Ranting About the BP Oil Debacle and the President's Speech: Plug the Hole!

And by "hole" I mean the president's mouth.

Seriously, are you kidding me with the "content" of last night's speech? I'm using the word extremely loosely. Using the oil disaster to bang on about cap-and-trade and pushing his energy agenda? NO! We want to know specific details about how to plug the leak, not some out-of-touch, tone-deaf nonsense about cap-and-bloody-trade. And the details aren't there for dealing with the pressing current situation. You can look for yourself. The text of the speech is here.

ClimateGate: Game Over?

The wheels are falling off fast:

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

Apparently some scientists have remembered that science means not forcing data to match an agenda.

The killjoy thermomaniac watermelons' increasing panic and dismay is just ... DELICIOUS. Meanwhile I want my incandescent light bulbs back!

The IPCC is going down in history as a collection of scientifically illiterate scoundrels who feathered their own nests with the lucrative benefits of being global warming alarmists.

I want to grab a stake and stab it right into the slimy green heart of cap-and-trade.

UPDATE 1: The IPCC admits it's not a scientific organization. Heh!

UPDATE 2: Skulduggery-mania! Here's a handy summary. The wheels are coming off so fast that I can't even keep count. Meanwhile, I bask in sweet, sweet vindication of my rejection of all the alarmism and its calls for "Give us all your money and freedoms or Gaia's going to burn." It sounded like bad science and corrupt politics. I was called evil. Turns out I was RIGHT. So there!

Cap-and-Trade Under Friendly Fire from Senate Democrats

I'll consider this a late Christmas present. Thanks, Santa!

Mark Steyn Dissects Copenhagen ... Plus a MM Rant

Do as I say, not as I do.

Preach it, Mark! Here's a hilarious bit of it:

Even making allowances for the stupidity of youthful idealism, the protesters in the streets of Copenhagen seem especially obtuse. Far from sticking it to the Man, they're cheerleading for the biggest Man of all: they're supporting a new globalized feudalism in which Prince Charles, Prince Al [Gore], Prince Rajendra and others "very high up in climate change" jet around the world at public expense telling the rest of us we need to stay put.

A British parliamentarian recently proposed that everyone be issued with an annual "carbon allowance" that would be drawn down every time he booked a flight, or filled up his car, or bought a washer and dryer instead of beating his laundry on the rocks down by the river with the village women every week. You think the Prince of Wales or any other member of the new global elite will be subject to that "allowance"? If you're young and you fall for this, you're a sap. Indeed, you're oozing so much sap the settled scientists should be measuring your tree rings.

I think these misguided fools can be called "useful idiots." More thoughts here.

Anyway, as the Insta-Prof often says, I'll believe there's a crisis when the people saying that there's a crisis actually behave as though there's a crisis. Copenhagen turned in a traffic jam of private jets and limousines, all of which produced as much carbon as a small country. The oh-so-concerned Gaia-lovers and profiteering climate hustlers could have just stayed home and tele-conferenced, couldn't they? We have the technology for that. But noooooooooooo. There's no publicity and self-congratulatory prancing about for the cameras there.

OK, and one more example, since it's lunchtime and I'm starting to get hungry. Remember how a bunch of eco-fanatics keep howling that we should all stop eating meat because it's bad for the planet or whatever? Well, 10,000 chickens and 5 tons of fish died to feed the enviro-elite at Copenhagen. How "green" is that? The only things sillier than the eco-calyptic predictions spewed by the Green cultists are their utter rampant hypocrisy and total lack of self-awareness. WATERMELONS!

UPDATE 1: Look at this British response: "let’s toast the negotiators of Copenhagen. By failing so spectacularly, they have presented us with a wonderful Christmas present." Cheers!

UPDATE 2: And this about the eco-politicians' contempt for the people:

If you want a "green revolution" – and the evidence suggests that you don't – it must truly be from the bottom up. This Government's strategy – to sneer at the doubters – is doomed, not only because doubt is the cornerstone of democracy but because, on this specific issue, the doubters are in the majority. Copenhagen marked the end of an era: it demonstrated the poverty and self-regard of elite politics, the introspection and self-congratulation of a political class still in love with itself because nobody else will love it. The lesson of 2009, from duck houses to green summits, was that that kind of politics is dead, and a new kind is needed. Any ideas? Meanwhile: Happy Christmas.

UPDATE 3: Schadenfreude alert! Oh, the sweet sound of exploding watermelons! Oh, the bitter tears of our enemies! The whole Kyopenhagen/Nopenhagen/Dopenhagen/Gropenhagen farce might have been worth it just to see the extreme Greenies' temper tantrums at the end. Plus, one of these days I'll maybe write a post about how this whole eco-cult thing is, at its heart of darkness, actually pretty darn inhumane and even flat-out racist -- it's happy to let the developing world stew indefinitely in poverty and toil in the name of Gaia. It might as well come out and say, "Sure, all the First World nations have electricity and sanitation and the basic tech that make life easier, but by golly we can't let you poor Africans/Indians/etc. have such things because that will destroy the earth! So go on living short painful lives of crushing toil and misery, you guys. Here we'll drive our Priuses and drink our soy Fair Trade cappuccinos in a haze of self-congratulatory eco-virtue while you can go on cooking your meager meals over open fires and suffering heat, cold, darkness, disease, and poverty. Gaia's a BEEYOTCH."

Stick a Fork In It: Cap-and-Trade is Done

Oh, I do hope so.

UPDATE: Hilariously snarky comment on the whole Greenie enterprise/scam/confidence trick:

"Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t, and can’t teach, create a fake ecological disaster so that they can get grant money."

*giggle*

Here's more hoping. Of course, the climate change gang has so much invested in this enterprise that they will not go quietly into the night, probably.

Nerd News Update: The best thing to do is to FREE THE DATA! The University of East Anglia has ordered the immediate release of all data files, but at this point the university is basically in full CYA/damage control mode.

Then take a look at this: they've dumped their data. Basically, this wrecks their credibility. If your conclusions cannot be checked independently against the raw data, then you haven't got a leg to stand on, because your "conclusions" then fall into the category of "stuff you just made up."

Oh, and check out the inimitable quote-maker Mark Steyn on this: "Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?" amid this "climate change tree-ring circus."

Environmentalists Not Welcome on Indian Reservations

Identity politics-a-palooza!

Total reductionist possibility here:

Tree-Hugging Greenie: "Look, you Native Americans, you need to do X and Y and Z to protect the Earth!"

Annoyed Native American: "Your ancestors massacred my ancestors and forced the survivors onto this reservation. And now you want to tell me how to live? BACK OFF, MAN."

MM: *snort-giggle*

Seriously, though, the Hopi and Navajo tribes are not pleased with enviro-crusaders who want to shut down coal operations on tribal lands. The tribes are concerned that doing so will further harm their already-bad economies.

Even better is this quotation by Navajo leader Joe Shirley:

"Environmentalists are good at identifying problems but poor at identifying feasible solutions," Shirley said in a news release. "Most often they don't try to work with us but against us, giving aid and comfort to those opposed to the sovereign decision-making of tribes."

. . . "Unfortunately, many of these people don't know about Navajos, sovereignty or self-determination," he said. "They just want any use of coal stopped. However, coal is the Navajo Nation's most plentiful resource, and our prosperity depends on it."

Indeed.

But who cares about the livelihood of a bunch of minorities anyway, man? We gotta SAVE THE EARTH BECAUSE AL GORE SAID SO!

Anyhoo, this is just the sort of thing that I'm talking about: enviro-nuts simply do not seem to understand (or care) that many of their "green" policies ultimately mean the economic devastation of many people, a large number of whom are already poor! Plus it's much easier and more glamorous and much more narcissistically satisfying to cavort around on some wild-eyed messianic mission to SAVE THE WHOLE FREAKING PLANET than to deal with the harsh practical realities of folks trying to pay their bills and make a living for themselves. Oh, don't EVEN get me started on cap-and-trade!

What Fresh Hell Is This? -- The Real Cost of Cap-and-Trade

The latest numbers are enough to make you scream:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

Cap-and-trade is basically a gigantic energy tax. And I don't know about you, but I do not have an extra $1,761 a year to throw away on some hare-brained enviro-fanatic scheme!

The sheer ideologically-driven foolishness of this is gobsmacking. In the middle of a recession, when people are losing jobs and folks all over the country are pinching every penny, let's raise the cost of living for everybody! And -- of course -- the poor will be hit the hardest of all.

I am tagging this "felony stupidity" too.

Quote of the Day: Vodkapundit on the Cap-and-Trade Energy Bill

Eloquence from Vodkapundit as the bill passes the House of Representatives:

Never have so few stolen so much from so many to achieve so little.

The cap-and-trade energy debacle is both a massive tax increase and an even more massive government power grab. I suppose that in scope its ambition is exceeded only by its stupidity. What are people thinking to justify raising energy prices in a time of soaring unemployment and economic recession?