Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science | Tags: Al Gore, Necessary Information, The Environment
Speaking of the environment, Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper, have announced that they are separating after four decades of marriage. Just thought you should know.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Environment, History | Tags: Al Gore, Czech Republic, The Cold War, The Free Market
I have often recommended the videos of the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Knowledge. Each is about 7 minutes long, presented one each day, for a week. Peter Robinson interviews serious people with serious ideas about current events and history.
This week’s guest is Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic. He was born in Prague in 1941 during WWII, grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. After earning a doctorate in economics he pursued a career in academia and at the Czechoslovak State Bank. Immediately after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Klaus entered politics. A founder of the Civic Democratic Party, he served 1992 to 1997 as prime minister of the Czech Republic. In 2003 he was elected president, a position to which he was reelected in 2008.
The first segment concerns the events of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down. The second segment is about the parallels to be drawn between a united Europe and the late Warsaw Pact. In the third, Mr. Klaus takes on Al Gore and points out the similarities in ideology between communism and environmentalism. And the Thursday segment is about how he became an advocate for the free market while studying economics under communism.
The previous interview was with Victor Davis Hanson, classical scholar and military historian and Robert Baer, former CIA agent who served in the Middle East, discussing with Peter Robinson the problem of Iraq. It is a stunning conversation.
All of the previous Uncommon Knowledge interviews are available in the NRO archives. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Try one segment of your choice. I’ll bet you get hooked!
Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear | Tags: Al Gore, Democrat Demagogues, Environment, Junk Science
According to an Earth Day survey of schoolchildren, one in three children between the ages of six and eleven think that the earth will have been destroyed by the time they grow up. The telephone survey conducted by Opinion Research polled a national sample of preteens, 250 boys and 250 girls.
Kids worry about the state of the planet, especially about clean air and clean water, regardless of their parents actions to recycle or make other efforts to be green. 50 percent say that hurricanes and tornadoes are the natural disasters that scare them the most. 28 percent say that they fear that animals such as polar bears and penguins will become extinct and disappear from the planet.
Minority kids are even more anxious. 75 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children believe that the planet will be irrevocably damaged by the time they grow up. Urban children are more anxious than suburban children.
Thank you, Al Gore, the Sierra Club, and all the green propagandists in the education establishment. This is child abuse. Kids write about polar bears for class projects.
I wrote a short post last December about DNA studies that determined that polar bears had been around much longer than estimated. It had been assumed that they evolved from brown bears fairly recently. Genetic studies determined that the polar bear had been around for at least 130,000 years, through warmer periods and cooler periods, and we probably didn’t need to worry about their surviving the slight warming that we have had. We could probably take them off the “might become endangered” list.
The post was illustrated with a really cute picture of a polar bear cub. We have had 26,000 hits on that one post — mostly from school children working on class projects. I hope that some of them read it to find out that the bears are probably not endangered, but I imagine that most of them were simply after the picture of the cub. I know it’s kid’s homework, because the hits stop during school vacations.
In England, the High Court ordered schools to give an equal amount of time to the scientific proof that many of Al Gore’s claims in “An Inconvenient Truth” were unsupportable, false, and just plain wrong. We have had no such luck in this country, and his celebrated propaganda powerpoint is constantly shown in the schools. The polar bear was chosen by environmental activists specifically to arouse worries about extinction, and by extension to use their habitat needs to prevent any possible drilling for oil.
Unnecessarily scaring kids seems like a particularly sleazy way to try to accomplish green fantasies.
Filed under: Freedom, Heartwarming, History | Tags: Al Gore, Irena Sendler, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, Nobel Prize
Much ado is made over Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. A highly coveted and ostensibly prestigious award; we are supposed to be deeply impressed by the winners. But should we really be? Just how much is a Nobel Peace Prize worth?
Consider this…
A Lady Named Irena Sendler
By John ColemanRecently a 98-year-old lady named Irena Sendler died.
During WWII, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.
Being German, she KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews. Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she also carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger children).
She also had a dog in the back of the truck that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, but the barking covered the children/infants noises.
During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 children/infants.
She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs and arms and beat her severely.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the children she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her backyard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the families. Most, of course, had been gassed.
Those children she helped were placed into foster family homes or adopted out.
Last year, Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She LOST.
Al Gore won for doing a slide show on Global Warming.
I’d say they aren’t worth spit.
Learn more about Irena Sendler at Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project.
(h/t ICECAP)
Filed under: History, Humor, News, Pop Culture | Tags: Al Gore, Culture War, Mainstream Media, Political Correctness/Multiculturalism
I am not impressed with the “changing of the year”. I don’t like New Year’s predictions, resolutions, endless displays of diet books, and the trite lists of ten best and ten worst. They are lazy efforts at glorifying the work of newsmen who increasingly are unable to identify what is important and what is trivial, and don’t want to put much effort into year-end columns.
Canadian columnist David Warren is a man after my own heart. For his “Man of the Year ” column he says:
For my last Sunday column of anno MMVIII, I will announce my selection for “Man of the Year.” It was, at most, a year of thin choices in the public and political realm. Once again, Al Gore did not make my list of finalists.
I didn’t like any of the newly-elected presidents, either; not Asif Ali Zardari, “Mr. Ten Percent” of Pakistan; nor Dimitry Medvedev, the Russian place-holder; nor Ma Ying-jeou, the smooth compromiser of independent Taiwan; nor Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana (if he has indeed won); nor even Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe (who won the election, but did not become president); or Barack Obama of the United States (who won but is not yet installed). I have invested no hope in any of them, and thus must hope to be surprised.
Among Time magazine’s rival list of candidates, I was immediately able to eliminate Steve Jobs, Bruce Springsteen, George Clooney, Rem Koolhaas, “Brad and Angelina,” Oprah Winfrey, and even Laura Bush’s library-science nominee, the Afghan novelist Khaled Hosseini — along with several dozen others among the world’s current, media-recognized, “leaders and revolutionaries, heroes and pioneers, scientists and thinkers, artists and entertainers, builders and titans,” to say nothing of their chefs. (I noticed that nobody nominated Bernie Madoff.)
I also consulted the “100 most beautiful people” of People magazine. After eliminating overlap from the list above, I further discounted “Kate,” “Salma,” Carrie,” the entire cast of Gossip Girl, Jessica Alba, their respective boyfriends where applicable, and anyone with the first name “Vanessa.”…
The whole delightful column is to be found here. You will be surprised at his choice of “Man of the Year”, and appreciate his reasons for his choice. Restores my interest in year-end lists.
Filed under: Conservatism, Election 2008, Liberalism, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Politics | Tags: Al Gore, John Kerry, John McCain, Obama, Polls, President Bush
Many Republicans are fretting over recent polling (RCP average Obama +5.9) in the presidential election, fearing, as some pundit on CNN declared, “the election is over”. Liberals, on the other hand, are quite cocky.
But let’s hold on for just a second and put things in persepective. A quick google search indicates things may not be as dire as Republicans fear and liberals, and the media (redundant, I know) would have us believe. Let’s take a little trip back in the time machine:
Newsweek Sept 30-Oct 2, 2004: Kerry 49 Bush 46
AP/Ipsos October 4-6, 2004: Kerry 50 Bush 46
Reuters/Zogby October 6-8, 2004: Kerry 46 Bush 45
Gallup Sept 30-Oct 2, 2000: Gore: 47 Bush 39
And there is more reason for optimism. As HotAir reports, the McCain campaign is saying it’s going to take the gloves off and start calling attention to Obama’s nefarious associations with criminals and radicals since the MSM won’t.
If they also start pointing the finger at Obama and Democrats for the financial crisis, and drawing attention to the big bucks and advisers Obama got from Fannie Mae, then things might actually turn around.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Election 2008, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Liberalism, News, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Politics | Tags: Al Gore, Democrat lies, Gas Prices, Liberal lies, Liberals, Nancy Pelosi, oil
Democrats WON’T ALLOW more drilling…
…because they DON’T WANT you to be able to afford gas!!!
If you want affordable transportation any time this decade, or next — if you want electricity to remain affordable — you damn well better vote Republican this fall. They are the only party that is in favor of increasing all our domestic energy supplies.
Filed under: Economy, Education, Environment, Global Warming, Liberalism, Media Bias, News, Politics, Socialism | Tags: Al Gore, Climate Change, Global Warming, IPCC, Junk Science, United Nations
When is a consensus not a consensus?
How about when the number of prominent, respected, and world-renowned scientists dissenting from the liberal global-warm-mongering far exceeds the number of scientists involved in the UN’s whole fraudulent International Panel on Climate Change?
As American Thinker points out, we have reached just such a number…and then some.
32,000 American scientists, including over 9,000 Ph.D’s, have now signed the “Oregon Petition” rejecting Kyoto and other similar measures, and the premise of “global warming” itself. The petition reads:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
With a corrupt Democrat majority in congress and both parties’ presidential candidates poised to do enormous damage to the US economy over nothing more than environmental hysteria and junk science, this story needs to get out.
But you know as well as I do, the mainstream media won’t cover it. (The National Post gives a detailed account of just how actively the media has been burying and trying to discredit real global warming dissent.) At least not until the story reaches such a critical mass that they can no longer ignore it.
I hope you’ll all join me in getting the word out. Blog about it, email it to friends, Digg it, Reddit it… pass it on.
Update: The official site of the Oregon Petition lists the signators of the petition by name and state, breaks them down by degree, and answers all sorts of questions you may have about the petition.
Filed under: Environment, News, Science/Technology | Tags: Al Gore, Environment Green Politics, Environmentalism, Global Hour, Liberal lies, Naive Urban People, NASA, science
Last night at the appointed hour (8:00 pm local time, “Global Hour” — see “The NUPs Strike Again!” below) I turned on all the lights and looked out the window. I was appalled. The neighbors just below had their porch lights on, but across the valley it was a sea of darkness. Surely I couldn’t be living in such a sea of greenies. Then I realized that I wasn’t. It was snowing, and I couldn’t see across the valley.
The NUPs (naive urban people) had thought to make some important environmental point by turning off the world’s lights for one hour. I am unsure of what the point was. World Jump Day‘s purpose was a little clearer –if everyone in the world jumped at the same time, it would alter the orbit of the earth slightly and improve something or other. I’m not much on candlelight vigils or marches with big puppets either. I suspect that the time involved could be better spent reading up on the problem that is of such concern.
The problem is that if the concern is “global warming” or “global cooling” or even the revised formulation “climate change”, the implication is that there is some right temperature from which variation is a worrisome thing. Which is clearly nonsense. I’m personally in favor of something ranging from 70° to 78°, but I have skiers in the family.
It is worth noting that true believers, such as Al Gore, will not tolerate disagreement. In a preview clip from his coming appearance on 60Minutes this week, he refers to climate skeptics as “few” and “flat-earth people”. And this is typical. Just mention NASA’s Aqua satellite and note the blank stares or rude language that ensues. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the splendid The Skeptical Environmentalist, has been the recipient of attacks almost as violent as those visited upon the publication of the Danish cartoons. Lomborg, a professor of statistics, merely took official government statistics and explained clearly what they indicated.
It is very worth following up on the previous link, and reading the whole thing. This paragraph is especially worth remembering:
Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring.
American Elephants 