American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture
John Hinderaker calls it this year’s coyest news story, but the year is young, so expect more like it,
Climate a factor in Rome’s rise and fall -study, h/t Jeff, who says,
OK Class what did we learn? Wet weather may have contributed to the spread of the bubonic plague, and disingenuous scientists may have contributed to the spread of the global warming hoax plague.
Snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event.”, said Dr. David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia – yes, the University behind the global warming fraud.
For more globally warmed alarmistic gems, read Eight Botched Environmental Forecasts
Here’s what a not-so-rare and definitely not exciting event looked like on Monday afternoon,
One thing you can count on, though: There will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future–and the present–never looked so bleak.
George Monbiot tries to argue that the snow and cold in England are signs of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Andrew Watt, in turn, read the Monbiot article, reviewed the data, and beat Monbiot’s argument with the big stick.
Go read Watt’s post. It’s a thing of beauty:
Australia’s white summer, Monbiot’s red fury
Leave it to government to leave you stranded.
As snow pounded Washington state and Seattle commuters waited for a bus, the iPod app failed because King County shut off the data feed that tracks bus locations.
Brian Ferris, who created the OneBusAway app explains,
In his blog post, Ferris notes that outdated technology on King County buses makes it especially difficult to track bus locations when weather turns nasty.
The position of each bus in Metro KC is not tracked with GPS, but rather with a decidedly lower-tech approach. Each bus is outfitted with a device that can radio the current odometer reading for the bus back to a server. If we know the odometer reading when the bus starts its route, we can periodically monitor the real-time odometer readings to determine how far along the route the bus has traveled. This gives us an estimate of position and from there, an estimate of how early or late a bus is. This is how http://mybus.org works and OneBusAway is just a fancy front-end to MyBus.
The problem comes with buses on adverse weather reroute, or any type of temporary reroute. When a bus goes on reroute, the physical route changes and the odometry calculation based on the original route used above is no longer accurate. In a perfect world, we would know when a bus is on reroute and adjust to its new route. Unfortunately, there is currently no automated way for handling this situation.
King County is “years away” from a GPS bus tracking system.
Your good-weather friends at King County, however, thank you for using public transit.
Cross-posted at Hot Air
Ed‘s running a poll for the Obamateurism of the week, but I would like to nominate this one for Obamateurism of the weekend:
Well, if that’s the case, I agree with Jim Hoft:
So, quit pushing that non-existent global warming junk science crap. Thank you.
However, Smitty makes a good point,
So, which gentleman [Al Gore or Barack Obama] is correct? Trick question! Neither! While seemingly opposite, they are both on the same side. They both represent the abdication of liberty in favor of small groups of people who are adept at portraying themselves smarter and more competent, to the detriment of society.
The beauty of being a Progressive is that all roads lead to state power, irrespective of superficial and occasionally dramatic contradiction.
Caleb Howe has lots more on the unsettled science.
Ooooh yeah, babeee….
Vanity Fair heaps praise on the Vanderbilt Divinity School drop-out and self-ordained pope of the cult of Anthropogenic Global Warming: Al Gore: The Poet Laureate of Climate Change
Among the brilliance shared by Gore is this (not sure what to call it),
The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools
Vanity Fair asks “Is Gore himself that shepherd?” He probably sees himself as the sheperd who will lead us like meek sheep to the promised land, along with the help of countless media tools like Vanity Fair, and other ones like the people who awarded him the Nobel Prize, and the hardcore believers who don’t want us to breathe because we exhale CO2.
On the breathing, Roger Kimball urges us, Don’t Hold Your Breath! Humans for Respiration, Unite! While you’re still allowed to breathe, hold on to your wallet: The AGW farce will cost us plenty, as you can see in these two articles,
James Pethokoukis writes on The EPA and Obama’s Uncertainty Tax
the only thing certain about the EPA ruling is more regulatory uncertainty leading to less economic growth and fewer jobs. Bad news, to be sure, for American businesses already flummoxed by the mercurial state of healthcare, financial and tax reform. Call it Obama’s Uncertainty Tax.
While a cap-and-trade bill has already passed the House of Representatives, few Capitol Hill observers expected the Senate to approve one, even by the end of 2010 thanks to the anemic economy and political risks for incumbent Democrats facing midterm elections. What’s more, expectations of a more Republican-leaning congress after 2010 made it seem like economy-wide carbon caps were sliding off the Obama agenda for the foreseeable future.
But now it’s conceivable carbon restrictions would be implemented as early as next year – even though the EPA itself admits its efforts would be more disruptive and less efficient than congressional action. Such an optimistic timetable assumes no legal challenges. But there will be plenty of those. Already, business groups are preparing to file suit against the EPA. It could fall to U.S. courts to determine the future of the nation’s approach to climate policy. This is a nightmare scenario for the private sector when it comes to planning for new expansion or hiring. Note that the big problem with the job market at the moment is not so much job losses and zippo new jobs being created. It will take a year of 4 percent growth adding 250,000 jobs a month to lower the unemployment rate to 9 percent.
Of course, about the only thing worse than regulatory uncertainty would be for the EPA to follow through with its top-down, command-and-control approach to dealing with perceived climate change.
While we’re dealing with that, the tools at the UN want our money: William Jacobson has the details, UN Climate Chief to US: “Show Me The Money”
Jacobson points out,
None of this is surprising. The global climate change industry is all about shaking the dollars and cents out of our pockets. From Al Gore’s profiteering off of the hysteria he has created, to the large corporate interests involved in selling “green” as a marketing tool, to researchers willing to stifle debate and tamper with data so as to justify funding, to an internationalist movement interested in transfer of wealth as a social policy, the global climate change debate is all about showing the money.
The “show me the money” line is from the movie Jerry Maguire, about a desperate sports agent willing to do anything. So fitting that the UN climate change guru now uses such a crass phrase
Perhaps the UN guy’s been reading Shakespeare, where Iago, one of the great villains, says,
Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favor with an usurp’d beard. I say put money in thy purse.
Thing is, that’s our money he’s talking about.
UPDATE, Thursday 10 December
Defused Lethal Al Gore Poem Released by Government
