By Dennis Avery

What a world!! Global warming alarmists bring us to the brink of world food shortage and economic collapse - using words and computer models, not higher temperatures. As a result, more wildlife species are threatened by palm oil plantations growing biodiesel than by climate change. Heavy sea ice just trapped a big Russian ice-breaker for seven days in the Arctic’s Northwest Passage, which the alarmists told us last year would soon be open sailing. The sunspots and a Pacific Ocean cooling phase are forecasting the earth will cool further over the next two decades. In the past, both have accurate in their in their predictions. 

The blue collar world sees no warming, but they surely see economic ruin staring them in the face.  Finally, the workers of the world are crying, “Enough of this man-made warming hype without warming!”

* Fishing fleets have gone on strike across Europe against ultra-high diesel prices, while the Greens demand that fuel become even more scarce and expensive
* Truckers are staging fuel-protest slowdowns in major European cities. 
* Protesting French farmers have blockaded fuel stations.
* More than 70 percent of Britons now say they will not pay any extra taxes to “save the planet.”

Guess whose advice we took on shifting much of our cropland from food to biofuels?  The advice of the same Greens who told us not to burn coal or oil. We shifted too much of our scarce cropland into corn ethanol and palm oil biodiesel. We forgot that the world’s food and feed demand was in the process of doubling due to 1) the last surge in human population growth; 2) rising Third World incomes and expectations; and 3) millions more beloved cats and dogs as households have fewer children and more affluence

Assuming society is not yet ready to starve the poor or euthanize their pets, we must feed them. That means at least twice as much global food and feed per year by 2040. Nor do we want to clear the forests or drain the wetlands to grow more crops. That means there is no “spare” cropland for corn ethanol.

Unless the planet starts warming again, quickly and significantly, the Green momentum for a low-carbon society will come to a screeching stop. There are many indications that we are in a long, moderate warming cycle, which began 150 years ago with the end of the Little Ice Age, and may continue for several more hundred years. There is no indication that this modest warming will be bad for humans, or for the wildlife. The thermometers show a net global temperature increase of just 0.2 degree C since 1940 - and even that tiny increase has been inflated by the urban heat island effect.

The big temperature increases are all in those unverified computer models so beloved by the Green movement. The mothers of the world’s kids and the workers who grow and catch its food now demand to see the thermometers climb more than 0.2 degrees before they renounce their food and jobs. Without energy, the workers can’t work, the farmers can’t farm, and the children can’t eat. Until and unless the Greens and the UN can offer some evidence beyond the guesses of computer models that consistently over-estimate the warming that is occurring, we’ll accept the unsung voice of the thermometers. Read more here.

By Richard Simon and Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

The environmental movement, only recently poised for major advances on global warming and other issues, has suddenly found itself on the defensive as high gasoline prices shift the political climate nationwide and trigger defections by longtime supporters. Opposition to offshore drilling—once ironclad in places like California and Florida—has begun to soften. Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida on Tuesday eased his opposition to new energy exploration off the coast.

“Floridians are suffering, and when you’re paying over $4 a gallon for gas, you have to wonder whether there might be additional resources that we might be able to utilize to bring that price down,” said Crist, a Republican. At the same time, pressure to drill is mounting. President Bush today is expected to call on Congress to lift the ban on new offshore drilling, and a House committee will consider a proposal to relax the moratorium.

John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, opposed new offshore drilling in his 2000 presidential campaign. He said Tuesday that he now supported lifting the long-standing ban. “I believe it is time for federal government to lift these restrictions and put our own reserves to use,” the Arizona senator said in a Houston speech on energy security.

Much of the nation’s coastal waters are off-limits to new oil and gas leasing until 2012 under executive orders first issued by Bush’s father,President George H.W. Bush, in 1991 and extended by President Clinton in 1998. In addition, Congress has taken action annually since 1981 to preclude drilling in coastal areas. But high petroleum prices have caused policymakers to begin rethinking a variety of issues, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration and imposing mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries and power plants. Read more here.

Vinod K. Dar, Right-Side News

The earth warmed strongly between 1915 and 1940, cooled between 1940 and 1975 and then warmed strongly again between 1975 and 1998.  The earth has been cooling in the opening years of this century even as carbon dioxide levels have risen appreciably since 1998.  Many influential people in the industrialized world believe that global warming is a transcendent issue and human activity, especially the activity of the energy complex, is to blame and carbon management, at any cost, is imperative.

A growing number of influential people in the developing world (this includes China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, as well as Russia) are openly rejecting the idea that human activity has any measurable influence on the planetary climate or even that there is anything unusual or abnormal about the climate at present.  Some of these people, joined by hundreds of scientists in the U.S. and Western Europe advance the idea that sunspot activity (which is cyclical) and the recently discovered (as recent as 1996) PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation:  20 to 30 year warming and cooling of the north-central Pacific Ocean) explain the cyclicality of global temperatures.  According to those who hold this view, the planet has entered into a 30 year or so cooling period and carbon dioxide emissions even if they keep growing, cannot prevent this cooling. 

In support they cite NASA’s recent study that the global oceans are cooling and expected to cool for several years.  NASA is the leading proponent of man-made global warming. They also quote data from the new Jason oceanographic satellite that the PDO is entering a multi-year cooling period.  Jason is run jointly by NASA and a French team.  Other support for this idea that global cooling not warming, is the planetary future within anyone’s strategic planning horizon comes from experiments conducted by the Danish Space Research Institute, which links global climate behavior to variations in the magnetic wind of the sun, which is changeable, driven by sunspot cycles.  Contrary to expectations, the current cycle (Cycle 24) is turning out to be very weak with negligible sunspot activity. 

Cooling will create greater stress on energy, food and health care than warming.  This stress can only be relieved by very large increases in energy output.  For example, exposure to cold is more dangerous to the fragile old, the infirm, the injured and the ailing.  More energy for space heating will be needed.  Increasingly, the huge waste in the food supply chain from field to table in much of the world will require tremendous investments in spoilage reduction at every step of the local, regional, national and global food supply chain.  Spoilage reduction is energy intensive. So is productivity enhancement via fertilizer, bio-engineered seeds, and water management.  For those who hold the second belief system, cooling is a more frightening prospect than warming.  The determination of NWNs to accelerate energy and food supply growth will only be strengthened as the second belief system attracts more adherents. Read moe here.