Catastrophe!

LIGHTHOUSE POINT, Florida (AP, 10/19/06) -- An 81-year-old man was in critical condition Thursday after a stingray flopped onto his boat and stung him, leaving a foot-long barb in his chest in an accident similar to the one that killed "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin. "Something like this is really, really extraordinarily rare," said Ellen Pikitch a professor of marine biology. "Even when they are under duress, they don't usually attack."

O’Reilly Factor, Fox News -- “It’s perfectly understandable,” said the lady scientist. “These creatures are under extreme stress from global warming.” O’Reilly wondered why a 1 degree F temperature rise would have such a dramatic effect. “It’s not like they were scalded,” he said. The lady scientist looked Bill in his unscientific blue eyes and patiently explained that he couldn’t be expected to understand the nuances of marine biology and the dire threat the ecosystem was under due to the increase in atmospheric carbon. Bill was impressed.

But I wasn’t. One of these years, the American voters are going to realize that they’ve been had, big time, by these global warming baristas and there will be hell to pay. But I get ahead of myself.

The crescendo of global warming hysteria peaked last summer with the worldwide release of algore’s horror movie (“An Inconvenient Truth”) that the naïve media and public took to be serious. Newscasts and print media kept reporting how “the science is settled,” that human caused global warming is the “consensus view.” Algore’s prediction of a 20 foot sea level rise by 2100 became an urban legend. Hollywood stars loved it and Gov. Arnold got his chops by signing a CA bill that “mandates” a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions statewide by 2020. The Democrats were delirious.

Then, unfortunately for them, some truth leaked out.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report issued Sept. 1 projected with confidence that the mean global temperature will increase by 3 deg. C and sea level will rise between 14 and 43 cm (1–3 feet) by 2100, if we do nothing. No Kyoto Protocol, no Kyoto 2, 3, 4,…N, nothing at all, and all we need to withstand is 1-3 feet higher seas. Folks started to think, “Hey, this is not so bad. In 94 years perhaps those fools living at sea level might find their way to ground 1-3 feet higher.” (Note to New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin.)

And the temperature rise will be least at the Equator (hot) and most at the poles (cold) so people in Minnesota might find their lows in the winter are 5-10 deg F higher than now, and my friend Chuck is delighted thinking about an extended duck hunting season. But don’t worry, if we somehow did stop the increase in greenhouse gas emissions the temperature increase would still be 2C by 2100, so Minnesota winter nights will still be pleasanter.

Here’s some more “inconvenient truth.”

Algore’s 20 feet of sea level rise was supposed to come from the melting of the polar ice fields. However, the huge East Antarctic ice sheet, which contains 90 percent of the world’s ice, has been thickening. European satellites measuring the ice sheet’s thickness found it is gaining about 45 billion tons of water per year because the planet has warmed enough for snow to fall at the coldest place on earth, according to a report in Science (June 24, 2005).

Just one more piece of algore’s “inconvenient truth”:

He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming. After Katrina last year, the alarmists were predicting even more hideous destruction to come this year. But something funny happened. It’s now nearly November, hurricane season is over, but there were no hurricanes. And you may have noticed that gas prices are down, from highs that were artificially inflated by the global warming - causes - hurricanes scare that led the oil futures traders to bid the price way up.

As for that so-called scientific consensus, one last bit of truth:

On July 24, 2006 the la times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at UCSD, reporting her review of 928 scientific papers. Oereskes claimed there was 100% consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. Algore featured her study in his movie. Now we find in a report by the Brit Benny Peiser that Naomi’s review ignored 11,000 studies or more than 90 percent of the papers dealing with global warming. And even in her small sub-sample, only 1% of the climate studies explicitly endorsed the so-called “consensus view” that human activity is driving global warming, 29% implicitly accepted the “consensus” and 3% of the studies actually opposed that view. Clearly 100% was a stretch, Naomi.

I could go on, but it’s just so stupid. However, you can’t keep a zealot down.

Fearing the loss of research funding if this sort of information gets reported by the mainstream media (unlikely), the global warming warriors cranked up the mega-complex climate models (nine of them) and churned out another study looking at the climate extremes that might occur. And this is where the catastrophe comes in.

According to the la times, Oct. 20, 2006: “Much of the world, including the drought-plagued American West, will face more deadly heat waves, intense rainstorms and prolonged dry spells before the end of the century.” In case you’re not scared yet, the report says the “temperature extremes … are likely to have adverse effects on human mortality and morbidity.” Did you know that the American West is draught-plagued? Apparently the West is in the eighth year of its most severe drought since record-keeping began in 1895, but I barely noticed. Grass is green, flowers are growing, cars are clean, pool is overflowing… no scratch that, I got carried away.

But it’s not all bad news. Other changes predicted by the models include a longer growing season and fewer frost days in the Northern U.S. and Europe. They may be able to grow wine grapes again in England, and the French will erect tariffs just like they did in the Medieval Warm Period when Greenland was green. And in Minnesota there will be fewer winter days categorized as “life threatening” – not such a bad thing.

Unfortunately the global warming hysteria has a momentum that has been barely deviated by the truth. TV ads by Bill Clinton and Julia Roberts implore CA voters to pass Prop. 87 that would impose a $4 Billion tax on oil taken from the ground. NY times columnist and flat-worlder Tom Friedman wrote that Arnold and Maria need to come out in favor of 87 so as to guarantee their legacy, and improve the chances of the 25% CO2 reduction.

Never mind that enacting the Kyoto Protocol would likely cost the United States up to $350 billion in 2012. “The average American family of four would pay an extra $2,700 annually for energy and consumer goods, and in US minority communities, the climate treaty would destroy 1.3 million jobs and substantially affect standards of living.” But Arnie’s protocol is only Kyoto/2 for CA (25% cut by 2020 rather than by 2012) so the CA family would only have to cough up $1350 annually, and we’d only lose about 100 thousand jobs. And the effect on temperature will be non-measurable, ie puny. But Hey! It’s a gesture.

I wish I had Senator Inhofe’s faith:

“The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.”

But I’m afraid that Neal Bortz has a more realistic take:

“Take heart, global warmistas! There's always next year! People aren't really getting that much smarter, so you'll be able to work your anti-capitalist, global warming agenda again.”