Jan 09 2009

What global warming? REDUX

Category: environment,global warmingharmonicminer @ 10:35 am

We’ve been commenting on this already. Here’s a Telegraph article saying that 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the “hottest in history” and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free, as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to “natural factors” such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely “masking the underlying warming trend”, and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

H/T: AzusaPacificAlumni

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Dec 11 2008

Dividing the promised land part 2

Category: economy,environment,government,humorharmonicminer @ 1:10 pm

This is about our adventures in dividing a 5 acre lot into two 2.5 acre lots, in San Bernardino County in southern California. It will include human folly, financial folly, governmental folly, economic folly, and environmental folly. Plenty of folly to go around. If you missed it, this post will make a lot more sense if you read Part 1 first.

So, we hired a real estate agent to help us through the land subdivision process. We were starting this about 2 years ago, when the real estate boom was in full flower, and everybody was very busy, including our agent, all the county offices and employees involved, and all the private companies the county engages to perform certain services for it. So, initially, we waited.

Then we waited some more.

What we didn’t know is that while we were waiting, the prices for every aspect of the process were going up, eventually reaching about $20,000, instead of the $14,000-$15,000 we were told initially.

Continue reading “Dividing the promised land part 2”

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Dec 10 2008

Dividing the promised land part 1

Category: economy,environment,government,humorharmonicminer @ 1:16 pm

This is about our adventures in dividing a 5 acre lot into two 2.5 acre lots, in San Bernardino County in southern California.  It will include human folly, financial folly, governmental folly, economic folly, and environmental folly.  Plenty of folly to go around.

My family and I live on the south half of the 5 acre lot.  The lot is defined as “sub-dividable” by the county.  We bought it 6 years ago, had a house built on it, assuming that we could subdivide it when we chose, and either sell the other half, or build on the other half, then sell it.

You know what they say about assumptions.

We moved into the house a little more than 4 years ago.  As you may recall, the go-go real estate market was in full swing.  When we began to check into it, we discovered that the cost to subdivide the property into two separate lots was estimated at $14,000 – $15,000.  Wow.  Who knew?  We asked why, and were told about all the things that “had to be done” before the lot could be divided.

“But,” we protested, “we just bought the lot, and built on it.  Environmental studies were already done.  Drainage has been determined.  Percolation tests have been done.”  (Those are necessary to determine that the ground will tolerate a septic tank, since it’s a pretty remote area.)  We continued, “And the survey was just done to determine the exact limits of the property before we were allowed to buy it.  All you have to do is draw a line down the middle of it.  Nothing has changed in the last six years.”

The county employee smiled condescendingly and explained that it all had to be done again.  I asked why, and was told, “It’s the state law for part of it, and county regulations for the rest of it.”  Did I mention that it was going to be $14,000 – $15,000 to get all this stuff done again?

Basically, we were staying in Judah, and wanted to sell Israel. Unfortunately, the Assyrians run the county, and the Babylonians run the state.  We could wait for Sharia Law to take over, and pay the jizya, or we could just bite the bullet and pay tribute now.

Continue reading “Dividing the promised land part 1”

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Sep 16 2008

Don’t get hot under the collar

Category: environment,global warmingharmonicminer @ 1:47 pm

Take that, eco-panic global warming fear mongers.

And if this isn’t enough for you, start here.

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Aug 02 2008

Environmentalism unleashed = disaster

Category: Al Gore,environment,global warming,mediaharmonicminer @ 9:26 am

Here is a new book that exposes the really, really inconvenient truth behind eco-panic myths about the environment, and what the real effect of many “environmental policies” has been.

Who is the inspiration behind the single biggest human caused environmental catastrophe, causing the most preventable death, of the 20th Century? Al Gore’s heroine, Rachel Carson, with her crusade against DDT, the use of which would have saved tens of millions of lives taken by malaria, but which was banned due to her efforts, and a sycophantic crowd of Gore’s predecessors in the eco-panic movement.

Yep: Al’s in fine company.

This book is a needed corrective for the total collapse of the media’s reporting in the area.

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Aug 01 2008

Democrats Squeeze the Water Balloon, expecting it not to change shape

Category: energy,environment,oil pricesharmonicminer @ 1:15 pm

When the USA outsources oil production to the rest of the world, the pumping tends to be done by nations that are far less careful about the environment than USA companies, in places more prone to damage caused by terrorists, natural disasters, and just plain sloppy work, with supervision done by corrupt regimes, and the profits going to the same place. Charles Krauthammer points out the environmental damage done BY the eco-panic Left:

Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic? Continue reading “Democrats Squeeze the Water Balloon, expecting it not to change shape”

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