Can humanity bring pollution under control, before it's too late? Would you belive the answer is, "Yes, it's likely".

I hate arguing about "climate change". Because whether you belive we are causing it, or whether you believe it's a natural occurance (as pre industrial history supports), it doesn't change the facts that:

a.) Pollution is bad; it kills us. And...

b.) Even if climate change is a natural cycle doing it's thing, our pollution could make the changes even more severe. Does anyone want, or need that?

What I like about the following video is, that it looks at current trends, with an eye to the big picture. What it sees, is more optimistic than you might expect.

Now of course, if Russia or China drags us into WWIII... but that's another story. This story is, we need not die of pollution. Nice to hear some good news, for a change.

     

Will we end up wanting global warming?

Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots

WASHINGTON (AFP) – For years, scientists have been predicting the Sun would by around 2012 move into solar maximum, a period of intense flares and sunspot activity, but lately a curious calm has suggested quite the opposite.

According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.

The signs include a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles, said experts from the National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory.

"This is highly unusual and unexpected," said Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO's Solar Synoptic Network, as the findings of the three studies were presented at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

"But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."

Solar activity tends to rise and fall every 11 years or so. The solar maximum and solar minimum each mark about half the interval of the magnetic pole reversal on the Sun, which happens every 22 years.

Hill said the current cycle, number 24, "may be the last normal one for some time and the next one, cycle 25, may not happen for some time.

"This is important because the solar cycle causes space weather which affects modern technology and may contribute to climate change," he told reporters.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as the "Little Ice Age."

"If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate," said Hill. [...]

It sounds like guessing. And then it goes on to say that even if a "Little Ice Age" happens, we will still have to worry about Global Warming. Huh? Go figure.
     

Earth Day: absurd & alarmist predictions of 1970

The following post was from Neal Boortz on "Earth Day" last Thursday. It shows how ridiculous and alarmist some environmental "experts" can be:

OH ... AND IT'S EARTH DAY

Well Bravo Foxtrot Delta. Earth Day. Quick ... let me eat some granola and recycle a newspaper.

Well ... I really must do something to celebrate Earth Day ... so how about this. I'm going to share a little list with you that was lifted from the libertarian website Reason.com. These predictions were made on Earth Day 1970. That was my first full year of talk radio, and I'm sure we were talking up these points back then.

So ... read and enjoy.

Earth Day Predictions, 1970 "We have about five more years at the outside to do something." • Kenneth Watt, ecologist "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." • George Wald, Harvard Biologist "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." • Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." • New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist "By...[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation." • Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions....By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." • Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support...the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...." • Life Magazine, January 1970 "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist "We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones." • Martin Litton, Sierra Club director "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate...that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." • Sen. Gaylord Nelson "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

What Climategate story? On to Copenhagen!

Climategate gets a pass by the media, in favor of the Copenhagen Summit. Neal Boortz spells it out:

THE CLIMATE CHANGE CIRCUS

Have you been keeping up with this Climategate story? If you limit your information gathering to The New York Times, you may have missed it.

Let's start at the beginning.

Where did this global warming nonsense come from in the first place? See how this fits:

The international community, working through the basically anti-American United Nations, starts dreaming of world-wide wealth redistribution. Well ... actually wealth isn't distributed, at least not here in the United States. Here, for the most part, it is earned. Even the poor, poor pitiful poor in this country earn whatever wealth they have. They don't exactly do it by punching a clock. Why go through all that trouble when all you have to do is punch a ballot.

OK ... so you have all these half-assed third world countries with their dictators of various stripes eyeing the wealth of the developed, industrial nations. They want some of that wealth, though they aren't willing to earn it. Why would some dictator tolerate a productive economy that might threaten his continued rule? Freedom - the necessary ingredient for a productive economy - has a way of causing domestic intranquility for dictators. So working through free markets isn't going to cut it. They will simply have to arrange whatever wealth they cannot seize handed to them. The best conduit for this wealth would be the UN.

OK ... so you're going to use the United Nations to transfer wealth from the big, fat wealthy nations to the corruption-plagued third world. But you're going to need a pretext? Hmmmmm. You need to come up with some way these nations are hurting you; some action these ugly rich nations are taking that is causing you harm. You're not under military attack. Your property isn't being conquered and seized ... at least not by the U.S. and Western Europe. But there is one thing! Now I don't have any idea how this idea was brought to fruition ... but it's brilliant!

When the cold war ended the world was littered with disaffected and discouraged communists and socialists. Their precious ideal of one world under Communism had melted away before their eyes. The Berlin Wall was aggregate and the Soviet Union was breaking apart. The precious hammer and sickle was being replaced by a Russian flag of red, white and blue stripes. These lost communists and anti-capitalists needed a new next. They were homeless. Where to turn?

The founder of the environmental group Greenpeace can tell you where these lost communists went. They headed straight for the environmental movement. Within weeks of the fall of the Soviet Union Greenpeace offices and rallies were suddenly crowded with unkempt people wearing Che Guavara t-shirts and Mao hats. This was the chosen new way to attack capitalism; not through the recitation of Communist doctrine, but through phony environmental concerns. Now capitalism was to be attacked not for its oppression of the working man, but for its affect on pour creeks, our lakes, and the air we breathe. The environmental movement became the home of anti-capitalists around the world.

What a perfect fit for third-world countries desirous of arranging for mighty transfers of wealth from the evil rich nations! They could work with the environmentalists to attack capitalism for all of the evil things that capitalists do to the fish and birds and stuff --- and for heating up our earth! These rich nations will need to pay! First we'll cook up some treaty that will slow down their economic growth ... then we'll find a way through the UN to make them pay for the damage they've already done. We can cripple their evil capitalist empire and get our hands on their wealth with a grand global warming scare campaign!

OK ... I need to cut this short. The United Nations and various environmental groups started pouring money into global warming research. Other nations, including the United States, joined in. After all, if you don't fund research into the affects of global warming, you really don't care what happens to our climate, do you? The scientists wanted to keep the money coming. To do that they knew they would have to bow to the dictates of political correctness ... and political correctness being a left-wing creation these scientists knew that they had better determine that man is going to cause this earth to become some sort of a convected oven if we don't slow down ... and the United Nations is just the crowed to do it.

So now we have discovered that one of the premiere research facilities involved in global warming research has been ... well, "faking it" is not too strong a phrase to use here.

Many of us already knew global warming to be a fraud. When scientists refuse to acknowledge the cyclical nature of solar activity in a discussion on global warming you have to scratch your head in wonder. Plus - when someone tells you that the science "is settled" and that there is "nothing left to debate;" you know that the science is anything but settled and there is plenty to debate.

The first news broke a bit over a week ago. Someone got into the computers at The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. This is one of the premiere global warming research institutes and has been constantly cited in stories warning us that we are cooking ourselves. Now there are thousands of emails from the East Anglia CRU detailing the "tricks" that were used to cook the data and the efforts made to ignore and to create a virtual exile for any scientists who dared to disagree with man-made global warming doctrine.

But .. here's the kicker. I alluded to it at the beginning of this bit. Now these scientists at the East Anglia CRM have admitted that they disposed of the raw data they used to conjure up their tales of man-made global warming. Just in case you're not a scientist .. throwing away your raw data is considered a big-time no no. There is, however, one really big reason why you might want to do this - toss the raw data into the garbage - and that would be if the data doesn't support your "learned" conclusion.

So now we will never be able to look at the original data these scientists gathered. Now we're truly at the point that were we have nothing left to do but take their word for it. Sorry .. .but when much of the undeveloped world is gunning for my bank account, I'm not sure I want to take these scientists word for anything.

Perhaps the more interesting story at this point is the failure of the ObamaMedia to pick up on the story. I guess the global warmers are going to have to find some other cause to disguise their wealth seizure and re-distribution schemes.

None of this seems to be slowing down The Community Organizer. He's heading to Copenhagen where the left and those after our wealth are going to try to cobble together a replacement for the hideous Kyoto Treaty.

Recently there has been an uptick in the number of stories on climate change. Here are a few of my favorites:

-Doctors in Great Britain are being told to educate their patients on the benefits of tackling climate change and lowering their carbon footprint.

-Experts say that lights on expressways should be turned off at night in order to protect the environment. It stops pollution and prevents the disruption of the life cycles of birds and bats and other wildlife.

-The president of Brazil says that the "gringos" should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation. By "gringos" he means Western nations .. aka. the United States.

It's a fraud, folks. How long are we going to tolerate these asinine ideas?

Obama, who originally said he would not attend the summit when people began to object, has of course changed his mind at the last minute, as I knew he would. So it will be onward with the Democrats agenda:

UN upbeat on Copenhagen global climate deal

[...] Ahead of Monday's talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hit back at claims that human influence on global warming has been exaggerated.

It said it was standing by its findings in response to a row over the reliability of data from a UK university.

Hacked e-mail exchanges from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit have prompted climate change sceptics to claim that data has been manipulated.

Top Swedish climate official Anders Turesson told the BBC that he hoped the issue "will be investigated".

However, Mr Turesson, who will also be leading EU negotiations as Sweden currently holds the rotating EU presidency, added: "But I cannot see it will in any way affect the negotiations here." [...]

That's right, we wouldn't want to confuse people with the facts, would we?

I'm thinking we need to upgrade our electrical grid at the RV Park with meters at each site, to charge for electricity. It seems certain that rates are going to go up after this. I think that those who voted for our current Democrat government can now start paying "their fair share", as the consequence of their choices.
     

Climate Change Fraud Exposed. Scandal?

Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’ (PJM Exclusive)
The man who challenged Al Gore to a debate is furious about the content of the leaked CRU emails — and says why you should be, too.

This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

[...]

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up. Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be. [...]

And how much exposure is all this getting in the MSM? Hardly any.

     

Our climate, the weather, our grid and the Sun

Sun entering weakest cycle since 1928
NOAA releases new predictions for solar cycle

The sun has entered its weakest cycle of magnetic activity since 1928, meaning fewer solar flares and coronal mass ejections, scientists predicted in a May 8 teleconference. A panel of solar scientists assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center reports that the cycle, which scientists believe began in December 2008, will peak in May 2013.

Storms of solar magnetic activity cause flares and ejections that can spit X-rays, UV light and billions of tons of charged particles into space, and toward Earth. These outbursts can make Earth’s upper atmosphere expand, potentially knocking out electrical grids and disrupting satellite communications — and can harm spacewalking astronauts.

“It’s fair to say we probably won’t see a whole lot of solar storms from this cycle,” Douglas Biesecker of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., said at the teleconference. “But a weaker cycle won’t lessen the intensity of the storms, just the number of them.” [...]

I had done an earlier post about the current solar minimum being extended, almost two years longer than it's expected cycle. The decrease in sunspot activity seems to coincide with colder than normal temperatures globally.

I can only wonder, if solar activity can slow down to the point where it extends beyond it's predicted cycle, might it not also move in the other direction too? Sort of like a pendulum, that swings in one direction, then back again an equal distance in the opposite direction? If we see below normal sunspot activity now, will we see higher than normal activity later?

The first article mentioned above made reference to solar storms. The earth has experienced many solar storms in it's past, but not any really big ones since humankind began using electricity on a large scale. The last great solar storm happened in 1859:

Relatively mild sunspot cycle predicted, but even 1 solar storm can damage Earth

WASHINGTON — When the sun sneezes it’s Earth that gets sick.

It’s time for the sun to move into a busier period for sunspots, and while forecasters expect a relatively mild outbreak by historical standards, one major solar storm can cause havoc with satellites and electrical systems here.

Like hurricanes, a weak cycle refers to the number of storms, but it only takes one powerful storm to create chaos, said scientist Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather prediction center.

A report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a storm as severe as one in 1859 occurred today, it could cause $1 trillion to $2 trillion in damage the first year and take four to 10 years to recover.

The 1859 storm shorted out telegraph wires, causing fires in North America and Europe, sent readings of Earth’s magnetic field soaring, and produced northern lights so bright that people read newspapers by their light.

Today there’s a lot more than telegraph lines at stake. Vulnerable electrical grids circle the globe, satellites now vital for all forms of communications can be severely disrupted along with the global positioning system. Indeed, the panel warned that a strong blast of solar wind can threaten national security, transportation, financial services and other essential functions.

The solar prediction center works closely with industry and government agencies to make sure they are prepared with changes in activity and prepared to respond when damage occurs, Biesecker said in a briefing.

While the most extreme events seem unlikely this time, there will probably be smaller scale disruptions to electrical service, airline flights, GPS signals and television, radio and cell phones. [...]

Read the whole thing. It says that sunspot measuring has been going on since the 1750's. When it comes to climate and weather, most of us only think in terms of what we've experienced directly, in our lifetime. But there is so much more historically. It's too easy to get hysterical about climate change, without that historical understanding of past changes and a scientific understanding of all the factors affecting our climate and weather, the sun being the most powerful.

People fear what they don't understand. If we understand the dynamics of climate change on earth, we can adapt to it when necessary and work with the ebb and flow of nature, instead of uselessly struggling to control it. We simply cannot control the sun.


Another article from NASA that mentions the 1859 solar storm:

New Solar Cycle Prediction

[...] It is tempting to describe such a cycle as "weak" or "mild," but that could give the wrong impression.

"Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather," points out Biesecker. "The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we’re predicting for 2013."

The 1859 storm--known as the "Carrington Event" after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare--electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused "only" $80 to 125 billion in damage. [...]

I'm not saying it's going to happen again soon. But it is likely to happen again sometime. And those who know the history of the sun and it's potential behaviors won't be taken completely by surprise by it. And hopefully, will be prepared for it. Katrina was also predicted, and would have been less damaging if more people had paid attention and acted accordingly.
     

George Carlin: "Save the F*cking Planet"

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. HT to Neal Boortz.

Just for fun, here's George Carlin's take on Earth Day. Do I need to tell you that there will be bad words in this video? Well, there, I just did.

Carlin jokes about the arrogance of enviro-wackos. Deliciously scathing.
     

Was 2008 the year that Global Warming was finally debunked as Unscientific Nonsense?

Ask one of those polar bears that have failed to drown like they should have.


Or better still, read this article by Christopher Booker from the Telegraph:

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

[...] Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world. [...]

We can only hope. But fantasies don't always die easily. I expect that just like Holocaust deniers, the hard core of the Global Warming Chicken Littles will always be with us.

And of course, since global warming has failed to materialize, it's adherents now claim that, no matter what the weather does, it's all proof that their theory is true anyway:

"Global warming" is a pseudo-science like astrology

A theory that can't be disproved, because no matter what happens, it's true anyway? What's science got to do with it? Nothing that's demonstrably true.
     

John McCain, Global Warming, Cleaner Air, Silver Lined Clouds and Sweet Lemonade

I've been ranting a lot lately about supporting our candidate, even when you can't agree with him on many issues. It's clearly difficult when you don't agree with your party's potential leader. I've compared it to making lemonade out of lemons. Perhaps it's my turn to make the lemonade.

Anyone who's read my blog knows what I think about the global warming hoax. Anyone who sees the news knows that John McCain is actively playing up to it.

Yes, it bothers me. Many times in my life, I've embraced the philosophy of finding silver linings in clouds, or making lemonade out of lemons. And yes, I've applied it to this. I'll start with the cloud first. Yes, I found the silver lining. For me it is thus:

Pat recently used the word "Watermelons" to describe many of the people who dominate the environmental movement; they are green on the outside, red on the inside. Their concern for the environment is only skin deep, it's really just a cover for their leftist anti-capitalist agenda. Their main purpose is to use environmentalism to attack capitalism, the same way many leftists support gay rights, radical feminists and black separatists; they care nothing for these causes, they are just supported by leftists to be used as a means to an end.

I consider myself "green" in the genuine sense; things like recycling and conserving energy and using resources efficiently, and conserving our environment by developing renewable resources are, to me, wonderful conservative ideas. Authentic environmentalism doesn't bother me, but the watermelons like Al Gore and company do.

When president Bush first mentioned global warming in his state of the union address, I was quite annoyed with him. I suspect he was simply trying to address an issue that has many Americans concerned, because he is supposed to be president of all the people, and as such it's necessary to stretch yourself at times to address issues that may not be your own, or at least not your priority.

I expect the same with John McCain, but he has walked through the door George Bush opened, and taken this issue to the next level. What good could come out of this? I can honestly think of a few things:

1.) If he treats the issue moderately, he will be appreciated by moderates who want to see something done, while simultaneously taking some of the wind out of the sails of the loonies and the radical left who are egging them on.

2.) Many of the solutions that are desired by global warmist believers also mesh nicely with concerns of many Republicans like myself. Developing alternative energy sources, including nuclear power, reducing dependency on oil, conserving energy, less waste of resources... if we can agree on these things, even if it's for different reasons, then why shouldn't we?

3.) We end up with cleaner air. Is this a bad thing? We all need to breath, and so will future generations. The pollution we release into the air can't be called back, it just keeps building up. It builds up gradually and we don't notice. Then one day, it's too late. Nuclear waste can be contained, and 80 percent of it can now be recycled. Other alternate energy sources don't pollute. Placing caps on emissions would provide incentive to support and speed their development.

Ok, that's the silver lining. But there are dangers inherent here. No matter what McCain does, the radical left will scream that it's not enough, and push for more, to try and damage our economy as much a possible. But by treating their concerns seriously and attempting to do something about it, he's also entering a tug-of-war contest, that will bring him close to the edge of the hoax abyss. If he can maintain his position and balance, fine. If he gets pulled over the edge, it could be disastrous.

So then comes the question: can we make lemonade out of this? I'm willing to try, but it depends on how far left he gets dragged. If he's pulled too far, the lemons will be so sour that I doubt any amount of sugar could fix it. I'm hoping he can build enough moderate support in this cause, to anchor him and keep him away from the cliff's edge, where the extremists want to go. If he can maintain the necessary balance, I will support him in this... but cautiously.

Can We Sue Al Gore and Carbon Credit Sellers?

Here is a scathing article by Eric Creed of Cityview magazine:

The Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated

[...] OK, I am a skeptic. When every lunatic liberal leftist on the face of the planet says we need to close down the carbon emissions of industry (carbon caps) and spend trillions of dollars trying to fix something that (1.) we don’t know if we caused it (the factual evidence says we didn’t), and (2.) if we did cause global warming, is it really in our power to fix (reverse) it, red flags go up. Many leading scientists firmly believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good for the planet. David Archibald, PhD, at the Biology Department of San Diego State University, is one of those leading scientists. In a lecture given at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, Dr. Archibald said that more CO2 in the atmosphere will give us a lusher environment and actually increase plant growth rates in addition to increasing the sustainability of crops in arid regions. [...]

This article is full of details about the fraudulent data that Al Gore and company have been peddling. At one point, it's suggested that Al Gore and people selling carbon credits should be sued for fraud. It would expose the financing behind the global warming hoax and allow testimony by reputable scientists who are informed with the complete data, not the faulty, incomplete and deliberately misleading computer models Al Gore has been using. Apparently this has been happening in Britain, and the real Inconvenient Truths have finally started to be debated honestly.

It's fine for people to be concerned about the environment, but debate and discussion about it has to be open and honest, and not ignore FACTS such as the sun's influence, and how the Earth's history is full of abrupt climate changes:

Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate

We have nothing to fear from the truth. Liars are a different matter.
     

Is Carbon Dioxide actually our Friend?

In praise of CO2
With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green

[...] Until the 1980s, ecologists had no way to systematically track growth in plant matter in every corner of the Earth -- the best they could do was analyze small plots of one-tenth of a hectare or less. The notion of continuously tracking global production to discover the true state of the globe's biota was not even considered.

Then, in the 1980s, ecologists realized that satellites could track production, and enlisted NASA to collect the data. For the first time, ecologists did not need to rely on rough estimates or anecdotal evidence of the health of the ecology: They could objectively measure the land's output and soon did -- on a daily basis and down to the last kilometre.

More from FP Oil Watch

The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass -- almost 110 million square kilometres -- enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.

Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up -- carbon is the building block of life -- and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."

Lush as the planet may now be, it is as nothing compared to earlier times, when levels of CO2 and Earth temperatures were far higher. [...]

The article goes on about the extensive benefits, including more abundant food. But if we are to believe radical leftists who claim that CO2 is a bad thing, what would it REALLY mean if we were seriously try to stop it? This next article tells us about the many sacred cows of the environmental movement that would be skewered by serious attempts to limit CO2:

Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green

[...]Winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism's sacred cows. We can afford to ignore neither the carbon-free electricity supplied by nuclear energy nor the transformational potential of genetic engineering. We need to take advantage of the energy efficiencies offered by urban density. We must accept that the world's fastest-growing economies won't forgo a higher standard of living in the name of climate science — and that, on the way up, countries like India and China might actually help devise the solutions the planet so desperately needs. [...]

The article goes on to give 10 Green Heresies that environmentalists need to embrace if they are serious about stopping greenhouse gases. You may find them shocking, even if you aren't "green"!
     

A Tax on Cow Farts to fight Global Warming

Just when you think you've seen it all. From Nealz Nuze:

THE LATEST GLOBAL WARMING TAX

When you want to save the planet from a non-existent crisis ... taxes and wealth redistribution seems like the way to go. In Estonia, farmers will now be taxed for the methane emissions produced by their cattle. Cattle produce the largest amounts of methane gas through belching and flatulence ... this accounts for 15-25% of overall gas emissions. One cow has the ability to produce an average of about 350 liters of methane and 1,500 liters of carbon dioxide each and every single day.

Apparently this isn't the first country to propose taxes along these lines. New Zealand also proposed a flatulence tax because New Zealand cattle are responsible for 90% of the country's methane emissions.

This "flatulence tax" is yet another way to creatively drive up food prices. Instead of taxing cow farts, which is methane, why not instead extract the methane from the manure of all farm animals and turn it into fuel, instead of using corn? Feed the corn to the animals to make manure, and turn the manure into fuel. The technologies involved in converting methane from manure into fuel have greatly improved since the idea was first explored in the 1970's. Recycling a waste product into something useful makes more sense than inefficiently wasting a food product that's needed elsewhere.
     

Ethanol and high food prices: the warnings were there years ago, but very few listened

Global warming hysteria lead politicians to "do something", regardless of the facts and warnings about what ethanol production would do to food prices. From Neal Boortz at Nealz Nuze:

CONCEDING THE BIOFUEL ARGUMENT ... NOT ME, THE POLITICIANS

But not now ... then.

Finally, somebody in DC is addressing the fact that ethanol production may have something to do with the increase in world food prices. Gee, ya think? I wonder what their first clue was.

Just yesterday Condi Rice said, "There has been apparently some effect, unintended consequence from the alternative fuels effort." Unintended consequences? Food costs rising 8% since 2005 ... People, even members of Congress, have been warned for years about the consequences of mandated ethanol production. Then there's this article from CNN Money dated back to 2006, or this one from almost one year ago warning us about ethanol's affect on food costs. Still not convinced? Go back to the 2004 election where ethanol was a really nice talking point for politicians. The New York Times even pointed out the problem of rising food prices due to mandatory ethanol production in January of 2006.

To give you one more piece of information, take a look at this article printed in the Science Daily back in Aug. 8, 2001. Here is what scientists have known since years:

The approximately $1 billion a year in current federal and state subsidies (mainly to large corporations) for ethanol production are not the only costs to consumers, the Cornell scientist observes. Subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and poultry in the United States Increasing ethanol production would further inflate corn prices, Pimentel says, noting: "In addition to paying tax dollars for ethanol subsidies, consumers would be paying significantly higher food prices in the marketplace."

Back in 1994 when Al Gore cast the tie breaking vote in the Senate that led to a methanol mandate from the EPA we were told that "the price of corn flakes isn't going to go up by one penny." Hind sight truly is 20-20.

This is what happens when politicians decide to value hysteria, emotional thinking and feel-goodism over science, reason and basic math.

It was the Democrats who lead this irrational charge into nonsense that is now raising food prices world wide. Yes, they had bi-partisan support from many Republicans who they suckered into the Ethanol boondoggle. But it was none other than enviro-wacko Al Gore who cast the tie breaking vote that pushed through the ethanol program. There's an Inconvenient Truth.

Now that we have rising food prices, will Gore take the credit? I doubt it. Because the price rises are occurring during a Republican administration, I bet he and the Democrats will try to put the blame on the Republicans. This is what the Republicans get for supporting pie-in-the-sky legislation from Democrats.

John McCain had spoken out against Ethanol production for many years, but more recently he also caved into the pressure to support it. He shouldn't have, because he was right all along.

The question now is, who's going to fix this government-created mess? Will anyone have the nerve to say we should scrap the Ethanol subsidies?


Related Links:

Undoing America's Ethanol Mistake

Mark Steyn: Feed your Prius, starve a peasant

Rising food costs are due to Ethanol Boondoggle
     

Food Prices & Climate Change Hysteria

What Happens When You Put Food Into Cars

Rising food costs due to Ethanol Boondoggle

When Ronald Reagan said "The government isn't the solution, it's the problem", he wasn't kidding. Ethanol is a prime example.

The Democrats are especially good at creating "solutions" that create even more problems, that in turn, require even more government. But this ethanol scam went through with the help of Republicans, who "felt" the need to "do something" in response to the global warming hysteria, instead of sticking with good science, reason and the known facts. This foolishness is the result of responding to hysterical hype.

Now the Democrats will use rising food prices as yet another reason to turn Republicans out of office, when in reality it was the Democrats who pushed hardest for the ethanol program. Yet it will be the Republicans that the MSM will blame.

The best thing the Republicans could do now is reverse this bad decision, but will any of them have the guts to do it, lest they offend the adherents of the Global Warming Religion?

UPDATE 04-09-08. This link from the "Government Is Not Your Daddy" blog:

Alternative Energy and the Law of Unintended Consequences

[...] Our national “investment” in subsidizing bio-fuel production has been so overwhelmingly successful that it’s had the effect of repurposing the majority of our corn crops to ethanol production. It has also motivated farmers to divert production from other crops to crops that can be used for biofuels.

Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of this noble effort have been to raise food prices, not only here in the U.S., but around the world. Rising food prices hit the poor the hardest, and accelerate the spread of poverty. In an article in Foreign Affairs, titled How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor, authors Runge and Senauer said ”Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires more than 450 pounds of corn - which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year.” Even as food shortages increase in countries where people are already starving, the U.S. is being forced to reduce its international food aid due to rising food costs at home, largely due to the diversion of crops to biofuel production.

The high demand for biofuels is also having an unintended impact on some of the environmentalists’ own pet causes. [...]

This article also goes into detail about the harmful effects of diluting gasoline with 10% ethanol, and the many other unintended harmful side effects of the Ethanol Boondoggle. Read the whole thing... and weep! Then demand that our politicians not only stop this nonsense, but reverse course before the damage spreads further.
     

Are we becoming a nation of idiots?

This piece from the Dallas Morning News looks at several major factors in the dumbing down of public discourse, and gets it exactly right:

Susan Jacoby: Is America getting dumber?

[...] Dumbness, to paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print (and by video, I mean every form of digital media); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book – fiction or nonfiction – over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) Americans are reading less and less. The lines between news and entertainment are becoming blurred, into a mish-mash of "info-tainment". Focusing on video media instead of reading seems to also encourage shorter attention spans, which is even manifesting itself in the way presidential campaigns are conducted:

[...] As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, politicians are under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that from 1968 to 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate – featuring the candidate's voice – dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, it was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge. [...]

It's not my imagination the electorate seems to be getting dumber and dumber. A growing number of people seem to lack the most basic kind of knowledge. But it isn't just the lack of knowledge that is the the problem:

[...] That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place.

Call this anti-rationalism – a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation. [...]

Exactly. How are people who don't even understand the basics of the earth's physical relationship to the sun going to be able to even begin to understand debates about the weather and so-called "global warming"? They won't bother to understand; they'll just follow their "feelings". I find this pretty scary stuff. It's a kind of Brave New World that we don't need. This article goes into a lot more detail, and is well worth reading. Identifying the problem properly is the first step to begin turning it around.

And clearly, it DOES need to be turned around. The facts are appalling:

Only 1 of 2 students graduate high school in US cities: study

[...] "Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma."

Based on 2003-2004 data, the report said that across the country the graduation average for public school students is 69.9 percent, with the best success rate in suburbs -- 74.9 percent -- and rural districts -- 73.2 percent.

Asian-Americans score the highest graduation rate, at 80 percent, with whites at 76.2 percent and Hispanics at 57.8 percent.

Women graduate at a much higher rate than men, 73.6 percent to 66.0 percent.

In the country's city schools, the study found that in urban areas generally, just 60.4 percent graduate, and in the principal school districts of the top 50 cities, barely half graduate. [...]

And as if these figures are not bad enough, consider that many of the students who do graduate are "functional illiterates". They can read traffic signs and labels on packages at the supermarket, but they can't understand newspaper or magazine articles, comprehend written instructions, write letters or balance a checkbook. A high school diploma is worth less and less. Nowadays many employers consider applicants with less than two years of college to be unemployable.

All of this is fixable, but we need to start reversing it now. Political correctness and Self Esteem BS be damned.
     

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... in Baghdad?

From the GOP Vixen blog: Snow in Baghdad!

For the first time since anyone there can remember, according to AccuWeather! Which makes for a perfect Feel-Good Photo Friday...

Posted by Bridget on January 11, 2008 at 04:14 PM |

Must be that darn global warming making snow again...

Stossel- GMAB - Al Gore Global Warming Myth
     

Global Temperatures, Sun Spots & Cosmic Rays

Too much of the hysteria surrounding global warming has involved cooking the figures by leaving out data. This article from Meridian Magazine show us many of the ways this is done:

All in a Good Cause

[...] If you pay close attention, you'll find that Global Warming alarmists are not actually saying "Global Warming" lately. No, nowadays it's "Climate Change." Do you know why?

Because for the past three years, global temperatures have been falling.

Oops.

The thing is, we've had twenty years since the Alarmists first raised the banner of Global Warming. They told us that "If This Goes On" by 2010 or 2020, sea levels will be rising so high that coastal cities will be flooded, famines will cover the earth, and ...

Oh, you know the list. They're still making the same predictions — they just move the dates farther back.

It's like those millennarian religious cults in the 1800s. Religious leaders would arise who would predict the Second Coming of Christ in 1838. When Christ didn't oblige them by showing up, they went back to their visions or scripture calculations or whatever they claimed and report that they miscalculated, now it was going to be 1843. Or whatever.

Here's the raw truth:

All the computer models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict that past.

That is, when you run their software with the data from, say, the 1970s or 1980s, and project what should happen in the 1990s or 2000s, they project results that have absolutely nothing to do with the known climate data for those decades.

In other words, the models don't work. The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done.

Why are so many scientists so wrong? [...]

Bold emphasis mine. Read the whole thing, there is so much more. Real science needs to be talked about, examined and discussed rationally, not religiously.


So how about some REAL and HONEST science? See what these two Danish researchers discovered:

The sun moves climate change

[...] For more than a decade, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center has been pursuing an explanation for why Earth cools and warms. His findings -- published in October in the Proceedings of the Royal Society -- the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the Royal Society of London -- are now in, and they don't point to us. The sun and the stars could explain most if not all of the warming this century, and he has laboratory results to demonstrate it. Dr. Svensmark's study had its origins in 1996, when he and a colleague presented findings at a scientific conference indicating that changes in the sun's magnetic field -- quite apart from greenhouse gases -- could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures.

[...]

Svensmark and his colleague had arrived at their theory after examining data that showed a surprisingly strong correlation between cosmic rays --highspeed atomic particles originating in exploded stars in the Milky Way -- and low-altitude clouds. Earth's cloud cover increased when the intensity of cosmic rays grew and decreased when the intensity declined.

Low-altitude clouds are significant because they especially shield the Earth from the sun to keep us cool. Low cloud cover can vary by 2% in five years, affecting the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square metre during that same period. "That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square metre estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution," Dr. Svensmark explained.

The Danish scientists put together several well-established scientific phenomena to arrive at their novel 1996 theory. The sun's magnetic field deflects some of the cosmic rays that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, and in so doing it also limits the immense amounts of ions and free electrons that the cosmic rays produce. But something had changed in the 20th century: The sun's magnetic field more than doubled in strength, deflecting an extraordinary number of rays. Could the diminution of cosmic rays this century have limited the formation of clouds, making the Earth warmer? [...]

Read on to see how these men proceeded to go about proving this theory. And why the global warming alarmists don't want you to hear about it.


Here is more on the cosmic ray connection in this article by Richard Black, for the BBC News:

Sun and global warming: A cosmic connection?

[...] Over the course of the Earth's history, the main factor driving changes in its climate has been that the amount of energy from the Sun varies, either because of wobbles in the Earth's orbit or because the Sun's power output changes.

Most noticeably, it changes with the 11-year solar cycle, first identified in the mid-1800s by astronomers who noticed periodic variations in the number of sunspots.

If it varied enough, it could change the Earth's surface temperature markedly. So is it?

[...]

Henrik Svensmark and his collaborators at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC) believe the missing link between small solar variations and large temperature changes on Earth are cosmic rays.

"I think the Sun is the major driver of climate change," he says, "and the reason I'm saying that is that if you look at historical temperature data and then solar activity and cosmic ray activity, it actually fits very beautifully.

"If CO2 is a very important climate driver then you would expect to see its effect on all timescales; and for example when you look at the last 500 million years, or the last 10,000 years, the correlation between changes in CO2 and climate are very poor."

When hugely energetic galactic cosmic rays - actually particles - crash into the top of the atmosphere, they set in train a sequence of events which leads to the production of ions in the lower atmosphere.

The theory is that this encourages the growth of tiny aerosol particles around which water vapour can condense, eventually aiding the formation of clouds.

And the link to the Sun? It is because cosmic rays are partially deflected by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles rushing away from the Sun, and the magnetic field it carries. A weaker solar wind means more cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere, hence more clouds and a cooler Earth. [...]

Read more to see what calm, rational, logical and provable science looks like. The cosmic ray theory is not new, and it has been studied continuously and expanced on since the 1950's. Many tenets of this theory are now provable through lab testing, and the historical data collected fits together to support it, in the complete and WHOLE picture. It's demonstratably correct, and makes more sense than incomplete data manipulated with software.
     

Stossel- GMAB - Al Gore Global Warming Myth

The Dems really seem to be going all out with the children-as-props thing. I guess it saves them from having to talk about FACTS. Emotional appeals are so much better, you don't need to think, just react.

Are Democrats "Emotional Thinkers"?

Global Warming Hysteria;
separating the facts from the fiction
     

Are Democrats "Emotional Thinkers"?

Which is to say, they don't really think that much, they FEEL more than anything else, and act accordingly. A study has been done that pretty much says just that. Neal Boortz has a look at it here:

THE DUMBING DOWN OF DEMOCRATS

[...] It looks like we have a high-powered brain scientist serving as the latest advisor to the Democratic party. Drew Westen conducted research which leads to his conclusion that politicians – liberal politicians -- should try and appeal to people's emotions, rather than bogging them down with data and facts.

Where did we first find out about this research? Why, at the ultra-left wing "Take Back America" convention, that's where. The study was presented by researcher, Drew Westen, a psychologist and brain researcher at Emory University in my hometown of Atlanta.

Here's the ironic part of his study. It sounds to me like Dr. Westen is basically telling democrats that their constituents are stupid. He is telling democrats to appeal to constituents' emotions because "it doesn't make sense to argue an issue using facts and figures ... or to count on voters to make choices based on sophisticated understandings of policy differences or procedures." And there you have it. Avoid the facts, just go right for the heart!

Dr. Westen is suggesting that manipulating a voter's emotions is better than boring them to tears with sophisticated understandings. "Sophisticated understandings? What's that? Sounds to me like just a phrase denoting basic worldly knowledge, or being an educated citizen. Mr. Westen says, "[The brain] prefers conclusions that are emotionally satisfying rather than conclusions that match the data."

Message to Democrats. Don't bore your constituents with facts. Just tell them whatever makes them comfortable, warm, happy and all fuzzy.

Hmmmmm .... Not boring constituents with facts. Does that sound at all like the global warming cultists? But, I digress [...]

(bold emphasis mine) It's worth reading the whole thing. Some of the
recent comments by Global Warming religionists are a perfect example of "emotional thinking" in action. They are attempting to whip up the emotions and create hysteria, in order to silence the opposition and stop reasoned debate and argument. That is the only recourse of people whose arguments will not hold up to scrutiny; prevent the scrutiny from happening.

The Irony is that Drew Westen is using his study to advise the Democrats that they can only win elections through emotional manipulation, and if that requires being negative about the opposition, they should go for it.

Emory University Professor Drew Westen, right, and Associate Professor Stephan Hamann, left, look over a computer generated composite of a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, FMRI, picture of a brain on Emory University's campus in Atlanta. (AP)
The Democrats already have a reputation as being the party of negativity. Yet time and time again, Americans elect optimists in presidential elections. Drew Westen's strategy sounds like a losing one to me. You can read more about his study here:

Hearts over minds, he tells Democrats

For more on the topic of "Emotional Thinking", see Born Again Redneck Yogi's essay here:

"The spirit is willing...
     

Al Gore's three 30 inch computer screens

He really does have three 30" screens. I'd try to think of something nasty to say about that, but I can't, because... I'd like to have those too!

I did find a comic though, that made some fun comments:


I got it from joyoftech.com, which also had this poll with it:

Most likely reason Al Gore needs those three 30" monitors?

• He's attempting to open a portal to other universe.
• He needs the desktop space for inventing things.
• He heard there's lots of money to be made in screen real estate.
• Everybody needs to spoil themselves now and then.
• TIME magazine was coming over, he had to do something fast to distract them from his messy office.
• Those monitors really take the sting out of not winning that election!

View the Results

My office is just like Al Gore's, but the screens, and the office, are considerably smaller:


No doubt Al needs the extra screen and office space more than I do. It can't be easy running a world-wide Global Warming Religion, and doing neat things like inventing the internet! Clearly it requires more space. ;-)

Here is a link to a compilation of all my posts involving Al Gore.