Global Warming Weekly Round-Up, Jan. 26th 2012

The Round-Up double-dog dares the GWPF to be cunning, global warming gets yet another new name and an occasional skeptic is pillaged.

And yes, there’s a hottie at the end too.

Part One: Hippie of the Week

This week’s HOTW wants you to stop thinking. And don’t ask questions either. In fact, Naomi Oreskes wants you to just SHUT UP and do as you’re told:

Jury duty was in some ways difficult, but in one respect, it was easy: We were given clear instructions by a recognized authority and we followed them. No one argued about who had the burden of proof. No one suggested that the judge was not an appropriate authority, or that we should reject her instructions. On the contrary, when the time came to deliberate, we referred on more than one occasion to her instructions, and when the time came to vote, we had little trouble reaching a unanimous verdict. Driving home, I found myself contrasting this with the issue on which I work in my professional life: climate change.

…

Scientists don’t play the role of prosecutor trying to prove a case. Rather, they are the jury trying to evaluate the evidence. And they have rendered their verdict. The problem is not that scientists have become advocates, as some have claimed. The problem is that there is no judge, no recognized authority giving us instructions we accept, and no recognized authority to accept the scientists’ verdict and declare it final.

Oreskes wants everyone to accept the ‘science’ of global warming and fall into line. Pesky skepticism has no place in her mind, she’s decided the scientists are right, and that’s good enough for her.

According to Naomi, we’d all be better off under a benevolent dictator to tell us what to do and how to live. Now she tells us, right after lil Kim shuffled off this mortal coil. The Universe has no sense of timing.

Oreskes has a history of hating skeptics, she’d like nothing more than a cozy communist system where the little people do as they’re told. Jo Nova has a pithy take-down of Oreskes, from last summer:

Years from now when their contributions are still recognized, Oreskes will be but a footnote in history classes of how poor research and largely baseless innuendo were used to serve a groupthink meme and feed a hate campaign against some of our best and brightest. No humility. No respect. No real effort to find the truth.

Hard as it is to believe from that description, Oreskes is a historian, not a climate scientist.

Part Two: Warmists

David Attenborough, the BBC nature guru who likes to trick audiences and worry about the weather, has launched a giant new wind turbine in the UK. He’s proud of his support for renewable energy:

“I think the wind turbine is a most elegant structure in harmony with nature.”

And by ‘in harmony with nature‘ he means an avian apocalypse.

Al Gore is cruising to Antarctica with Richard Branson and others:

Former Vice President Al Gore is taking his fight against climate change to Antarctica next week as part of a cruise organized by his Climate Reality Project. Gore and more than 100 fellow travelers will depart from Argentina late next week. Scientists, including climatologists James Hansen of NASA and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will give talks during the journey.

They’re going to the deep south to draw awareness to melting ice which they say will lead to catastrophic sea level rise.  That’s the same catastrophic sea level rise that has Al so worried he bought a new mansion on California’s coast. Wait, what?

A new documentary is to be released which will take a look at the oil industry. It’s called ‘Greedy Lying Bastards’, which sort of gives away the ending, if you ask me.

Donna Laframboise could be forgiven for resting on her laurels after the success of her book, but no. Which is why we call her Minx the Merciless. She will not rest until no two bricks of the IPCC edifice are together and Raj Pachauri crawls over broken glass to her door and begs her to stop. Which would be fun to watch, but futile, because she’s merciless, see? This week la Laframboise discovered that IPCC scientists were, once upon a time, guests of the Environmental Defense Fund:

Now tell me, if some nice people offered you meeting space in glorious downtown Manhattan, helped you procure travel documents, fed you – and offered you goodness knows what other charming assistance, entertainment, and company over a three-day period – would you not be somewhat tempted to identify with their worldview?

The EDF isn’t a collection of newborn lambs and fluffy bunny rabbits. These are professional bloody lobbyists. You know – people who get paid to advance a particular agenda.

Apparently, WWIV has already started. I’m not sure what happened in WWIII, though based on form, its a safe bet the French surrendered, Italy changed its mind and America showed up late and got all the girls.

The UK’s Met. Office has boldly stated that a decline in the Sun’s activity will have no effect on the runaway effects of CO2. Based on their record, stout footwear and warm coat futures are up.

Et tu, Amazon? The Amazon (the rainforest, not the retailer) is about to become a greenhouse gas emitter. Gaia doesn’t want to be saved.

NASA’s resident global warming muppet Jim Hansen joined a FOI request for the Global Warming Policy Foundation to reveal its sources of funding. My advice to Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser is to agree to release the information, just as soon as Al Gore reveals where he got his $300 million from. Go on GWPF, I double-dog dare ya.

The Maldives claim that sea level rise will sink them and only other people’s money can save them. Maybe we should let them sink.

Warmist thugs are working to isolate and demonize weather forecasters who don’t follow the approved line on global warming. Because SHUT UP is all they’ve got left.

Oh noes, global warming causes perverts. Or something. Add it to The List.

Global warming became climate change which then became climate disruption, which  became a biodiversity crisis which didn’t catch on and now will be called sustainable development. Any questions?

A new $4.5 million polar bear center opened in Manitoba, and immediately proclaimed that polar bears are in danger because of slightly milder weather. That’s another year of funding taken care of, then.

Virginians got a peek at some of the emails Michael ‘Stick’ Mann’s not wanted to release. It doesn’t look good:

In PE-22, Mann alludes to his “dirty laundry” which cannot come out, requesting his correspondent to not pass the email or the data attached to it to anyone else (UVa has claimed no attachments to any emails were preserved on their system). In this email, Mann admits he has failed to follow the most basic tenet of science, to keep a record of exactly what he did in his research, and thus himself could not reproduce his own results.

A warmist who celebrated the Obama Keystone XL decision realizes that Canada is going to sell its oil anyway, that it’ll be transported on ships which is less green than a pipeline, and that hippies are the ultimate party of no.

Part Three: Inconvenient Truths

Germany is spending 100 billion Euros on solar subsidies and manufacturing firms are running for the exits:

One fifth of every German industrial company has moved activities to foreign countries, or plans to do so, because of the uncertain energy and raw material supply. This is the result of a survey conducted by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), in which 1520 companies participated

Soylent has thoughts on Germany’s problem.

NOAA’s failure to produce an arc has consequences for the predictions of warmists.

Remember when Al Gore said the melting snows of Kilimanjaro were a sign of global warming and would be gone in ten years? Yeah, nevermind.

Remember when Al Gore said more hurricanes would be caused by global warming? Yeah, nevermind that prediction either.

Oh noes, coral reefs are handling global warming better than expected. Who knew that Greenpeace would be more of a threat to reefs than the effects of a harmless trace gas essential to life on Earth?

Opposition to giant bird shredders is growing in the UK as politicians from all parties agree that blending birds in return for the occasional kilowatt isn’t a good idea. That and the fact that wind farms make air traffic control radar systems twitchy.

It’s the extinction-reversal event of the week. Grizzled Langur monkeys were thought extinct, but now they’re merely endangered.

Mercury in birds is a problem. In your light bulbs, it’s close to mandatory. Being green isn’t easy.

Geoengineering isn’t as simple as salting clouds or unfurling giant tin foil hats in space. Hacking the planet isn’t a good idea. We’ve mentioned that before.

Bjorn Lomborg, skeptical environmentalist and ex-ABBA front man is to close his Copenhagen Consensus Centre because he’s been defunded by the Danes. Considering some of the things Danes used to do to people they didn’t like, he probably got off easy.

Sustainability is unsustainable. No, really.

President Obama nixed Keystone XL , a project that 51% of Americans support. Oops. Sen. Inhofe has a crazy notion to hold the President to his word on future energy projects. Yeah, good luck with that. It turns out green is more of a burden than boon to Obama’s reelection hopes.

Here’s a link with an inconvenient comparison between the Keystone XL pipeline and wind power. It also contains math, click at your own risk.

Tim Ball flays the IPCC for abusing the precautionary principle:

Rio 1992 was the political manifestation of the Club of Rome objectives. Scientific evidence, required to ‘prove’ humans were destroying the planet with capitalism and its fossil fuel driven technology, was already underway through the IPCC. The political roadmap was formalized in Rio as Agenda 21. Annex 1 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development lists the basic Principles. Most are specific, but the catch-all is Principle 15:

In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

It’s a naked, incorrrect, application of the Precautionary Principle. As one person said,

Proponents of the Precautionary Principle are trying to smuggle in a default position: The environment trumps all other values.

Julia Gillard said a carbon tax would save Australia from global warming, and she was right. 2011 was the 51st warmest year in Australia. Unless that very average year of weather means it didn’t need saving, in which case, oops.

Part Four: Global Hottie

This week’s global hottie is German supermodel Heidi Klum, who may be offered honorary Canadian status for her recent success with Seal clubbing.

Thanks for reading.