The Copenhagen Failure

The science is not settled. Neither, apparently, is the politics. The Guardian calls the Copenhagen global warming conference a failure. When the greens at the Guardian say it's a failure, you know, it's really a failure. And that's a good thing. I love this:

Obama with Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, by his side walked quickly past the row of waiting television cameras. "Do we have a deal?" a cameraman shouted. Obama did not answer, but Hillary Clinton bared her teeth in a grin.

Bared her teeth indeed.

Jeep Techno Music

I love music and I love old cars (old Jeeps are special), so this performance, er, resonates.

It took these folks weeks of rehearsal and seven hours to record this - will the poor old Jeep-repurposed-as-musical-instrument ever be the same again?

"What A Bunch Of Buffoons"

Gerald Warner editorializes in The Telegraph:

This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man [Rajendra Pachauri] is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption [citation?], wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.

If there were not $45 trillion of Western citizens’ money at stake, this would be the funniest moment in world history. What a bunch of buffoons.

Obama In Copenhagen

From today's National Post:
"Obama has said nothing to save the Copenhagen conference from failure."

Well, good.

Also good: Stephen Harper keeps his head down.

The Prime Minister once called Kyoto "a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations." Copenhagen may yield an improved agreement, if non-Kyoto signatories like China, India, Brazil and the United States are included. But it remains a giant wealth transfer mechanism.

Anyone who doubts this should read yesterday's editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which details how Corus, Europe's second-largest steel-maker, has shut a giant plant at Redcar in England, cutting 1,700 jobs.

Corus, owned by Tata of India, will now be able to sell its excess of carbon allowances, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, because it will produce six million fewer tons of CO2.

Hope. And change.

Dipping Into TED

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world."

Hoist By Their Own Petard

In Copenhagen, a propaganda coup by CFACT against the enviro-industrial complex.

“Greenpeace has been using these kinds of tactics for decades, and now they can find out what it’s like to have a little taste of their own medicine, “ said CFACT executive director Craig Rucker who masterminded the operation.

CFACT unfurled the banners for two reasons, CFACT president David Rothbard explained. “Greenpeace ships, like the Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise, have become global symbols for radical environmentalism, and we wanted to call attention to the harm these groups are causing. And second, it seemed appropriate to use one of Greenpeace’s favorite tactics to make this point.”

Greenpeace is one of the “most unethical and irresponsible corporations on Earth,” said Christina Wilson, a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. “It’s time to expose it for what it is, and help promote real environmental justice. So I was really excited to participate in this human rights effort.”

Sweet. Video of CFACT dropping the banner on the Arctic Sunrise HERE.

Global Warming Fraud - "Our Side Is Winning This Argument, Big Time"

Lord Christopher Monckton is one of the leading heroes of the snowballing pro-science, anti-AGW movement (he has famously called out the "traffic light environmentalists" - they are green because they are too yellow to admit that they are red).

In this video from a few days ago, Monckton names eight of the Climategate scientists from the leaked CRU emails.

What makes the video so powerful is not just Monckton's compelling take on the science of global temperature. It is that Monckton calls the Climategate scientists liars and criminals and anyone who still follows their fraudulent prophecies dupes and fools.



Lord Monckton on Climategate at the 2nd International Climate Conference from CFACT on Vimeo.

Brian Micklethwait of Samizdata says:

You can feel that most crucial of propaganda processes happening with Climategate: the reversing of the burden of proof. Unfair to all the fraud detectives (Watts, McIntyre, and the rest of them, including Monckton himself) though it undoubtedly was, those noble toilers, until the Climategate revelations erupted, had to prove everything, in defiance of the default position. Their every tiny blemish was jumped upon. Their major claims were ignored. Now the default position is slowly mutating into: It's all made-up nonsense. And the burden of proof is shifting onto the shoulders of all those who want to go on believing in such ever more discredited alarmism. In short, our side is winning this argument, big time.

From the Samizdata comments:

I would think that if they don't sue him for this, and win, it's pretty much game over.

Climategate Summary

If you are new to the subject or need more analysis, the Daily Mail's David Rose writes a top notch summary of the vexing issues surrounding Climategate.

Editorial note: The lede makes it seem as if this story is about the involvement of the Russians. While a Russian web server was used to spread the CRU files, to say the "Russians" were behind any of this is purely a warmist red herring.

Read the whole thing. And spread it around. You owe it to yourself in the interest of being informed.

Follow The Money

We all know now that Al Gore is on track (he hopes) to become a carbon billionaire, but did you know who else has the inside track on big global warming bucks? Check out the startling - and extensive - carbon-based big-business interests of millionaire global warmist Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.

Pachauri is the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the head global warmist.

Check out Pachauri's CV at one of his companies, Pegasus Capital Advisors. Among many other industrial interests, he also sits on the boards of several oil companies.

Over at EUReferendum, Richard North writes that Pachauri is A Busy Man.

And James Delingpole of the Telegraph writes:

...with business interests like these are we really sure Dr Rajendra Pachauri is fit to head the IPCC?

Messiah On Crack

Here's some more beloved music of the season from The Rambler via The New Yorker.

It's the last few bars of a community choir's finale to Handel's Messiah. As the choir sings its guts soul out in the final Hallelujah, the organist drives it all off a cliff.

Best laugh I had all day.

You can listen to the MP3 here - be sure to turn up your speakers to fully appreciate this shrieking, cacaphonous train wreck of a finale.

Or you can do as this lad did and made it into a YouTube comedy video.

Santa Baby

This is Eartha Kitt's version. I always ask Santa for a '54 convertible too! Not bright blue though.

Macleans On Canada's Climate Heroes

Last Sunday, the Ottawa Citizen ran a profile of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. They are the two Canadian researchers whose doggedness and scientific ethics revealed the whole Climategate scam to the light of day.

Now, here's another profile. Macleans Magazine writes about Stephen McIntyre's work in demolishing modern "theories" of global warming.

UPDATE: And another McIntyre profile at the Toronto Star. (The Star!)

The "Hockey Stick" In Perspective

Here is a simple but brilliant exposition of the "hockey stick" global warming graph. It uses Greenland and Antarctic ice core data to show that there was indeed a significant uptick in temperatures after 1850. No argument there.

What is educational about this though is not the blade of the hockey stick, which indicates the modern warming, but the shape and length of the handle of the stick.

Suddenly we have modern global warming in the context of geological time. This is what the warmists ignore and what they do not want you to know. Watch the whole thing (it's only 2:53), then make you own conclusions.

Record Lows

It was exceptionally cold in Edmonton today:

Environment Canada recorded a frigid -46.1 C, or -58.4 C with wind chill, at the Edmonton International Airport at 5 a.m. The old record of -36.1 C was set last year, Lessard said. “To break a temperature by 10 degrees is very exceptional.”

 Cold in Copengagen too, -8.5 C, breaking the record for this date by 7 degrees.

Here in St. John's we have -8, also well below normal. And the snow on the ground seems to be settling in. I would expect it to be milder and wetter than it is right now. If the cool pattern maintains we'll have a fairly unusual white Christmas in St. John's.

UPDATE: Across the US, 815 new snowfall records, 304 low temperature, and 403 lowest max temperature records were set this past week.

It's A Climategate Christmas

My all time favorite global warming satirists Minnesotans For Global Warming have a new Christmas song out.



You also need to see If We Had Some Global Warming and Three Below Honey.

And here's last year's Christmas song, The 12 Days of Global Warming.

Armed Response

At a UN press conference in Copenhagen, journalist Phelim McAleer ('Mine Your Own Business', 'Not Evil Just Wrong') asks IPCC Coordinating Lead Author Stephen Schneider a pointed question about the 'Climategate' scandal. McAleer is interrupted twice by Prof Schneider's assistant and then an armed UN security guard is ordered to stop McAleer' camera. At a UN press conference. Watch it here.


 


Back in October, the same sort of thing happened to McAleer at a meeting of the  Society of Environmental Journalists in Wisconsin when he tried to ask Al Gore about proven falsehoods in his global warming movie "An Inconvenient Truth". Journalists protected Gore by turning off McAleer 's microphone.

Presidential. At Last.

Barack Obama went to Norway to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize yesterday and made a very good speech.

First, he rightly admits he didn't deserve the big prize:

...I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.  Compared to some of the giants of history who've received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight.

Then, acknowledging the irony of being awarded a peace prize when he is a war-time president, Obama stands on the shoulders of John F. Kennedy and even Ronald Reagan and reaffirms the historic role of the United States as the most powerful force for peace in the world.

I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.  For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause.  And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.

But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world.  Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this:  The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.  The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.  We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will.  We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.  

Presidential. At Last. If he believes what he says and can keep it up.  Read the whole speech. It is longish but well worth your while.

UPDATE: Or not. David Frum trashes the speech in today's National Post.

Vernon's Antique Toy Shop

It's been a few years since I drove down Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula, so as I passed through Swift Current yesterday on the way to Harbour Mille, Vernon's Antique Toy Shop came as quite a surprise to this life-long car fan.

Vernon Smith owns the shop, a 12,000 square foot museum to his eclectic tastes in two-dozen very expensive vintage automobiles.

This car, for example, is considered by many Pontiac fans to be the Holy Grail of all Pontiacs, the extremely rare 1957 Bonneville fuel injection convertible. And here it sits in Swift Current, Newfoundland.

The Globe and Mail did a profile on the shop and it's creator back in November.

He's one of the wealthiest men in Atlantic Canada. Newfoundland's Vernon Smith made his money in the power-line construction industry, but it's his passion for cars that attracts attention these days.

He has a jaw-dropping collection of classic cars worth millions of dollars. It took him more than two decades to build, but his 12,000-square-foot showroom dubbed “Vernon's Antique Toy Shop” is a hidden gem.

Visit Vernon's Antique Toy Shop's website here. More local persective here at The Packet.

10 Brands That Will Disappear In 2010

In 2009, famous brands like Pontiac and Saturn cars and Gourmet Magazine disappeared. This list compiled by 24/7 Wall Street for 2010 cuts even deeper.

Among the big names to go next year will be Newsweek, Motorola and Kodak. And that is just the short list. Here are the rest.

The Obama Coup D'État And The Protocols Of The Elders Of Norwich

On Monday, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) incredibly declared carbon dioxide - a gas necessary for life - a pollutant, thus opening up a whole slew of regulatory and taxation opportunities for the federal government.

British writer and broadcaster Gerald Warner writes in the Telegraph about how the Obama Whitehouse is using global warming and the EPA to rule by decree.

Who needs tanks on the lawn when you have the Environmental Protection Agency? Barack Obama’s use of the EPA to pressurise the Senate to pass his climate change Nuremberg Decrees shows his dictatorial mentality. He wants to override Congress, which is hostile to his climate gobbledegook because it is representative of the American electorate, and sideline the nation’s elected Senators by ruling by decree, courtesy of the EPA. This is a coup d’état.

And what is the justification for this undemocratic action? The allegedly imminent threat from “Anthropogenic Global Warming”. There is always a supposed threat, when tyrants take the stage. The President of the United States has just reduced his moral authority to the level of any Third World dictator heading a “Government of National Emergency”.

The decision to declare CO2 a "pollutant" was based on the now-discredited work at the University of East Anglia.

Those jokers are the main authority for the extravagant claims in the IPCC report and, by extension, for the EPA’s “Endangerment Finding”. That is the authority that is being invoked to overturn the principles of 1776 in the United States.

The Protocols of the Elders of Norwich are the justification for EPA tyranny.