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Honey, I didn’t know you invited Al Gore to tea


We’re expecting sixteen inches of global warmening tonight. Okay, that’s the Mail. They are <ahem> somewhat prone to exaggeration — but we’ve just watched the evening news, and it looks pretty dire out there. It’s been snowing on Scotland for two weeks, and now it’s moving across the sunny South.

It’s a lot for here, I’m telling you. And worse than the snow is the deep cold that looks to hang on afterwards, turning us into a slippery Britcicle.

The Met Office has so much egg on their faces, they could make face omelets. They — for the third year in a row — promised us a record warm Winter, as temperatures have gone down and down to levels not seen in decades.

How can £200 million a year buy weather forecasts so consistently wrong? Because the Met Office is the throbbing heart of British warmist propaganda.

The current chairman of the Met Office, Robert Napier, was previously chief executive of WWF-UK, the UK arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature. In other words, a long-standing, committed environmental activist bugfuck looney-tune.

And, in the chattering teeth of this latest embarrassment, management has given itself nice, fat raises.

The question is, how long will Britons pay stupid money for short-range forecasts substantially less helpful than just sticking your head out the damn window, and long-range forecasts that amount to hysterical international suicide pacts?

January 5, 2010 — 7:47 pm
Comments: 43

Have we really been arguing AGW that long?

I watched an MST3K this afternoon (episode 704, 1996 — the Incredible Melting Man) and caught the clip above. Geez, I knew the notion of Global Warming went back that far, but I didn’t know we were arguing the politics that long ago.

“Pablum-puking liberals” is a Morton Downey, jr. expression, Google suggests. But whether he ever specifically addressed global warming, I could not say.

Sorry about getting a little color on my blog up there. I tried to get around it by sticking an intro on the clip, but YouTube doesn’t grab the first frame for the still. Stupid. This is my first YouTube! But possibly not my last.

Oh, and weasel’s luck! First year I had a shot at making it to the voting in the Weblog Awards, and they’ve been cancelled. Thanks for the nominations, anyhow.

January 4, 2010 — 6:08 pm
Comments: 12

If the science were real, they wouldn’t have to be so tricksy

The Associate Press published this interactive map today. You click the little buttons at the top, and you get to see the map turn from cool blues and grays to scary-hot oranges and yellows as average global temperatures get warmer.

Then I read the key.

They are comparing warm seasons (May to October) of four recent periods (1891-1900 to 1945-1954 to 1970-1979 to 1997-2006) to the averages for 1951-1980. Prithee, allow me to inquire — what the fuckity fuck? Here that is on the calendar:  

 

 

Why those four particular nine-year clusters? And why compare them against that particular overlapping 29 year stretch? And why just the warm seasons? They don’t explain, but we suspect we know why, don’t us?

Comparing four random chunks of time to another random chunk of time may make for a colorful, scary-looking picture, but it sure as shit isn’t science, folks.

But wait! There’s more! Remember our old friend the Greenland ice cores from a while back? Taking the earliest period versus the latest period on their map, this is what their cunning stunt looks like plotted on that:

 

Pff! Lovely settled science there, guys.

Oh, and the little stars on the map? You’re supposed to click them — all six of them — to learn what adorable, doe-eye animals are endangered by this obvious runaway warmening. Click the star for Sweden and you discover that climate change means filthy, disease-carrying ticks can survive there now.

So it’s getting warmer in Sweden, and the most striking consequence of that is…ticks!?!

December 22, 2009 — 7:47 pm
Comments: 12

Nopenhagen

servingsuggestion

The hippies, they are not happy.

John Lanchbery, Birdlife International: “It sounds very vague. There’s no next step, nothing to link through to how to get a final deal done.”

Heh heh.

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club: “President Obama and the rest of the world paid a steep price here in Copenhagen because of obstructionism in the United States Senate.”

Say what?

Kate Horner, Friends of the Earth: “This is the United Nations and the nations here are not united on this secret backroom declaration. The US has lied to the world when they called it a deal and they lied to over a hundred countries when they said would listen to their needs. This toothless declaration, being spun by the US as an historic success, reflects contempt for the multilateral process and we expect more from our Nobel prize winning President.”

But he means well. And he’s got a fabulous crease in his pants.

From what I can glean, they’ve agreed that the earth shouldn’t be allowed to warm more than 2°C, but how they’re going to bully the planet into that unclear. There’s no set target, oversight or enforcement involved. It’s less a treaty than a serving suggestion.

I love this quote from Obama: “We are confident that we are moving in the direction of a significant accord.”

We’ve agreed to take the first steps toward talking about a framework for considering the implications of actually doing something.

Thank you, O Lord, for the incompetence of our enemies.

December 18, 2009 — 7:41 pm
Comments: 25

Say no to the Turkish delight!

Al Gore is the White Witch

I got it! Al Gore is the White Witch!

That’s why it snows wherever he goes. That’s why he’s desperate to make us cool things down, even though the climate is manifestly not getting warmer.

They’re snowed in in Copenhagen. It’s predicted in D.C. They’re predicting snow for us tonight, too, so I’m making cookies in case that means Al’s dropping in unexpectedly.

I’m not just saying this to be nasty: have you ever noticed there’s something drag-queen-y in Gore’s face? It’s partly that his eyebrows look shaved, but it’s something else about his eyes. And his high nostrils.

Why would drag queens have high nostrils? Shut up is why.

December 17, 2009 — 6:50 pm
Comments: 25

Ecokitsch

climatekitsch

Ugh. I just watched the opening film for the Copenhagen climate summit for the first time. It’s awful. No, don’t bother — it’s not fun awful, it’s just bad.

Surprisingly bad. I mean, it’s not even a good example of tear-jerking child exploitative propaganda. It’s perfunctory. It doesn’t connect. It could be titled Girl Makes Mildly Distressed Faces In Front Of a Green Screen.

And, yes, her teddy bear is a polar bear. And, yes — of course she drops it into a huge crevice that opens in the earth. And, sure, we get a shot of her hand reaching for it. Languidly. The way you might reach for the potato chip you dropped. You’d like it, but on second thought, you know it’s probably better to let the dog have it.

I thought the left was supposed to have all the clever creative types on board?

Good weekend, everyone!

December 11, 2009 — 5:21 pm
Comments: 34

Pitchers!

climate variation over time

The fabulous Watt’s Up With That ran a series of charts a few days ago showing temperature variation over time in Greenland ice cores. And by “over time” I mean going back over 400,000 years.

I thought it would make a cracking animation, with the fades and the arrows and the background music. But WordPress doesn’t play nice with Flash (which, in any case, is on my desktop machine in semi-exile). So I thought I’d do a simple Javascript dingus where you could click the picture to see the next one. Turns out, WordPress plays even less well with Javascript. Finally, in despair, I cut together a badly-paced lame-o animated .gif file that sucks ALL KINDS of ass.

Eh. Sorry. I really need to uncrate some of my old, professional tools and build some spiffier visuals. Reload the page to rewind.

Anyhow, do go read the article in the original Geek (not all the increments are in my retardimation). When he zooms all the way back to the longest view, it’s obvious that the earth’s most comfortable resting place is deep, deep cold. The last ten thousand years — you know, the period when our species crawled out of the muck and flourished — have all been much, MUCH warmer than the preceding umpty-ump hundreds of thousands.

And the 20th Century doesn’t come close to being the warmest of the warm.

December 10, 2009 — 7:06 pm
Comments: 37

Number crunching…

copenhagen

I used this calculator to estimate our combined household carbon dioxide output at 6.76 tonnes per year. That’s “tonnes” with a “nes” on the end, on account of it’s some gay European thing. Then I worked out the super-mathemagical guzintas in 41,000 tonnes — the estimate for the Copenhagen Summit in this Telegraph article.

The same article estimates the summit will include:
1,200 limousines
140 extra private jets
15,000 delegates and officials,
5,000 journalists
98 world leaders
The usual celebretards
(Plus 50,000 protesters, I read somewhere else)
The hotels, menus and entertainments don’t bear thinking of

All this to tell ME I’ve been living too high on the hog and I have to cut way, way back on my selfish lifestyle to save the world. FUCK YOU, you oily, dimwitted, sanctimonious, shit-eating kleptocrats. If there’s going severe belt-tightening, YOU FIRST.

The Telegraph article hilariously concludes, “The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus.”

No, really? YA THINK?

GAH! <thud>

December 8, 2009 — 8:28 pm
Comments: 27

Recycling: I do it for Al

Al Gore Poetry

Heh. I’d forgotten this graphic until somebody Stumbleupon’d it. I’m guessing it turns up on Google with some combination of “Al Gore” and “poetry”.

Oh, I do hope so.

Reposted in honor of the Copenhagen summit. I wonder if they scheduled this thing knowing every American who heard “December 7” automatically thought, “a date that will live in infamy.”

Me, I’m busy cleaning house today. You know how your mother used to complain that she had to clear up before the maid came? I can top that — I’m tidying for the county rat-catcher. We’ve got uninvited guests and it’s a government service here.

I don’t want him stepping in the door and saying, “Ah. I can see your problem, ma’am. You’re a pair of filthy, disgusting slobs.”

December 7, 2009 — 4:56 pm
Comments: 25

Stuff hippies like

zaramama

I confess: in the States, I shopped at Whole Foods sometimes. The organic thing is a total crock of shit, but they sell beautifully chosen food — and a lot of exotic things I couldn’t get in my regular Stop ‘n’ Shop run. Sometimes I’m willing to pay through the nose for that.

Here, I scratch that same itch at painfully quaint specialty stores. Where I bought this stuff today — fancy, multicolored, fru-fru, popping corn. Zaramama was the Incan goddess of maize (for reals — I just looked it up).

Whenever a food or cosmetic is associated with an Incan deity, slap a hand over your pocket quick — a hippie is surely trying to steal your wallet.

I’m recently reconnecting with popcorn. My dad — who is super health conscious — popped the stuff in shopping bag quantities. With no salt or added fat. It was appallingly healthy and there was lots and lots of it. When I left home, I swore I’d never touch the stuff again.

So I missed out on movie popcorn and the whole “movie popcorn” manufactured scandal. The one where those pinch-faced lefty scolds at the Center for Science in the Public Interest claimed a medium popcorn contains “more fat than a breakfast of bacon and eggs, a Big Mac and fries, and a steak dinner combined.”

Uh huh. That seems pretty implausible, but…whatever. At least you can safely ignore the part where they warn you off cooking it in coconut oil — turns out the stuff is probably pretty good for you. And good for popping corn, because it’s stable at high temperatures.

I have a simpleton’s sullen distrust of the microwave oven, so I pop my corn on the stovetop in a deep iron skillet with a lid. In coconut oil. Then a light spritz of oil to make the salt stick.

Corn pops because of the hard outer shell — the starch inside can super-heat before the shell goes bang. This happens at around 360°F in a delightful crunchy starch esplosion. If you end up with small, chewy popcorn, you cooked it too hot. If you have many unpopped kernels, you didn’t cook it hot enough.

This stuff? I made some a little while ago. Very nice. No unpopped kernels, fluffy and crispy and exceptionally tasty. I looked online, though, and nobody is selling it any cheaper than my shopkeeper. Special occasion popcorn, then.

Good weekend, everyone!

December 4, 2009 — 8:12 pm
Comments: 36