Reading another blog, I ran across this quote which has to be one of the most moronic statements I’ve seen in some time.  With all the cap and trade hoopla, when you read this, you really wonder if anyone has a clue as to what they are really talking about.  Via npr:

Waxman: Well, there have been scientists brought together to see if they could figure out the science and make it clear whether this is a danger or not, whether it’s a danger that’s a great one or one that we can postpone for a while, and the overwhelming consensus of all the leading scientists that have looked at this issue is there is a warming of the planet, it’s manmade, caused by our burning of carbon fuels, and it’s happening faster than anybody ever thought it would happen.

We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point – they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by that ice cap.

If that gets released we’ll have more carbon emissions and methane gas in our atmosphere than we have now. We see a lot of destruction happening because of global warming, climate change problems, so we’ve got enough warning signals and enough of a scientific consensus to take this seriously.

Congressman Waxman has literally lost his mind.  And this is one of the geniuses who’s bill is currently going through congress.  If this is their theory, that the poles are EVAPORATING (geesh, we’ve gone from melting to whole hearted evaporation.

Last I checked, any ships, voyages, explorers that have gone up to the FROZEN artic have basically gotten, well, stuck.  And frozen.  And then needed rescuing.

After reading an article on the excellent “Watts up with That“, I got to read a transcript from Charles Osgood on how any effect of global warming done by man can easily be outdone by the sun:

I know you’ve already got a lot to worry about as it is, but something rather odd is going on — on the Sun.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity — and last year, it was supposed to have heated up — and, at its peak, would have a tumultuous boiling atmosphere, spitting out flares and huge chunks of super-hot gas.

Instead, it hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity. Right now, the sun is the dimmest it’s been in nearly a century.

Did you know that? It’s true. Astronomers are baffled by it, but has the press covered the story? Hardly at all. Is the government doing anything about it? No, it’s not even in the Obama budget or any Congressional earmarks.

But, sooner or later, I bet it will turn out to be our fault — yours and mine. And in Washington, where everything is political, they’ll note that it began before President Obama took office — perhaps “another example of the failed policies of the Bush Administration.”

At an upcoming meeting of astronomers in the United Kingdom, they’ll be studying new pictures of the Sun taken from space, looking for any hint that the Sun will start heating up again and acting up again, the way it’s supposed to. But there is no sign of that, so far.

In the mid-17th Century, there was a quiet spell on the Sun — known as the Maunder Minimum — which lasted 70 years, and led to a mini-Ice Age here on Earth.

Right now, global warming is a given to so many, it raises the question: Could another minimum activity period on the Sun counteract, in any way, the effects of global warming?

Hush, child! You’re not even supposed to suggest that. The only thing that can change global warming is if we human beings — we Americans, especially — completely change our ways and our way of life.

I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this solar dimming business, now that the story is out. Remember, you heard it here first…

I was surprised to find Mr. Osgood as a skeptic of the Global Warming hoopla.  Nice to see some other members joining the ranks of “mankind isn’t all evil”.

Anthony Watt’s website has discussed much about just how inactive the sun is right now, and it’s confusing everybody.  Models keep getting reset, people scratch their heads.  And the sun goes on doing whatever it wants.

It’s the liberal’s idea that anything and everyone can be controlled, or at least contained.  So, I’m waiting on the latest round of TARP money to be spent on getting the sun to play along.  Maybe launch up some of the defence nuclear missles that the lib’s don’t want around any longer — maybe it will re-ignite the sun back to normal so we can get on with melting the polar ice caps.  Or maybe some kind of cap-n-trade policy we can enact.  Hey, the sun needs to get in line and play the game!

So, on this Earth Day, I celebrate the wonders of Nature — in that it is still something we don’t understand well (the sun, weather, ocean depths, dark matter, and so on).  Perhaps one day it will all make sense.  But to go completely berserk over something we know so little about, just wastes time and money.  Unless you are a liberal.

I watched recently a program on the History Channel — which interestingly enough wasn’t much about history, but more about, well, I’ll let you read it:

Life After People: What if every human being on earth disappeared? This isn’t the story of how we might vanish–it is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind. In this episode, we’ll see what happens to some of the bodies left behind. Most embalmed and buried, some mummified, others cryogenically frozen. Will any of them truly achieve immortality? Or will they be outlived by other memorials to mankind, like the Statue of Liberty or the Sistine Chapel. This is just part of a journey that will take us to the future of cities of Boston and Houston–as well as haunting sites already devoid of man.

This sounded at least somewhat interesting.  However after an hour into their main first episode, it became clear this was more about the Green and Scream movement making the case for how great it will be if man actually WAS gone and we just let good ol’ Mother Nature take its course.  Man is the ultamite evil, polluting and changing the good Earth for the worse.  Once he’s gone, the world quickly will wash all our sins away.  The program basically re-creates their own Gia Religion, whereby Mankind is cast as “Satan”.

Although not over-the-top about it, it’s a defininte sub-topic that permeates much of the discussion of what happens if suddenly, every one was gone — Mankind is bad, Mother Nature good.  There are even a few scenes where the speaking person (scientist, college professor, who knows) glefully smiles when he talks about how the plants reclaim the cities and bring back such wonderful things.  He’s much more happy about a building now turinging into some moronic tree than the loss of some 6.5 billion people.

What’s just so wierd is that I can’t think of one way for this scenario to occur without taking out most of the so-loved plants and animals with it (well, except for the Rapture, but that still leaves people behind).  Nuclear Holocaust — that destroys a lot of stuff.  Ditto for asteroids, comets, solar catastrophes, etc.

So, my conclusion is that the point of this show is to make us painfully aware that Mankind is now equivalent with Satan — we are here to destroy this world.  And only the Environmentalists will be able to “save” us from “our sins”.

I’m really losing faith in pretty much any science based channel anymore — seems like they all have gone over to the waky land to smoke some of that “congressional crack” and play nice with any leftist ideology.