December 2011 Archives

By Elmer Beauregard

Minnesota is experiencing a very nice warm winter this year, in fact we just had a brown Christmas. Nobody is blaming it on Global Warming that I have seen but I'm sure they will soon. It is so warm up here that Ice houses are sinking through the ice.

Here is a piece that Kare 11 did on that subject.

Before people start doing the Chicken Little thing and cry "The Globe Is Warming!" I would like to remind everyone that we have had this kind of winter before, and it seems to happen every eleven years or so.

I remember the non-winters of '88 and '99, both of those years people were playing golf in January in Minnesota. Now in 2011 twelve years after the last one we are having a very mild winter, the thing is I was expecting it.

Caveman Forcaster


There seems to be a correlation between these mild winters and the solar cycle or sunspot cycle. If you look at this chart you will see the the solar activity goes up and down like a yo-yo on an eleven year cycle. I was looking for a warm winter in 2010 and it didn't happen but sure enough one year later we get a little break from the severe winters we've had in the last few years. So hope to see you on the golf course real soon.

By Ron Paul, pau.house.gov

Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act. No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property. Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say "I'm not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry." However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time. The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty. To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured.

The PATRIOT Act, as bad is its violation of the 4th Amendment, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) continues that slip toward tyranny and in fact accelerates it significantly. The main section of concern, Section 1021 of the NDAA Conference Report, does to the 5th Amendment what the PATRIOT Act does to the 4th. The 5th Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning. It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented or access to legal counsel.

By Craig Rucker, wattsupwiththat.com

EPA mercury rules for electricity generating units are based on false science and economics

The Environmental Protection Agency claims its "final proposed" Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rules will eliminate toxic pollution from electrical generating units, bring up to $140 billion in annual health benefits, and prevent thousands of premature deaths yearly - all for "only" $11 billion a year in compliance costs.

This may be true in the virtual reality of EPA computer models, linear extrapolations, cherry-picked health studies and statistics, government press releases and agency-generated public comments. However, in the real world inhabited by families, employers and other energy users, the new rules will bring few benefits, but will impose extensive costs that the agency chose to minimize or ignore in its analysis.

Emissions of mercury and other air toxics from power plants have been declining steadily for decades, as older generating units have been replaced with more efficient, less polluting systems or retrofitted with better pollution control technologies. While a few older plants still violate EPA's draconian proposed rules - the new rules are not based on credible scientific and epidemiological studies.

Read more here.

Mike Barrett, Activist Post

To those of you who have been eager to hear the latest news concerning the potential release of genetically modified mosquitoes - here it is.

It turns out that the genetically modified mosquitoes could be released into the U.S. environment as early as January of 2012.

A private firm plans to initiate the release of the GE mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Florida will be the first beta testing grounds to determine whether or not the mosquitoes lead to detrimental environmental and genetic impact. Residents in this area will also be subjected -- without choice -- to these genetically manipulated insects, unless the private firm decides to seek permission.

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes -- An Unknown Dangerous Experiment

The first mosquito release took place in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean in 2009. On Sunday, October 27, the release was discussed in a scientific paper by the journal of Nature Biotechnology with the report concluding the release's success.

A second trial occurred in 2010, where 6,000 mosquitoes were released in Malaysia for further experiments. The mosquitoes are genetically modified with a gene designed to kill them unless given an antibiotic known as tetracycline. Offspring of the GM mosquitoes will receive this same lethal gene which will kill the offspring before it can ever reach adulthood. As more genetically modified mosquitoes mate with wild mosquitoes, the idea is that more and more offspring will be produced with the lethal gene, thereby reducing the mosquito population.

By Donna Laframboise, Financial Post

U.S. Justice Department request puts chill on skeptical bloggers

In recent days I've been receiving calls and emails asking what the U.S. Justice Department wants with me. In fact, there has been a misunderstanding. I write a blog about climate-change dogma that has a similar Web address to a blogger in the United States. It is that person -- who publishes under the pen name Jeff Id at NOconsensus.wordpress.com -- who is being targeted.

Earlier this month, a trial attorney employed by the Justice Department's criminal division sent a formal request to WordPress (the blogging software company) to freeze for 90 days "all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession" regarding three climate-skeptic blogs. ClimateAudit.org -- written by Canadian Steve McIntyre and hosted on WordPress' U.S.-based servers -- was one of that trio. So was Tallbloke's Talkshop, written by a U.K. resident and published at tallbloke.wordpress.com.

The Justice Department is interested in WordPress records spanning three days -- Nov. 21 to 23 inclusive. At 4:09 a.m. on Nov. 22, someone calling themselves FOIA made a comment on McIntyre's blog. It consisted solely of a link to a zip file posted online at a Russian Web address. The zip file contained 5,000 emails written by some of the most prominent names in climate science.

Dubbed Climategate 2, these documents are still being examined and sifted. But emails have already come to light in which scientists employed by publicly funded universities in the U.K. and elsewhere discuss the deliberate deletion and removal of records from university computers. (In the U.K., altering or deleting documents in an attempt to circumvent freedom of information legislation is a criminal offense.)

In these emails individuals such as the University of Pennsylvania's Michael Mann also talk about "the cause" they feel they are advancing. Moreover, these exchanges make it abundantly clear that the experts who've been conducting climate research (and writing reports about that research for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have privately expressed doubts about the robustness of many of their findings.

Read the rest of the article here.

By Maxim Lott, Fox News

Are your tax dollars helping hide global warming data from the public? Internal emails leaked as part of "Climategate 2.0" indicate the answer may be "Yes."

The original Climategate emails -- correspondence stolen from servers at a research facility in the U.K. and released on the Internet in late 2009 -- shook up the field of climate research. Now a new batch posted in late November to a Russian server shows that scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit refused to share their U.S. government-funded data with anyone they thought would disagree with them.

Making that case in 2009, the then-head of the Research Unit, Dr. Phil Jones, told colleagues repeatedly that the U.S. Department of Energy was funding his data collection -- and that officials there agreed that he should not have to release the data.

"Work on the land station data has been funded by the U.S. Dept of Energy, and I have their agreement that the data needn't be passed on. I got this [agreement] in 2007," Jones wrote in a May 13, 2009, email to British officials, before listing reasons he did not want them to release data.

Two months later, Jones reiterated that sentiment to colleagues, saying that the data "has to be well hidden. I've discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data."

Read the rest of article here.

by Mark Hertsgaard, Grist

Here's a new idea for how to deal with climate deniers: Blast them into space.

The proposal came yesterday during a freewheeling panel discussion among California Gov. Jerry Brown, Virgin Group Chair Sir Richard Branson, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chair Rajendra Pachauri. Kicking off a conference on "Extreme Climate Risks and California's Future" held at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Brown pledged to protect his state from the "huge problems" posed by climate change, including from efforts by climate science deniers to impede climate action.

"Our biggest problem is to deal with the skepticism and denial of the cult-like lemmings who would take us over the cliff," said Brown, a Democrat, eliciting cheers and laughter from an audience of roughly 200 policymakers, businessleaders, and activists. "The skeptics and deniers have billions of dollars at their disposal ... But I can tell you we're going to fight them every step of the way until we get this state on a sustainable path forward."

"It's sad that in America you don't talk about climate change because of Republicans," said the British Branson, who described "exciting breakthroughs" in Virgin's efforts to develop low-carbon aviation fuels. Showing particular promise is an algae-based fuel that, Branson said, could reduce aviation's carbon emissions by 80 to 90 percent.

Read the rest here.

By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times

Congressional negotiators struck a deal Thursday that overturns the new rules that were to have banned sales of traditional incandescent light bulbs beginning next year.

That agreement is tucked inside the massive 1,200-page spending bill that funds the government through the rest of this fiscal year, and which both houses of Congress will vote on Friday. Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill, which heads off a looming government shutdown.

Congressional Republicans dropped almost all of the policy restrictions they tried to attach to the bill, but won inclusion of the light bulb provision, which prevents the Obama administration from carrying through a 2007 law that would have set energy efficiency standards that effectively made the traditional light bulb obsolete.

The bill doesn't actually amend the 2007 law, but does prohibit the administration from spending any money to carry out the light bulb standards -- which amounts to at least a temporary reprieve.

Read more here.

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

(CNN) -- For Canada, the cost of either meeting its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, or failing to do so, was too much to bear.

On Monday, the country became the first signatory of the landmark climate treaty to back out of the deal, citing the huge potential cost of legally binding commitments.

Confirming the move, environment minister Peter Kent said to meet its obligations under the accord Canada would have to take every single vehicle off its roads.

"Every car, truck, ATV, tractor, ambulance, police car," he elaborated in a media briefing, before giving another equally unpalatable option of closing down the country's entire farming and agricultural sector and cutting heat to every home, building and factory.

If the country failed to do so, Kent said taxpayers would have to give $14 billion to other countries "with no impact on emissions or the environment."

Read the rest of the article here.

By Elmer Beauregard





One of the themes to come out of Climategate 2.0 is the phrase "The Cause" that Michael Mann mentions in a few of his emails. You probably already saw this fake movie trailer I made. But what is "The Cause"? I'm sure if you asked Michael Mann he would say it is to educate people about the dangers of Global Warming and to institute legislation like Cap & Trade to try and stop global warming in their minds they are "Saving The Planet". Also part of their cause is to win the PR battle and to silence the skeptics, because you can only pass new laws if a large majority believe in it. This is basically what he says int this TEDx speech.

To be fair we as skeptics also have a cause, our cause is to expose the warmists like Michael Mann and to stop their agenda. So having a "Cause" per se is not a bad thing, both skeptics and warmists are fighting for their perspective causes on the battlefield of public opinion. So why is this phrase so insidious? Well maybe the cause to what Michael refers is more than just a scientific theory about the weather.

In Michael's TEDx speech he brings up the fact that the first Climategate came out just before the Copenhagen meeting and it helped to derail a "most important opportunity" for an international agreement. He states that maybe it was just a coincidence, but I don't think it was. Here are the event leading up to the Copenhagen Meeting in my mind, and I do think it would make a great movie.

UPDATE: You can listen to the interview here.

We are going to be on "The Power Hour" with Joyce Riley tomorrow from 8am to 10am tomorrow. Tune in and listen and call in, should be fun

DECEMBER 9 FUN FRIDAY with AN EDGE!:

Levity, at times can bring forth a powerful message and engage the thought processes more as our brains go into overdrive with everything facing us today. A group in Minnesota has taken songs we all know and written their own lyrics to convey important truths. Minnesotans for Global Warming is represented today by Elmer Beauregard who has written songs with an edge - relax a little today and enjoy! Don't let the name fool you, but it surely brings in lots of folks for a look when they are researching global warming - there is usually a method to the madness!

OPEN LINES LIVE with JOYCE 1-855-955-6923 or INTERNATIONAL 651-289-4333 X125.

Want to stop Global Warming? I've got some swamp land I can sell you.

Heard this on NPR this morning, now swamps are causing global warming. The Greens normally love wetlands, but now they want to flood them and grow weeds to stop global warming and to make millions of dollars while saving the planet. Maybe the state of Louisiana should sell carbon offsets to California, they're whole state is basically a big flooded swamp.

I'm trying to be sarcastic, but this is actually what they are doing. I guess if your core beliefs are based on a lie, bizarre behavior should be expected.

Can 'Carbon Ranching' Offset Emissions In Calif.?

by Christopher Joyce, NPR.org

Climate experts are exploring the concept of growing dense fields of weeds to help soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Just over a year from now, California will begin enforcing a set of laws that limit emissions of greenhouse gases from factories, power plants and, eventually, from vehicles.

So if you run a power plant in California, you might reduce your footprint by buying new, cleaner equipment. But that can be expensive.

Instead, you could help pay to protect a growing forest, because it sucks carbon dioxide out of the air. Or you could pay a farmer to capture methane from a pond of pig waste.

Read the rest of the article here.

By Ed Rogers, Washington Post

One interesting phenomenon of the 2012 race has been the disappearance of global warming as a campaign issue. Not surprising among the Republicans, but not even President Obama is talking about it.

When President Obama was running during more flush economic times, he promised to raise everyone's power bill in order to save the planet. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board on January 17, 2008, President Obama stated that, "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Any such utterance today would be political suicide.

Even this year's worldwide confab of climate change zealots and anti-growth fanatics in Durban, South Africa is very low key. Representing the U.S. at the conference is Todd Stern, the State Department Special Envoy for Climate Change (Todd Stern is an able public servant -- they should give him a job where his talents could be put to good use), and Jonathan Pershing, the Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change. Expect a dry written statement from the Obama administration, with empty phrases like "progress made" or "a deepened understanding among nations is developing."

Since the last election, the science surrounding global climate change has been tainted by scandal, while economic realities have become all too clear. We need an environmental policy that is no longer connected to global weather maintenance. Pursuing the global remedies that the left wants includes giving money to other countries and raising American families' power bills. We can't transfer green technology money to Solyndra, much less to foreign countries.

Read the rest of the article here.