Flash!

Ships and passengers frozen in ice near Sweden:

Thirty to 40 ships — including several passenger ships — were stuck Thursday in ice off the coast of Sweden, said a spokesman for the Maritime Search and Rescue Center in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The area of the Baltic Sea worst hit by the ice were the waters bounded by mainland Sweden, the Stockholm archipelago and the Finnish island of Aland, said Tommy Gardebring, press officer with the Swedish Maritime Administration.

The center identified one of the passenger ships as the Amorella, with 753 passengers and 190 crew members.

Several passenger vessels from Viking Line were stuck, he said. One of them had been freed.

Of course, according to global warmening theory, such an event is unpossible. An event like this would put the North Dakota Banana Growers Association into receivership. But never fear, true believers! We here at the Blue Crab Boulevard Academy of Scientifical Studies have applied the Jones-Mann-Hansen “Hide the Decline” formula to the temperature data from the Baltic and have great news! The ships, their crews and the passengers are not actually frozen in the ice.

They actually flashed to incandescent gas when the scientifically corrected temperature hit 25,000° C.

There He Goes Again

Al Gore makes another materially false statement:

Gore says, “The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States….”

….In fact, recent research actually contra dicts Gore’s claims about “significantly more water moisture in the atmosphere.”

In late January, Scientific American reported: “A mysterious drop in water vapor in the lower stratosphere might be slowing climate change,” and noted that “an apparent increase in water vapor in this region in the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated global warming.”

Gore has a more than spotty record on telling the truth, as a court in Britain pointed out. Keep in mind that this man has gotten rich off his dire warnings of inevitable doom and stands to make even more by getting more governments to play along with his not exactly true statements.

The folks down in Georgia and the Carolinas are getting hammered with snow right now. I don’t recall that happening very often at all. Where I live, we are running about 10 degrees below the average and have been for some time. It may – just may – warm a bit this weekend during the day, but the nights are still going to bone-chilling temperatures. I’ve about worn out an ice scraper this season.

“No Global Warming Since 1995″

So says Dr. Phil Jones, the scientist at the center of the leaked emails form the Climate Research Unit. Despite admitting that, Dr. Jones continues to insist that global warming is happening and is man made. But he also admits he’s lost all the data.

So we’ll have to take it on faith.

No thanks.

The entire theory of anthropogenic global warming is built off data that is conveniently lost. We’re supposed to just believe even though there has been no actual warming in 15 years. We’re supposed to just submit to radical social engineering experiments based on our trust in scientists who have been actively lying to us for the past decade and a half.

No thanks.

Ice Work If You Can Get It

Mark Steyn on the collapsing bandwagon of global warming:

But where did all these experts get the data from? Well, NASA’s assertion that Himalayan glaciers “may disappear altogether” by 2030 rests on one footnote, citing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.

In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report suggests 2035 as the likely arrival of Armageddon, but what’s half a decade between scaremongers? They rate the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing as “very high”—i.e., more than 90 per cent. And the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that report, so it must be kosher, right? Well, yes, its Himalayan claims rest on a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report called “An Overview of Glaciers.”

WWF? Aren’t they something to do with pandas and the Duke of Edinburgh? True. But they wouldn’t be saying this stuff if they hadn’t got the science nailed down, would they? The WWF report relies on an article published in the New Scientist in 1999 by Fred Pearce.

That’s it? One article from 12 years ago in a pop-science mag? Oh, but don’t worry, back in 1999 Fred did a quickie telephone interview with a chap called Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. And this Syed Hasnain cove presumably knows a thing or two about glaciers.

Well, yes. But he now says he was just idly “speculating”; he didn’t do any research or anything like that.

But so what? His musings were wafted upwards through the New Scientist to the World Wildlife Fund to the IPCC to a global fait accompli: the glaciers are disappearing. Everyone knows that. You’re not a denier, are you? India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, says there was not “an iota of scienti?c evidence” to support the 2035 claim. Yet that proved no obstacle to its progress through the alarmist establishment. Dr. Murari Lal, the “scientist” who included the 2035 glacier apocalypse in the IPCC report, told Britain’s Mail on Sunday that he knew it wasn’t based on “peer-reviewed science” but “we thought we should put it in”—for political reasons.

In other words the science wasn’t settled. Rather, the propaganda was settled on. And that propaganda took on a life of its own and was repeated over and over and over, in ever more shrill bits of propaganda masquerading as science. (Go read the entire piece, Steyn is at his best when slapping around the easily led.)

If the news corpse exercised even a small amount of basic curiosity, they would be noticing odd little things, such as the vast wealth apparently acquired by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC. Or the vast wealth acquired by Al Gore. And if the news corpse was even modestly endowed with a kindergarten level ability to connect the dots, they would have smelled a rat long ago. Several rats.

Instead, they hopped onto the bandwagon along with thousands upon thousands other useful idiots and began hyping the fraud.

And it is fraud, writ large.

What ought to be settled on is how to bring the fraudsters to justice for what they have done and are still attempting to do.

The bandwagon is collapsing under the weight of the lies piled onto it.

Who Needs Science When You Can Just Make Stuff Up?

Still more hijinks from the IPCC. It seems they just made up stuff to go into their last report – or rather, just embellished other people’s made up stuff.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.

The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.

Gee, one assumes they’ll return their illegitimately earned Nobel Prize. And the rest of their ill-gotten gains.

Sure they will.

They will keep stonewalling, insisting the science is perfectly sound even if it is made up out of the whole cloth. Thus it is with frauds and cultists.

UPDATE: Heh. Tim Blair also uses the term “make stuff up”.

Freezing In The Dark

Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times:

Now, almost a generation later, we face another election in which the main parties are united in a single masochistic view: that the nation must cut its carbon emissions by 80% — this is what all but five MPs voted for in the Climate Change Act — to save not just ourselves but also the entire planet from global warming. For this to happen — to meet the terms of the act, I mean, not to “save the world” — the typical British family will have to pay thousands of pounds a year more in bills, since the cost of renewable energy is so much higher than that of oil, gas and coal.

The vast programme of wind turbines for which the bills are now coming in will not, by the way, avert the energy cut-offs declared last week by the national grid. Quite the opposite: as is often the case, the recent icy temperatures have been accompanied by negligible amounts of wind. If we had already decommissioned any of our fossil-fuel power stations and replaced them with wind power, we would now be facing a genuine civil emergency rather than merely inconvenience.

 And that, I can tell you, is absolutely true. Every day I drive past a large coal-fired generation facility. Those units (there are four of them) are all-in. As in firing at full capacity. They have been doing so since the cold snap hit.

Today it actually climbed all the way up to 20° F at my place.

But there is no wind at all.

If we were dependent solely on wind generation, we would have a civil catastrophe on our hands. There would be people dead from this cold. If the Obama administration succeeds in regulating carbon emissions through the EPA, your energy costs will be enormous during spells like this. 

Like all the rest of Obamanomics, “green” energy is a massive fraud.

Cold Irony

As of the writing of this post it is colder in Northern Florida (25°F) than it is at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (26°F).

Time to head South to get warm. Really, really South.

That Icy Finger Of Sarcasm

Heh.

Frozen Gore

The Frozen Gore returns:

FAIRBANKS – In what might become an annual tradition, an ice sculpture of former Vice President Al Gore has taken its place in front of Thrifty Liquor along Airport Way.

The two-ton “Frozen Gore” sculpture isn’t exactly a tribute. It’s a tongue-in-cheek critique of Gore’s vocal belief in man-made climate change, complete with hot air pouring out of his mouth.

Local businessmen Craig Compeau and Rudy Gavora contracted the piece from award-winning sculptor Steve Dean and say they’ll keep erecting one each winter until Gore accepts an invitation to discuss the global warming issue in Fairbanks.

“We do want to invite debate,” Compeau said. “We don’t agree with his theories — we’re suspicious of the financial motivation behind them.”

Follow the money and everything about Gore looks more than a little smelly. Not that the in-the-tank media has any inclination to follow that particular yellow brick road.

Meanwhile, in Britain they are finding out how much a brutal winter costs:

The freezing weather has already cost businesses an estimated £690million, and experts fear economic output could be hit by as much as £14billion over the next three weeks if the bad weather continues.

In the center of the United States a seriously brutal dagger of arctic air is stabbing down all the way to Texas. This is very, very cold air coupled with a severe North wind. Trust me, it is not nice outside right now in my neck of the woods. And it will be hitting hard all the way down to the Gulf Coast by the weekend.

Cold(er) Shot

Think it’s cold now? It will be getting worse:

Much of the nation got off to a frigid start to the workweek on Monday and below-freezing temperatures will threaten to break records in parts of the South on Tuesday morning.

Hard freeze warnings were scheduled to be in effect Tuesday morning for much of northern Florida and parts of other Gulf Coast states, according to the National Weather Service.

Lows could reach the teens Tuesday morning in parts of Alabama and Mississippi and the mid-20s in parts of Louisiana and northern Florida, according to the weather service. Record lows could be tied or set in those areas as well as parts of southern Georgia and Texas, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.

Temperatures could get even colder later in the week, Myers and CNN meteorologist Sean Morris said.

Accuweather is projecting arctic air reaching all the way to Mexico by late in the week. They are also cheerfully pointing out that it is shaping up to be the coldest winter in 25 years over most of the nation.

We had -20° F overnight – and it is supposed to get colder with a strong North wind in the next few days. This air is heading South. Good luck folks. Stay warm.

Don’t Forget Global Whoring

Call it ClimateGate. Call it Global Whoring. Call it whatever you wish. But we should not forget the scandal of the CRU and the emails they want you to forget:

The revelation of Climategate occurs at a time when the accuracy of the climate models is being seriously questioned. Over the last decade Earth’s temperature has not warmed, yet every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the next century?

Climategate reveals how predetermined political agendas shaped science rather than the other way around. It is high time to question the true agenda of the scientists now on the hot seat and to bring skeptics back into the public debate.

The media is playing silent on this after a few initial stories. Don’t let them spike the story. This matters, too. Even though there are lots of other matters going on in this country and globally.

Miami Ice

Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

Bundle up — again — South Florida.

The National Weather Service on Friday is reporting that “a very strong cold front” is expected to move through the region as early as the afternoon. The cold front will be accompanied by scattered thunderstorms and strong winds.

Temperatures could plunge into to the 30s on Friday night.

I feel your chill, Miami. Of course the high where I live is 15° F. But still, I hope the authorities have issued a falling iguana alert.

Ice Scream In

I scream, you scream we all scream for the blizzard to stop screwing up our delivered wisdom…

A downtown protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday’s snowstorm.

“Not many people showed up because of the blizzard conditions,” said organizer Clea Major, an international studies student at the University of Utah.

It didn’t take long for the six friends to pack up a bullhorn and posters they’d planned to use for their “scream-in,” an outlet for their frustration about the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks earlier this month to curb the pollution blamed for climate change.

One simply has to love it when liberal arts meets the cold (literally), hard reality of the world as it actually is. Which is not as Ms. Major thinks it is.

This is not Ms. Major’s first frosty disappointment (read the whole article). Maybe it will begin to sink in next time.

I’ll Be Froze For Christmas

Britain:

The big freeze is likely to keep many thousands of families apart at Christmas.

Drivers have been warned not to go out on treacherous roads, flights have been cancelled and train services badly disrupted by the cold.

The AA and police have urged families to postpone celebrations until the roads are safer.

United States:

A strengthening storm producing snow, ice, rain and locally severe thunderstorms over the Plains will transform into a severe blizzard spanning Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, zapping power, closing roads and placing some people’s lives in peril.

Snow and ice are already coating roads, sidewalks, trees and power lines from around Lake Michigan to the the High Plains.

Wind-whipped and blowing snow will then begin to pound Nebraska, Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma on Christmas Eve.

Germany:

A seven-year-old boy was stopped by police in northern Germany while trying to plough snow with a front loader he borrowed from his parents’ business, authorities said.

Officers on patrol found the boy atop the 3.5-metre-tall (11.5-foot-tall) excavator after he had cleared the street in the town of Reinfeld and was driving back to the parking lot.

Serbia:

Dozens of children in a southern Serbia town set up barricades with their sleighs to stop workers from putting salt on the streets and melting the snow, the Beta news agency reported on Tuesday.

Supported by their parents, the kids first got into a verbal altercation with workers in the town of Kursumlija, but then things heated up and they threw firecrackers at their equipment.

In Copenhagen, the warmists, including the president of the United States, tried to convince the world that global warming was occurring. Either your eyes or the warmists are wrong.

Which do you trust?

The Clowns Make The Circus

Mark Steyn on the Clown Princes of Copenhagen:

The best summation of the UN climate circus in Denmark comes from Andrew Bolt of Australia’s Herald Sun: “Nothing is real in Copenhagen – not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the ’solution’.”

Just so. Reuters, for example, carried a moving account of the speech by Ian Fry, lead negotiator for Tuvalu, the beleaguered Pacific island nation soon to be under water because of a planet-devastating combination of your SUV and unsustainable bovine flatulence from Vermont farms. “The fate of my country rests in your hands,” Fry told the meeting. “I make this as a strong and impassioned plea … I woke this morning and I was crying and that was not easy for a grown man to admit,” he continued, “his voice choking with emotion,” in the Reuters reporter’s words. Who could fail to be moved?

“My country, ’tis of thee

Sweet land near rising sea

Of thee I choke!”

Alas, nowhere in this emotionally harrowing dispatch was there room to mention that Ian Fry’s country is not Tuvalu but Australia, where he lives relatively safe from rising sea levels given that he’s a hundred miles inland. A career doom-monger, he’s resided in Queanbeyan, New South Wales for over a decade while working his way, in the revealing phrase of his neighbor Michelle Ormay, to being “very high up in climate change.” As to whether the emotion-choked lachrymose pleader has ever lived in “his” endangered country of Tuvalu, his wife told Samantha Maiden of The Australian that she would “rather not comment.” Like his fellow Copenhagen delegate Brad Pitt, Ian Fry is an actor: He’s not a Tuvaluan, but he plays one on the world stage.

Another scathing review from Steyn. As always, I urge you to read all of what he has written, for there are other clowns behaving, well, clownishly. Steyn skewers them.

Obama got his piece of paper to wave. The American press will fawn appropriately. Or rather, inappropriately for actual journalists. Which they by and large ceased being some time ago. (One of those is described in loving terms as well.)

Anyone with half a brain could see the naked greed and politics of envy on full display in Copenhagen. From the globe-trotting jet-setters to the useful idiots lobbying to become serfs in the new world medieval order. For only a few clown prices will be able to enjoy the AGW true believer lifestyle. The rest will be bound to their place of birth by carbon chains.