Global Warming Headlines of the Day

From Drudge:

GORE: Global warming IS REAL; Blasts talkradio show hosts... 

Earned 'D' In Natural Sciences At Harvard...

I saw a term this weekend that I liked: Enviro-fundamentalist. That describes Gore to a tee. He thinks he's global warming's answer to Billy Graham, but he's really nothing but a snake oil salesman.

Lock Up Global Warming Activists For Fraud

Don Surber makes the point:

So far this month, the public has learned that the Arctic is overrun with polar bears,according to a Canadian study. The poster child for fear-warmongering by junk-science global warmists not only survives but thrives.

Then an actual count of penguins found that there are twice as many Emperor Penguins in Antarctica than previously thought, a second study found.

Then, another study found that far from melting in 23 years as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC report predicted, the glaciers of the Himalaya mountains are doing just fine.

The time has come to investigate James Hansen, Michael Mann, Al Gore and other global warming stars for fraud. They lied. They manipulated data. They made false predictions of doom in their over-heated sales pitches. I know that Hansen and Gore made millions off these false alarms of ecological doom. We must now hold them accountable for false claims and the spreading of rumors.

So, will Obama de-list the Polar Bear from the endangered species list? That designation has locked up millions of acres of arctic lands that could be developed for their energy potential. These activists have been responsible for taking trillions out of the world economy in the useless pursuit of "green" energy and other globaloney nonsense. They must be held accountable for their fraud and misrepresentation.

Remember Bernie Madoff?   His fraud pales in comparison to what these guys have done and he's sitting in jail.  Time to open up a couple more cells.

Al Gore Fires Keith Olbermann at Current TV, Replaces Him With Client #9

Because even a disgraced former governor who was caught paying for sex is preferable to Keith Olbermann (from the NYT and Breitbart):

In a letter to viewers, the channel said Friday: “We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet. We are more committed to those goals today than ever before.

Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.”

Mr. Olbermann will not be given an opportunity to sign off. Starting Friday night, the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer will replace him at 8 p.m., according to the letter to viewers. His program will be titled “Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer.”

Apparently Olbermann didn't play well with others.

UPDATE:  Olbermann has a Twitter meltdown and threatens legal action.

James Carville Is Still Firmly Entrenched in 2000

I heard a clip of Carville commenting on the Supreme Court's apparent disdain for Obamacare that got me riled up. I don't have the exact quote, but it went something like this:

What do you expect? Scalia and Thomas overturned an election!

Really, James? What election would that be?

Of course, he's talking about the 2000 presidential election and more specifically the results in Florida which gave the nod to George W. Bush and deprived us of the incredible majesty of Al Gore. Democrats will go to their grave trying to delegitimize Bush's presidency.

Well, words mean things James, so let's look at yours. In order to "overturn" an election the assumption must be that one party was declared the winner only to have the courts take the win away and give it to his challenger. At what point did the court take away the win from Al Gore?

Let's look at the possibilities:

• Did Gore win Florida on election night?  No, Bush ended up with over 1,000 more votes.
• At any time during the recounts and contests was Al Gore ahead by even one vote?  Nope, he trailed the entire time.
• The night the election was certified was Al Gore declared the winner?  Nope, the official certification signed by Secretary of State Katherine Harris showed Bush the winner.
• How about the Electoral College?  Was Gore declared the winner when the Electoral votes were tallied?  Nope, Bush won that too.
• How about the media consortium that conducted a full recount of Florida after the election was completely over?  Did Gore have more votes then?  Nope, he lost that too.

So what did Al Gore actually win?  He did have more national popular votes which in a presidential election means exactly NOTHING.  We don't elect our presidents by popular vote.  In fact, had there not been an early and incorrect call by the networks in Florida Bush would have likely won the state by more than 10,000 votes and probably carried the national numbers too.

In conclusion, Gore won nothing but had the election "overturned" by the Supreme Court.

Get your head out of your hindquarters, James.  You lost.  Get over it.

O Chinese Tree, O Chinese Tree...

Thy tree rings laugh at Al Gore:

A blockbuster Chinese study of Tibetan tree rings by Liu et al 2011 shows, with detail, that the modern era is a dog-standard normal climate when compared to the last 2,500 years. The temperature, the rate of change — it’s all been seen before. Nothing about the current period is “abnormal”, indeed the current warming period in Tibet can be produced through calculation of cycles. Liu et al do a Fourier analysis on the underlying cycles and do brave predictions as well.

In Tibet, it was about the same temperature on at least four occasions — back in late Roman times (those chariots!), then again in the dark ages (blame the collapse of industry), then in the middle ages (the Vikings?), then in modern times (blame the rise of industry).

Clearly, these climate cycles have nothing to with human civilization. Their team finds natural cycles of many different lengths are at work: 2-3 years, 100 years, 199 years, 800 years, and 1,324 years. The cold periods are associated with sunspot cycles. What we are not used to seeing are brave scientists willing to publish exact predictions of future temperatures for 100 years that include rises and falls. Apparently, it will cool til 2068, then warm again, though not to the same warmth as 2006 levels.

Imagine that, the current climate has been repeated in the past. And there weren't any SUVs around when it did.

The only hot air involved with the current climate cycle is coming from global warming activists.

Global Warming Headlines of the Day

From Drudge:

SNOW FOR ALL SOULS...

Earliest New York City snow since Civil War?

Powerful Storm Could Impact 60 Million People...

CT braces for up to foot...

Wall Streeters Bundle Up for Cold Weather...

Al Gore, call your office.

Al Gore's Myth Busted

At Watt's Up With That they took on Al Gore's Climate 101 video experiment and tried to replicate it.  Myth busted.  Well done.

Rev. Al Gore to Hold 24-Hour Global Warming Revival Meeting

He must save the lost:

Former Vice President Al Gore will renew his 30-year campaign to convince skeptics of the link between climate change and extreme weather events this week in a 24-hour global multi-media event.

"24 Hours of Reality" will broadcast a presentation by Al Gore every hour for 24 hours across 24 different time zones from Wednesday to Thursday, with the aim of convincing climate change deniers and driving action against global warming among households, schools and businesses.

The campaign also asks people to hand over control of their social networking accounts on Facebook and Twitter to it for 24 hours to deliver Gore's message.

Gore is actually asking people to give him permission to take over and post to their Facebook and Twitter accounts during this revival meeting. I have nearly 4,000 friends on Facebook, and I can guarantee you that if I find any of them cooperating with this effort I'll unfriend them in a minute.  I'm not going to have my news feed polluted and spammed by Al Gore.

Yes, It's the Sun, Stupid

I've been posting on this subject for years now (the first "It's the Sun, Stupid" post was in March, 2007) and the science keeps proving me right.  The sun controls the Earth's climate, not my son's SUV:

The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.

The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.

In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.

Can we stop all the "green energy" crap now? And the "green jobs" baloney? None of that stuff will change the Earth's temperature one degree if the sun doesn't go along with it.

So What's The Real Story With Rick Perry and Al Gore?

R.G. Ratcliffe looked it up:

OK, whack on Republican Gov. Rick Perry in his presidential campaign for having once been a Democrat.

Whack on Rick Perry for endorsing Al Gore in his 1988 presidential run.

But would everyone quit saying he was Gore’s state chairman, because it is simply not true.

Gore in 1988 was viewed as the Southern conservative alternative to Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis. The leaders of the Gore campaign in Texas were House Speaker Gib Lewis, Democratic Chairman Bob Slagle and Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby.

On Jan. 5, 1988, Gib brought Gore to Austin to receive the endorsement of 27 state legislators. One of them was Rick Perry. If Perry even spoke that day, his words were so lame that they did not get quoted in news stories. In the Houston Chronicle and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Perry was just listed in alphabetical order as one of the lawmakers backing Gore.

I have tried to find a news release from the event to see if there was any possibility that it said something like: Legislative co-chairs for Gore. But I have not found anything like that. So I recently asked an Austin political consultant who was deep into the Gore campaign that year if Perry was chairman. He told me no. He said Perry did the news conference and then a one-day endorsement fly-around of some of the legislators. And that was it.

There's more at the link. Looks like much ado about nothing.

Rick Perry Used to Be a Democrat...Just Like Ronald Reagan

The Texas Tribune has a lengthy article on Rick Perry's Democrat past and his decision to move to the GOP, and since I expect Mitt Romney or one of the other candidates to try and make that an issue, it's worth reading the piece:

Gov. Rick Perry, a no-apologies conservative known for slashing government spending and opposing all tax increases, is about as Republican as you can get.

But that wasn’t always the case.

Perry spent his first six years in politics as a Democrat, in a somewhat forgotten history that is sure to be revived and scrutinized by Republican opponents if he decides to run for president.

A raging liberal he was not. Elected to represent a slice of rural West Texas in the state House of Representatives in 1984, Perry, a young rancher and cotton farmer, gained an early reputation as a fiscal conservative. He was one of a handful of freshman “pit bulls,” so named because they sat in the lower pit of the House Appropriations Committee, where they fought to keep spending low.

One of the biggest criticism is likely to be Perry's support for Al Gore in 1988:

Another political move Perry made back then: He was a top Texas supporter and organizer in 1988 for Al Gore, who ran as a southern conservative rather than the populist reformer he eventually became as the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee.

“I came to my senses,” Perry likes to say when asked about his Gore days.

I guarantee you that had Gore acted in 1988 like he acts today Perry would have had nothing to do with him.

Any candidate who attempts to make Perry's Democrat past into an issue will be quickly reminded that Ronald Reagan was also a Democrat. He famously said that he didn't leave the party, the party left him. I'm sure Perry had the same experience.

Rev. Al Gore Goes Jeremiah Wright on Climate Change

The High Priest of Climate Change, the Very Rev. Al Gore, gave a diatribe worth of Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the Aspen Institute this week.  I'm going to leave Rev. Al's bad language in the piece because to bleep it out would diminish the pure wild-eyed craziness of it.  You've been warned:

The former vice president dropped in on an Aspen Institute media forum titled “Networks and Citizenship” on Thursday and railed against corporate evildoers who put profit above society.

Gore referenced the book “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, which tells of how petroleum, steel, autos, utilities and others enlisted lobbyists to cloud the climate debate.

Gore recalled how not long ago tobacco giants “succeeded in delaying the implementation of the surgeon general’s report for 40 years – 40 years! In every one of those 40 years the average number of Americans killed by cigarettes each year exceeded the total number of Americans killed in all of World War II: 450,000 per year. My sister was one of them. … It was evil, evil, evil.”

The model of media manipulation used then, Gore said, “was transported whole cloth into the climate debate. And some of the exact same people — I can go down a list of their names — are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!” Gore exclaimed.

“When you go and talk to any audience about climate, you hear them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again,” he continued. “There’s no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened. People have no idea! … It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the goddamn word climate. It is not acceptable. They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it.”

That last paragraph is particularly instructive because it shows just how sensitive Gore has become to criticism and how fragile he is when challenged on this beliefs. The idea that man-made global warming is "settled science" has been pretty much disproven, at least to the extent that the Earth is in jeopardy and somehow we can fix it all if we only increase taxes and reduce our standard of living.  A recent report from NASA showed that the climate models people like Al Gore have relied on are hopelessly flawed and significantly overstate the problem.

Rev. Al needs to be medicated.  I'm sure at one point he had big plans for the billions he'd make with his carbon credit scam, but those days are over.

Oppressive Heat Wave to Affect Much of the Country

It's July and it's hot out there:

An oppressive and potentially deadly summertime mix of sizzling temperatures and high humidity baked a large swath of the country again on Sunday, pushing afternoon heat indexes in dozens of cities to dangerous levels.

Forecasters warned the heatwave would persist through much of the coming week and cautioned residents in more than three dozen states to take extra precautions.

The National Weather Service posted excessive heat warnings for much of the country's midsection, including Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, as well as South and North Dakota, where forecasters predicted heat indexes could hit 115 degrees.

"This will likely be the most significant heat wave the region has experienced in at least the last five years," the weather service said.

Cities especially hard hit by the heat included Rapid City, South Dakota, Springfield, Illinois, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, where AccuWeather.com meteorologists were predicting long-standing high-temperature records would fall this week.

Kristina Pydynowski, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, predicted the heatwave will affect more than 40 states.

My son just spent a week in Oklahoma where temperatures and humidity were worse than Las Vegas. I think it was 112 the first day he was there and 104+ the rest of the week. Plus they threw in some thunderstorms, so you know the humidity was up there. Pretty uncomfortable compared to what we're used to out here.

However, that's what happens in July. And the countdown to Al Gore proclaiming the whole thing is proof of global warming...3...2...1...

Al Gore Launches a New Globaloney Campaign

Since he's generally ignored these days, Al Gore is trying to drum up new hysteria about global warming (from Newsbusters):

Nobel laureate Al Gore must be noticing the public's continued lack of concern for his money making myth about carbon dioxide destroying the planet.

On Tuesday, he announced a new campaign and worldwide event to re-energize global warming hysteria:

Today, The Climate Reality Project (formerly the Alliance for Climate Protection) announced a new global campaign to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis and mobilize citizens to help solve it.  The campaign kicks off with 24 Hours of Reality, a worldwide, live streamed event on September 14-15.

During the 24 Hours of Reality event, people all around the globe living with the impacts of climate change will connect the dots between recent extreme weather events — including floods, droughts and storms — and the manmade pollution that is changing our climate. From Tonga to Cape Verde and Mexico City to Alaska, the event will feature scientists, celebrities, business leaders and concerned citizens, along with former Vice President Al Gore. It will be broadcast live online over 24 hours, in 24 time zones and in multiple languages.

"The climate crisis knows no political boundaries. Ferocious storms and deadly heat waves are occurring with alarming frequency all over the world. We are living with the reality of the climate crisis every day. The only question is, how soon can we act?" said Vice President Gore.

I guess Gore noticed the total failure of last month's climate talks in Bonn, Germany, as well as last week's Harrispoll which found "the lowest number who believe in global warming since the question was first asked in 1997 (44% now do, down from 51% in 2009 and 71% in 2007)."

Nobody is listening anymore, Al. Go home to your energy gulping mansion and your girlfriends.

Al Gore Wants You To Have Fewer Children

He didn't use the word abortion, but it wasn't far from his lips (from Daily Caller):

The global warming debate has always been a touchy one for both sides, and when the world’s top global warming activist is talking about the size of population and how that contributes to the choices societies make, it might be worth taking note.

In an appearance Monday in New York City, former Vice President Al Gore, prominently known for his climate change activism, took on the subject of population size and the role of society in controlling it to reduce pollution.

He offered some ideas about what might be done for females in the name of stabilizing population growth. (h/t Chris Horner via wattsupwiththat.com)

“One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women,” Gore said. “You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children have, the spacing of the children.

"Ubiquitous availability of fertility management?"  Is that like "no controlling legal authority?"  Gore can say less with more words than anyone I know.

I wonder if it snowed in New York? It usually does when Gore makes a global warming speech.

Betting Against Global Warming

Donald Boudreaux, a professor of economics, is offering a challenge to those who insist that the tornadoes we've had this year are a sign that global warming is ravaging the earth:

Since 1950 there have been 57 confirmed F5 tornadoes, with winds between 261–318 miles per hour, in the U.S. Of those, five struck in 1953; six in 1974. So far this year there have been four F5 tornadoes in the U.S., including the devastating storm that killed more than 130 people in Joplin on May 22. F5 tornadoes are massive, terrifying and deadly. But they generally touch down in unpopulated areas, thus going unnoticed. The tragedy of Joplin and other tornadoes this year is that they touched down in populated areas, causing great loss of life. Yet if these storms had struck even 20 years ago there would have been far more deaths.

So confident am I that the number of deaths from violent storms will continue to decline that I challenge Mr. McKibben — or Al Gore, Paul Krugman, or any other climate-change doomsayer — to put his wealth where his words are. I’ll bet $10,000 that the average annual number of Americans killed by tornadoes, floods and hurricanes will fall over the next 20 years. Specifically, I’ll bet that the average annual number of Americans killed by these violent weather events from 2011 through 2030 will be lower than it was from 1991 through 2010.

If environmentalists really are convinced that climate change inevitably makes life on Earth more lethal, this bet for them is a no-brainer. They can position themselves to earn a cool 10 grand while demonstrating to a still-skeptical American public the seriousness of their convictions.

But if no one accepts my bet, what would that fact say about how seriously Americans should treat climate-change doomsaying?

Do I have any takers?

Nope. Just as global warming proponents refuse to debate their preposterous theories, they won't defend them with their dollars either. We've had an active tornado season, which isn't unusual for a La Nina year, but these things are cyclical. If global warming explains 2011, what explains 1974, 1953, 1932 and 1925?

AP Course Requires Both Sides of Global Warming to be Taught

As it should be since human-caused global warming is still just a theory and not settled scientific fact:

A new high school advanced placement class that addresses global warming has prompted the school board to start requiring teachers to present opposing views in courses that include controversial topics.

Los Alamitos Unified School district trustees unanimously agreed to update the policy on controversial issues at the request of board member Jeffrey Barke, who said he is concerned about "global warming dogma" and wants students to be offered a balanced perspective on the topic.

"There are two clearly divergent opinions on global warming," Barke said in an interview. "There are those who believe that global warming is a fact, created by man's impact on the environment and the consequences will be devastating. There are others on the conservative side who believe it's much ado about nothing. It's overhyped and politically motivated, and the science is not solid, and there's room for more studies."

Since news of the board's decision was posted on a numerous national blogs, Barke said he has received more than 100 e-mails criticizing the district's move and attacking him personally.

Los Alamitos resident J.M. Ivler, who has a daughter at the high school, did not e-mail Barke, but he was critical of the school board.

"There is consensus in the field that we have global warming happening, it is getting warmer and it is related to what we are doing to the planet," he said. "That is not in dispute in the scientific community. It is in dispute in the political community. This is a science class. Teach science."

I'm sorry, Mr. Ivler, but you are woefully uninformed. Read and learn.  From Don Surber:

Climate Depot reported that more than 1,000 scientists “have now challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former Vice President Al Gore.”

As Marc Morano of Climate Depot pointed out that is 20 times the number of scientists (52) that signed on to the IPCC report that won a Nobel Peace Prize (not a Nobel science prize).

Let's hope that as a result of this class Mr. Ivler's daughter will be better informed about global warming than he is.

Majority of World is Laughing at Al Gore

Gallup says he's not fooling most of the people on global warming:

Most of the human race does not see global warming as a serious threat, according to a Gallup poll released last week that surveyed individuals in 111 countries.

Respondents were asked: “How serious of a threat is global warming to you and your family?” They were given the options of anwering: not at all serious, not very serious, somewhat serious or very serious.

Worldwide, only 42 percent told Gallup they believed global warming was either a “somewhat serious” or “very serious” threat. Gallup did not publish the separate percentages for each answer.

In the United States, 53 percent said they believed global warming was a “somewhat serious” or “very serious” threat to themselves and their families. That was down from 63 percent in polling that Gallup did on the question in the United States in 2007 and 2008.

Even if the globe is warming (and that's in dispute) there's not a darn thing we can do about it. Nature would just laugh at our feeble attempts to control the global temperature, especially if it's done with politically correct foolishness.

Americans Worry Least About Global Warming

Al Gore, you may now retire in shame.  Jim Geraghty tells us that Americans just haven't bought the globaloney hype:

I’ve never understood why the environmental movement so wholeheartedly embraced discussing a problem that is unproven and far-off in the future, like global warming, instead of discussing problems in the here and now, like water pollution, air pollution, etc. It would seem that is indeed where the public’s mind is, these days. Gallup: “With Earth Day about a month away, Americans tell Gallup they worry the most about several water-related risks and issues among nine major environmental issues. They worry least about global warming and loss of open spaces.”

Al, I might suggest you consider moving to an energy-gulping mansion in Europe where they've bought into the whole globaloney thing. They'll still worship you there.

Meanwhile, the same people who are futilely pushing global warming are stopping clean energy projects around the country:

The Obama administration has set a target of having 80 percent of America’s electricity come from “clean energy sources” by 2035, but ironically one of the biggest obstacles to this goal could come from within the environmental movement itself.

From coast to coast, efforts to build everything from wind farms to solar plants has run afoul of local environmental groups and the “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) phenomenon. Pro-environmental journals, such as the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, as well as business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have each cataloged this trend.

“Often, many of the same groups urging us to think globally about renewable energy are acting locally to stop the very same renewable energy projects that could create jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Bill Kovacs, senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote in the introduction of the group’s recent “Project, No Project” report. “NIMBY activism has blocked more renewable projects than coal-fired power plants by organizing local opposition, changing zoning laws, opposing permits, filing lawsuits, and using other long delay mechanisms, effectively bleeding projects dry of their financing.”

Recent examples include environmentalist lawsuits seeking to block construction of a solar power plant in California’s Mojave Desert due to threats to the endangered desert tortoise and environmentalists suing to block the construction of a 75-wind turbine project in Nevada due to threats to local wildlife.

And don't forget the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts that would have provided tons of clean energy to the area, but was killed by Teddy Kennedy because he might have been able to see a windmill from his family's compound. He could probably use a windmill right about now.

Mother Gaia Swats Down Another Global Warming Satellite

Apparently she doesn't like being spied on for junk science:

A rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite plummeted into the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch attempt Friday, the second-straight blow to NASA's weakened environmental monitoring program.

The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted off early Friday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but fell to the sea several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring satellite two years ago with the same type of rocket.

During a press conference Friday, officials explained that a protective shell atop the rocket did not separate from the satellite as it should have about three minutes after launch. That left the Glory spacecraft without the velocity to reach orbit.

"We failed to make orbit," NASA launch director Omar Baez said at a press conference Friday. "Indications are that the satellite and rocket ... is in the southern Pacific Ocean somewhere."

The 2009 failed satellite, which would have studied global warming, crashed into the ocean near Antarctica. Officials said Glory likely wound up landing in the same area. Both were on Taurus rockets launched by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va.

Put Al Gore in one of those and I bet she'd let it fly...as long as it couldn't come back.

UPDATE:  This launch had Obama administration connections:

NASA is launching an investigation into what caused a $424 million satellite, and a key climate research tool, to crash early Friday morning.

The mission was to be the first satellite launch under President Obama's climate initiative and was supposed to "advance the United States' contribution to cutting-edge and policy-relevant climate change science," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division, in January.