Earth ChangesS


Green Light

Best of the Web: Founder of The Weather Channel to file lawsuit against Gore and Climategate cohorts

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© Fuller
Finally, efforts are being made by the founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, to sue Al Gore and his cohorts for perpetrating "the greatest scam in history" - the fraud of global warming. Thirty thousand others, comprised of scientists and experts, are also willing to join in that lawsuit.

So how did this fraud all get started? It all started in Chicago shortly after Earth Day, April 17, 1995, when Al Gore went to Fall River, Mass., to give his green sermon speech. He was soon joined by Maurice Strong and Peter Knight, a registered lobbyist and Gore's former top Senate aid.

It didn't take long before the Chicago Climate Exchange was formed and "a veritable rat's nest of cronyism" was formed. The largest shareholder in the Exchange is Goldman Sachs, and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its honorary chairman. The Joyce Foundation, which funded the Exchange, also funded money for John Ayers' Chicago School Initiative. John is the brother of William Ayers who was one of the founders of the Weathermen.

Question

Best of the Web: James Hansen: Would you buy a used temperature data set from THIS man?

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© UnknownJames Hansen, playing "catch" with the world
Before we get too worried about NASA's latest stamping-its-little-feet claims that the world is getting hotter it is it is it IS, let us first remind ourselves why we should trust their temperature records slightly less far than we can spit.

Then let's have a closer look at the character and motives of the man in charge of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Dr James Hansen. Last year, he was described by his former course supervisor at NASA, Dr John Theon, as an "activist" and an embarrassment.

Or as the Great Booker puts it:
If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Igloo

First Climategate, now Glaciergate

Hot on the heels of Climategate - the leaking of thousands of emails and computer files that show many of the world's leading climate scientists fudging the results of their global warming research and contriving to keep skeptics from being published in academic journals - comes what could be called Glaciergate.

Prominent among the claims of impending environmental disaster in the UN's fourth report on climate change, published in 2007, was the prediction that all of the 15,000 glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by 2035. That's just 25 years away. Now the Times of London has discovered that this claim was not based on scientific enquiry, but rather on speculation. And old speculation at that.

In 1999 the magazine The New Scientist interviewed an Indian climatologist named Syed Hasnain. He told reporter Fred Pearce that it was his "speculation" that the Himalayan glaciers would "vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming." Dr. Hasnain cautioned that the data on which his speculation was based had neither been published nor peer reviewed, Mr. Pearce noted his in his article.

Snowman

Flashback The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam

Earth
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.

How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government?


Comment: Perhaps because there's political and financial profit to be gained in diverting the public's attention away from what's really happening here on the big blue marble.

If you wanted to mask the actual causes, those cosmic influences that are a naturally repeating cycle of warming and sudden massive cooling - as recorded time and again in earth's history - what better way than to focus public awareness inwards rather than outwards?

It would be naive to think that governments were unaware of the processes involved, the research and evidence is there for those who look, this is public ignorance by design.


Cloud Lightning

US: California storms move through Arizona: Most of 1 Arizona town underwater

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© UnknownWenden, AZ
Wenden - A western Arizona town is underwater Friday morning after the torrential storm the swept through the streets. Scott Jones with the Wenden Fire Department said the Centennial Wash breached its banks and 3/4 of Wenden is underwater.

Some parts of town are reporting 4 to 5 feet of water and others are reporting 6 inches of water. See the slideshow to see photos of the town.

Bug

Insect Colonies Operate as 'Superorganisms', New Research Finds

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© iStockphoto/Juan Manuel Garcia LopezBy analyzing data from 168 different social insect species including ants, termites, bees and wasps, researchers found that the lifespan, growth rates and rates of reproduction of whole colonies when considered as superorganisms were nearly indistinguishable from individual organisms.
A new team of researchers including scientists from the University of Florida has shown insect colonies follow some of the same biological "rules" as individuals, a finding that suggests insect societies operate like a single "superorganism" in terms of their physiology and life cycle.

For more than a century, biologists have marveled at the highly cooperative nature of ants, bees and other social insects that work together to determine the survival and growth of a colony.

The social interactions are much like cells working together in a single body, hence the term "superorganism" -- an organism comprised of many organisms, according to James Gillooly, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the department of biology at UF's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Now, researchers from UF, the University of Oklahoma and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have taken the same mathematical models that predict lifespan, growth and reproduction in individual organisms and used them to predict these features in whole colonies.

Binoculars

Ship with 30 Aboard Stuck in Ice Off Russia's Pacific Coast

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© Sergei Krasnoukhov/RIA Novosti
A ship with 30 crew on board sent a distress signal on Friday, warning that it could sink after becoming stuck in ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, off Russia's Pacific coast, local emergencies officials said.

"The information that the refrigerator ship had become iced-in was received by the emergencies department of the Sakhalin Region at 07:40 Moscow time," the official said.

All crew members on board the vessel are Russians, he said, adding that bad weather conditions could hamper any rescue operation.

Gear

IPCC climate gurus apologize for glacier 'error' after being called on their BS

The U.N.'s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said estimates relating to the rate of recession of the Himalayan glaciers in its Fourth Assessment Report were "poorly substantiated" adding that "well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly."

Despite the admission, the IPCC reiterated its concern about the dangers melting glaciers present in a region that is home to more than one-sixth of the world's population.

Cloud Lightning

US: Latest storm brings tornado-like winds, floods roads and causes small mudslides in foothill communities

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© UnknownLocal resident Rhonda Keermann views the area where several feet of mud blocked Big Tujunga Canyon Road, preventing her from leaving
The latest winter storm moved through Southern California with a wallop this afternoon, flooding roads, causing tornado-like winds in Ventura and Santa Barbara and causing small mudslides in foothill communities.

The storm brought winds of up to 80 mph and waves recorded at up to 20 feet. The brunt of the storm has moved to the east, but more showers and isolated thunderstorms are forecast through Friday.

[Updated 4:16 p.m.: Acting Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today proclaimed a state of emergency in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco and Siskiyou counties due to the series of storms. In a prepared statement, Brown cited the loss of human life, injuries, flooding, heavy snows, loss of power and mudslides as reason for the state of emergency. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is currently in Washington D.C.]

Ventura County fire officials said that they had received reports that a tornado touched down in the eastern end of the city of Ventura near North Bank Drive and Montgomery Avenue, downing power lines and causing damage to cars, outbuildings and agriculture, as well as toppling a tree into a home.

Better Earth

Flashback Organic Farming Could Feed the World

Along with reporting on fertilizers, biotech, ethanol, corporate consolidation and the agrofuels vs food debate comes an increased science reporting of the real world of organic-ecological-diversified agriculture that actually feeds the world.

The biotech industry used to regard speed as one of the defining characteristics of genetic engineering. To prove the point, it rushed new products to market with little regard for the consequences. Speed, however, is a characteristic of neither good science nor sustainable agriculture. Now the 'slow' reports of scientific findings on nutritious food and sustainable agriculture are beginning to surface. It will be interesting to see how the biotech bullies deal with these. The authors of a new study claim that a switch to organic farming would not reduce the world's food supply but could actually increase food security in developing countries. They claim their findings lay to rest the debate over whether organic farming could sustainably feed the world. The team of researchers has compiled research from 293 different comparisons into a single study to assess the overall efficiency of the two agricultural systems.