Oh, that carbon dioxide global warming thing? Never mind.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released the following statement:

You know all the panic we tried to instigate about how carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming? And how the UN secretary general said that "humanity faces oblivion if it fails to confront global warming"? 

Our bad. Sorry. Seems that CO2 doesn't cause global warming after all. Never mind. 

But we still want your money.

That's right: Global warming caused by chlorofluorocarbons, not carbon dioxide, new study says.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week. 

CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical analysis now shows that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. 

"Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong," said Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry in Waterloo's Faculty of Science. "In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming." 

"Most conventional theories expect that global temperatures will continue to increase as CO2 levels continue to rise, as they have done since 1850. What's striking is that since 2002, global temperatures have actually declined – matching a decline in CFCs in the atmosphere," Professor Lu said. "My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 °C from 1950 to 2002, but the earth has actually cooled since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline."

Global cooling! Well, even global cooling is climate change, right? So the bureaucrats in the IPCC and like entities will still be in business. But I do wonder how they will transition from warming alarmism to cooling alarmism. And how they will describe the catastrophic portents of global cooling in order to increase their funding.

And don't you love Prof. Lu's description of how CFCs and cosmic rays "conspire" to cool the globe? It's a plot, I tell ya!

But Prof. Lu is not the first scientist to denounce the CO2 theory of global warming.

The great biofuel hoax - and the evil resulting

Until biofuels can be manufactured economically and in quantity from plant waste byproducts, they should, I think, be resisted by any person who claims to have a moral sense.

As everyone knows, biofuels have been touted with great vigor by the Bush administration, as well as practically every other Western government, as the answer to over-reliance on petroleum fuels. The reason is not that the world is running out of oil - on the contrary, the globe is practically floating in it (though the wrong places have most of the reserves). The reason for the shift to biofuels is to stop global warming.

There are excellent reasons to move our energy reliance away from oil, but shifting to biofuels to stop global warming isn't one of them. I won't even address here the issue of whether (a) the world really is warming, or (b) whether petroleum use is a the principal cause. Both these matters are still unsettled by scientists (though not by politicians). My point here is that what we are doing is growing food crops to convert to ethanol, and this fact has two very deleterious effects: (a) it produces more, not less, gases presently described as "greenhouse" gases, said to cause global warming, and (b) makes all foods more expensive.

The Guardian newspaper has an article today focusing on the latter aspect, but does touch on the former.

A recent study by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen shows that the official estimates have ignored the contribution of nitrogen fertilisers. They generate a greenhouse gas - nitrous oxide - that is 296 times as powerful as CO2. These emissions alone ensure that ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 and 1.5 times as much warming as petrol, while rapeseed oil (the source of more than 80% of the world's biodiesel) generates 1-1.7 times the impact of diesel. This is before you account for the changes in land use.

A paper published in the journal Science three months ago suggests that protecting uncultivated land saves, over 30 years, between two and nine times the carbon emissions you might avoid by ploughing it and planting biofuels. Last year the research group LMC International estimated that if the British and European target of a 5% contribution from biofuels were to be adopted by the rest of the world, the global acreage of cultivated land would expand by 15%. That means the end of most tropical forests. It might also cause runaway climate change.

That's what happens when activists and politicians focus on only one thing, carbon dioxide, the the big meanie of global warming. Yet methane and nitrous oxide are said by climatologists to be far more powerful in inducing global warming than CO2. Why focus on CO2? Michael Crichton pointed out in his book, State of Fear, that if the atmosphere was a football field, the amount of CO2 would be one inch of the field. Nonetheless, gobal warming alarmists say that a minute increase of that one inch places the entire earth in jeopardy.

Yet, according to the Guardian, the most damaging fact about biofuels is not they that will make global warming worse, but that

... using food to produce biofuels "might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further". This week, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls "a very serious crisis". Even when the price of food was low, 850 million people went hungry because they could not afford to buy it. With every increment in the price of flour or grain, several million more are pushed below the breadline.

The cost of rice has risen by 20% over the past year, maize by 50%, wheat by 100%. Biofuels aren't entirely to blame - by taking land out of food production they exacerbate the effects of bad harvests and rising demand - but almost all the major agencies are now warning against expansion. And almost all the major governments are ignoring them.

Get the irony? Global petroleum reserves are at an all-time high, while global food reserves are at one of their lowest levels in the modern era, yet we're reducing the amount of food we grow in order to use less oil. Already in the US, 15 percent (1.6 billion bushels) of corn production is devoted not to the table, but to the tank. The effect on the prices of other foods has been felt hard, especially animal foods, such as chickens, for which corn is a major foodstuff. Feed corn for livestock has risen sharply in price.

The Guardian concludes, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, "If the governments promoting biofuels do not reverse their policies ... [m]illions will be displaced, hundreds of millions more could go hungry." Couldn't happen, you say? Well, consider that the banning of DDT in 1972 has resulted in the deaths of more people than died around the world in World War II (see this piece in 21st Century Science and and Technology magazine). Never underestimate the power of governments to destroy, and be especially wary when they claim the best of intentions in order to do so.

Torture still endorsed by US government

Geologist Professor Ian Plimer, describing the computer models used by global warming alarmists:

‘I’m a natural scientist ... collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Meanwhile, two US scientists have explained the severe shortcomings of computer climate models.

Gary Strand, a software engineer at the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), admitted climate model software “doesn't meet the best standards available” in a comment he posted on the website Climate Audit.

“As a software engineer, I know that climate model software doesn't meet the best standards available. We've made quite a lot of progress, but we've still quite a ways to go,” Strand wrote on July 5, 2009, according to the website WattsUpWithThat.com.

Strand's candid admission promoted WattsUpWithThat's skeptical Meteorologist Anthony Watts to ask the following question:

“Do we really want Congress to make trillion dollar tax decisions today based on 'software [that] doesn't meet the best standards available?'”

Meteorologist Watts also critiqued the current climate models, noting, “NASA GISS model E written on some of the worst FORTRAN coding ever seen is a challenge to even get running. NASA GISTEMP is even worse.

Another Plimer quote:

Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury. It’s the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets.

See my own post, "Environmentalist religion explained." As I wrote then, it's appropriate to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Update: What about 55 million years ago?

A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday.
Previous research into this period, called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, estimates the planet's surface temperature blasted upwards by between five and nine degrees Celsius (nine and 16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in just a few thousand years.

The Arctic Ocean warmed to 23 C (73 F), or about the temperature of a lukewarm bath.

How PETM happened is unclear but climatologists are eager to find out, as this could shed light on aspects of global warming today.

I blame the cave men. Don't try to object that there were no cave men 55 million years ago. Doesn't matter. It's still humans' fault.

Oh, and did you know that the earth has had polar ice caps for only about 20 percent of its age? "Normal" temps, on geological scale, are those too warm to support polar ice.

Environmentalist religion explained

Freeman Dyson:

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [From, "The Question of Global Warming."]

Freeman Dyson is one of the most highly-regarded physicists in the world. Wikipedia introduces its entry on him thus:

Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, and nuclear engineering. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism and a proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

A true intellectual heavyweight, his essay in the New York Review of Books this month is a very important analysis that I urge you to read in full.

Dyson is not the first to point out that environmentalism has morphed into an actual religion in its own right. In Global Cooling Ain't so Hot, Either, I pointed out:

Michael Crichton and J.R. Dunn have written highly insightful essays about how environmentalism is a religion in its own right. See “Environmentalism as Religion” by Crichton and Dunn’s piece, “A Necessary Apocalypse,” in which he shows how gobal-warming environmentalism is not merely a religion, it is an apocalyptic religion. Its deity is Mother Earth (Gaia), for whom human beings are mortal enemies. NBC’s Matt Lauer inadvertantly gave away Gaiaism’s central article of faith thus:

Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives … The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home.

My second son was required to take ecology his junior year in high school; he related to me that the curriculum basically said there was nothing wrong with earth that the disappearance of humanity wouldn’t cure.

Jonah Goldberg wrote recently of the "Church of Green."

"At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. ...

Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt, and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as “selfish, conceited creatures.” Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

I heard Gore on NPR recently. He was asked about evangelical pastor Joseph Hagee’s absurd comment that Hurricane Katrina was God’s wrath for New Orleans’s sexual depravity. Naturally, Gore chuckled at such backwardness. But then the Nobel laureate went on to blame Katrina on man’s energy sinfulness. It struck me that the two men are not so different.

As Crichton pointed out, "environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths." Let me elucidate.

---

There are other religions than Judaism and Christianity, of course, but modern environmentalism was born in the West, whose cultural heritage and common languages are steeped through and through in Christian tradition, which was itself a daughter of Judaism.

The common themes of both scriptural Judaism and Christianity deal with deity, the natural world (existing first in a purity state), a corruption of the purity state (Augustine: "fall from grace,"), redemption and liberation/salvation. Then follows paradise. A prominent, though not universal, strain in both Judaism and Christianity is a looming apocalypse that in potential or in fact destroys enormous swaths of humanity.

Modern environmentalism has all these elements, with an emphasis on apocalypticism. I'll examine these religious elements in turn.

Deity: That would be the earth itself. "Mother Earth" is a term tossed about among the religion's adherents, thus personalizing what is really only a gazillion-ton hunk of rock. Personalization of the planet is necessary to deify it. Adherents often call this new deity, “Gaia,” the name of an ancient Greek earth goddess. The Gaia hypothesis was first proposed by NASA scientist James Lovelock, who introduced it thus:

What is the hypothesis of Gaia ? Stated simply, the idea is that we may have discovered a living being bigger, more ancient, and more complex than anything from our wildest dreams. That being, called Gaia, is the Earth.

The most important tenet of Gaiaism is that the earth is itself alive and is a being in its own right.

Creation: Environmentalism offerns no real theory of how the earth came to be, it focuses on the biosphere. In that manner it does echo the Jewish Scriptures, once removed. The Scriptures do inquire how the earth came to be, but not how God came to be.

As for the appearance of life, environmentalism drops the Bible's creation stories and substitutes evolution. Now, I am not arguing here against the theory of evolution. I am simply pointing out that evolution theory is environmentalism's explanation of life on earth and its diversity. The earth's biodiversity is extremely important for environmentalism, since evolution-driven biodiversity undergirds the apocalypticism of religious environmentalism. The apocalypse of "climate change" is predicted to destroy the evolutionary niches of various species. They won't be able to adapt.

The Purity State: Take your pick:

• Gaia before the appearance of human beings or,
• Gaia after we showed up, but before we invented civilization. (The anti-civilization theme is present in the Hebrew Scriptures, too.) This aspect romanticizes pre-civilizational peoples, often portraying them as gentle souls "living in harmony" with nature and imagining that they worshiped the earth, too, which in fact some did. (However, this notion is rebutted by contemporary researchers.)

The Corruption of (or Fall from) Purity: This is easily defined. It was the invention of the internal-combustion engine and the use of fossil fuels that followed. Burning coal also. More broadly, though, the Fall is consumerism and international industry, especially chemical industries.

Redemption: There is no savior per se in environmentalism. We have to save ourselves. Barack Obama sings the same song; one of his stump themes is, "We are the change we have been waiting for." And just as one wonders whether Obama is running for office or creating a cultic following, environmentalism relies on its own cultic leaders to guide the masses and give enlightenment to them. Like the Law of Moses, their commandments are to be obeyed from faith rather than inquiry: recycle, drive less, eat organics, drive hybrids, etc.

Paradise: Sorry, environmentalism offers not. There is no longing for "life more abundant," since abundancy is exactly what environmentalism uses for original sin. Instead of paradise, environmentalism promotes stasis:

Folks my age and maybe a little younger can remember when the Environmental Apocaplypse was not global warming but global cooling. So let us suppose two things: first that global warming really is occurring and human attention to it can reverse it, and second, that we do reverse it. Are we then to agree that a cooler earth really is in our best interests? Why?

I’ve always kind of suspected that underlying much of environmentalism is a desire for the impossible: stasis.

Moreover, environmental stasis can be accomplished only by human austerity. Environmentalism's New Jerusalem is not prosperity, but decline, presented as a return to humanity's purity state: the simple life arranged around a village-type lifestyle where everything is within walking distance of everything else. Who else but George Monbiot to explain?

Everything we thought was good turns out also to be bad. It is an act of kindness to travel to your cousin's wedding. Now it is also an act of cruelty. It is a good thing to light the streets at night. Climate change tells us it kills more people than it saves. We are killing people by the most innocent means: turning on the lights, taking a bath, driving to work, going on holiday. Climate change demands a reversal of our moral compass, for which we are plainly unprepared.

Apocalypticism: Like religious apocalypticism, environmental apocalypticism - in fact, the whole movement - is predicated on the imminent, substantial destruction of the natural world and its inhabitants. This from no less a personage than United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who just five months ago said that "humanity faces oblivion if it fails to confront global warming." Oblivion, he said. Rising seas, expanding droughts, melting sea ice, increased desertification, scorched crops, mass human suffering and death - all inhabit the same enviro-religious space as Revelation's horsemen of the apocalypse.

Important in Jewish and Christian apocalypticism was the concept of "children of light" versus the "children of darkness." The children of darkness were those who rebelled against God, who turned away from righteousness and embodied evil. Children of light were those who apprehended the truth of God and cleaved toward spiritual purity. This notion has been adopted wholesale by environmentalism. Dyson again:

Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future.

Catch that? This is a clear delineation of the realm of light and of darkness, and whom inhabits each. "The worldwide community of environmentalists ... holds the moral high ground," and thus are the children of light. Who are the children of darkness? They are the "evil" ones who conduct or permit the "ruthless destruction of natural habitats." Dyson continues,

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. ... Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment.

(Italics added.) "Enemy of the environment" = child of darkness. (Dyson does not himself promote such a belief, but certainly it is out there.)

Another tenet of religious apocalypticism is that things will get worse before they get better. And so it is with environmentalist apocalypticism. No matter what we do now, greenhouse gases, and therefore climate change, will intensify until at least mid-century, and only then might be abated.

Still skeptical that environmentalism is a religion in its own right? Then peruse, "Nature is not your friend."

Then Scott Lancaster, 18, was killed and eaten by a mountain lion.

Scott’s friends and family consoled themselves that his death, sad and untimely though it was, had somehow been kind of fitting for him. As James Valdez put it, "He was a real outdoorsy guy."

"It felt natural," said Abby Heller. "It felt like it was part of nature, and part of the way the cycle happens. It seemed kind of pure."

It was "natural," part of the pure cycle of life for a young man to suffer a gruesome, horrifying, massively painful death by means of the "red in tooth and claw" of one of Gaia's creatures. And so the case that environmentalism is a religion in its own right is hereby closed.

---

But there is more than mere religiousity at work in religious environmentalism. H.L. Mencken observed, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." And that is the true foundation of environmentalism today: the desire of its gurus to regulate the way others live. Monbiot again:

We can deal with climate change only with the help of governments, restraining the exertions of our natural liberties.

Dyson wrote that, "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion." I demur. Environmentalism has not replaced socialism at all. Instead, the old-line socialists, faced with decades of the failure of political socialism, have jumped on the environmentalist bandwagon to keep socialism alive. Environmentalism has become a much better vehicle to achieve a rigid regulation of people's lives than political socialism ever was. After all, the fate of the entire planet is at stake! Environmentalism has already led some British members of Parliament to propose that the government regulate almost every aspect of buying and selling by private individuals. If this is not socialism, it is a distinction without a difference.

So there you are. At bottom, modern environmentalism has discarded scientific rigor to embrace something not much different than Leninism, the desire to control the major components of the way individuals live. From there it is a short step for environmentalism to Leninism's successor: Stalinism, the desire to control every aspect of the way we live. That's our future, minus the gulags. We hope.

This seems an apt time to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Updates:

The originator of the Gaia theory, which pretty much kicked off the environmentalist movement, now says it's a load of crock and that environmentalism is a totally unscientific religion.

Arthur Chrenkoff elaborates more on Environmentalism as a religion. Excellent essay!

March 2020: Now the Judeo-Christian template Crichton spoke of is being abandoned for full-up paganism and the practice of child sacrifice to achieve religious goals: "Bernie Sanders: Abortion And Population Control Are Important Parts Of Addressing Climate Change."

Please bring back global warming!

A Minneapolis blogger, commenting on the abnormally cool weather there, pleads for global warming to return.

Today, walking down the street in downtown Minneapolis at 5:30, en route from my office to my parking ramp, I saw something I've never seen before: a man wearing a winter coat in July. Well, maybe not quite a winter coat, but definitely a fall/winter semi-parka with an unzipped, faux-fur lined hood. He was carrying a briefcase and looked like a businessman who was tired of being cold every time he went outdoors. In the summer.

I personally don't think that we (all of humankind, let alone we Americans) can control the weather, but for those who do think we possess that Godlike power, here's a request: can we turn the thermostat up a little?

Here in Tennessee, the low last night was about 54 where I live; we slept with the windows open and the AC off. NO AC today, either, since the high is forecast for only 75. It has a long way to go as I type this at 11:15 a.m. - and this is July, heretofore an insufferably hot, humid month.

But we can still blame it on global warming, right? Well, no, since that hasn't been happening since 1998. So let's blame it on climate change - yeah, that's it, climate change!

Temps continue to drop

UAH MSU have released their new satellite data for May 2008. The global anomaly was -0.17 °C, the coldest reading after January 2000 and the third coldest monthly figure after September 1993.

An interesting factoid: "May 2008 was more than 0.75 °C cooler than January 2007."

More by the physicist who blogs at The Reference Frame. And "a former television meteorologist who spent 25 years on the air and who also operates a weather technology and content business" points out that,

It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C seen in January 2008. ...

But even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ∆T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon “global warming signal” of the last 100 years.

I blame global warming climate change.

Ice age on the way?

Europe is facing the coldest winter in 1,000 years.

Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.

The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe.

I blame global warming! Oh, wait, we don't have global warming any more. It's being remarketed as "global climate disruption."

1st Oct. snow in London in 70 years

It snowed yesterday in London for the first time in 70 years. Read all about it.

I blame global warming. (HT: American Digest)

Related, MIT scientists say that global warming theory contradicts empirical data.

Boston (MA) - Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature - and not the direct result of man's contributions.

Then there's the record cold in Florida this week. And the heaviest snows in Switzerland since record-keeping began.

Global warming alert

Record cold:

The return of the trade winds should temper the temperature extremes that occurred around the state over the weekend, but it will be increasing the wildfire threat, Maui weather analyst Glenn James said Tuesday. ...

It may appear to be an abrupt change in conditions, after Maui County experienced a record low 64 degrees on Sunday that combined with steady afternoon showers to provide another near record 65 degrees on Monday, before the daytime temperature zipped up to a high of 91 degrees that afternoon.

I blame global warming.

Related: Suddenly being green is not cool any more.

I blame global warming

This was caused by Hurricane Sandy and Sandy was caused by global warming - ipso facto:

It's a meme!

I posted last week about just how environmentalism is an actual religion in its own right. Now here's the UK's Telegraph:

if you really want to know what it's like to be a 16th-century heretic, try saying you're a bit sceptical about man-made global warming.

Temperatures do seem to have gone up a little, even though environmentalists acknowledge that we might be in for a cool spell now. And we've certainly had our fair share of tsunamis, hurricanes and typhoons recently. Still, no one has convincingly proved that all this is definitely man's fault. Try saying that in polite circles and it's like saying you're partial to roasted babies. ...

understand people disagreeing with global warming sceptics, but not the jeering, ridiculing way they do it. I'm not sure I'm right; they're convinced I'm wrong. They're convinced, too, that they have the moral high ground, that all sceptics are sworn enemies of nature, flowers and puppy dogs.

Environmentalism is the new secular faith - school prayer for liberals, as an American philosopher put it. The faith is a strict one. You're not allowed to join if you think that it's sensible to keep an eye on the environment but don't think that man is to blame for changes in world temperature.

You must believe in the full package. If you do, you are blessed, free from sin and allowed the pious smugness you find in the worst sort of religious believers. It's not enough to believe in these things yourself; you must condemn others for not sharing your belief.

The latest carbon credits scheme - published in a parliamentary committee report - is squarely on the side of the believers. The idea is that everyone gets an annual carbon ration to spend on fuel and energy bills and, if you want to overspend, you buy credits from low carbon emitters.

It's just like the medieval trade in indulgences, where remission for sins was granted by the Church once the sinner confessed and received absolution. By the late Middle Ages, the system had grown corrupt, with professional pardoners selling indulgences by the bucketload.

The medieval market in indulgences ended with the Reformation. You can imagine the outcome of this market in modern sin. Oceans of sackcloth-and-ashes piety from those who underspend their carbon credit, and badly informed abuse for people who like flying abroad on holiday.

All time low expected for Denver

No, I'm not referring to the upcoming DNC convention. It's the temperature.

Around the metro area, Friday may be rainy with a high predicted to plummet to a
record-low high of 61 degrees — that’s 26 degrees below the normal high of 87 degrees for mid-August.

The previous record minimum high temperature for Aug. 15 was 69 degrees in 1933, according to the National Weather Service.

“That will be a significant cool-off,” said Bob Koopmeiners of the National Weather
Service in Boulder.

I blame global warming.

More: "... over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C — that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years."

Professor Piven Gets Her 15 Minutes

So Sociology is finally having its 15 minutes of fame. Frances Fox Piven in The Nation laments the lack of revolutionary spirit in the current age. Where ARE those cannon fodder proletariat anyway.

The problem of how to bring people together is sometimes made easier by government service centers, as when in the 1960s poor mothers gathered in crowded welfare centers or when the jobless congregated in unemployment centers.

Could it be that maybe that’s not the droids we’re looking for? But wait, there’s more.

Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. (Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves "mothers" instead of "recipients," although they were unlucky in doing so at a time when motherhood was losing prestige.) Losing a job is bruising; even when many other people are out of work, most people are still working. So, a kind of psychological transformation has to take place; the out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible.

Oh, yes, anger. That’s THE ingredient for the Revolution (along with Draino and Prell). After all, that’s been the scenario when Capitalism replaced the Agrarian Modes of Production. Marx and Engels Speak!

But Professors Altman and Taranto dissent and voice a distinct opinion (okay, Taranto is not REALLY a professor—in fact he did not finish college but he IS the opinion editor at the Wall Street Journal and that’s LIKE being a professor since he’s in a position where he doesn’t care if we don’t like him or not—is that like tenure?).

The uproar Frances created generated some angry attacks—apparently people consider HER to be a good target for THEIR anger! This was met by the Four Riders of the American Sociological Association (REAL Professors) professing THEIR support of their fallen angel and returning fire at those ANGRY under educated masses (the Proletariat?). In short, the academic world is turning out to do what they do best—hiss.

This is so much fun! It’s like being back in Gradual School! I get to watch really cool guys and chicks (er, professors) discussing REALLY high level stuff like Marx and Engels. They are oh so hip and cool. When I grow up, I wanna be a sociologist just like them! Still to this day, I wanna be a sociologist, too.



We could pretend its 1979 when all the cool professors were ex SDSers who had made it. And THEY can give over a really powerful sermon on the Gospels of Marx and Engels. REALLY worth your time and they can use the FTE's.

In seminar, the professors sit poised on the divan while we students merit the floor at their feet. Gracefully, Frances (it's her seminar) gives over the Truth of THE Manifesto according to Karl and Fred.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie. [They ALWAYS add the italics and bold print when they lean forward to preach their points!]

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

So, we learn the Holy Word that The Revolution comes when members of the Bourgeoisie, like Prometheus, leave their Towers to teach the masses the means and modes of revolutionary technologies. After all, the Proletariat are not up to learning these tools themselves being unemployed factory workers and all.

But, wait! There’s danger in the fields. The wolves run wild in the cold Russian Winter Nights chasing lone horse drawn sleds filled with terrified children and their mothers where Grandmothers leap from sleds to be eaten to save the precious little ones from certain death! Grandma! Don't do it!

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

Frances leans forward and whispers that even though a massive coagulation of American humanity is coalescing about Tea Rooms—they are NOT the Revolutionary Ones. They are reactionary POSERS out to LOOK like a Revolutionary Class, aware of itself acting for its own self interest. Oh no! These are the ones trying to roll back the times to some Ancient Order—to a Halcyon Age when White Men gathered to throw off the tyranny of a King, another White Man. Yes—they want to bring back the ancient glory of the Constitution.

But, do not trust them, my pretties.

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

So this cannot BE those frequenters of Tea Rooms. No. The Revolution MUST be violent. That’s what our studies have shown. And, we KNOW.

At this point, the visiting professor, who looks real cool with his tweed jacket, leather elbow patches, thick brown tortoise shell glasses rimmed by his thin balding brown hair, bespeaks from his reclined place on the divan.

"But, Frances," he purrs. "Just what DO these proletariat look like? I mean, is it not an empirical question? Just what is the spark that sets this off? After all, Frances, would not one person’s Revolutionary be another person’s Reactionary? Would we even recognize what they look like? Are they like us just poor and unemployed or do they not bathe and reek of the odiousness of labor, street effluvia, and body odor? What would Frederick Engels say to get this Revolution happening?"

Good question and one that was asked to Frederick Engels over a century ago. His response is classic. But first some background.

The questioner was Isaac Hourwich, an economist and a jurist from Russia who taught at the University of Chicago and Columbia and periodically was an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He was also my great grandfather. [I come from several generations of Gentle Marxists and Marxettes.] He had been a rabble rousing Revolutionary in The Old Country and was sent to Siberia for the Cause. His sister translated the Manifesto into Russian for its first edition there. So, the family was pretty Red. His daughter told me about the wolves. When I teach the Manifesto, I always apologize on her behalf—my fault. I also blame Global Warming.

Anyway, Isaac wrote to Fred in 1893 to see if Fred could say a few things to encourage the Serfs of Russia to rise up against their Oppressors. Fred’s words to Izzie ring true still.

London, 27 May 1893
122 Regent's Park Road, NW

Dr. Isaac A. Hourwich

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for your interesting study on the Economics of the Russian Village, which I read, I hope, not without profit.

As to the burning questions of the Russian revolutionary movement, the part which the peasantry may be effected to take in it, these are subjects on which I could not conscientiously state an opinion for publication without previously studying over again the whole subject and completing my very imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case by bringing it up to date. But for that I am sorry to say I have not at present the time. And then, I have every reason to doubt whether such a public statement by me would have the effect you expect of it.

I know from my own experience of 1849-52 how unavoidably a political emigration splits itself up into a number of divergent factions, so long as the mother-country remains quiet. The burning desire to act, face to face with the impossibility of doing anything effective, causes in many intelligent and energetic heads an over active mental speculation, an attempt at discovering or inventing new and almost miraculous means of action.

The word of an outsider would have but a trifling, and at best passing effect. If you have followed the Russian emigration literature of the last decade, you will yourself know how, for instance, passages from Marx's writings and correspon¬dence have been interpreted in the most contradictory ways, exactly as if they had been texts from the Classics or from the New Testament, by various sections of Russian emigrants.

Whatever I might say on the subject you mention, would probably share the same fate, if any attention was paid to it. And so from all these various reasons, I think it best for all whom it may concern, including myself, to abstain.

Yours very truly,
F. Engels

[Source: Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishing Group Corp, 2004) Vol. 50 pp. 144-45.]

Now THIS is how a true Marxist Scholar SHOULD address the issues of the popular uprising in America:

Yo, Dude (or, Dudette as the case may be); I’ve haven’t the FOGGIEST notion of how this is playing out, who the players REALLY are; and I am the very LAST person on earth to ask about such matters.

Are Tea Room attendees the formation of the Proletariat revolutionary force or not? Are the twenty-first century technologies associated with the information the New Mode of Production that the Prophet and his Priest foretold in their visions? There are some social scientists who say yes, some say no, and eventually, when the facts are in, we'll all know a portion of the explained variance. It is, after all, an empirical question.

So, Frances, go back and study your sources and quit posing. You are far too established and Bourgeois to be manning the picket lines—you’ll have to give up your pension. As a sociologist, you may have something to offer but only after the facts are in. That's the problem with science. You have to wait until events have unfolded to assess whether or not your hypotheses are correct. As attractive as it is, the lecturn is not a bully pulpit.

Charles, there's a reason you're not king

And the reason is that your mum isn't a batbelfry like you are.

Prince Charles urged the world Tuesday to fight climate change, saying that while the global credit crunch will be temporary, the effects of the "climate crunch" were irreversible. ...

"Given the current turbulence in the international financial system and the immediate and damaging effect it is having on the whole world, the credit crunch is rightly a preoccupation of vast significance and importance," Charles said.

"But we take our eye off the 'climate crunch' at our peril," he said in a speech at Japan's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. ...

"The scale of the challenge is clear, nothing less than an urgent, full-scale transformation to a low-carbon society is needed," he said.

So don't get too exercised about the looming worldwide recession, folks, because Charles wants to plunge the worldwide economies into the abyss by urgent transformation into a "low-carbon" society.

Meanwhile:

A nor'easter into Wednesday will continue to slam the Northeast with snow, rain and wind, causing more headaches for Major League Baseball. ...

Expert Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson says, "This is a big storm by October standards." More a foot of snow will fall in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania and the Adirondacks in upstate New York.

And also meanwhile:

Near-record cold, and mountain snow

Snow is accumulating this afternoon in the North Carolina mountains, and the rest of the Carolinas is shivering in the first cold outbreak of the season.

Temperatures that are more than 15 degrees below normal for this time of year, combined with strong northwest winds, are making today uncomfortably chilly in the Charlotte metro region.

I blame global warming and the "Charles effect."

But the dadgum science is SETTLED!

I blame global warming! Or global cooling! Wait, it's because of climate change! Just remember, the science is settled!

As they say, climate is what you want, but weather is what you get.

Saturday Photo Funnies

I blame global warming:
















A road for drunk drivers
















Hyperinflation




















Oops, I left my bank vault at home.




















Are you a geek? Need a job?















Oh please, oh please . . .

Earliest snowfall ever in Boise

The Idaho Statesman reports,

Big snow flakes fell early Friday evening, turning Downtown Boise into a giant snow globe for people on their way home from work. The snow caught many people off guard, including this bicyclist heading down Idaho Street between 8th and 9th around 5:45 p.m. Across the Treasure Valley, tree branches heavy with wet, snow-covered leaves fell on power lines, causing scattered power outages. This is the earliest measurable snowfall in Boise since recordkeeping began in 1898, according to the National Weather Service.

I blame global warming.

I blame global warming

KETV, Omaha:

OMAHA, Neb. -- Holt County snowplows were out Tuesday night clearing 8 inches of hail that fell during a storm.

Alaska's shivering summer

Alaska is on track for the coldest summer on record.

I blame global warming. (HT: Don Surber)

I blame global warming

"Charlotte [NC] temperature hits 123-year low"

Or did Al Gore just swoop through Charlotte?