Bristol News
Thanks to Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green’s blog, I see that the state representative whose district includes Burlington, Republican John Piscopo, has introduced a measure “to repeal global warming legislation that was passed based on the assumption that global warming is caused by human action.”
I have a call in to Piscopo to find out why he’s seeking the legislation.
But here is something from a 2006 transcript of the House proceedings that provides a revealing glimpse:
“Mr. Speaker, I didn’t want to make this into a big global warming debate, but I guess it’s been introduced, and I just kind of want to summarize. Yes, there is some warming on the planet in the last few years. A lot of it can be measured by the activity on the sun. The sun is just more active. We go through periods of warming. We’ll go through periods of cooling.
Mark my words, in ten years, we’re all going to be worried about late spring frosts, and early fall frosts, and crops dying and we’re going to be in some huge climate cooling hysteria. That’s just the way it is with this globe. It warms and it cools. There is nothing the little State of Connecticut, in rolling back its economy to 1990 standards, or over-regulating its manufacturing industry or anything like that, is going to do to stop this huge planet from having fluctuations in its climate.
And I can introduce a lot of different science to this. A lot of it gets squashed by our mainstream media, but I hope that you will all keep an open mind on this debate, in the future, and I will keep trying. And here is a press release he put out about it awhile back that I wish I’d seen before today.”
Here’s what state Rep. Bill Hamzy, the Plymouth Republican whose district includes northwestern Bristol had to say during the same 2006 floor debate where Piscopo spoke: I also rise to speak on the issue of global warming, which was introduced by one of my fellow Representatives, and also state that I believe you can have, in this Chamber, a difference of opinion without resorting to code words like right-wing think tank, or left-wing think tank, or liberal or conservative.
And you can have an honest difference of opinion in a conversation about issues that we take up in this Chamber. And because of differences of opinion, I’m not sure that it’s credible to be throwing out those types of words.
If you go back over the course of the history of this world, more than just 15 or 20 years, but go back 1,000 years, you’ll see the pattern of global warming and global cooling and recognize that while, I also believe that it’s incumbent upon us to reduce emissions. But I do not believe that the emissions that are released in the State of Connecticut affect the global warming as an entire universe. And last February, with this measure, Hamzy and Piscopo sought to use money allocated to combat global warming to reduce electrical rates instead. Read post here.
And in California, Dan Logue, the 3rd District assemblyman seeks to suspend states global warming law AB32!
“In the last year alone, California lost 95,000 private sector jobs and our manufacturing base has been devastated. An independent economist stated AB32 is a threat to our remaining 1.5 million manufacturing jobs. AB32 will hurt our environment. AB32 is a job killer - businesses can’t comply and remain competitive, so they are leaving. This has resulted in less tax revenue for environmental mitigation, bringing a halt to many programs that keep our public safe from toxic waste and limit our ability to provide safe, clean, water. As of now, there are thousands of toxic sites in California and no money to mitigate. Given the current state of our economy, AB32 must be suspended before it suspends our funding for schools, law enforcement, parks, water storage, and any hope of economic recovery. At its most basic analysis -no private sector jobs, no economy, no tax revenues for the state for anything. We will be broke. But we will be politically correct and Hollywood will love us!”
Pew Research Center
As Barack Obama takes office, the public’s focus is overwhelmingly on domestic policy concerns - particularly the economy. Strengthening the nation’s economy and improving the job situation stand at the top of the public’s list of domestic priorities for 2009. Meanwhile, the priority placed on issues such as the environment, crime, illegal immigration and even reducing health care costs has fallen off from a year ago.
While it is not unusual for the public to prioritize domestic over foreign policy, the balance of opinion today is particularly one-sided. Roughly seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say that President Obama should focus on domestic policy, while just 11% prioritize foreign policy. By comparison, last January, 56% cited domestic policy as most important while 31% said Bush should focus on foreign policy.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 7-11 among 1,503 adults on cell phones and landlines, finds that strengthening the economy and improving the job situation are higher priorities today than they have been at any point over the past decade, and the recent upward trend has been steep. The share of Americans saying that strengthening the nation’s economy should be a top priority has risen from 68% two years ago to 75% last January to 85% today. Concern about jobs has risen even more sharply. The 82% who rate improving the job situation as a top priority represents a 21-point jump from 61% a year ago.
Of the 20 issues people were asked to rate in both January 2008 and January 2009, five have slipped significantly in importance as attention to the economy has surged. Protecting the environment fell the most precipitously - just 41% rate this as a top priority today, down from 56% a year ago. The percentage rating illegal immigration as a top priority has fallen from 51% to 41% over the past year, and reducing crime has fallen by a similar amount (from 54% to 46%). And while reducing health care costs remains a top priority to 59% of Americans, this is down 10-points from 69% one year ago.
The public’s interest in many other policy areas remains relatively stable, by comparison. Roughly three-quarters (76%) say that defending the country from future terrorist attacks should be a top priority, making it the third highest priority among the 20 issues tested in the survey. As recently as two years ago, terrorism ranked at the top of the list of policy priorities. The share of Americans who rate terrorism as a top priority has not changed substantially in recent years; the issue has simply been leapfrogged by the economy and jobs at the top of the list.
The 15-point decline in the percentage calling environmental protection a top priority this year is steep, but not unprecedented given the broader shift in public priorities. Between January 2001 and January 2002, the proportion rating environmental protection as a top priority fell by a similar amount (from 63% to 44%); a number of domestic priorities declined in importance following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. By January 2003, just 39% called environmental protection a top priority - comparable to today’s 41% - before resurging as a priority from 2006 to 2008, only to fall again this year.
The decline in the percentage calling environmental protection a top priority crosses partisan and demographic lines. For instance, only about four-in-ten women (43%) and men (39%) now say that protecting the environment should be a top priority; last January, 57% of women and 55% of men rated environmental protection as a top priority. Read more here.
See larger image here.
By John Ray, Posted on Antigreen Blogspot
“We must get rid of the Medieval Warm period” was an early cry from Warmists. The period concerned is of course a complete refutation of Warmism so it had to be “got rid of” somehow. And, with his now discredited “hockeystick” graph, Michael Mann seemed to have done it. When that came unstuck they started to say that the period was just a “local” phenomenon. As there are now findings that it extended to both Argentina and New Zealand, that sure is a big locality!
Meanwhile, another big embarrassment in recent years has been the pesky non-melting of the Antarctic icecap. All observations show it as INCREASING in mass overall. But never fear! A way has now been found around that! And who is in on the fix? None other than that same old statistical faker, Michael Mann. (Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year By Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell, Nature 457, 459-462 (22 January 2008)
What they have done seems pretty clear. They have used one of the old dodges that Prof. Brignell calls ”chartmanship”. They have taken a distant and unusually cold year and shown that there has been warming since then. Utterly meaningless, of course.
US researchers have pored over data from satellites and weather stations in the biggest ever study of the frozen continent’s climate and found it’s warming after all. Barry Brook, director of the University of Adelaide’s Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, said the finding was alarming. Scientists now estimate the melting of Antarctica’s massive ice sheets will cause the world’s sea levels to rise by one to two metres by the end of the century.
Scientists already knew, he said, that the massive ice sheets of western Antarctica were melting, but the study showed they would melt more quickly. The research, contained in Thursday’s issue of Nature, was also bad news for climate change in general, Professor Brook said. It had been thought Antarctica’s cooling would help restrain global warming by acting as a “cool pack”, but this did not appear to be the case.
The US study found that eastern Antarctica - which includes the Australian zone - is getting cooler. But this is outweighed by western Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula, which are warming. On average the continent is warming, the study found. Over the past 50 years much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world. Study co-author Eric Steig from the University of Washington said the satellite data was revealing. “The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that’s not the case,” he told Nature. Professor Brook said it had been thought Antarctica was cooling partly because of the hole in the ozone layer, which allowed the hot air out. Read more here.
For a very excellent and detailed summary of all the arguments against this new paper see this report “Scientists, Data Challenge New Antarctic ‘Warming’ Study -Comprehensive Data Round Up Debunks New Antarctic ‘Estimate of Temperature Trends’ here. In it even the UN IPCC lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, not in any way a climate change skeptic, said of the study: “I remain somewhat skeptical. It is hard to make data where none exist.”
The report starts: A new study on Antarctic temperatures - which is contrary to the findings of multiple previous studies—claims “that since 1957, the annual temperature for the entire continent of Antarctica has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, but still is 50 degrees below zero.” Many media reports did not focus on the fact that the study also found Antarctic temperatures have cooled since the 1970’s.
Despite the fact that the study was immediately viewed with major skepticism by scientists who believe in anthropogenic global warming, many in the media seized on the study as a chance to attacks those skeptical of man-made climate doom. According to the release of the study: “The researchers devised a statistical technique that uses data from satellites and from Antarctic weather stations to make a new estimate of temperature trends. The scientists found temperature measurements from weather stations corresponded closely with satellite data for overlapping time periods. That allowed them to use the satellite data as a guide to deduce temperatures in areas of the continent without weather stations.”
Few media outlets noted that in 2007 Antarctic “sea ice coverage has grown to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1979”, according to peer-reviewed studies and scientists who study the area.” [See also other factors impacting Antarctica: ”Volcano, Not Global Warming Effects, May be Melting an Antarctic Glacier , See Map of Volcanoes, The Antarctic deep sea gets COLDER - April 21, 2008 and a January 12, 2008, peer-reviewed paper in AGU (American Geophysical Union) found “A doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850.” - See comprehensive data round up below]
