Global Warming Lawsuits Becoming a Growth Industry

Can't get anyone to pay attention to your global warming hoax? Sue 'em:

From being a marginal and even mocked issue, climate-change litigation is fast emerging as a new frontier of law where some believe hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.

Compensation for losses inflicted by man-made global warming would be jaw-dropping, a payout that would make tobacco and asbestos damages look like pocket money.

Imagine: a country or an individual could get redress for a drought that destroyed farmland, for floods and storms that created an army of refugees, for rising seas that wiped a small island state off the map.

In the past three years, the number of climate-related lawsuits has ballooned, filling the void of political efforts in tackling greenhouse-gas emissions.

Eyeing the money-spinning potential, some major commercial law firms now place climate-change litigation in their Internet shop window.

Seminars on climate law are often thickly attended by corporations that could be in the firing line -- and by the companies that insure them.

But legal experts sound a note of caution, warning that this is a new and mist-shrouded area of justice.

I'm guessing the mist is being caused by global warming.

The problem with running this issue through the courts rather than looking objectively at the science is in court you just have to convince some jurors or perhaps a liberal judge or two of the righteousness of your cause, even if you can't produce science to back it up. Once it's in the courts it becomes subjective, not objective.  Get the right people on the jury and you can get them to award millions, even if the whole thing is based on a hoax.

And in order to avoid massive legal bills, many companies may choose to settle rather than fight the hoax in court.  Yet another reason why we need a loser-pays tort system in this country.

Super La Niña

Looks like world weather is about to head into a very cold pattern:

A super La Nina is developing.

Historically, these strong La Nina events drop the Earth’s average temperature around one degree Fahrenheit, and the drop comes quickly. As a result, some of the same places that had record heat this summer may suffer through record cold this winter.

La Nina is the lesser-known colder sister of El Nino. La Nina chills the waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean, and in turn cools the entire planet for one to two years or more. This chilling has the potential to bring bone-numbing cold to many parts of the world for this and the following winter. As a result, world energy demand may spike in the next one to two years as much colder weather hits many of the major industrial nations.

This La Nina appears to be special, at least so far. It is well on its way to being the strongest of these events since the super La Nina of 1955-1956. During that powerful La Nina that lasted two years, the global average temperature fell nearly one degree Fahrenheit from 1953 to 1956.

So, in a practical sense, what does this mean for temperatures around the U.S.?

Right now the Pacific Ocean is in the beginning of a thirty year cooler spell called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. There is a strong, potentially super La Nina developing. The sun is still quiet with very few sunspots. When these conditions exist, the first two months of the cold season (December and January) tend to be cold from Montana to Iowa to Florida up to the Great Lakes and most of New England. In addition, temperatures tend to be very cold from central and western Canada to Alaska. China could suffer a bitterly cold December and January if historic temperature patterns are consistent with current conditions. Much of central and western Europe are cold in these situations as well.

The second half of the cold season (February and March) typically experiences some changes in the global temperature patterns in these types of winters. For Europe the changes are not good. Bitter cold and snow dominates from western Russia across all of Europe. In other words, what starts as a cold winter in central and western Europe deepens into a severe winter in February and March across all of Europe. The extreme cold eases in southern China but it deepens in the north and northeastern part of the country. In the United States the cold of December and January in the middle and eastern part of the country reverses to mild weather from Texas to Florida up to the Great Lakes and New England. All of the western U.S. is cold and snowy up to the northern Great Plains. What starts as a mild winter out west turns much colder with large amounts of snow while the east gets a break from the cold.

By the way, for all the global warming activists out there, you might enjoy this paragraph:

The El Nino of the last year pushed the global temperature right back to where it had been in the beginning of 2007. The result has been no net warming or cooling since then. In fact, there has been no net warming or cooling since around 1999. Interestingly, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 369 parts per million to 387 ppm (parts per million) during this time. This amount is above the level of 302 ppm in 1910, when 20th century global temperature started to rise. Despite this significant rise in carbon dioxide since 1999, there has been no “global warming” during this period.

An inconvenient truth for Al Gore.  Today's big storm in the upper Midwest could be the first of many.

Goodbye Sunspots, Hello Global Cooling

The sun is quieting down and this bodes ill for the global warming crowd:

“Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades. The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age.”

Get out your long undies, folks.

Global Warming Headline of the Day

From the AP:

Old Farmer's Almanac: Global cooling to continue

Al Gore, call your office.

And a bonus headline:

Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss -- by half!

Global Cooling Hits Al Gore

I guess it's gotten pretty frosty at the Gore mansion:

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage.

According to an e-mailed statement obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the Gores said it was "a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."

Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider confirmed the statement came from the Gores, but declined to comment further.

Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush. He has since campaigned worldwide to draw attention to climate change, which in 2007 led to a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

Tipper Gore is known for her advocacy on mental health issues. She became interested partly because her mother suffered from depression.

There's no truth to the rumor that the marriage broke up because Al had an affair with a polar bear.

Global Cooling Coming Back

So says The Space and Science Research Center:

The Space and Science Research Center (SSRC), the leading independent research organization in the United States on the subject of the next climate change, issues today the following warning of imminent crop damage expected to produce food and ethanol shortages for the US and Canada:

Over the next 30 months, global temperatures are expected to make another dramatic drop even greater than that seen during the 2007-2008 period. As the Earth’s current El Nino dissipates, the planet will return to the long term temperature decline brought on by the Sun’s historic reduction in output, the on-going “solar hibernation.” In follow-up to the specific global temperature forecast posted in SSRC Press Release 4-2009, the SSRC advises that in order to return to the long term decline slope from the current El Nino induced high temperatures, a significant global cold weather re-direction must occur. According to SSRC Director John Casey, “The Earth typically makes adjustments in major temperature spikes within two to three years. In this case as we cool down from El Nino, we are dealing with the combined effects of this planetary thermodynamic normalization and the influence of the more powerful underlying global temperature downturn brought on by the solar hibernation. Both forces will present the first opportunity since the period of Sun-caused global warming period ended to witness obvious harmful agricultural impacts of the new cold climate. Analysis shows that food and crop derived fuel will for the first time, become threatened in the next two and a half years. Though the SSRC does not get involved with short term weather prediction, it would not be unusual to see these ill-effects this year much less within the next 30 months.”

I can't wait for James Hansen or Al Gore to tell us this is all being caused by global warming.

Record Snowfall Generates Call for New Federal Agency

Just what we need. From Red State:

You know what this all means right? We need a new federal agency to “study and report on the changing climate.”

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

“Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat,” Locke said Monday at a news conference.

Lubchenco added, “Climate change is real, it’s happening now.” She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.

Please tell me, when is the climate not changing? As we orbit the sun orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy our climate will, as it has done since God first said “Let there be light”, continue to change.

There is nothing new under the sun. This is just the 21st century equivalent of the 5000 year old sun worshipping religions.

Exactly.

Global Warming Quote of the Day

From Vladimir Putin:

“In addition to the global warming challenges, we need to address ‘global cooling’ effects and to do so promptly.”

Say what??

A New Mini Ice Age

That's a distinct possibility:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.
This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.

South Texas where I was this weekend just had some of the coldest weather they've had in years. Looks like this may not be an isolated incident.

Big Chill Coming

Accuweather says to get out your warm woolies - it's going to get pretty cold in much of the country:

Nearly the entire eastern half of the United States is enduring bitterly cold temperatures not experienced since 1985. Even Florida, which has been hovering around freezing levels overnight recently, is also feeling the almost-nationwide chill.

"It'll be like the great winters of the '60s and '70s," said AccuWeather.com Chief Meteorologist and Expert Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi.
The last time a large swath of severely low temperatures struck the nation was in January 1985. That historic arctic outbreak had below-zero temperatures Fahrenheit stretching from Chicago eastward to New York City, and all the way south to Macon, Ga.

This Friday I'll be making my 12th annual visit to Rockport, TX, home of the Rockport Gospel Music Festival. We've had all kinds of weather over the years, from 80's and humid to 50's and rainy. Most of the time the temps are in the 60's or 70's (even though it's January) and fairly comfortable. That's why so many Midwesterners head there this time of year and become "Winter Texans". They will make up the majority of our crowd this weekend.

Well, I just looked at the 10 day forecast for Rockport and the high temp on Friday will be 40, climbing to 44 on Saturday. As you can see from the map above the arctic air will make it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Darned global warming.

Today's Global Warming Headlines

From Drudge:

East Coast Faces Deep Freeze; Florida Oranges Threatened...
CHILL MAP...
Iowa temps 'a solid 30 degrees below normal'...
Peru's mountain people 'face extinction because of cold conditions'...
Beijing -- coldest in 40 years...
World copes with Arctic weather...

COLD, COLD, COLDER

We warned you a few days ago this was gonna happen.

Global Cooling Forces Nancy Pelosi to Leave Global Warming Summit Early

God must love messing with their heads:

In a strange twist, a Washington snowstorm is forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, to make an early departure from a global warming summit here in Denmark.

Pelosi told CNN that military officials leading her Congressional delegation have urged the 21 lawmakers to leave Copenhagen several hours earlier than scheduled on Saturday.

The Speaker said she has agreed to the new travel plan so that lawmakers can get back to Washington before much of the expected storm wallops the nation's capital.

Let's hope they have a bumpy flight home.

Remember the Global Cooling Panic of 1975?

I do, and so does this guy:

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."

Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."

OK, you say, that's media. But what did our rational scientists say?

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age."

You can't blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed's mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today's scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work.

In 2002 I stood in a room of the Smithsonian. One entire wall charted the cooling of our globe over the last 60 million years. This was no straight line. The curve had two steep dips followed by leveling. There were no significant warming periods. Smithsonian scientists inscribed it across some 20 feet of plaster, with timelines.

What if your are wrong and there is instead an ice age coming? Wouldn't we be aiding that end and killing everyone on the planet by "taking action"?

Last year, I went back. That fresco is painted over. The same curve hides behind smoked glass, shrunk to three feet but showing the same cooling trend. Hey, why should the Smithsonian put its tax-free status at risk? If the politicians decide to whip up public fear in a different direction, get with it, oh ye subsidized servants. Downplay that embarrassing old chart and maybe nobody will notice.

I remember a TV show from the 70's called "In Search Of..." starring Leonard Nimoy as the host. The show went "in search of" various interesting topics, and one that I remember was "In Search Of the Coming Global Ice Age". Global cooling was all the rage back then, just as global warming was all the rage...at least until the earth stopped warming in 1998.

Mankind has no control over earth's climate. Only arrogant pinheads who think themselves gods would presume to believe they could alter that planet's temperature through their actions.

Global Warming Photo of the Day

From The Corner:

That, folks, is the sun - the source of all warming on this planet. Notice anything missing? Sunspots. Sunspots are signs of increased energy output and they've gone largely missing for the last two years.

There have been 264 spotless days in 2009. Four more such days and 2009 will become the 2nd most spotless year in the last 100. If you want to know why global temperatures are declining look no further.

We could fire up all the SUVs on earth and not change a thing.

Global Warming Headline of the Day

From MSNBC:

Earth could plunge into sudden ice age

And, of course, the reason is global warming. It causes everything.

Global Warming Video of the Day

From Minnesotans for Global Warming:

Apparently Obama has decided to attend the climate change conference in Copenhagen. He had earlier promised to reverse global warming and now, thanks to the revelation of the great globaloney fraud, it looks like it's been reversed. What a leader.

Many in Media Still Working to Defend Climate Change Fraud

The hacked emails from the British agency promoting global warming has created massive heartburn for the mainstream media which has been pushing globaloney for years. Normally the scent of a major fraud would send the media scrambling to be the ones to break the story, but this time they're all too interesting in defending the climate con men:

Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of days have uncovered some shocking revelations about the baloney practices that pass as sound science about climate change.

It was announced Thursday afternoon that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. Those e-mails involved communication among many scientific researchers and policy advocates with similar ideological positions all across the world. Those purported authorities were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global-warming claims.

Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny. Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the "trick of adding in the real temps to each series ... to hide the decline [in temperature]."

Mr. Mann admitted that he was party to this conversation and lamely explained to the New York Times that "scientists often used the word 'trick' to refer to a good way to solve a problem 'and not something secret.' " Though the liberal New York newspaper apparently buys this explanation, we have seen no benign explanation that justifies efforts by researchers to skew data on so-called global-warming "to hide the decline." Given the controversies over the accuracy of Mr. Mann's past research, it is surprising his current explanations are accepted so readily.

There's more at the link.

Ace points out this piece of media complicity with the climate con men:

Networks, Media Blacking Out ClimateGate Story; ABCNews Instead Runs Headline, "Worse Than the Worst: Climate Report Says Even Most Dire Predictions Too Tame"

Shameful.

Apparently climate change is one of those stories that's "too good to check", and when the "deniers" turn out to be the ones telling the truth, media heads explode.

This Newsbuster item is pretty funny. Major newspapers are still pushing globaloney is their articles and ignoring the Climategate scandal but their readers won't let them get away with it.

I Guess We Have Longer to Save the World Than We Thought

Several world leaders in recent months have given us the countdown to save the world, the number of days left to enact crippling climate regulations that would keep Mother Gaia's heart ticking for a bit longer.

Maybe not.

I guess Mother Gaia isn't quite yet on the critical list because suddenly we have more time:

President Barack Obama and other world leaders agreed today that next month's much-anticipated climate change summit will be merely a way station, not the once hoped-for end point, in the search for a worldwide global warming treaty.

The 192-nation climate conference beginning in three weeks in Copenhagen had originally been intended to produce a new global climate-change treaty. Hopes for that have dimmed lately. But comments by Obama and fellow leaders at a hastily arranged breakfast meeting here on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit served to put the final nail in any remaining expectations for the December summit.

"There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days," said Michael Froman, Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economic matters.

Of course, these delays give the rest of the world a little more time to realize that global warming stopped in 1998, thus making their economy-crippling plans harder to sell.

That's a good thing. Enjoy the cooler weather.

And in the spirit of reducing carbon footprints, I guess the delay means Obama's 71 vehicle motorcade which he had in China won't be that big of a deal.

John Holdren, Climate Populist

John Holdren is the totalitarian loon who now serves as Obama's Science Czar. He's also a climate populist - somebody who chases whatever the "cool kids" in climate science say he should promote. Here's what he's had to say about global warming from the October 2008 Scientific American:

The ongoing disruption of the earth’s climate by man-made greenhouse gases is already well beyond dangerous and is careening toward completely unmanageable. Under midrange projections for economic growth and technological change, the planet’s average surface temperature in 2050 will be about two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than its preindustrial value. The last time the earth was that warm was 130,000 years ago, and sea level was four to six meters higher than today. No one knows how long it will take sea level to “catch up” with such an increase; it could be several centuries, or it could be less.

In other words, we're all gonna die.

Now, let's flash back to the Disco Era for this Holdren Golden Oldie, courtesy of Zomblog:

In 1971, John Holdren edited and contributed an essay to a book entitled Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man. He wrote (along with colleague Paul Ehrlich) the book’s sixth chapter, called “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide.” (Click here to view a photograph of the table of contents, showing Holdren’s essay on pages 64-78; click on the image to the left to view the cover.) In their chapter, Holdren and Ehrlich speculate about various environmental catastrophes, and on pages 76 and 77 Holdren the climate scientist speaks about the probable likelihood of a “new ice age” caused by human activity (air pollution, dust from farming, jet exhaust, desertification, etc.).

In other words, we're all gonna die.

This is the worst form of populism, based not on reality or even reliable science, but based on seeing a parade and running to get in front of it. Nothing he forecast in 1971 came true, and there's no reason to think that his latest rants will come true either.

Truth is not important to populists. Being one of the "cool kids" is what's important, and now that he's part of the Obama Czar Regime, he's one of the coolest.

How Come the Oceans Aren't Receding As Promised?

The White House starts the next big scare - global warming:

Harmful effects from global warming are already here and worsening, warns the first climate report from Barack Obama's presidency in the strongest language on climate change ever to come out of the White House.

Global warming has already caused more heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, longer growing seasons and altered river flow, according to the document released Tuesday by the White House science adviser and other top officials.

What's wrong with longer growing seasons? I had a story just the other day that crops are failing because of global cooling.

And remember this from an Obama speech about a year ago?

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless...
... this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...
... this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

So, why hasn't he healed the planet yet?