United Liberty

It seems that President Barack Obama is making a push on cap-and-trade (but don’t call it that), which has been stalled in the Senate since last year:

Closed-door talks extended to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday as President Obama, key senators and industry officials searched for an elusive agreement on comprehensive energy and climate change legislation.

At the White House, Obama implored 14 Democrats and Republicans to reach consensus before the end of this year on a bill that puts a first-ever price on carbon emissions, rather than settle for the energy-only approach favored by some moderates.
[…]
Those talks occupied 70 minutes of Obama’s time as eight Democrats and six Republicans went around the Cabinet Room describing their demands. Obama opened the meeting by insisting the Senate stick to his plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions, and in return pledged to make concessions on oil and gas drilling and nuclear power.

You have to wonder if this is his back up plan on getting a major part of his domestic agenda passed in case health care falls apart. While not as much of a hot button issue like health care, cap-and-trade could easily turn into a damaging issue back home for Democrats in Republican-leaning district. In other words, it’s their funeral.

It appears that scientists may be taking another look at whether the world is actually warming or not.

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

While the climate alarmists often say winter weather is not an indiction that global warming doesn’t exist, it’s hard to to convince people when they see stories about snow in 49 of 50 states. Here in Georgia, we’re bracing for another couple inches. We may get one good snow every few years. We’re not used to two systems in the same weekend.

It does seem that the climate alarmists face a believability problem. Just 35 years ago, they were telling us to brace for another cooling period. Notice now how they are changing how they phrase their message. It’s no longer “global warming,” it’s “climate change.”

Whatever it is, it looks like the collectivists will have to find another means to convey their message.

As if to illustrate that those on the Left are just as capable of irrational, insane and downright bizarre comments as Pat Robertson and the Religious Right, Danny Glover suggests in this audio clip that the Haiti earthquake was a response (by Mother Nature, God or somebody) to the failure to address global warming at Copenhagen.

“I am greatly relieved that the last-minute agreement President Obama negotiated is being widely described as ‘meaningful.’  When politicians call something ‘meaningful,’ that means it isn’t.” - Chris Chocola, President of the Club for Growth

Word came last night of a deal being struck at the United Nations conference in Copenhagen to scale back greenhouse gas emissions:

President Barack Obama said the United States, China and several other countries reached an “unprecedented breakthrough” Friday to curb greenhouse gas emissions - including a mechanism to verify compliance - after a frenzied day of diplomacy at the U.N. climate talks.

The agreement, which also includes the developing nations of India, South Africa and Brazil, requires each country to list the actions they will take to cut global warming pollution by specific amounts, a senior Obama administration official said. The official described the deal on the condition of anonymity because specific details had not been announced.

Under the agreement, the official said each country also will list the actions it will take to cut global warming pollution by specific amounts. The deal reiterates a goal that eight leading industrialized nations set earlier this year on long-term emission cuts and provides a mechanism to help poor countries prepare for climate change.

The deal, however, is non-binding and President Barack Obama knows he can’t get a treaty through the United States Senate, given that the can’t even get his cap-and-trade bill moved through.

So, yeah, this is much ado about nothing really.

It looks like all the climate change propaganda isn’t working as planned.

Back in 2007, when I was writing for the Pacific Publishing Company in Seattle, Washington, I wrote an article on climate change called “Fear Tactics Continue.” From disaster movies that showed a snow-covered New York City to the over-the-top documentary An Inconvenient Truth, I pointed out that there was a concerted effort to make climate change accepted in the popular consciousness (and thus push critics out of the mainstream) by scaring the crap out of people.

That effort is falling apart at the seams because it was built on a foundation of lies and half-truths.

First, one of the very scientists that Al Gore quoted has been backing away from the use of his data by Gore:

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

The Atlas Foundation is out with another video is Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute on the ClimateGate scandal, the lack of review of data produced by purveyors of this junk science:

“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous [global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” - Al Gore, in an interview with Grist (May 2006)