Here’s an unsolicited e-mail I received Thursday (extra hyphens and characters inserted; see Update for why):

Re: Your Glo-bal War-ming/ Political Site

I’ve been reading your website for a little while now and I love all the insight that you have!

The Glo-bal Warm-ing Aware-ness Org-ani-zation is looking to spread the word about global warming and its consequences. I was hoping that you and your readers might like to help.

Would you let me know if you would be willing to display our small logo on your website/blog?
We are also looking for contributors of content on our organization’s site: www.Glob-alW-arming.org.in – if you’re interested in contributing a story, we would love it if you could!

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you soon,

Scott
Spread Awa-reness About Gl-ob-al War-ming
Join us at: www dot GlobalWar-ming dot org dot in

Here’s the logo you will see when you visit the organization’s web site:

Far be it from me to turn down a cry for help, especially from someone who “love(s) all the insight” that I have(!). So of course I am displaying The Gl-ob-al Warmi-ng Awar-eness Organiz-ation’s cute green ribbon on my web site, and I have incorporated it into the following design, which I dutifully sent to them for their consideration, along with an offer to create relevant content:

I’ll let you know if I get a reply. :–>

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UPDATE: Yes, I know that the site is, from all appearances, a hybrid version of a splog, which is why I didn’t provide a direct link, and which is why I added the hyphens, in hopes of cutting down their search engine recognition.

UPDATE 2: Well, I got a reply…… (oh, you want me to tell you what it was? Sorry) ….. here:

I must say, I got a kick out of your blog post. =)
We’re simply providing another platform for debate.

If you would like, I’d be more than willing to post a counter argument on
our site, written by you, I think that people should see all sides of an
argument.

I’ll even give you a link to your site on ours.

So maybe it’s a splog, or maybe it isn’t. I replied: “I don’t think you are a serious site, or you would not have sent a form e-mail presuming I buy into globaloney. Stick around six months, prove you’re not a splog, and maybe some form of exchange makes sense.”

RELATED: A great column by Jeff Jacoby today — “Chicken Little and global warming”

Credit card payment rates are falling — No, not the interest rates, but the percentage of total outstanding balances being paid off by consumers each month. Not a big drop, but not a good piece of news.
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Talk about Inconvenient Truths (HT Conservative UAW Guy) — Two books debunking the global warming “globaloney” that it (if it is even for-sure happening) is caused by human activity are coming out soon:

Two powerful new books say today?s global warming is due not to human activity but primarily to a long, moderate solar-linked cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, by physicist Fred Singer and economist Dennis Avery was released just before Christmas. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and former BBC science writer Nigel Calder (Icon Books), is due out in March.

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Home-schooler harassment in Germany appears to have escalated (HT One Oar in the Water). UPDATE: NixGuy has more.
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It was two years (too long) since I had seen this Super Bowl ad; it probably is for you too. Definitely the best ever. Go there.

When he was governor of California, Jerry Brown earned the moniker “Governor Moonbeam” for his loopy ideas and behavior.

Wiki says this about the origins of the nickname:

Brown often proposed unorthodox ideas, including the establishment of a state space academy and the purchasing of a satellite that would be launched into orbit to provide emergency communications for the state—a proposal similar to one that would indeed be adopted by the state. In 1978, Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko nicknamed Brown “Governor Moonbeam” because of the latter idea. The nickname quickly became associated with his quirky politics, which were considered eccentric by some in California and the rest of the nation. In 1992, almost 15 years later, Royko would disavow the nickname, proclaiming Brown to be “just as serious” as any other politician.

If Royko were still alive, I believe he would be a supporter of a nickname restoration, based on what I’m seeing in a subscription-only editorial in the Wall Street Journal today (bolds are mine):

The U.N.’s latest global warming report is being spun as a wake-up call. But whether or not you agree on the need for urgent action, it ought to be obvious that the absolute last branch of government that should set climate policy is the courts. As usual, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has his own ideas.

At issue is a federal lawsuit filed last September by Mr. Brown’s predecessor, Bill Lockyer, asking for billions of dollars worth of damages to be levied against six automakers — General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Nissan and Chrysler — because their products allegedly create a common-law “nuisance” by contributing to global warming.

At the time most observers, Mr. Brown included, appeared to regard the move as an election-year stunt. But now that he’s in office, Mr. Brown has decided to pursue the case, which he says rests on “sound legal doctrine.” Because “no federal statute speaks directly to the particular problem of global warming,” says California’s recent response to the carmakers’ motion for dismissal, “… federal common law applies.”

Uh-huh. We don’t want to give Governor Brown any ideas, but if making a legal product that might contribute to global warming is an actionable offense, why stop with the automakers? How about the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, which deprives the world of a “carbon sink” (aka a tree) to create its daily product? Or how about cattle ranchers, whose flatulent herds emit massive amounts of methane before they become steaks on your dinner table? Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

In short, there’s scarcely any economic activity imaginable that doesn’t somehow affect the balance of greenhouse gases, which is why a “nuisance” complaint against any single industry doesn’t make sense.

Although there would be some satisfaction in hoisting the relentlessly biased and ignorant LA Times on its own petard, the Journal is of course correct that individual industries can’t be singled out for an alleged “nuisance” that others are also supposedly creating. The “proper” venue for economy-killing ideas like this would be the California legislature (it wouldn’t really be “proper” there either, but at least it might be legal).

Captain Ed, who thinks “Attorney General Sunbeam” might be a more appropriate moniker to hang on the new attorney general, was ahead of the curve as usual back in December when he noted Brown’s interest in using his office as a globaloney club.

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UPDATE: All of this is being in the name of what climatologist Timothy Ball at Canada Free Press calls “the greatest deception in the history of science.” Redhawk Review refers to Ball’s truth as “the cold, hard facts.”

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Previous Post:

- Sept. 26, 2006 — The Cali Global Warming Suit: Really an Unreported ‘Request’ for a Court-Ordered BTU Tax

Almost every one of Steyn’s Sunday Chicago Sun-Times columns could be Column of the Day.

This one manages to compress the arguments debunking “global warming” or “climate change” (collectively known as “globaloney” around here), the one-world-government agenda of so many globaloney proponents, and the elites’ indifference to the suffering of impoverished people around the world — all into four paragraphs:

The question is whether what’s happening now is just the natural give and take of the planet, as Erik the Red (in 10th century Greenland — Ed.) and my town’s early settlers (Steyn lives in New Hampshire — Ed.) understood it. Or whether it’s something so unprecedented that we need to divert vast resources to a transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can do their best to cripple the global economy and deny much of the developing world access to the healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings. To the eco-chondriacs that’s a no-brainer. As Mark Fenn of the Worldwide Fund for Nature says in the new documentary ”Mine Your Own Business”:

“In Madagascar, the indicators of quality of life are not housing. They’re not nutrition, specifically. They’re not health in a lot of cases. It’s not education. A lot of children in Fort Dauphin do not go to school because the parents don’t consider that to be important. . . . People have no jobs, but if I could put you with a family and you could count how many times in a day that that family smiles. Then I put you with a family well off, in New York or London, and you count how many times people smile. . . . You tell me who is rich and who is poor.”

Well, if smiles are the measure of quality of life, I’m Bill Gates; I’m laughing my head off. Male life expectancy in Madagascar is 52.5 years. But Mark Fenn is right: Those l’il malnourished villagers sure look awful cute dancing up and down when the big environmentalist activist flies in to shoot the fund-raising video.

If “global warming” is real and if man is responsible, why then do so many “experts” need to rely on obviously fraudulent data? The famous “hockey stick” graph showed the planet’s climate history as basically one long bungalow with the Empire State Building tacked on the end. Completely false. In evaluating industrial impact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used GDP estimates based on exchange rates rather than purchasing power: As a result, they assume by the year 2100 that not only South Africans but also North Koreans will have a higher per capita income than Americans. That’s why the climate-change computer models look scary. That’s how “solid” the science is: It’s predicated on the North Korean economy overtaking the United States.

BBC says that the Stern Review into the Economics of Climate Change may have gaping holes in it (HT CCnet e-mail) that even believers in “global warming” and “climate change” (referred to around here as “globaloney”) are having a hard time handling:

….. expert critics of the review now claim that it overestimates the risk of severe global warming, and underestimates the cost of acting to stop it.The message from the report’s chief author, the economist Sir Nicholas Stern, was simple: if we did nothing about climate change, it would cost us the equivalent of at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever.

But if we acted today, we could prevent a catastrophe.

This point was emphasised at the report’s launch by Mr Blair who warned we would see the disastrous consequences of climate change – not in some science fiction future, but in our lifetimes.

These figures sounded scary and imminent. But if you read the report in detail, that is not what it actually says.

The 5% damage to global GDP figure will not happen for well over one hundred years, according to Stern’s predictions. And the review certainly does not forecast disastrous consequences in our lifetimes.

‘Cherry-picking’

The report may have been loved by the politicians and headline writers but when climate scientists and environmental economists read the 670-page review, many said there were serious flaws.

….. Richard Tol is a professor at Hamburg and Carnegie Mellon Universities, and is one of the world’s leading environmental economists.

The Stern Review cites his work 63 times; but that does not mean he agrees with it.

“If a student of mine were to hand in this report as a Masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I would give him a ‘D’ for diligence; but more likely I would give him an ‘F’ for fail.

“There is a whole range of very basic economics mistakes that somebody who claims to be a Professor of Economics simply should not make,” he told The Investigation on BBC Radio 4.

….. “Stern consistently picks the most pessimistic for every choice that one can make. He overestimates through cherry-picking, he double counts particularly the risks and he underestimates what development and adaptation will do to impacts,” he said.

And yet the movement to adopt Stern’s recommended draconian measures appears to be gaining steam. I would suggest asking the people of the world if they want to volunteer to participate in a global economic depression in the name of pseudoscience.

A national embarrassment: It’s pretty bad when your team’s record of continuous player arrests (latest contribution to that record is here; may require registration) gets the full-smackdown treatment from leading sportstalker Jim Rome. But that’s what the Cincinnati “Nine Players Arrested in Eight Months” Bengals had to endure on Rome’s Monday show. Rome worried that the “good guys” on the team might not be able to impose their will on the criminal element — because they may be outnumbered. He is right to worry.

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From the I’ll Believe It When I See It Department — The new UN Secretary-General just said “The Secretary-General will call for an urgent, system wide and external inquiry into all activities done around the globe by the U.N. funds and programs.” As the OpinionJournal.com editorialists noted, the key word is “external.” Those external auditors must be given unfettered access to information, and must have no restrictions on what they’re allowed to report or who they’re allowed to report it to (i.e., ultimately, the world). We’ll see.

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How’s this for a contrast? At the same time as at least some believers in global warming (otherwise known as “globaloney” around here) are worried that they are overhyping the situation, a bunch of big companies jumps on the globaloney bandwagon. It’s not as odd as you might think: The scientists are worried that they are being pushed to the fringe as climate research reality continues to bite them in the butt. Meanwhile, on the business side, the big boys are making peace with globaloney because they feel they can absorb the enormous costs that would be involved in adapting, while believing that smaller competitors will either have a tougher time of it, or will go out of business.

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Dumb Thieves Department:

It didn’t take much for police to track down 14 cell phones stolen from a town’s public works department on Long Island.

The Town of Babylon had used the phones as GPS (Global Positioning System) devices for its trucks. The same technology led police right to the home of the suspects about a half-mile from where the phones were stolen, according to Babylon Department of Public Works Commissioner Phil Berdolt. The devices went missing last week.

Too funny (HT Instapundit):

Gore Effect — The phenomenon that leads to unseasonally cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming. Hence, the Gore Effect.

- Australia, November 2006: Al Gore is visiting two weeks before summer begins. The Gore Effect strikes: “Ski resort operators gazed at the snow in amazement. Parents took children out of school and headed for the mountains. Cricketers scurried amid bullets of hail as Melburnians traded lunchtime tales of the incredible cold.” (The Age)

- New York, March 2004: “Gore chose January 15, 2004, one of the coldest days in New York City’s history, to rail against the Bush administration and global warming skeptics… Global warming, Gore told a startled audience, is causing record cold temperatures.” (NY Environment News)

As you also see, supposedly man-made “global warming” (now being cleverly recast as “climate change”), according to the Gospel of St. Al, is not only dangerously heating up the planet, it is the cause of the supposedly more frequent weather extremes we are experiencing. It would have been more appropriate if Gore’s 2004 Gotham audience had laughed.

Instapundit says: “….. I think that the real cause of this cold snap in the L.A./Hollywood area is that Al Gore has been shortlisted for an Oscar. Al just can’t catch a break.”

Here’s one of the latest examples (HT Amy Ridenour) of global warming intimidation, among so many examples it has become impossible to keep up them:

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
January 17, 2007

The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to “Holocaust Deniers” and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program “The Climate Code,” is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their “Seal of Approval” for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

“If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval ….”

Intimidation by two sitting US Senators was noted here back in December.

One of the best indicators of a bogus argument is when supporters of it attempt to silence those who disagree with it. By that sole yardstick, the claim that any global warming that my be occurring is primarily caused by human activity is one of the all-time whoppers.

A reminder: Most cable systems have their own local weather channel that gives you what you need to know more quickly, more often, and without the agenda.

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UPDATE: James Spann, an Alabama weatherman hits back hard (HT Drudge; bolds are mine) –

Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?

I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:

* Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.

* The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, let’s not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.

If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.

Spann’s in double trouble with the PC crowd, because he invoked God.

(Aside: Can’t wait for someone to take a shot at him because he’s in the Yellowhammer State.)

The Alabama weatherman brings up an excellent point tying in to media coverage — Since corporate or industry sponsorship of research is typically reported (and often, by inference or specifically criticized as “tainting” the findings), why isn’t the fact that a person or group is funded by government or other grants aimed at “proving” globaloney routinely disclosed?

UPDATE 2: This is too funny. It’s the 235th comment at Spann’s post in Update 1 –

Man-made “Global Warming” is crap (for reasons listed by others above, among others)

But what I wanted to point out a hilarious/idiotic quote from Cullen:

It’s like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It’s not a political statement, it’s just an incorrect statement.”

Interesting, however she wasting her time telling us, and should choose a different audience to inform about how hurricanes rotate. After all, it was Al Gore’s Inconvenient Piece of Crap that used a backwards rotating hurricane on it’s posters, promotional items and DVDs!!!

Anyway, just wanted to point out how funny it is that this “expert” (read: lying alarmist) Cullen brings up hurricane rotation, unaware (or dishonestly ignoring) that the Gore crew (who is on her side) couldn’t get it right before having the image printed MILLIONS of times all over the world.

(If this is new information to you, simply look up the movie on Amazon, then go out and search for satellite images of hurricanes. I challenge you to prove that the “Inconvenient” hurricane was rotating the right way).

UPDATE 3, Jan. 21: Cullen, in a hypocritical response for the ages, decries “A Very Political Climate.”

I guess global warming took the week off.

(I know, the “climate change” globalarmists will say the humans are causing more extremes in weather. They’ve got a globaloney excuse for every reason, and every season.)