Warming? Cooling? Whatever is convenient

The BBC News reports that not only has global warming disappeared to be replaced by global cooling, but that this cooling trend will continue for some time.

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

Why so truthful all of the sudden? It's hard to know the motive. Perhaps the bald-faced lies perpetuated by the rabid global-warming crowd were finally so obviously at odds with reality that cooler heads (pardon the pun) decided that if any vestige of the human-caused climate catastrophe crowd were to survive, it would have to be admitted that climate change was at very least not confined to warming trends and rising sea levels.

I personally am rather confused by the warming catastrophe crowd, considering some of them seemed to be convinced that by tomorrow morning the Atlantic might very well be lapping at our thresholds, while others were simultaneously predicting an apocalypse so slow in coming that we might well be living on other planets before it arrives.

Meanwhile, evidently it was getting colder all the time...
Now record cold temperatures are being seen all over.

We should note, however, that while climate change skeptics see this cooling as justification for their skepticism of inexorably rising global temperatures, true believers' faith in the heat death of the world by our own hands continues unabated:

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

Yes, thus spoke the oracle: Centuries-long ice ages may interfere, as in the past, but at some day in the hypothetical future, it will get hotter than it is now. Other scientists agree:

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

Notice the language here. Does anyone not realize that this has taken on all the artifices of a religious institution? Dr. Latif, worried that he might be perceived as a nonbeliever in Warming, clarifies that despite the scientific data stating otherwise, he is not a skeptic! Yes, we must have faith that the heat is coming. Ignore the cooling trend. Just believe. Sooner or later a heating trend will re-emerge, then we can start all this up again.

Meanwhile, the American people are less and less convinced; polls show that significantly fewer Americans are worried that Florida will go the way of the Siberian land bridge any time soon...

The new poll found that only 57 percent of Americans believe there is “solid evidence” for the existence of global warming, compared to 71 percent in April 2008.

Additionally, the poll shows that the percentage of Americans who believe global warming is caused by human activity has dropped from 47 percent last year to 36 percent today.

One can only hope this means we'll hear less hysteria about carbon footprints and other such nonsense related to carbon dioxide levels, which have never been causally linked to warming anyway. But "Cap-and-Trade" is already here, and something tells me that more of the same taxes are coming whether facts or the American people back them up or not. It's not a question of reality or democracy anymore. As President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus (currently being sidelined in the EU for being a disagreeist) has pointed out, global climate change politics is just a power-play.

So should we sit idly by and watch our freedoms be taken for whatever trendy excuse the religio-scientific backers of the liberal pan-bureaucracy may contrive? We already have been. And that realization is by far the most frightening thing I'll encounter this halloween...

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Entitling Ourselves to Death

So this one was obvious, but I couldn't pass it up.
Pelosi is in China, behaving as we have come to expect.

"U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Beijing on Thursday to cooperate on climate change, calling a safe environment a basic human right."

There is beautiful irony in appealing to Beijing to cooperate in the efforts to change our climate (oh, sorry, I mean disrupt the natural cycle of our climate-er, I mean... Bush caused Katrina! There we go.) on the basis of human rights, when Beijing clearly not only has a track record of ignoring human rights complaints, but disagrees with the Western concept of human rights on a fundamental philosophical level altogether.

Of course, Drudge's headline emphasized Pelosi's typically creepy statement that "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."

Granted, that's an interesting and revealing statement of the liberal outlook on life. More on that later, perhaps. But to me, the key phrase comes earlier in the article.

"I do see this opportunity for climate change to be ... a game-changer," she said at Tsinghua. "It's a place where human rights — looking out for the needs of the poor in terms of climate change and healthy environment — are a human right."

A human right? Since when? Are we now entitled to a static climate and optimal living conditions? It's not even possible to control the climate from a human perspective. The most of what we have accomplished so far is to murk things up a bit, and even that pales in comparison to one truly significant volcanic eruption. We might just as well speak of the entitlement to never be cold.

No generation of humans in modern history has been as concerned for the well-being of our environment, or more willing to sacrifice personal freedom (which we are also supposedly entitled to) for the sake of associated causes. And yet we are continually told by our president and other national leaders that we should be prepared to sacrifice for our country.

Pardon my frankness, but while I am quite prepared to sacrifice time, effort, and even my life if necessary for my country, I fail to see that our government deserves any of the above, nor that the interests of our country are being in any way advanced by said government.

An unfortunate event occurred in a town near my home several years back; a steel plant was taken over, the workers all laid off, and the plant dismantled and sold off. This story is unfortunately not uncommon across the country, as "looters" (to borrow a term from Ayn Rand) profit by destroying our producing power to line their pockets.

But now the looters are in Washington, and selling our freedoms isn't paying as well as it used to.
They'll be looking for more soon, which means more entitlements must be discovered.

Our forefathers knew better; we're not entitled to anything. Now we are coasting on the strength of their achievements, but inertia is running out. America was a chance for people to work hard and succeed, not for what they felt they deserved to be given to them by a nanny state.

If Americans have any entitlement, it is the chance for their hard work to pay off.
Perhaps we have forgotten that this is not always how the world works. In some cultures, you work yourself nearly to death, just to stay where you are. In others, a stratified society means that all your hard work will never help you get ahead.

America was never a give-away, it was a tough job with a good starting salary and excellent chances of advancement.

Now we are all "entitled" to prosperity, but not everyone is willing to work hard. Where then, does the money for those people come from? From the people producing all the value in this country. Right now, they are dragging everyone else along with them. But the situation can't continue forever.

If we don't kick the looters out of Washington, and also destroy the culture of entitlement, there simply is no future for America.

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