October 2007

Matthew Sinclair of the UK Taxpayers' Alliance has a good post up at his personal blog on how alarmists can completely ignore data that contradict their positions and turn the argument round to supporting their concerns.

On Sunday, October 25, Interfaith Voices, a public radio show hosted by Maureen Fiedler, interviewed Caroline Kenner, an ordained pagan clergyperson, about Halloween and how it fits into Wicca. Not particularly noteworthy, except for the following exchange. Fiedler asked, “What do witches do anyway?” After talking a bit about how witches have been unfairly maligned in history books, Kenner said this.

Kenner: It’s a healing path for many of us and it’s Earth based. And this is one of the reasons many people are drawn to it [paganism] these days. The environmental angle is extremely important to many many people in paganism and wicca. We believe the Earth is a living being and that our responsibility towards her includes good stewardship. And if we don’t take more notice of the effect on the environment and stop chasing the almighty dollar down the pike so quickly, we are going to end up exactly like exactly where we are going and it’s not going to be good.

Fiedler: So you would be very involved in things like issues of climate change?

Kenner: Well, for those of us who have had apocalyptic visions of the environmental destruction yet to come for 20 years, Vice President Gore’s film wasn’t a big surprise to some of us.

If Gore ever decides to run for President, at least he’ll have the apocalyptic pagan vote tied up.

Doomsayer Lovelock has been visiting the Royal Academy of Sciences in the UK again. I thought the Academy was a society for serious research, but they obviously like to get their apocalypse fix on a regular basis as well. I can recommend several religious establishments for this purpose, they don't have to drag the good name of science through the mud in this way.

Evidence suggests that much of our concern about global climate change – and calls for government action – may be misplaced. No matter what we do, climate will continue to change, as it always has, warming and cooling periodically for various reasons. We are not in the midst of a crisis.

READ my lips: economic growth and jobs equals energy use equals carbon emissions.

KEVIN Rudd has said it is "absolutely fundamental" that developing nations sign up to Kyoto emissions targets as he tries to limit the fallout after forcing Peter Garrett into an embarrassing backflip on Labor's policy.

 

I found an extensive Reuter's story about coal use growth in China, despite worries over global warming. It's nice to see that a country like China has adopted CEI's high wealth creation, maximum growth, maximum resiliency approach to adapting with climate change.

The Fires This Time

by William Yeatman on October 29, 2007

Blame California's mega-fires on global warming. Or at least that's what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said last week in the Hill.

Global warming affords endless opportunities to test glib hypotheses by politicians who have no training whatsoever in fields of which they claim pontifical knowledge. And Reid's statement is easy to test.