It’s A Good Thing The Sun Can’t Affect Us Here…

…at least thats what Al Gore told us. From Daily Tech: Sun Makes History. First Spotless Month in a Century

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots — is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.

When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.

But this year — which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 — has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.

The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.

I love how the theory that SUV’s drive our climate was not too controversial, but a paper about sunspots was considered “out there.”

There have been plenty of signs lately that decreased solar activity is having an impact on our climate. Last winter was the harshest in awhile. The UK and Western Europe have had very mild summers with lots of Brits complaining about the lack of warm weather. Here in the Twin Cities we had an entire month of August without topping 90 degrees.

What does any of that prove? Well, not too much really, but it is certainly more consistent with the theory of solar influence on climate than it is with Anthropogenic Global Warming. Remember, AGW works (so we are told) without any input from the sun. (Yep, all of the computers models they used for the U.N. reports neglected to have a solar input variable.) Now, this is fine as long as you make it clear that your work is in the “all things being equal” vein. However, the pronouncements of the Goracle and his cohort of scientific henchmen were treated like they were scripture.

Like it or not, the universe is still a big place and we are still small and relatively insignificant. If an inactive sun make this a cooler world than it does. We will have to learn to adapt as best we can.

H/T To QandO, where a commenter had this beautiful line:

What matters is we meet Ted Turner’s prediction of cannibalism. How we get there isn’t important!

When Karbon Kings Go Yachting

Oh, good lord.

And now, in order to complete his hypocrisy trifecta, Al Gore may now be extending his excessive consumption to the water as well. In an amazing display of conspicuous consumption, even for Al Gore, his new 100-foot houseboat that docks at the Hurricane Marina in Smithville, Tennessee is creating a critical buzz among many of his former congressional constituents. Dubbed “Bio-Solar One,” which may reflect some latent Air Force One envy, Gore has proudly strutted the small-town dock claiming that his monstrous houseboat is environmentally friendly. (Only Al Gore would name his boat B.S. One and not get the joke. Or perhaps the joke is on us?)

The yacht is - literally - bigger than the house my family and I live in. There are only four of us here now, but it was six not so many years ago. It may be "eco-friendly" to run, but I'd sure love to see how much carbon entered the atmosphere building Al's new toy.

Hypocrisy. Look it up in the dictionary. Gore's picture should appear next to it.

Canute Get There From Here

Andrew Revkin at the New York Times Dot Earth blog does his best to annotate Al Gore's latest climate hysteria. From the perspective of an engineer who has worked in the utility area, I think Revkin misses an important point. Simply put, Gore has no clue - whatsoever - what he is talking about. None. Take this quote:

To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity within 10 years will require us to overcome many obstacles. At present, for example, we do not have a unified national grid that is sufficiently advanced to link the areas where the sun shines and the wind blows to the cities in the East and the West that need the electricity.

The fact is, we do have an interconnected grid - or nothing would be working the way it does. The other fact is that the laws of physics dictate how line losses work. It is not possible to transmit power from "where the sun shines and the wind blows" to anywhere all that distant from those places. This has to do with the pure physical constraints of how electricity is produced and transmitted. All those overhead transmission lines have real - and absolute - physical constraints on them. Al Gore cannot wave his magic wand and remove those constraints.

When Gore can pull off what King Canute could not and repeal the laws of physics that govern how things work in the real world, I'll listen to him.

I rahter doubt I'll ever have to.

The New Scientific Method: When You Don’t Have The Data, Fudge It

The headlines are the stuff of biblical plagues: Expect More Droughts, Heavy Downpours, Excessive Heat, And Intense Hurricanes Due To Global Warming, NOAA

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research has released a scientific assessment that provides the first comprehensive analysis of observed and projected changes in weather and climate extremes in North America and U.S. territories. Among the major findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace as humans continue to increase the atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

I've said it once, I'll say it again; Ohmygod…we are all going to die!

Or not. 

The thing is, wasn't Anthropogenic Global Warming (TM) supposed to be an ongoing process were are now caught in the middle of, and not some theoretical possibility in a far off future?  If that is true we should have seen some evidence of these increases in extreme weather.  Well, what is the evidence in the report for that?  Turns out there isn't any, as Roger Pielke has helpfully outlined:

The report contains several remarkable conclusions, that somehow did not seem to make it into the official press release.

1. Over the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.

2. Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.

3. Despite increases in some measures of precipitation (pp. 46-50, pp. 130-131), there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (high flows above 90th percentile).

4. There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms

5. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters.

6. There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.

(Pielke has extended commentary on each of these findings, and you should head over to Prometheus to read it all.)

So what scientific evidence do we have that Global Warming is leading to extreme weather events?  Well, we don't have any, not in the sense of actual observed weather events.  Shouldn't that give someone pause?  Normal people probably would taken aback by the lack of evidence.  But we are not dealing with normal people. 

"Well the things is," we are told, "we scientists have these absolutely fabulous computer models which predict future extreme weather events." 

How do you know they are accurate?  Have you used them to replicate the known incidences of extreme weather of the past? 

"Well, no, we haven't been able to do that exactly.  But we are totally confident we can predict the future." 

Why is that? 

"Because theses are computer models. You can't argue with computers!  They are, like, totally high-tech."

The amazing thing is, the press is largely swayed by this argument.  The complete lack of evidence doesn't bother them in the least.  We generally have names for things people believe despite the absence of supporting evidence.  "Science" isn't one of the names.

Looking Green

As opposed to actually being green. The Washington Post notes that most of the highly publicized ways of "fighting" climate change are completely useless - or very nearly so. Instead they are more of a fashion statement.

In March of last year, the World Wildlife Fund in Australia teamed up with Leo Burnett, the multinational advertising agency that created the Marlboro Man, to come up with a new environmental campaign called Earth Hour. The idea was to get 2 million residents in Sydney to turn off all the lights in their homes for one hour. The campaign generated wide publicity, but the energy saved was small — the equivalent of taking about five cars off the city's roads for a year.

This year, Earth Hour expanded to dozens of cities around the world. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building in New York were among the U.S. landmarks that went dark. Many corporations signed on to burnish their green credentials. A bar in Phoenix served a drink called an ecotini — organic vodka, green tea and an edible orchid.

But if everyone who participated in Earth Hour had left their lights on and instead switched to mundane, high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulbs, simple calculations show, it might have saved 1,368 times as much energy, because the bulbs would have saved energy all year…..

….."It is very difficult to get people to invest in home insulation and energy efficiency, which are much more effective than putting solar panels on your roof," he said. "Solar panels are popular because you can see you are doing something — and your neighbors can see it, too."

Greenier than thou rules. Style over substance. Just as Al Gore preaches carbon neutrality while consuming vast quantities of energy. The official in charge of the Earth Hour initiative for the WWF admits that the whole thing is designed to manipulate people:

"You are not going to get people to change what people do by engaging their heads; you have to engage their hearts," she said. "You need symbols to spur action. You are not going to get people to take action unless you get them to care about the issue. You are not going to do that by pulling out the U.N. report on blah, blah, blah."

Very nice. It's really about a political agenda.

“Global Warming” Jumps The Shark, Literally

Just when you thought it was safe to read The Guardian: Surge in fatal shark attacks blamed on global warming

Three decades have passed since the movie Jaws sent terrified bathers scrambling out of the ocean. But as any beach lifeguard knows, there's still nothing like a gory shark attack to stoke public hysteria and paranoia.

Two deaths in the waters off California and Mexico last week and a spate of shark-inflicted injuries to surfers off Florida's Atlantic coast have left beachgoers seeking an explanation for a sudden surge in the number of strikes.

In the first four months of this year, there were four fatal shark attacks worldwide, compared with one in the whole of 2007, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

'The one thing that's affecting shark attacks more than anything else is human activity,' said Dr George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert who maintains the database. 'As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites.'

Some experts suggest that an abundance of seals has attracted high numbers of sharks, while others believe that overfishing has hit their food chain. 'I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's a convenient excuse,' Burgess said. Another contributory factor to the location of shark attacks could be global warming and rising sea temperatures. 'You'll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn't in the past with some regularity,' he said.

Oh good Lord….where to begin?  For starters, if "global warming" is the culprit how come the sharks have waited until we have had a cooler year before they got to chomping in earnest? 

Besides, has there actually been a "surge" in fatal shark attacks?  Well, let's look at the worldwide fatal shark attack stats since 1990:

1990-1992: 11

1993-1995: 28

1996-1998: 18

1999-2001: 19

2002-2004: 14

2005-2007: 9

So, the last three years saw the fewest fatal attacks since worldwide statistics have been kept.  In fact, were we to see a dramatic increase in shark attacks one might argue that was evidence of global cooling back to mid-1990's levels!

Actually, the reference to Jaws in the Guardian story is kind of instructive here.  I've always argued the "global warming" hysteria fulfilled the left's need for a simple morality tale, but I've come to realize the storyline it most closely resembles is the classic Spielberg yarn from 1975.  Think about it.  In the film you have the heroes, the earnest public servant (Roy Schieder) and the vaguely hippie pseudo-academic (Richard Dreyfuss), joining forces to battle against the ignorance of the political and capitalistic establishment (think Murray Hamilton as the hapless Mayor of Amity Island).  The powers that be ignore the dire warnings from the voice of science ("this is no boating accident!") and, as a result, friendly dogs and young children are slaughtered (among others.)  If only they'd listened! I could go on about the parallels (I've got a bit about Quint representing the supposed "suicidal" tendencies of tradition), but I think I've made my point.

I just wonder what tomorrow will bring?  Maybe we will learn AGW causes male pattern baldness and erectile disfunction as well. 

I can't wait.

Update:

Others on this stupidity. JammieWearingFool:

This is so ridiculous. The recent fatality off Solana Beach in California was more an anomaly than anything. For one, there weren't exactly too many people in the water that morning and the Pacific Ocean isn't exactly like warm bath water.

I was on that beach two weeks prior to that attack and believe me, the water was freezing. I was one of the few people who actually went in the water without a wetsuit.

Junk journalism like this should be rejected by the editors at the newspapers. Such irresponsible reporting does nothing but bring discredit upon the news business.

The Strata-Sphere:

I wonder how that theory works when the IPCC and others have had to admit the global temperatures have been flat or falling while the shark attacks increased? I guess we just need to ignore the data, and take it on faith, that all is right with the Church of IPCC-Gore. Pathetic.

Up To Two Feet Of Epicycles

As Rich pointed out, the true believers have no postulated a new cooling trend that is all part of carbon-forced global warming. The fancy dance steps provide them with a ten year long cooling trend, after which another explanation will be forthcoming to explain the advancing glaciers, apparently. Thank heavens for epicycles. Meanwhile, back in the real world folks in the Black Hills region of South Dakota should rush out and stock up on bread and milk. They are about to get hit with another foot of epicycle on top of the 12-18 inches they got yesterday and today.

Through noon Thursday, 17 inches of snow had fallen near Hulett, Wyo., more than a foot fell in the Wasatch Range in Utah, and 12 inches was on the ground in parts of South Dakota.

The snow in Colorado Thursday led to numerous accidents on Interstate 70 in the foothills west of Denver, forcing the closure of the westbound lanes. Several state highways in the mountains had been closed due to icy conditions.

The heaviest snow will fall through Friday across the western High Plains. Two feet or more of snow is forecast in the Black Hills of South Dakota, while lesser amounts spread across eastern Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and the western Dakotas.

Even better, high winds will accompany the newest epicycle, causing blizzard conditions and extremely dangerous driving conditions.

“Global Warming” Goes Ptolemaic

It's as if the AGW crowd has simply throw up their hands and yelled, "Ockham's Razor be damned!"  Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming

 Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

“Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. “Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''

Got that? 

So here is how the story goes.  "We got this theory, see, all about how your SUV is destroying the earth by pumping it full of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, you know.  As CO2 increases so does the temperatures.  (Didn't you see Al's flick?)  Except, of course, for those times when increased CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't lead to higher temperatures. We thought we might be in trouble there, as our theory looks like it says the opposite thing.  But, don't you worry, because we got ourselves a codicil, you see, that allows for cooler temperatures while Global Warming is still ongoing.  Pretty nifty, eh?  And if that isn't enough and the weather still ain't acting like its supposeda in a decade or so, we got a line in to the Pope to see about swinging ourselves a special dispensation."

What could more scientific than that?

Or, as Tully over at Stubborn Facts put it brilliantly:

When the data inconveniently refuses to conform to your theory, just how should a True Believer in that theory respond?

Why, add an epicycle, of course!

I suppose the more baroque a theory is the better it expresses "consensus." 

The Real Victim Of “Global Warming”

Bird Dog at Maggie's Farm points out the real victim of the "global warming" hysteria: real conservationism.

At the risk of sounding corny, we believe in good stewardship of our inheritance.

What's irrational? The Green Movement is irrational. Most of it represents feel-good ideas that are hooey: symbolic hooey that is meant to make people feel virtuous while accomplishing nothing. Witness the lightbulb craze, "organic" vegetables, "recycling" plastic bottles (totally energy-inefficient), or hybrid cars (which do nothing "for the planet" but which are great on gas mileage). It's empty vanity and fashion, and nothing more (for an example, see this foolish agonizing piece by Michael Pollan), who has caught a bad case of the vain and guilt-ridden sanctimony of the "I can make a difference" disorder.

Pure organic pixie dust for the latte liberals.

The CO2 obsession is similarly irrational, and, deep down, everybody must know it. It is irrational because it is futile, regardless of whether there is any current warming, and regardless of whether there is any man-made warming.

I've pointed out that it has never been easier to rape the planet right now. Say you're producing biofuel and you have a free pass to eradicate a rain forest. But true conservation is being dragged down into the insanity of the extremists. Bird Dog has it exactly right here. Go read it all.

The Starving Peasants On The Far Horizon.

Mark Steyn has rather a lot to say about Time Magazines "Iwo Tree-ma" photo that I posted about yesterday. But the only thing the tree is good for is to block the view of the starving peasants.

Heigh-ho. In the greater scheme of things, a few dead natives keeled over with distended bellies is a small price to pay for saving the planet, right? Except that turning food into fuel does nothing for the planet in the first place. That tree the U.S. Marines are raising on Iwo Jima was most-likely cut down to make way for an ethanol-producing corn field: Researchers at Princeton calculate that, to date, the "carbon debt" created by the biofuels arboricide will take 167 years to reverse.

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death. On April 15, the Independent, the impeccably progressive British newspaper, editorialized:

"The production of biofuel is devastating huge swaths of the world's environment. So why on Earth is the government forcing us to use more of it?"

You want the short answer? Because the government made the mistake of listening to fellows like you. Here's the self-same Independent in November 2005:

"At last, some refreshing signs of intelligent thinking on climate change are coming out of Whitehall. The Environment minister, Elliot Morley, reveals today in an interview with this newspaper that the Government is drawing up plans to impose a 'biofuel obligation' on oil companies … . This has the potential to be the biggest green innovation in the British petrol market since the introduction of unleaded petrol."

Etc. It's not the environmental movement's chickenfeedhawks who'll have to reap what they demand must be sown, but we should be in no doubt about where to place the blame – on the bullying activists and their media cheerleaders and weather-vane politicians who insist that the "science" is "settled" and that those who question whether there's any crisis are (in the designation of the strikingly nonemaciated Al Gore) "denialists."

Green is the new red. As always, read the whole thing, Steyn is in rare form over this one. The media might want to rethink their biased cheer-leading. The first victim of totalitarianism is freedom of the press.

Dearth Day

Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace who left the organization in 1986, explains why he has turned against Greenpeace. It's quite simple, really, it is the dearth of science in the hysterical warnings of the group. Many of those hysterical warnings are either baseless or completely self-serving.

But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind.

At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.

The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.

The latest hobbyhorse Greenpeace is riding is trying to force a ban on the common plasticizer diisononyl phthalate (DINP), which has been tested repeatedly, used for years and is perfectly safe. Greenpeace wants it banned and untried, unstudied compounds substituted. That and the opposition to chlorine points to more than a dearth of science. It also shows a dearth of compassion for their fellow humans.

Incidentally, I have posted about Patrick Moore in the past. He has become an eloquent advocate of nuclear power - which Greenpeace also froths unscientifically about. Greenpeace has, as Moore points out, become a politically-motivated organization more interested in its agenda than in really saving the earth. Or caring about the human beings who have to live here.

Brainwashing

A well known expert on hurricanes has, once again, used an annual conference on the subject of his expertise to bash global warming zealots. He stated that there is no less than an attempt to brainwash the young into believing the teachings of the Al Gore cult.

William Gray, the well-known Colorado State University hurricane forecaster, routinely uses the annual National Hurricane Conference as a platform to bash global warming. In a statement to Florida Today, Gray argued that the scientific consensus on global warming is bogus — and "a mild form of McCarthyism has developed toward those scientists who do not agree" that mankind is in danger.

"We are also brainwashing our children on the warming topic. We have no better example than Al Gore's alarmists and inaccurate movie which is being shown in our schools and being hawked by warming activists with little or no meteorological-climate background," Gray wrote.

Some scientists believe global warming will actually decrease — not increase — the number of hurricanes that form over the Atlantic Ocean each year. Last Friday, in the final session of the hurricane conference, a pair of climate experts said rising sea-surface temperatures in and near the Caribbean could strengthen vertical wind shear. Robust wind shear is the bane of hurricanes, as it tends to tear apart cyclones during their formative stages.

Gore's movie has been proven in a British court to contain materially false statements. The "Cascade Effect" is in full flower in the "consensus" on global warming. Cold weather continues throughout much of the Northern hemisphere this year. The big new cure-all for global warming, biofuel, is rapidly losing its sheen, even to the gullible media. 

Ted Turner: A New Dim-Witted Malthus

Consider this another example, one in a long and depressing string of examples, that our educational system has been in the crapper for some time:  Global Warming Will Cause Mass Cannibalism

TED TURNER: Not doing it [ed. "it" being something drastic about Anthropogenic Global Warming (tm)] will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hottest in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable. The droughts will be so bad there'll be no more corn grown. Not doing it is suicide. Just like dropping bombs on each other, nuclear weapons is suicide. We've got to stop doing the suicidal two things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons and after that we've got to stabilize the population. When I was born-

CHARLIE ROSE: So what's wrong with the population?

TURNER: We're too many people. That's why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff. If there were less people, they'd be using less stuff.

This is so stupid it hurts.  But it does underscore how much of the AGW crowd's appeal is built upon a grade school level morality tale.  "See the bad people!  See how greedy the bad people are??!  Watch how their greed bites them in the butt!" 

Of course, the Malthusian implications in Ted Turner's vision are a little more sinister:

"See all the multitude of poor people who want to be rich people?  How greedy of them!  We can't have them succeed at that, now can we?  It's better if they didn't exist.  How can we get them to stop breathing??  Hmmm…"

It's amazing that so many supposedly secular people want so desperately to be living in "end times."

The Biofuel Crash

I'vebeen posting about the biofuel scam for some time now. I have pointed out the skyrocketing price of food and the real and lasting environmental damage that biofuel production entails. It seems the world is suddenly waking up to the nightmare the eco-warriors have created. 

Biofuels made from food crops such as corn, sugar, soybeans and oil palm burn cleaner than fossil fuels, but experts say high demand is sending ripples through the world economy, and could be doing the environment more harm than good.

Rudy Gosal, a 36-year-old courier who queued with hundreds of others in Indonesia's capital in March to buy government-subsidised cooking oil, is one of millions feeling the pinch of the push towards biofuels.

After the latest rise earlier this year, the cost of cooking oil in Jakarta jumped a massive 70 percent, to around 12,000 rupiah (1.31 dollars) a litre……

……A study published in the journal Science in February found it would take around 86 years for biodiesel made from palm oil grown on cleared tropical lowland forest to repay the "carbon debt" generated from clearing the land.

For biodiesel from cleared peatlands, the study found, the debt would take more than 840 years to repay.

"Certainly the carbon debt from converting peatlands is far and away larger than in any of the other ecosystems we considered," said Jason Hill, an economist at the University of Minnesota and study co-author.

But Indonesia appears intent on running up that debt. Already at least 10 million of its 22.5 million hectares (55.6 million acres) of peatland have been cleared, according to the Centre for International Forestry Research, and the clearing shows no sign of slowing.

Indonesia currently emits the world's third largest total of so-called greenhouse gas. I have said it before: there is no better time to rape the planet than right now. All you have to say is that you are fighting global warming or going "green" and you can get away with ecological murder. The laws of physics and thermodynamics are not subject to repeal by wishful thinking or kindergarten-level scientific theory. Yet that is precisely what has been influencing politicians to sign onto this fuelishness.

Coldest February In At Least A Decade

In Britain they are now predicting that, despite a few warm days, it is likely to be the coldest February in at least a decade.

When a pony's stable is the great outdoors, he doesn't get much of a roof over his mane.

So this fellow woke up in the New Forest in Hampshire with a fair dusting of frost on yesterday's freezing morning.

He didn't even have the comfort of a good breakfast, as the grass he nibbled at was just as icy.

Enlarge the image

The freeze hit Britain hard on Saturday night as temperatures plummeted to -9C.

Much of the country woke up to a hard frost yesterday morning and the weather is expected to stay bitterly cold during the first part of the week.

Despite the freezing conditions, the sun brightened up what could have otherwise been a bleak day yesterday.

The temperature is set to fall below zero again tonight with weather predications of 3C.

Experts predict this month could end up being one of the coldest Februaries in 10 years despite the mild few days enjoyed by many earlier this week.

A Met Office spokesman said: "The coldest places are likely to be along the Welsh borders and across the Pennines where it could get down to -9C and it's likely to be well below freezing everywhere else." 

I pointed to a number of things that indicate how cold this winter has been in a post I did yesterday. It has been a thoroughly cold winter here in the American Midwest - in fact it is snowing again where I live and the north wind is brutal. When the warm days hit Britain it was a sign of global warming according to the press (can't find the article, oddly) now it is a cold winter. Funny, isn't it?