Mitt Romney Receives 'Backing' From Al Gore Over Climate Change Stance

Green Comrades:  Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the 2012 Republican nomination has received the kind of support he could do without – praise from Al Gore for his stance on climate change. 

From The Telegraph

By Toby Harnden

Mr Gore, who has championed climate issues since losing the 2000 presidential race and relinquishing the vice-presidency, posted a note on his blog lauding Mr Romney for his position that mankind has contributed to rising global temperatures.
 

"Good for Mitt Romney though we've long passed the point where weak lip-service is enough on the Climate Crisis," Mr Gore wrote. "While other Republicans are running from the truth, he is sticking to his guns in the face of the anti-science wing of the Republican Party."

The message, almost certainly designed to be mischievous, could further stir up conservative criticism of the former Massachusetts governor, who outlined his position in New Hampshire.

President Barack Obama and senior Democrats have also expressed enthusiasm for Mr Romney's Massachusetts health care law, describing it as a template for Mr Obama's controversial national reform of last year.

Mr Romney's supporters argue that the praise from Democrats is an attempt to scupper his bid for the nomination and an indication that they fear him. 

 

 

The Climate Change Climate Change

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

From The Wall Street Journal
By Kimberley A. Strassel

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

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Climate Change Indoctrination Takes a Mental Toll

We don't share the assumptions in this article that man-made global warming will precipitate global catastrophe. However, millions of students around the world are being brainwashed and traumatized by politicians and ideologues in government schools.

Climate Change Takes a Mental Toll

From The Boston Globe
By Emily Anthes

Last year, an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was refusing to drink water. Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as the first known instance of "climate change delusion."

Robert Salo, the psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming-related natural disasters.

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Dr. Gore, Please Call Your Office: Earth on Brink of an Ice Age

From Pravda

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

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More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

From LifeSiteNews

The UN global warming conference which concluded Friday in Poland faced a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. A newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report was released last week featuring the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN.

The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears.

Pro-life advocates have long mistrusted the Kyoto protocol and similar climate schemes as they are usually tied to population control, which could be implemented with the pressure coming from the alarmist claims Kyoto advocates have made in the past.

The report quotes Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, saying: "I am a skeptic … Global warming has become a new religion."

UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist said that warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history … When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists."

Geologist Georgia D. Brown, an instructor of Geology & Oceanography at College of Lake County in Illinois, who co-authored a 1993 peer-reviewed study on the CO2 content in the magma from Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii in the prestigious journal American Mineralogist, rejected climate fears and supported the notion of a coming global cool down. "I talk to my students about this topic every semester, not just when we are covering glacial geology, but at different points throughout the term. I want them to know that they shouldn't take every alarmist claim at face value," Brown wrote on December 13, 2006. "Fear is a means of controlling a population, and since the cold war has ended, the government needed new fuel for its control fire," Brown wrote.

See the full Senate Minority Report here: http://epw.senate.gov/public index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View...

Global Warming Freeze?

From The Washington Times
Commentary By David Deming

President-elect Barack Obama recently declared his intention to mitigate global warming by enacting a cap-and-trade policy that would reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by the year 2050.

But the last two years of global cooling have nearly erased 30 years of temperature increases. To the extent that global warming ever existed, it is now officially over.

This year began with a severe spell of winter weather in China. Observers characterized it as the largest natural disaster to hit China in decades. By the end of January, blizzards and cold temperatures had killed 60 people and caused millions to lose electric service. Nearly a million buildings were damaged and airports had to close. Hong Kong had the second-longest cold spell since 1885. A temperature of 33.6 degrees Fahrenheit was barely higher than the record low of 32 degrees F set in 1893.

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GLOBAL WARMING AND PAGAN EMPTINESS

Cardinal George Pell on the latest hysterical substitute for religion.

Interview by Michael Gilchrist in Catholic World Report, January 2008

In the debate over the theory of global warming, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney is a decided skeptic. His forthright reservations about the claim of catastrophic man-made climate change have made him a target for criticism in Australia. CWR talked to him about the controversy.

Your recent remarks questioning the claims about man-made climate change have drawn fierce criticism here in Australia. How do you account for that?

Cardinal Pell: Despite the fact that Australians like to see themselves as a ruggedly independent, rational, and democratic people, in some respects a herd-like mentality still prevails. Right now, the mass media, politicians, many church figures, and the public generally seem to have embraced even the wilder claims about man-made climate change as if they constituted a new religion.

These days, for any public figure to question the basis of what amounts to a green fundamentalist faith is tantamount to heresy. The angry editorials and letters to newspapers certainly suggest this.

You are one of very few public figures in this country to express open skepticism about man-made climate change and its alleged long-term effects. What is your reading of the scientific evidence for climate change? What is the basis of your skepticism?

Cardinal Pell: I am certainly skeptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes. Scientific debate is not decided by any changing consensus, even if it is endorsed by political parties and public opinion. Climate change both up and down has been occurring, probably since earth first had a climate.

Science is a process of experimentation, debate, and respect for evidence. Often it is dealing with uncertainties rather than certainties, and so its forecasts and predictions can be spectacularly wrong. We must not ignore evidence that doesn't suit our cause. Long-term weather forecasting is a notoriously imprecise exercise.

In the 1970s some scientists were predicting a new ice age because of global cooling. Today other scientists are predicting an apocalypse because of global warming. It is no disrespect to science or scientists to take these latest claims with a grain of salt. Commitment to the scientific method actually requires it.

Uncertainties on climate change abound. Temperatures in Greenland were higher in the 1940s than they are today, and the Kangerlussuaq glacier there is not shrinking but growing in size. While the ice may be melting in the Arctic, apparently it is increasing in extent in the Antarctic. Overall world temperatures have not increased since 1998 according to the statistics—whatever the case might be in particular locations.

Do you accept that human activities may have contributed to at least some of the global warming?

Cardinal Pell: Significant evidence suggests that average temperatures rose by 0.6 degrees centigrade during the last century, and there is no doubt that large-scale industrial activities can have an adverse impact in particular locations, as in the larger Chinese cities. But when averaged out across the globe, it is difficult to see this being the main culprit for any overall global warming, let alone bringing us to the verge of catastrophe. Again, we are dealing with a very imprecise science here, whatever the computer models might suggest. There are so many other variables.

The journal American Scientist recently published a study on the melting glacier on Mount Kilimanjaro. The study confirms that air temperature around the glacier continues to be below freezing, so it is not melting because of global warming. Instead, the melt pattern of the glacier is consistent with the effect of direct radiant heat from the sun. Human activity can't be blamed for that.

I gather that increasing temperatures have been detected on Mars where human activity can hardly be blamed. Man-made carbon emissions—however large or undesirable—need to be set in context next to the immense power of the sun, the influence of the oceans, clouds and other forces of nature that have been impacting the earth for millions of years.

Of course, if the locally adverse effects of human excesses, such as various forms of pollution, lead to greater care for the environment, that's all to the good. Humans act out of self-interest in these situations, although in addition Christians have particular responsibilities as custodians of God's creation for today and tomorrow.

What do you make of the popularity of Al Gore and his message of doom?

Cardinal Pell: There's no doubt many people are ready to believe the worst-case scenarios. Perhaps all those Hollywood disaster movies have blurred the distinction between fact and fiction. Few of us have the scientific knowledge to question the wild claims Gore has made—other than some grains of common sense.

However, the day before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the English high court ruled that DVDs of Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth could not be shown in schools without teachers providing additional materials to correct nine "significant errors" in the film.

Among them were claims that Pacific atolls are being evacuated because of rising sea levels and that polar bears are drowning because they have to swim up to 60 miles to find ice. The court found there is "no evidence" to support either claim. Polar bears have drowned in recent times, but because of storms, not melting ice.

Would you see the whole global warming mania as having overtones of a new religious movement filling the vacuum in a post-Christian culture?

Cardinal Pell: It is true that some of the more hysterical and extreme claims about global warming appear symptomatic of a pagan emptiness, of a Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature.

Years ago I was struck by the fears that middle-class kids without religion had about nuclear war. It was almost an obsession with a few of them. It's almost as though people without religion, who don't belong to any of the great religious traditions, have got to be frightened of something.

Perhaps they're looking for a cause that is almost a substitute for religion. I often point out that some of those who are now warning us against global warming were warning us back in the 1970s about an imminent new ice age, because according to some criteria an ice age is a bit overdue. Remember the fuss about the millennium bug and our computer systems in the lead-up to the year 2000.

Belief in a benign God who is master of the universe has a steadying psychological effect, although it is no guarantee of Utopia, no guarantee that the continuing climate and geographic changes will be benign. In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

What role do you see for yourself as a religious leader on this issue?

Cardinal Pell: There are many measures that are good for the environment that we should pursue. We need to be able talk freely about this and about the uncertainties around climate change. Invoking the authority of some scientific experts to shut down debate is not good for science, for the environment, for people here and in the developing world or for the people of tomorrow.

My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes. I strive to argue rationally towards God the Creator, and reject substitutes, be they pantheist or atheist.

Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralizing their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don't need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness. Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense.

The Christian God is not an insurance broker, nor did his Son Jesus Christ say anything on global warming, although he said much on the struggle between good and evil, meaning and fear, love and hate.

Jesus calls us to address the challenges in our own hearts, families, and communities before we moralize about distant worlds, where we are usually powerless.

Michael Gilchrist is editor of the Australian religious monthly AD2000 and author of the recently published study of Australian Catholicism, Lost! Australia's Catholics Today.

BUSH SELLS OUT AMERICA AT UN CONFERENCE

By Cliff Kincaid

Our national "news" programs have been preoccupied with baseball players on steroids, but they should devote some attention to the Bush Administration's approval of a plan to put the United Nations on steroids. Apparently looking to leave office with the blessings of the "international community," the Bush Administration just sold out American interests at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

Official conference documents speak of “a new global deal” by 2013, under which the U.S. dramatically reduces its greenhouse gas emissions under international supervision and transfers more money and technology to other countries. Marc Morano, who works for Senator James Inhofe and provides information that the U.S. media will not give to the American people, notes in a dispatch that the Bali conference featured a panel discussion of a global carbon tax to force U.S. taxpayers to cough up the money. An official U.N. report (PDF) prepared for Bali speaks of “a need for new and additional external sources of funds.” That’s U.N.-speak for global taxes. This is actually an old story I have been following for years. You can read more at my www.stopglobaltaxes.org website.

In a related matter, the Medical Journal of Australia has published an article advocating a carbon tax on a family having more than two children because every baby “represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions…” The author, a medical doctor, says that, as “citizens of the world,” populations need to be controlled “to ensure the survival of the environment.” He suggests “carbon credits” for those who are sterilized so they can’t have children.

This is where the global warming crusade is leading: an emerging world government with control over the most intimate details of our personal and family lives.

In addition to putting his stamp of approval on this suicidal course, President Bush is pushing the dangerous U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, which establishes another independent revenue stream for the U.N. Never mind that the evidence shows that the treaty’s International Seabed Authority is as corrupt as any other U.N. bureaucracy.

So the President who doesn’t want to raise domestic taxes on the American people will leave a legacy of global taxes.

“The United States joins the consensus Decision of the Conference of the Parties in Bali that is a critical first step in assuring that the U.N. negotiation process moves forward toward a comprehensive and effective post-2012 arrangement,” declared the Bush White House press secretary in a statement released on Saturday. This is bureaucratic jargon for letting the United Nations and the rest of the world decide the fate of the U.S. economy.

It was a story the media had to cover in some form. The U.S. “concession” at the end of the conference, in agreeing to the final document, sidetracked charges that the U.S. had been “obstructionist,” the New York Times reported.

So the Bush White House got some semi-favorable press from the leading liberal paper in the U.S. But at whose expense? As usual, Americans will pay and get nothing in return. This time, it is worse―a U.S. administration is giving away our sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats and global elitists. It’s quite a reversal―from rejecting the first U.N. global warming treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, to endorsing a much tougher and “comprehensive” treaty. It demonstrates, once again, how Bush has lost control of his administration and allows renegade bureaucrats at such agencies as the State Department and the CIA to set policy.

The media noted the turnaround when the State Department decided at the last minute to support a document that not only commits the U.S. to another treaty that will dismantle even more of the U.S. industrial base, but will plunder American taxpayers for more of their hard-earned tax dollars to be sent to the rest of the world. This is called, in the words of the White House press secretary, “financing the deployment” of “clean technologies” in the developing world and “assisting countries in adapting to climate change.” Another term for it is “foreign aid.”

Americans oppose additional foreign aid. But when it is presented in terms of saving the planet, it sounds more palatable. It is also popular to promote more foreign aid in the name of fighting AIDS, except for the fact that the U.N. has been caught exaggerating this problem, too. It is not fashionable to say―and even Rupert Murdoch of Fox News has jumped on the global warming bandwagon―but plenty of experts note the evidence that climate change is a natural phenomenon that we can’t do anything about. However, the U.N. sees the “problem” as another means by which it can increase its power. The scam is getting rather old, but people keep falling for it.

If there ever were a time for Republican presidential candidates to break with Bush and stake out a position against the U.N. and for American sovereignty in foreign affairs, this was it. And yet, at the December 12 presidential debate, as the Bali conference was underway, Senator John McCain said that while he thought the climate was changing because of human activity, it didn’t really matter whether humans were a factor or not. “Suppose that climate change is not real and all we do is adopt green technologies, which our economy and our technology is perfectly capable of. Then all we’ve done is given our kids a cleaner world,” he said. McCain seems oblivious to the prospect of giving the U.N. more power and authority and reducing our living standards in service to a lie.

“I agree with John. Climate change is real. It’s happening. I believe human beings are contributing to it,” declared Rudy Giuliani. “I think the best way to deal with it is through energy independence.” But how can American “independence” be achieved when politicians are making our economy subservient to the dictates of a global elite operating through the corrupt U.N.?

Where does Giuliani get the idea that human beings are “contributing” to global warming anyway? The U.N. says so, and that’s apparently good enough for him.

Alan Keyes, the new entry in the race, had the best answer on the topic. “I’m in favor of reducing global warming, because I think the most important emission we need to control is the hot air emission of politicians who pretend one thing and don’t deliver,” he said.

It is tragic to watch America decline while corrupt international bureaucracies grow in power and influence over us. It looks increasingly like Al Gore did win the election and is president today.