Climate Predictions Left Un-Fullfilled

This is from Watts Up With That blog

The Worst Climate Predictions of 2008

And yet to play out, let’s also not forget Al Gore’s 2008 prediction: “Entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years”

-Anthony

By Dennis Avery in the Canada Free Press

“2008 will be the hottest year in a century:” The Old Farmers’ Almanac, September 11, 2008, Hurricanes, Arctic Ice, Coral, Drinking water, Aspen skiing

We’re now well into the earth’s third straight harsher winter-but in late 2007 it was still hard to forget 22 straight years of global warming from 1976-1998. So the Old Farmer’s Almanac predicted 2008 would be the hottest year in the last 100.

But sunspots had been predicting major cooling since 2000, and global temperatures turned downward in early 2007. The sunspots have had a 79 percent correlation with the earth’s thermometers since 1860. Today’s temperatures are about on a par with 1940. For 2008, the Almanac hired a new climatologist, Joe D’Aleo, who says the declining sunspots and the cool phase of the Pacific Ocean predict 25-30 years of cooler temperatures for the planet.

“You could potentially sail, kayak or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice . . . is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.” Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs, June, 2008.

Soon after this prediction, a huge Russian icebreaker got trapped in the thick ice of the Northwest Passage for a full week. The Arctic ice hadn’t melted in 2007, it got blown
into warmer southern waters. Now it’s back. (Reference)

Remember too the Arctic has its own 70-year climate cycle. Polish climatologist Rajmund Przbylak says “the highest temperatures since the beginning of instrumental observation occurred clearly in the 1930s” based on more than 40 Arctic temperature stations.

(This uneducated prediction may have been the catalyst for Lewis Pugh and his absurd kayak stunt that failed miserably - Anthony)

“Australia’s Cities Will Run Out of Drinking Water Due to Global Warming.”

Tim Flannery was named Australia’s Man of the Year in 2007-for predicting that Australian cities will run out of water. He predicted Perth would become the “first 21st century ghost city,’ and that Sydney would be out of water by 2007. Today however, Australia’s city reservoirs are amply filled. Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne Herald-Sun reminds us Australia is truly a land of long droughts and flooding rains.

“Hurricane Effects Will Only Get Worse.” Live Science, September 19, 2008.

So wrote the on-line tech website Live Science, but the number of Atlantic hurricanes 2006-2008 has been 22 percent below average, with insured losses more than 50 percent below average. The British Navy recorded more than twice as many major land-falling Caribbean hurricanes in the last part of the Little Ice Age (1700-1850) as during the much-warmer last half of the 20th century.

“Corals will become increasingly rare on reef systems.” Dr. Hans Hoegh-Guldberg, head of Queensland University (Australia) marine studies.

In 2006, Dr. Hoegh-Guldberg warned that high temperatures might kill 30-40 percent of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef “within a month.” In 2007, he said global warming temperatures were bleaching [potentially killing] the reef.

But, in 2008, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network said climate change had not damaged the “well-managed” reef in the four years since its last report. Veteran diver Ben Cropp said that in 50 years he’d seen no heat damage to the reef at all. “The only change I’ve seen has been the result of over-fishing, pollution, too many tourists or people dropping anchors on the reef,” he said.

No More Skiing? “Climate Change and Aspen,” Aspen, CO city-funded study, June, 2007.

Aspen’s study predicted global warming would change the climate to resemble hot, dry Amarillo, Texas. But in 2008, European ski resorts opened a month early, after Switzerland recorded more October snow than ever before. Would-be skiers in Aspen had lots of winter snow-but a chill factor of 18 below zero F. kept them at their fireplaces instead of on the slopes.

*Sources:

Predictions of 25-30 year cooling due to Pacific Decadal Oscillation: Scafetta and West, 2006, “Phenomenological Solar Signature in 400 Years of Reconstructed Northern Hemisphere Temperature Record,” Geophysical Research Letters.

Arctic Warmer in the 1930s: R. Przybylak, 2000, “Temporal and Spatial Variation of Surface Air Temperature over the Period of Instrumental Observation in the Arctic,” International Journal of Climatology 20.

British Navy records of Caribbean hurricanes 1700-1850: J.B. Elsner et al., 2000, “Spatial Variations in Major U.S. Hurricane Activity,” Journal of Climate 13.

Predictions of coral loss: Hoegh-Guldberg et al., Science, Vol. 318, 2007. Status of Coral Reefs of the World 2008, issued by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, Nov., 2008.

Aspen climate change study: Climate Change and Aspen: An Assessment of Potential Impacts and Responses, Aspen Global Change Institute, June, 2007.
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Dennis T. Avery, is a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute in Washington. Dennis is the Director for Global Food Issues ([url=http://www.cgfi.org]http://www.cgfi.org[/url]). He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State.


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Rent

A Post From Reason's Hit and Run
I love posts that illustrate the Rent-Seeking problem we have in this country. I added the bold emphasis.

Blagojevich as a Lesson in The Evils of Rent-Seeking
George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, finds that the Blago contretemps reminds him of the importance of the economic concept of rent-seeking, and how government income transfers do more, and worse, than create a zero-sum game of special interest wins, taxpayer loses. An excerpt:

The income derived from possessing a special privilege is called "rent" (which, by the way, has nothing to do with the monthly payments that tenants make to landlords). Rents themselves are just a transfer of value from some people to others. So, for example, when each American pays an extra $10 annually for sugar because of the special protections that Uncle Sam gives to American sugar farmers, that $10 winds up in the hands of sugar farmers. Each of us who doesn't grow sugar is worse off by $10, while those who do grow it are better off by the sum total.
[But] the very ability of government to create lucrative special privileges diverts resources from socially productive pursuits into wasteful ones.
Knowing that government is willing and able to impose tariffs that will protect them from foreign competition – and knowing that such protection will raise their incomes – sugar farmers understandably spend some of their resources farming government rather than farming their land.
Such lobbying can reap advantages worth millions. So it's understandable that companies spend considerable effort courting politicians who can bestow such privileges. That's wasteful. Time, energy, and other materials that could be used to expand the output or improve the quality of goods and services are instead used to lobby government for narrow benefits that may harm society at large. .....

(see Broken Window Fallacy here)

It's easy to look at the Blagojevich case and see a failure of personal ethics. It is about character. But it's also about how government itself creates the very conditions for corruption. Think of all the special privileges governors can bestow: subsidies for stadiums, public-works contracts, special taxes and fees, not to mention myriad regulations with myriad loopholes. Chief executives – mayors, governors, and presidents – are supposed to be the chief enforcers of the law. Today, though, they are also chief bestowers of privileges.....
......Blagojevich's shenanigans – though probably illegal in ways that grants of other special privileges aren't – are nevertheless appropriately seen as a product of the rent-seeking culture that today's increasingly unconstrained government engenders.

Oh The Poor Polar Bear

I guess we are all guilty of cruelty to animals. (except of course Nobel laureate AL Gore)

Stimulus Package . . . that's what she said

I have often quoted Ezra Taft Benson and the Proper Role Of Government, I believe now that governments role (proper or not) has come to be the money spenders. I would guess that 90% of all legislative actions are based on how to spend tax payers money, the other 10% is all the important stuff like, what should or should not be a federal holiday, what month should be national apple pie month, whether or not Sasquatch is endangered, and if so is the Yetti and Bigfoot also endangered and so on.

Here is a video explaining what the government strategy is, it does not however explain why, for that is simply not possible.

Mumbai

A true analysis on the Mumbai incident:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mumbai Tragedy

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

The Bigoted Mormons, And Other Conervatives

Prop 8 in California really is about bigotry. People that voted for prop 8 (Christians, conservatives etc) did it to protect their way of life and to exclude inviting gay and lesbians into their circles. Churches don't want to have to marry gays if they find it against their beliefs, Boy Scouts don't want to be forced to allow same sex couples be troop leaders and camp out chaperons. That's not to say they can't live side by side with same sex couples and afford them all the courtesy they would any other.

Reason has a good story on this topic (Gay By Force):

Ideally, the government would leave marriage to private institutions, which managed to maintain it for almost all of its history. Short of that, those institutions and the individuals who follow their teachings should be free to accept or reject gay unions as they see fit, which means they should not have to worry about being sued for unlawful discrimination.

The key to this debate is what happened to eHarmony in New Jersey (added emphasis):

Such fears played a conspicuous role in the Proposition 8 campaign, and the eHarmony case shows they're not fanciful. Eric McKinley, the gay man who filed the New Jersey civil rights complaint that forced eHarmony to start matching same-sex couples, says the company's straights-only strategy was "very hurtful" and made him feel like "a second-class citizen."
Unlike a government that claims exclusive authority to approve adoptions or marriages, eHarmony has plenty of competitors, including online matchmakers that advertise themselves as gay-friendly alternatives. Yet McKinley could not bear the thought that one of many dating services chose to focus on heterosexuals. Such intolerance of diversity undermines the struggle for gay rights by feeding fears that equal treatment by the government means equal treatment by everyone.

The thought that not everyone must recognize gay, lesbian unions is unbearable to the gay and lesbian people. After all, in California gay and lesbians are afforded the same rights through domestic partnerships that a married couple has.

A California domestic partnership is a legal relationship available to same-sex couples, and to certain opposite-sex couples in which at least one party is at least 62 years of age. It affords the couple most of "the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law..." as married spouses. [1]

So what then is the big deal with "Marriage"? Marriage is a religious institution created by religious authority for people to have intimate relations with the approval of God. It just so happens that our society has combined marriage with civil unions to be recognized as the same. I don't know of many religions that promote gay marriage (other than the Episcopalians, and some "fringe" religions). It would seem to me that forcing religions to accept and preform gay marriages would be tantamount to having Gods approval. Which is ironic because most gay lesbians are, not necessarily atheistic, but non-religious. I personally don't know any church going homosexuals.