The claim of consensus is fake, designed to stampede you into actions that will cripple our economy, and which you will regret for many years. There is no consensus, and even if there were, consensus is not the test of scientific validity. Theories that disagree with the facts are wrong, consensus or no." The five signees of the letter include professors from Princeton University, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Santa Barbara. The letter refers to an earlier open letter sent to Congress by those five signees and others declaring: "The sky is not falling. The earth has been cooling for 10 years, without help. The present cooling was NOT predicted by the alarmists' computer models, and has come as an embarrassment to them. . . "We are flooded with claims that the evidence is clear, that the debate is closed, that we must act immediately, etc., but in fact there is no such evidence. It doesn't exist." The Oct. 29 letter also notes that the American Physical Society, an organization of physicists, did not sign the AAAS letter and states the society is "at this moment reviewing its stance on so-called global warming, having received a petition from its membership to do so. That petition was signed by 160 distinguished members and fellows of the society, including one Nobelist and 12 members of the National Academies. Indeed a score of the signers are Members and Fellows of the AAAS, none of whom were consulted before the AAAS letter to you." The petition reads in part: "Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth's climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate. "The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes — natural and human — on the Earth's climate." The 160 signees of the petition range alphabetically from Harold M. Agnew, former White House science councilor and former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, to Martin V. Zombeck, a physicist formerly with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and include Ivar Giaever, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1973.

quote Originally posted by fierobear: I'm already making plans for solar power. We get enough sun around here that it should be viable to be off the grid, at least most of the time.

When you get stuff set up, please share for the rest of us to get ideas.

quote Originally posted by 2.5: When you get stuff set up, please share for the rest of us to get ideas.

Sure. If it happens, it will be a while. It's VERY expensive. But ironically, if they pass Cap and Tax, the cost of a solar power system will be worth it.

Naw, no media bias on this subject..

Newsweek Admits 74 Percent of Gore Letters Are Critical, But Fails to Publish Any

Newsweek has done it again: a few weeks after acknowledging half its letters were critical of Joe Biden (but publishing none of them), they proclaimed their Al Gore cover was unpopular. Forty-six percent of their letter writers wrote on the subject of Gore, and 74 percent of them were critical. Still, Newsweek ran only positive letters. The first, most prominent one (in larger red type) read: "Until each nation makes responsibility for this earth a priority, we will continue to devastate it – and ourselves."

The next letter praises Gore's courage and conscience, but still presses him from the left to crush the problem of human overpopulation:

As a six-continent bicycle traveler for the past 35 years, I admire Al Gore addressing climate change. However, he fails to highlight the basic factor accelerating it: human overpopulation. Either we address it, or Mother Nature will do it for us. – Frosty Wooldridge, Golden, Colo.

Then the reading gets really hair-curling. Lee Bidgood Jr of Gainesville, Florida compared global-warming deniers to people who denied the Holocaust:

Propaganda by global-warming skeptics and deniers reminds me of 1944, when as an Army officer I saw living skeletons in striped pajamas. Horror stories about Nazi concentration camps suddenly rang true. I wondered how intelligent people could commit such atrocities. History records the effectiveness of Joseph Goebbels's propaganda. I hope Al Gore and others can prevail over today's anti--science propaganda.

Newsweek even included a letter from a professional liberal complaining that all the goo for Gore was ruined by including an essay by Karl Rove. It was (as usual) an "unworthy" counterpoint: "Rove's essay repeats debunked claims about cap-and-trade systems and fails to offer an alternative method for significantly reducing carbon emissions to the levels scientists say are necessary. Rove's opinion piece was an unworthy counterpoint to Gore's serious call to action."

It was signed Aaron Huertas, Press Secretary, Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, D.C.

The sun is still at a minimum but for how long?

http://spaceweather.com/

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 1 days
2009 total: 243 days (76%)
Since 2004: 754 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days

http://science.nasa.gov/hea...deepsolarminimum.htm

The US Government knows about this but still says "The changes so far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming" To that I say HAH!

The scientists cannot predict with any accuracy how long the solar minimum will last. It could be a year or it could be more. History tells us it could go either way and presently it is cooling the earth down nicely.

Rest assured that when the solar minimum ends, and the heat cycle starts again, it will be all our fault as per the Goreites.

Arn

As some of you may have read in the other thread, a major pro-global warming researcher's computer system was hacked, and files were posted on the internet - including emails between climate scientists. You can read about it here.

One juicy tidbit...the bastard WANTS global warming to happen, regardless of the consequences, just so he can be proved right...

From: Phil Jones
To: John Christy
Subject: This and that
Date: Tue Jul 5 15:51:55 2005
…..
…..
in subsequent drafts. Someone is going to check the final version and the Aug 12 draft. This is partly why I’ve sent you the rest of this mail. IPCC, me and whoever will get accused of being political, whatever we do. As you know, I’m not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn’t being political, it is being selfish.
Cheers
Phil
IPCC stuff —- just for interest !!!

Notice the most recent data is from 2000? No heating since according to some, and definitely cooling in 2008/09

Arn

So much for all those claims about skeptical scientists being funded by "big oil". What about those funded by "big green"?

CRU Files Betray Climate Alarmists' Funding Hypocrisy

By Marc Sheppard

It seems that while scientists who accept funding from oil companies are branded as bought-and-paid-for shills, those financed by renewable energy interests remain unchallenged authorities in their fields. Words can’t adequately express my astonishment.

Amid the thousands of files apparently lifted from Britain’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) last week sit two documents on the subject of the unit’s funding. One is a spreadsheet (pdj_grant_since1990.xls) logging the various grants CRU chief P.D. Jones has received since 1990. It lists 55 such endowments from agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Energy to NATO, worth a total of £13,718,547, or approximately $22.6 million. I guess cooking climate data can be an expensive habit, particularly for an oft-quoted and highly exalted U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chief climatologist.

But it’s actually the second document (potential-funding.doc) that tells the more compelling tale. In addition to four government sources of potential CRU funding, it lists an equal number of "energy agencies" they might put the bite on. Three -- the Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative, and the Energy Saving Trust -- are U.K.-based consultancy and funding specialists promoting "new energy" technologies with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The fourth -- Renewables North West -- is an American company promoting the expansion of solar, wind, and geothermal energy in the Pacific Northwest.

Needless to say, all four of these CRU "potential funding sources" have an undeniably intrinsic financial interest in the promotion of the carbochondriacal reports CRU is ready, willing, and able to dish out ostensibly on demand. And equally obvious, Jones is all too aware that a renewable energy-funded CRU will remain the world’s premiere authority on the subject of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) despite any appearance of conflict.

And yet, no such latitude has ever been extended to scientists in the skeptical camp.

For instance, when MIT’s Richard Lindzen delivers one of his trademark brilliant presentations leading to the conclusion that climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 is about 0.5°C, not the 1.5°-5°C predicted by IPCC models, all we hear from alarmists and complicit media types is that the professor once charged oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services and is therefore an unreliable big-oil hack.

Or when S. Fred Singer challenges the IPCC to explain whether water vapor and clouds represent positive or negative feedback, or stands before a graph depicting temperatures decreasing over the past ten years while CO2 climbed and declares that “the relationship is meaningless,” his words are similarly dismissed based solely on the fact that he has received funding from ExxonMobil.

Let’s set aside the fact that Lindzen had actually accepted a total of $10,000 in expenses and expert witness fees from such interests on the day he ceased such activities two decades ago. And that Singer has received only $20,000 from ExxonMobil. And that alarmists outfund climate by several orders of magnitude, which leads to the artificial expansion of the number of scientists who appear to support alarmist views. And even that monies paid to either side of the debate have zero impact on the science of whether or not 20th-century warming was caused or is exacerbated by man-made CO2 emissions. And don’t get me started on carbon-millionaire Al Gore.

The issue is this: Just how is it that funding from renewable energy interests evades charges of bias, yet subsidies from traditional power entities scream bloody conflict when each is equally friendly to the recipient’s cause?

As with all things AGW, the alarmist quick-draw canard that the science is settled but for a few outliers in the fossil fuel industry's pockets is quickly losing whatever civic support it may have had. And the scientific subterfuge exposed last week by the CRU emails and documents represents but the latest of many recent outrages sure to accelerate the ongoing public awakening to the hoax that has been perpetrated upon them.

In the broader scheme, the credibility blow the IPCC will likely suffer from its top acolytes -- senior authors and editors -- bandying data-manipulation-revealing e-mails will weaken and perhaps ultimately break the AGW orthodoxy spine erected by its politically-charged assessments. And that can only serve to further declaw their fellow alarmists and media minions -- which of course would be nothing short of stupendous.

For as Lord Christopher Monckton emphasized in his rousing speech to close the second International Conference on Climate Change in New York City last March:
There is no climate crisis. There was no climate crisis. There will be no climate crisis.
And it has become abundantly clear that it is not, nor was it ever, the AGW skeptics who were the liers. Or the cheaters.

Or the bought-and-paid-for hypocrites.

Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?

The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.

Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:

A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season.

http://www.worldclimaterepo...ls-in-satellite-era/

Arn

Why aren't our senators and representatives demanding an investigation or holding hearings to get to the bottom of who perpetrated this whole global warming scam which is about to cost us more trillions of our dollars with cap and tax? I guess they all went home for Thanksgiving. Maybe someone will bring it up when they get back to work. This couldn't have come at a better time. Comrade Obama is getting his pen all warmed up to sign our future away in Copenhagen. He will no doubt try and ignore this news until after the dirty deed has been done and the media will keep it quiet to help him too. The media should be screaming at the top of their lungs. This is the biggest story since man discovered the earth isn't flat. I just can't believe this is happening in America.

quote Originally posted by Puglet01: Why aren't our senators and representatives demanding an investigation or holding hearings to get to the bottom of who perpetrated this whole global warming scam which is about to cost us more trillions of our dollars with cap and tax?

Because the panic and "crisis" will allow them to seize more power from the private sector and generate more tax revenues.

I wonder how all those idiots feel on the left since they've been duped all these years?

GOP opens probe into climate science e-mails
http://www.onenewsnow.com/H...fault.aspx?id=783358

[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 11-25-2009).]

quote Originally posted by Puglet01: I wonder how all those idiots feel on the left since they've been duped all these years?

Hey, if IPCC is dishonest there is nothing to say the other side isn't dishonest. Zip.

I finished reading the documents/emails and I still don't see a smoking gun but I do believe IPCC's data is no longer trustworthy regardless of the truth. There is enough arrogance in the emails alone to be suspicious of the data and their motives. There is no way to know exactly what they meant but it leaves a wide open door for anyone to question their data and motives.

At this point I think it's officially a major cluster ****. We can't believe the IPCC data and while McIntyre and others have refuted much of the conclusions, I now can't believe their counter arguments either lock stock and barrel. Taken as a whole, I don't think we can accept either sides findings (which leaves use squarely in the position to not believe AGW is real and hope that is correct.)

This also screws any of the honest researchers that used IPCC data (from Mann, who ever) in their work. Toss it. Gone. Useless. Even it they are right, it's poisoned. Heck, It's poisoned even if they didn't use it. If IPCC is dishonest then everyone is potentially dishonest. If someone did research independent of NASA, IPCCs, etc. and drew the conclusion that AGW is possibly correct, that is now poisoned. The arrogance of IPCC affects everyone. Dumb asses.

Grand, just grand. In my eyes, it's a total reset.

[This message has been edited by TK (edited 11-25-2009).]

quote Originally posted by TK: Grand, just grand. In my eyes, it's a total reset.

Oh, but Obama is going to Copenhagen and will commit the U.S. to fighting global warming by cutting our CO2 emissions anyway.

Obama to vow greenhouse emissions cuts in Denmark

Christ. I WARNED people that this is what would happen if he got elected.

This is some of the coder's comments. If you've ever written a lot of code trying to manage data, you'll enjoy the comments. Many of them hit home. "Twilight Zone".

http://wattsupwiththat.com/...codified/#more-13197

[This message has been edited by TK (edited 11-26-2009).]

Probably the only result will be the hacker ends up going to jail for blowing the whistle. The left will do their best to prevent us from finding out the truth. Now is a good time to buy stock in smoke and mirrors. The left will needs tons of them.

quote Originally posted by Puglet01: Probably the only result will be the hacker ends up going to jail for blowing the whistle. The left will do their best to prevent us from finding out the truth. Now is a good time to buy stock in smoke and mirrors. The left will needs tons of them.

Not necessarily. England has laws that protect whistleblowers, just like our laws. If this is an inside job, the person can be protected from prosecution. All signs so far are that this is an inside job. The information that was hacked was very specific.

We may be vindicated but that doesn't stop their cap and trade plans. They plan to make much money off this plan by taxing us to pay reduce our carbon footprint, even if it has not effect on the climate. Be prepared for higher energy bills and energy shortages as we shut down coal mines, natural gas resources, and the few nuclear reactors we have left, to force us to switch to "greener" alternatives. Our energy costs are going to skyrocket if this legislation passes.

quote Originally posted by avengador1: We may be vindicated but that doesn't stop their cap and trade plans. They plan to make much money off this plan by taxing us to pay reduce our carbon footprint, even if it has not effect on the climate. Be prepared for higher energy bills and energy shortages as we shut down coal mines, natural gas resources, and the few nuclear reactors we have left, to force us to switch to "greener" alternatives. Our energy costs are going to skyrocket if this legislation passes.

Oh, I have no doubt. Obama and the liberal politicians are hellbent on taking this country down so they can rebuild it as a socialist welfare state. Cap and Tax will go a long way toward that goal. They couldn't give a s*** about any contrary evidence, their twisted minds are made up.

Is that really the plan, or are they simply wrong headed? I think Obama thinks of himself as the reincarnation of FDR.

I am watching what the Republican Senators do. Surely they will use this for their own partisan plans. This is likely our best hope.

Arn

quote Originally posted by Arns85GT: Is that really the plan, or are they simply wrong headed? I think Obama thinks of himself as the reincarnation of FDR. I am watching what the Republican Senators do. Surely they will use this for their own partisan plans. This is likely our best hope. Arn

But what will we get in return? Who was the last president that actually delivered on what people though they were voting for? So the GOP gets into the Whitehouse. And they will do what? That is the problem. Odds are, it won't be what we thought.

As for the CRU hack, I am hoping all of the primary researchers will step out of line for a couple of years and let some new people come and review the data while continuing the research. I think the AGW researchers need to bow out and cooperate 100% so we can unravel this mess. It's a huge black-eye on science and if they are not will, then they need to be removed. The damage goes well beyond AGW.

quote Originally posted by TK: But what will we get in return? Who was the last president that actually delivered on what people though they were voting for? So the GOP gets into the Whitehouse. And they will do what? That is the problem. Odds are, it won't be what we thought. As for the CRU hack, I am hoping all of the primary researchers will step out of line for a couple of years and let some new people come and review the data while continuing the research. I think the AGW researchers need to bow out and cooperate 100% so we can unravel this mess. It's a huge black-eye on science and if they are not will, then they need to be removed. The damage goes well beyond AGW.

The problem is that they aren't really studying what's happening in the climate. They are proceeding from a preconceived notion - that the planet is warming and human produced C02 is the cause - and they aren't interested in entertaining any other possibilities...including that they might be wrong. It isn't science that's driving this, it's politics and social engineering.

This scheme of taxing us on our emissions has been in the works for a long time. It is the ultimate scam. They will not let it go no matter what evidence is put in front of them. They have the perfect opportunity to put the plan in place with a socialist president and congress. Many of them are ready to fall on their sword and take one for the team to pass this. There needs to be a huge stink about this so even the sleeping Americans know about it. It will be difficult since the media wants to keep it quiet and let this blow over.

quote Originally posted by fierobear: The problem is that they aren't really studying what's happening in the climate. They are proceeding from a preconceived notion - that the planet is warming and human produced C02 is the cause - and they aren't interested in entertaining any other possibilities...including that they might be wrong. It isn't science that's driving this, it's politics and social engineering.

Hi John,

Well, that's a pretty broad stroke. I agree that there are *many* researchers that are trying to support AGW (get on the bandwagon) but there are still many that are collecting data and haven't drawn any conclusions. There really isn't any choice but to continue researching but with a new group of people and full third party review. I support studying it since it's not just a 1990's "I pulled it out of my ass" hypothesis, but any conclusions either way are now null and void and it has to go back to being studied. It's not like we should ban research on climate change right? Is that what you are proposing? Never look at it again?

Whether or not the government is trying to enslave the western world is a separate topic in my eyes. We need to keep the pressure on them to not agree to squat while we try and heal this black eye on science.

I think the media blow up is still smoldering. The media will throw their children to the lions if it means ratings and selling advertising slots. They only report facts and not truth. They can switch ti new facts on a dime.

[This message has been edited by TK (edited 11-27-2009).]

quote Originally posted by TK: Hi John, Well, that's a pretty broad stroke.

Well, Terry, all I can say is that I've been following this issue for a couple of years now. I've dug in deep, and I don't like what I'm seeing. 22 pages of this thread are testimony to how deeply this goes. Taxing us in order to pay other countries for "Climate Reparations"...

Copenhagen Redux: Socialist Resource Redistribution under the Guise of Paying Our “Climate Debt”

In December President Obama will be traveling to Copenhagen yet again to participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control meeting. This conference and what transpires therein will likely become one of the truly momentous occasions of his administration.

It may also be one of the darkest moments in American history, since the President appears to stand poised to further extend his philosophy of socialistic resource distribution beyond the bounds of our nation into the international community.

The central issue to be discussed and negotiated at the climate conference will be the resolution of issues involving so-called “climate debt” between developed and emerging economies.

The term “climate debt” was coined at an earlier international climate conference by a Bolivian delegation and consists of two components: “emission debt” – i.e. the overutilization of the atmosphere as a waste site for CO2 and other airborne pollutants by developed nations thereby substantially diminishing the planet’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases, and “adaption debt” - “opportunity costs” realized by emerging nations due to the overutilization of natural resources by the large developed nations as well as the costs emerging nations must subsequently incur to adapt to the excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Paying off this “climate debt” is construed as a central issue in achieving economic and social justice relative to the current climate change issue. It is argued that unless this debt is repaid the emerging economies will be unable to develop their own societies and economies in an environmentally sustainable fashion. Consequently these nations will not be capable of fully participating in the UN Framework Convention on Climate unless they are economically enfranchised by those developing nations who have greedily incurred the world’s “climate debt.”

Let’s be clear about what we are talking about here!

This is a massive redistribution of economic resources from developed economies such as the U.S. to a plethora of emerging nations. Alternately stated, what is involved here is the comparative crippling of the U.S. economy in order to further stimulate the economies of these emerging economic markets.

Does this sound familiar? If not, it should.

This is the identical theme we are seeing within the nation as the administration calls for the redistribution of resources from the wealthy among us (which includes a whole lot more of us than you might want to acknowledge) to the least affluent by way of a series of taxes and regulatory schemes.

The net effect of such socialist redistribution within the U.S. is the dampening of economic initiative and productivity. Even more disturbing, however, is the extent to which the economic retardation effect of domestic resource redistribution would be amplified by simultaneously doing the same thing at an international level.

In case the rationale for the President’s numerous international “apology tours” has escaped you, their purpose may well be on full display at this upcoming climate change “give-away” conference. President Obama has made it abundantly clear that we Americans have been selfish and greedy capitalists and have thoughtlessly exploited the whole world’s resources to achieve our own prosperity and power. Consequently, I fully expect that during the Copenhagen conference he will obligate the U.S.to a schedule of "climate debt" payments that will essentially amount to climate reparations owed to the rest of the world.

In this way the President can redeem our alleged national sin, first through confession (international apology) then through penitence and atonement. “Atonement” is itself such an appropriate descriptor of what the President seeks since it is indeed his goal to "become as one" with the rest of the world (i.e. to make “at-one-ment”), seeking their forgiveness and ultimate absolution.

Ultimately though, it’s all about “reparations.” Reparation is one of the by-words of the Obama administration. Don’t be fooled for a minute about Obama’s ulterior motives. The President’s initiatives in health care, housing, education, taxation and more are principally about reparations from “those mean nasty wealthy folks” to “the exploited within the society.” For socialists like Obama, there is no such thing as success that is not achieved or purchased at the expense of others.

Consequently if one person “wins” in the economy, then by necessity someone else (typically a person of color) has been pre-ordained to fail. This is, after all, the perverse rationale of zero-sum economics.

Those on the left – and internationally speaking there are a multitude of them – apply the same principle to “climate debt.” The lifestyles and standards of living of the developed nations have been purchased at the expense of the standards of living among emerging nations. Consequently they must be punished to achieve equity.

That so many people seriously accept this over-simplification of socio-political-economics is disturbing enough. What is still more worriesome, however, is that the President of the United States appears ready to embrace the inherent principles reflected in this flawed logic.

If the President journeys to Copenhagen and consents to these "climate debt reparations" then I fear his actions portend something much more serious than mere gullibility or naivety. If the President signs a treaty committing this nation to pay climate reparations, then such an action would of necessity be considered an act of national disloyalty, betrayal, and frankly treasonous.

It should disturb every American that our President would even consider further weakening our great nation through a massive redistribution of national and international wealth. Moreover, it should further disturb citizens that his administration is even willing to consider such climate debt reparations in the absence of any serious indication on the part of China or any of the emerging nations that they would actually abide by the same international climate guidelines that the U.S. and other developed nations are about to self-impose upon themselves.

This entire economic redistribution scenario can only conclude with China and the other emerging economies dramatically increasing their economic and military capacities while the rest of the world voluntarily weakens theirs. Once this dramatic transfer of wealth and power occurs, an inevitable expansion of political, economic and military might among the emerging economies will follow, and this expansion will be achieved at the expense of the freedom and safety of the U.S. and the rest of the free and democratic world.

Signing a treaty like the one awaiting us in Copenhagen would be tantamount to bargaining with a thug to voluntarily relinquish your weapons, ammunition and money only to be surprised when the thug turns around and mugs you.

Parenthetically, you might remember that Obama’s last visit to Copenhagen on behalf of the Olympics didn’t work out very well for him. He overestimated his celebrity influence on the international stage.

By comparison, if this trip to Copenhagen culminates in his signature upon a climate change treaty committing the U.S. to climate debt reparations, then I predict that he will be upbraided at home while being lauded and praised very widely in Europe and beyond. Such a bifurcated reaction should be no surprise since the payment of climate reparations would obviously provide handsome profits for developing many nations while comparatively rendering the U.S. much less affluent.

Yet, in the eyes of many, many others within the international community, Obama's endorsement of climate debt reparations would be quietly regarded as foolhardy, realizing as they do that America’s voluntary relegation of its economic resources to other nations provides a fertile opportunity for their own economic, political and military expansion and domination.

Within the U.S., however, the President could expect a very cool reception from among political conservatives and moderates, since committing to climate reparations would in all likelihood usher in an extremely dark and trying era during which the U.S. as an economic, political and military power would of necessity be forced to devolve its capacity, thereby rendering it and the entire free world less secure and safe.

Unfortunately, we must steel ourselves and prepare for the singular inevitability that the President will use the occasion of the Copenhagen Conference to do much more that “run-down the reputation of the U.S.” We must anticipate the real possibility that he will sign the Copenhagen Climate Accord.

If President Obama ultimately chooses to sign an agreement containing climate debt reparations, then we should quickly act to temper enthusiasm regarding his “triumphant” jaunt abroad. Instead we should loudly and soundly admonish and sanction him – making darn sure that although he may have successfully exercised his prerogative to sign a bad agreement in Copenhagen, that agreement must ultimately be ratified in the U.S. Senate.

Hopefully, if such a treaty signed by the President were to make its way to the Senate for ratification, its sponsors could count upon catching pure unmitigated hell from their constituents if they even contemplated entering into a complicit relationship with Obama to sell-out our nation.

Remember, Judas sold out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Call me crazy, but I strongly suspect that President Obama would be willing to sell-out the U.S. for much less – i.e. for the adoration of the environmentalists and the accolades of the international elites.

Whether or not the government is trying to enslave the western world is a separate topic in my eyes. We need to keep the pressure on them to not agree to squat while we try and heal this black eye on science.

I think the media blow up is still smoldering. The media will throw their children to the lions if it means ratings and selling advertising slots. They only report facts and not truth. They can switch ti new facts on a dime.

[/QUOTE]

http://www.minnesotansforglobalwarming.com/m4gw/
Watch the video, it's funny.

[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 11-29-2009).]

This article contains several links to supporting articles, if you'd like to check the references.

Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It would be no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line.

A short tour of previous AGW highlights would include:

The Y2K Glitch. This episode involved the NASA/GISS team led by James Hansen, possibly the most fanatical and unrelenting of all warmists, a man who makes Al Gore look like a skeptic. (Among other things, Hansen has demanded that warming "deniers" be tried for "crimes against humanity".) While examining a series of NASA temperature graphs, Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, himself not so much a skeptic as an anti-warming Van Helsing, uncovered a discontinuity occurring in January 2000 that raised temperatures gathered over widespread areas by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit. McIntyre had no easy time of it, since Hansen refused to reveal what algorithm he'd used to process the data, forcing McIntyre to perform some very abstruse calculations to figure it out.

Once notified, Hansen's team promised to correct the error, stating that it was an "oversight". When the corrected figures were at last released, they rocked the church of warming from bingo hall to steeple. Vanished was the claim that the past few years were "the warmest on record". Now 1934 now took precedence. A full half of the top ten warmest years occurred before WW II, well prior to any massive CO2 buildup.

No explanation has ever been offered. We have a Y2K glitch that behaves like no other computer glitch ever encountered, uniformly affecting a large number of sources distributed almost nationwide. Although the incident trashed all recent data and raised uncomfortable questions about the warming thesis as a whole, NASA itself made no effort at an investigation or inquiry. All that we're ever going to hear is "oversight". I guess that's how they do things at NASA/GISS.

The Arctic Ice Melt. We've been informed for the better part of a decade that Arctic ice was melting at an unprecedented rate, and that the North Pole would be ice-free in twenty, thirty, or forty years, depending in the hysteria level of the media platform in question. In truth, ice thinning was due to a cyclical weather pattern in which winds blow ice floes south into warmer water. Everybody involved knew that this cycle occurred, everyone had seen it happen previously time out of mind. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Worse yet, when the weather returned to its normal pattern two years ago, large numbers of scientists put in considerable effort to suggest that the "new" ice was thinner than usual and would vanish in a flash as soon as the temperatures went back up. The media went along with the joke. The Germans have a phrase to cover such eventualities: this crew should be stripped of their trade. (Several expeditions setting out for the Pole to "call attention" to the coming Arctic catastrophe had to stop short due to icy conditions. In one case, both women involved suffered serious frostbite.)

The Poor Polar Bears. Closely related is the saga of the polar bears, staring extinction in the face due to warming while, somewhere beyond the aurora, Gaia weeps bitter tears. This was evidently inspired by a single photograph (you've seen it -- the entire world has at this point) of a woebegone polar bear crouched on a melting iceberg. That bear had to be sulking over allowing a nice juicy seal to escape, because it was in no danger. Out of the twenty major polar bear populations only two are known to be decreasing. Estimates of bear population (there are no exact figures) have increased over the past forty years, from 17,000 to19,000 to the current number of 22,000 to 27,000. The bears are becoming pests in municipalities such as Churchill and Point Barrow. (As clearly shown here.) Despite all this, last year the bear was put on the U.S. "endangered" list.

The Hockey Stick That Wasn't. The "hockey stick" is a nickname for a chart prepared by Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania professor and leading warmist. The chart purports to show temperature levels for the past millennium, and consists of a straight line until it reaches the late 20th century, when it suddenly shoots upward, creating the "hockey stick" profile. This chart was a major feature of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on global warming and is a commonly-used media graphic.

This chart creates immediate doubt in anyone knowledgeable about the climate of the past millennium, which more resembles a roller coaster than a straight line. It developed -- in yet another impressive McIntyre takedown, this time with an assist from Ross McKitrick -- that Mann was utilizing an algorithm that would produce hockey sticks if you fed it telephone numbers. (Mann is the "Mike" mentioned in the CRU e-mails, and this is one of his "tricks".) Despite this disclosure, Mann has never withdrawn the chart, offered an explanation, or made a correction. The chart remains an accepted piece of evidence among warmists.

Tree-Ring Circus. Due to the fact that direct temperature measures for past epochs are lacking, climatologists utilize "proxy measures", such as tree rings, glacial moraines, and lake sediments. Tree rings have played an important part in the warming controversy, as evidence backing the claim that temperatures have been consistently lower worldwide until recently. A crucial series of measurements, utilized by Mann among others, involves trees located on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia. How many trees were measured, you ask? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?

The answer is twelve. A number perfectly adequate to trigger international panic, overthrow the capitalist system, establish a Green totalitarianism, and completely turn Western culture on its head.

But it turns out that further measurements were in fact made in the area, involving at least thirty-four other trees. And when this data is added to the original twelve, then the warming evidence disappears into the same branch of the Twilight Zone as the blade of Mann's hockey stick. Another "oversight", you understand.

We could go on to mention the automated U.S. weather stations chronicled by the tireless Anthony Watts, which were conscientiously placed next to air-con vents, atop sewage plants, in parking lots, and in one case, in a swamp (as many as 90% may be giving spurious high readings). The glaciers that are vanishing worldwide except where they aren't. The endless papers demonstrating that the coral reefs, along with various birds, animals, insects, and plants, are facing extinction even though no warming whatsoever has occurred for twelve years. (And in the thirty years before that, the total rise was 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit, easily within normal variation.) Powerful stuff, this warming -- it maims and destroys even when it's not happening.

It's within this context that the East Anglia e-mails must be judged. The vanishingly small number of legacy media writers who are paying attention behave as if the messages comprise some kind of puzzling anomaly, with no relation to anything that came before. In truth, they stand as the internal memos from the East Anglia branch of the Nigerian National Bank, which can save us from the horrors of global warming after payment of a small up-front fee.

There is always a deeper level to the damage caused by fraud. It strains social relationships, generates cynicism, and debases standing institutions. What has suffered the most damage from AGW is faith in the scientific method, the basic set of procedures -- it could be called an algorithm -- governing scientific investigation. These procedures embody simplicity itself: you examine a phenomenon. You gather data. You construct a hypothesis to explain that phenomenon. And then...

Well, first, let's cover what you don't do.

You don't manipulate data. (As CRU chief scientist Phil Jones stated he was doing in the now-famous "Mike's trick" e-mail, not to mention throughout the now-famous source code.)

You don't fabricate data. (As one CRU scientist did while compiling weather-station data. Running into problems, he states, "I can make it up. So I did." He adds an evil smiley face. This e-mail has gone under radar up until now. It can be found in the comments on James Delingpole's blog.

You don't deny data to other investigators. (As Hansen, Jones, and, it appears, everybody else in the warming community has done at one time or another.)

You don't destroy evidence. (As the members of the CRU did following a Freedom of Information request.)

You don't bury contradictory data. (As Jones and several colleagues did in an attempt to undercut the impact of the Medieval Warming Period.)

You don't secretly manipulate the argument from behind the scenes. (As the CRU staff did with the website Realclimate.org., screening comments to allow only those that supported the warming thesis.)

You don't secretly undercut your critics. (As Mann advised the CRU to do concerning the scientific journal, Climate Researh: "I think we have to stop considering ‘Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.")

You don't try to get a journal editor critical of your case fired. (As the CRU staff evidently succeeded in doing with an editor for Geophysical Research Letters.)

What you do, if you are a serious scientist operating according to the established method, is attempt to falsify your hypothesis. Test it to destruction; carry out serious attacks on its weakest points to see if they hold up. If they do -- and the vast majority of hypotheses suffer the indignity embodied in a phrase attributed variously to Thomas Huxley and Lord Kelvin: "a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact" -- then you have a theory that can be published, and tested, and verified by other scientists. If you don't, you throw it out.

None of this, amidst all the chicanery, fabrications, and manipulations, appears to have been done by anyone active in global warming research, the CRU least of all. From which point we are forced to conclude that AGW is not science, and that any "consensus" that can drawn from it is a consensus of fraud.

(The late-breaking revelations of temperature manipulations at New Zealand's NiWA institute -- another one of Mike's tricks? -- merely underlines the lesson of CRU. Now that the dam has busted, we'll be hearing dozens of stories like this over the weeks and months to come.)

The West is a technological society. Science is as responsible for making us what we have become as any other factor, including the democratic system of government. The two are in fact complementary, each supporting and encouraging the other across the decades since this country was established. (And yes, I am aware that Britain and Germany were both centers of scientific progress, both of them nations liberalized by the example of the United States. Even the utterly authoritarian Bismarck was forced to heed the voice of the people despite his inclination to do anything but.)

The technology developed from scientific research has created a world that would be unrecognizable to our forebears of even a century ago. Technology has transformed diet, health, communications, and transportation. It has doubled lifespans in advanced countries. Prior to the modern epoch, few ever caught a glimpse of the world past their own farming fields. India, China, and Africa were wild myths, the Pacific and Antarctica utterly unknown, the planets and stars merely pretty lights in the sky. Technology opened the world, not just for everyday men and women, but for invalids, the disabled, and the subnormal, who once lived lives of almost incomprehensible deprivation. Technology was a crucial factor in the dissolution of the ancient empires, the humbling of the aristocracies.

As Paul Johnson has pointed out, a technological breakout appeared imminent at a number of points in the past millennium. Consider the anonymous Hussite engineer of the 15th century who left a notebook even more breathtaking than that of Leonardo, or the revolutionary English Levelers of the 17th century who dreamed of flying machines and factories. If a breakout had occurred at those times, the consequences would have been unimaginable. But the Hussites were destroyed by the German princes, the Levelers by the reestablishment of the English crown. It required the birth of a true democratic republic in the late 18th century to provide the setting for a serious scientific-technical takeoff, one that after 200 years has brought us to where we stand today, gazing out at the galaxies beyond the galaxies with the secret of life itself within reach.

It is this, and no less, that scientific fraud threatens. This is no trivial matter; it involves one of the basic elements of modern Western life. When scientific figures lie, they lie to all of us. If they foment serious distrust of the scientific endeavor -- as they are doing -- they are creating a schism in the heart of our culture, a wound that in the long run could prove even more deadly than the Jihadi terrorists.

Such failings are not relegated only to climatology. With the apparent success of the climate hustlers, it has infected all areas of research. Over the past decade, stem-cell studies have proven a hotbed of fraud. Recall Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean biologist who claimed to have cloned various higher animals and isolated new stem cell lines, to worldwide applause. Suk was discovered to have faked all his research, prompting the South Korean government to ban him from taking part in any further work. Nor was he alone. Researchers throughout the field have been caught fabricating and manipulating data, and at least one large biotech company has developed the habit of announcing grand breakthroughs to goose its stock prices.

A number of factors are responsible, among them the grant-making process, which rewards extravagant claims and demands matching results, and the superstar factor, in which media adulation creates a sense of intellectual arrogance -- as in the case of Dr. Suk -- unmatched since Galileo's heyday. But the major problem lies in politics, specifically as involves ideology.

In both major recent cases of fraud, science had become entwined and infected with ideology to a point where its very nature had been transformed. It was no longer science in the classic mold, boldly asking basic questions without fear or favor. It had become an ideological tool, carrying out only such research as met with the approval of political elites. Stem-cell research had become enmeshed with the abortion question. Embryonic stem cells, obtained by "processing" aborted babies, received the lion's share of funding and attention despite its showing no potential whatsoever. Adult stem cells, obtainable from bone marrow, skin cells, or virtually any other part of the body, were shunted aside despite extraordinarily promising research results. This bias permeated the entire field and distorted all perceptions of it -- one of the reasons Dr. Suk was so wildly overpraised was his willingness to attack Pres. George W. Bush for limiting embryonic stem-cell exploitation.

The climatology story is little different. Environmentalist Greens needed a threat, one that menaced not only technological civilization but life on earth itself. They had promoted an endless parade of such threats since the 1960s -- overpopulation, pollution, runaway nuclear power, and global cooling -- only to see them shrivel like popped balloons. They required a menace that was overwhelming, long-term, and not easily disproven. With warming, the climatologists gave them one. In exchange for sky-high funding, millennial scientists, the heirs of Bacon, Copernicus, and Einstein, men who bled and suffered for the sake of their work, continually inflated the nature and extent of the CO2 threat, using, as we now know, the sleaziest methods available. The result has been complete intellectual degradation.

Scientists were once among the most trusted figures in Western public life, similar to bankers, priests, and doctors, but in a real sense standing above them all. Scientists were honored as truth-tellers, aware that their reputation for veracity and seriousness was their only real asset. And while exceptions existed (read the story of Blondlot and his N-rays, for one example), the public took them at their own valuation.

That is ended, one with the scholastic monasteries and the academy at Athens. Scientists today are well on their way to becoming an amalgam of the cheap politician and the three-card monte dealer. They are viewed by the less educated as a privileged class making alarming and impudent claims for their own benefit. The better informed find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being unable to defend something we once admired.

The next set of questions in physics cannot be answered without equipment costing billions at the very least, and possibly much more. Will a disbelieving public pay for that? We are facing serious dilemmas concerning breakthroughs in biology, not only in stem-cell technology but also in neurology and synthetic biology, breakthroughs that threaten to distort the very nature of humanity itself. Should we leave the solutions up to people who want us to pick a card, any card?

The collaboration between science and democracy is one of the great achievements of human history. It is now threatened by the behavior of people at the very heart of that collaboration. If it is destroyed, something of unparalleled value will have vanished, something that will be nearly impossible to replace. If the Western world wishes to continue its magnificent upward journey, we will have to save science from itself. An errant and corrupt climatology is the place to start.