Posts Made By: Dave Snope

Dr. David Suzuki, chairman of the David Suzuki Foundation, gives some insight into the workings of David Suzuki's mind.

I do despair. My wife and I huddle at night and weep for our helplessness. We are losing big-time and I’m enough of a scientist to see we are heading right down the tube. Judging by the past twenty years, we are going backward. I understand why people like Jim Lovelock and Clive Hamilton believe it’s too late. But, if one says it’s too late, then I tell them “Please shut up and go away” because it does no good to say it’s too late.

But The Great Suzuki will not shut up.


Over the past century, good runs were of the order of 25 to 35 million fish. Two years ago, just over a million sockeye returned and I figured “That’s it. The run is done.” A year later we got the biggest run in 100 years – 35 million! No one knows what the hell happened, but it shows nature has surprises up her sleeve and maybe, if we can pull back and give her a chance, she will reveal some wonderful surprises

I tell children “The two most important people on the planet are Mom and Dad. Tell them you are worried about your future and because they love you, they have to become eco-warriors for you.”


http://ht.ly/4uN4M

Another in an unending string of climate change disaster predictions that didn't come true:


In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. These people, it was said, would flee a range of disasters including sea level rise, increases in the numbers and severity of hurricanes, and disruption to food production.

The UNEP even provided a handy map. The map shows us the places most at risk including the very sensitive low lying islands of the Pacific and Caribbean.

It so happens that just a few of these islands and other places most at risk have since had censuses, so it should be possible for us now to get some idea of the devastating impact climate change is having on their populations. Let’s have a look at the evidence:

.... charts and data...

However, a very cursory look at the first available evidence seems to show that the places identified by the UNEP as most at risk of having climate refugees are not only not losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions in the world.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/52189/what-happened-to-the-climate-refugees/

The 15 year change is shocking.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=13&fy=1996&sm=04&sd=13&sy=2011

H/T Steven Goddard

Not the witch doctors!

Scathing satire from Joanne Nova's speech at the 23 March 2011 "Carbon Tax" Protest in Perth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NtbuM3OuTZg

It's important to see both sides of a debate, and since I posted a link to Jo Nova's, here is a link to Bill McKibben's speech at PowerShift 2011.

From the Wiki, He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College.[2] In 2010, the Boston Globe called him "the nation's leading environmentalist".

It seems like I chose the right guy to represent.

I particularly enjoyed his points about the right CO2 ppm starting at 2:15, and at 3:00 his comment that the scientific method has worked splendidly was a gem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CdF8wz4Jwm8

The theory of anthropogenic global warming is based upon the notion that increases in the minor greenhouse gas CO2 result in increases of the major greenhouse gas water vapor, thereby supposedly increasing global warming to alarming levels of 2-5C per doubling of CO2 levels. Without this assumed and unproven positive feedback from water vapor, there is no basis for alarm. While the IPCC confidently stated in their 2007 report,

“The average atmospheric water vapour content has increased since at least the 1980s over land and ocean as well as in the upper troposphere. The increase is broadly consistent with the extra water vapour that warmer air can hold.”

a 2005 paper based on the NASA water vapor data set [called NVAP] showed that water vapor levels had instead declined (with 95% confidence) between 1988-1999. The paper states,

“By examining the 12 year record [1988-1999], a decrease of TPW [total precipitable water vapor] at a rate of -0.29 mm / decade is observed. This relationship is significant at the 95 % but not at the 99 % level [since when do climate scientists insist on a 99% confidence level?]. A downward trend would be intriguing since there should be a positive slope if a global warming signal was present."

If the trend in water vapor is negative instead of positive, there is no positive feedback from water vapor and the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming would be falsified. Climate scientist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. notes that the NASA findings "conflict with the conclusion of the 2007 IPCC report." NASA has not released an update of this extremely important NVAP water vapor data for the past 10 years and does not plan to release the data from 2001 through 2010 or the "reanalyzed" 1988-2001 data until "sometime in 2012 or 2013." However, an online NASA NVAP annual report dated 3/15/11 shows the telling "PRELIMINARY RESULT, NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION" of a continued decline in atmospheric water vapor:



While most NASA data is made available on the internet within a few months of collection and analysis, for some reason NASA NVAP water vapor data -which could either support or undermine the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming- is not going to be officially released for up to 12 years since collection. Is it too much to ask that NASA finishes its analysis and releases this data before the world spends trillions on a potentially non-existent problem?

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/04/nasa-keeps-mum-on-data-that-could.html

http://www.wimp.com/misunderstoodman/

Economic policy was brought up in a recent thread, and Investors Business Daily ran this relavant piece yesterday:

Compare the two worst post-World War II recessions. Both the 1981-82 and the 2007-09 downturns were long (16 months and 18 months, respectively) and painful (unemployment peaked at 10.8% in 1981-82 and 10.1% in the last one).

What's dramatically different, however, is how each president responded.

Obama massively increased spending, vastly expanded the regulatory state, and pushed through a government takeover of health care. What's more, he constantly browbeats industry leaders, talks about the failings of the marketplace and endlessly advocates higher taxes on the most productive parts of the economy.

In contrast, Reagan pushed spending restraint, deregulated entire industries, massively cut taxes and waxed poetic about the wonders of a free economy.

The result? While the Reagan recovery saw turbocharged growth and a tumbling unemployment rate, Obama's has produced neither. Consider:

• GDP. In the seven quarters after the 1981-82 recession ended, the economy cranked out quarterly growth rates that averaged 7.1%. Under Obama, GDP growth has averaged a mere 2.8%. (See chart at right.)

• Unemployment. Under Reagan, the unemployment rate had fallen to 7.5% by this point in the recovery. Under Obama, it's still stuck at 8.8%.

• Long-term unemployment. There were far fewer long-term unemployed by this point in the Reagan recovery; just 18% of the unemployed had been without a job 27 weeks or more. Under Obama, that figure is an astonishing 45%.

• Consumer confidence. By this point in the Reagan recovery, the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index had hit 100. Today, the index stands at just 65.4.

• Deficits. Under Reagan, the federal deficit was trimmed to 4.8% of GDP by 1984. Under Obama, the deficit is expected to climb to 10.9% of GDP this year.

Obama and his defenders like to say he inherited the worst downturn since the Great Depression and that things would have been worse still had he not acted. But the recession was almost over by the time he took office — and officially over just six months after that.

So while Obama's policies had little to do with bringing an end to the Great Recession, they've had everything to do with producing what is by far the worst economic recovery in the past 70 years.


http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/570566/201104281910/And-They-Call-It-A-Recovery-.htm

The Democrat's coordinated word of the day is "gutsy". As they usually do in a national situation, they all use the same word.

[I]But the top prize for the most sycophancy towards Obama this week surely has to be awarded to Wendy Chamberlain, Middle East Institute president and former US ambassador to Pakistan, who had this to say on CNN:

But he made that decision to go without telling Pakistan and that took some real courage, as much courage as our Navy SEALs did in pulling off a near flawless operation.[/I]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100086873/former-us-ambassador-to-pakistan-barack-obama-showed-as-much-courage-as-our-navy-seals/

Yes, Barack, it's the government union workers that are suffering the most. They're the victims, not the spending problems, in his alternate reality.

Day after day, every day this week, from his alternate reality economic policies to having cop-killer praising rap stars at the White House the night before honoring police heroes, from telling us the border fence is "basically complete" at only 5%, to making up a lie on the White House Blog that his supporters yelled "Republicans are racist" during his AZ press conference. Barack continues to demonstrate that he is the worst president ever.

CBS’s Mark Knoller, covering a town hall on the economy with the president this morning, reports: “President Obama blames high unemployment rate on ‘huge layoffs of government workers’ at federal, state and local levels.”



This is completely wrong. Extremely and mind-bogglingly wrong. Epically wrong… We are about 8 million away from the most recent peak in private-sector employment…. As you can see, in terms of total number of Americans employed in government, there has been no real discernible recession. In fact, the number has increased slightly.

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/267060/president-obama-completely-wrong-reason-high-unemployment