Category — United Nations

Democrat National Convention Schedule

2008

7:00 p.m. Opening Ceremony, Burning of U.S. Flag by the UN Synchronized Flag Burning Team –Photo supplied

7:15 p.m. Pledge of Allegiance to the United Nations

7:16 p.m. John Kerry proposes a toast to Ted Kennedy.

7:30 - 8 p.m. Nonreligious prayer and worship: Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton

7:31 p.m.John Kerry proposes a toast to Ted Kennedy.

8:05 p.m. Ceremonial Tree Hugging in the “Garden of Sybaritic Pleasures”

8:15-8:30 p.m. Gay Wedding: Barney Frank, officiating; Reception follows in the Eastern Bathhouse
Barney Frank proposes a toast to the newly joined

8:45 p.m. Separation of the reception attendees and newly joined using 2X4 as prybars

8:46 p.m. Joe Biden proposes a toast to the newly separated

9:00 p.m. Keynote Speech: ‘The Proper Etiquette for Surrender’ delivered by Harry Reid

9:26 p.m. John Murtha proposes a toast to cut & run.

9:28 p.m. John Kerry toasts his Purple Hearts.

9:30 p.m. ACLU collection to benefit the Taliban’s Memorial to Fallen Freedom Fighters.

9:35 p.m. Giving you gas: the Pelosi/Reid five year plan for drilling everywhere but in the U.S.

9:36 p.m. John Kerry’s speech: We can still shorten this war by losing it.

9:45 p.m. The New Economy: The Military as a home occupation force using Obamanomics

9:46 p.m. Joe Biden proposes a toast to Truth.

9:50 p.m. Dan Rather receives ‘Truth in Broadcasting’ award presented by Michael Moore.

9:53 p.m.Michael Moore proposes a toast to truth and ethics.

10:00 p.m. Anointing of Barack Obama for President by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

10:20 p.m. Mookie Sadr proposes a toast to Barack Hussein Obama with sherbet.

11:05 p.m. Al Gore melts on the carpet to protest the convention’s carbon footprint, then leaves because his SUV is running.

11:06 p.m. The Vermont Progressive Party creates a memorial to Al Gore’s melted form.

11:07 p.m. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast to ice cubes.

11:15 p.m. ‘Our Troops are War Criminals’ presented by Dick Durbin with video

11:29 p.m. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast to John Kerry.

11:30 p.m. Acceptance of the halo by Obama and the paper roll to Messianic throne.

11:45 p.m. Departure of Obama via Carpet to Ivesco Field–Photo supplied

12:00 a.m. Ted Kennedy is toast.

12:05 a.m. Bill tells Ted to drive Hillary home.

Taliban Committee to elect Obama; M. Ahmadinejad Treas.

Maybe drinking biofuels tastes fine.

Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks. [snip]

In lean times, biotech grains are less taboo

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops. [snip]

There can’t be a food shortage, we have food to burn. Ethanol is the wave of the future. This is what the greenies wanted, this is what results.
First, understand there isn’t a shortage of food, there is a shortage of non-GE food. In Europe, Asia and areas like Vermont, they want non-modified food. This is a self-inflicted predicament for 75% of the corn grown in the US is GE. If they want corn, they get what we sell and pay the price. Or, grow their own. They can have precisely what they want then.
If they don’t, Frankenfoods, the bane of every Luddite, are coming to their plate.

There is one more option:

I could not tell if this was a pickup or a delivery.

“Pirates can claim UK asylum”

Not just a problem for Penzance: “The Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights.

Here’s another idea that will go far in “making the world safe for the children.”

Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain” on the grounds that if sent back to Somalia they could face cruel punishments such as beheading or hand-chopping. (Marie Woolf, Times Online, Apr. 13).

You can read the whole article here, it isn’t too long. The schadenfreude quotient in this piece is delightfully high.
By the way, why haven’t we seen his fat face anywhere, pontificating his point of view?

Climate facts to warm to

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.
Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: “Is the Earth still warming?”

She replied: “No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.” [snip]

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along. [snip]

THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.

The Australian’s Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald’s version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that “we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics”.

What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: “Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. (emphasis added)[snip]

The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age’s version of the essay. The attribution reads: “Copyright Ian McEwan 2008″ and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.

Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn’t there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at “absorbing inconvenient fact”?

With all the above going on, we get these fools:

At island retreat, Branson and friends seek to save a world ‘on fire’

“So, do we really think the world is on fire?” Branson, the British magnate and adventurer, asked several guests, as a manservant scurried off to fetch him another glass of pinot grigio. [snip]
Branson does - and so did most of his guests. So on this recent weekend on his private hideaway in the crystalline waters between the islands of Tortola and Anegada, they tried to figure out what to do about it and perhaps get richer in the process.

Yeah, like with the Gorbot, it is all about money.

What would we do with out the UN.

Early in our debate over female genital cutting, Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago critiqued a 2006 Lancet study by a group of researchers working with the World Health Organization. I invited those researchers from the W.H.O. study to respond.

They’ve prepared a response written by Hermione Lovel of Department of Health in Cambridge, England; Efua Dorkenoo of WHO; Zeinab Mohamed and Clare McGettigan of the University of Manchester, England, and E.O. Akande of W.H.O. and University College Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria. The researchers addressed two questions raised by Lab readers:

1. Are there local organizations around the world discussing this topic? (Asked by Elizabeth Tierney.)
2. Is there any any collation of evidence on the positive and negative effects female genital mutilation (FGM)?

Here are the researchers’ answers:

1. There are many local organizations around the world discussing female genital mutilaltion (FGM). Your readers may be interested to know they exist in many countries in Africa where FGM is a traditional practice as well as in western countries where the practice has been reported in specific immigrant communities. To list just a few examples, they include the Inter-African Committee (IAC) which is the largest African women’s regional organization with national chapters in 28 African countries working to end FGM . Other well known groups working to stop FGM include Tostan in Senegal; BAFROW in the Gambia; the Babiker Badri Scientific Society in Sudan, Equality Now Kenya, Agency for Cultural Change UK, FORWARD UK, FORWARD Germany and RAINBO. Most of these are fully engaged in their work in local communities so do not devote their limited resources to web sites but some do have a web presence people. These include the large organizations such as the IAC, EQUALITY NOW and RAINBO. All have networks of grassroots organizations campaigning against FGM in Africa and parts of the Middle East. Most importantly the WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research publishes factual education materials on FGM which can be downloaded here.
3. Aside from a number of research articles that have brought together what we know to date of the health complications, in 1995 a Manchester University team was commissioned to work with WHO to undertake a systematic literature search on primary evidence of health sequelae of FGM. This was produced in 2000 and is available here. [snip]

Understand, now that these NGO’s are talking about FGM, we assure ending this practice. Devoting this amount of compassion to the subject guarantees the solution.

How about dealing with this like the Brits and Progressives deal with guns. That works so well.

The Boston Globe endorsement of Barack Obama isn’t surprising. However, if you’re a person who believes in electing a president with experience and accomplishments, the Globe endorsement is embarrassingly light in those respects.

As a public service, I’ve provided a moonbat to English translation for our readers:

America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has this understanding at his core.

He’ll suck up to the UN.

Many have remarked on Obama’s extraordinary biography: that he is the biracial son of a father from Kenya and a mother who had him at 18

He’s an affirmative action hire.

that he was raised in the dynamic, multi-ethnic cultures of Hawaii and Indonesia

Oh, the many splendors of diversity!

the gritty and often thankless work of community organizing in Chicago

He was a moonbat without a job.

Similarly, his exposure to foreign lands as a child and his own complex racial identity have made him at ease with diversity - of point of view as well as race or religion.

I’ve been to Canada. Apparently, that would qualify me to be Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

He speaks with clarity and directness, and he is also a listener, a lost art in our politics.

Instead of waterboarding the terrorists, he’ll “listen” to them.

“I don’t oppose all wars,” he said in the fall of 2002. “I’m opposed to rash wars.”

Not exactly a deep thinker that Barack fellow.

His support for merit pay for teachers, or a cap on carbon emissions, suggests a healthy independence from the established order.

And since teacher pay is a local issue, he’d never get to implement it anyway. But thanks for the independence, Barack.

Obama’s critics, and even many who want to support him, worry about his relative lack of experience.

If you think the presidency is a good place for on the job training, then Barack’s your man. If putting a wholly unqualified moonbat in the White House scares you, then he’s not.

Flash news

The U.S. Ag bureau advises tomato growers to diversify crops. Prices will drop when the extended growing season at Nome hits full production.
Chick Little posts advisories on sky conditions, postulating serious positional shifts.
Gov. Schwarzenegger predicts fewer fires in CA in the next millennia.
Vermont gets beachfront property again.

U.N. Report Describes Risks of Inaction on Climate Change

Synthesizing reams of data from its three previous reports, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time specifically points out important risks if governments fail to respond: melting ice sheets that could lead to a rapid rise in sea levels and the extinction of large numbers of species brought about by even moderate amounts of warming, on the order of 1 to 3 degrees.

UN Panel Gives Dire Warming Forecast

“Only urgent, global action will do,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on the United States and China - the world’s two biggest polluters - to do more to slow global climate change.
“I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role,” Ban told reporters. “Both countries can lead in their own way.”
Ban, however, advised against assigning blame. [snip]

It is providential to have a U.N. Secretary-General who isn’t a finger pointing hysteric.

Cult awaits end of days in cave after leader’s arrest

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) – Members of a Russian doomsday cult barricaded themselves in a cave to wait out the end of the world as the cult’s leader underwent psychiatric exams Thursday, Russian media reported. [snip]
“It is obviously some kind of insanity,” Mitropolitan Kirill, a high-ranking Russian Orthodox Church official, told Russian television. “It is perhaps even a medical case. A very dangerous phenomena is happening in Russia’s religious life.”

I’m surprised the UN isn’t in the cave with them. Well, they are secure from the sky calamity in the homemade grotto.

“The United Nations has been an extraordinary failure of late.”–Mitt Romney 10/18/2007

One question for Mitt, Are you just coming to this realization now?

A charmingly lucid methodology to a significant problem, this should surpass the moonbat EU members before long, dispersing wisdom like pixie dust on the wind, leaving them broached like dead whales.

Switzerland: Europe’s heart of darkness?

Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country’s immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe’s heart of darkness? By Paul Vallely
At first sight, the poster looks like an innocent children’s cartoon. Three white sheep stand beside a black sheep. The drawing makes it looks as though the animals are smiling. But then you notice that the three white beasts are standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking the black one off the flag, with a crafty flick of its back legs.
The poster is, according to the United Nations, the sinister symbol of the rise of a new racism and xenophobia in the heart of one of the world’s oldest independent democracies.

A worrying new extremism is on the rise. For the poster – which bears the slogan “For More Security” – is not the work of a fringe neo-Nazi group. It has been conceived – and plastered on to billboards, into newspapers and posted to every home in a direct mailshot – by the Swiss People’s Party (the Schweizerische Volkspartei or SVP) which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country’s coalition government.

With a general election due next month, it has launched a twofold campaign which has caused the UN’s special rapporteur on racism to ask for an official explanation from the government. The party has launched a campaign to raise the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to reintroduce into the penal code a measure to allow judges to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes once they have served their jail sentence.

But far more dramatically, it has announced its intention to lay before parliament a law allowing the entire family of a criminal under the age of 18 to be deported as soon as sentence is passed.

It will be the first such law in Europe since the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft – kin liability – whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for their crimes and punished equally.

The proposal will be a test case not just for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, where a division between liberal multiculturalism and a conservative isolationism is opening up in political discourse in many countries, the UK included. [snip]

Dr Schlüer is a small affable man. But if he speaks softly he wields a big stick. The statistics are clear, he said, foreigners are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals. “In a suburb of Zürich, a group of youths between 14 and 18 recently raped a 13-year-old girl,” he said. “It turned out that all of them were already under investigation for some previous offence. They were all foreigners from the Balkans or Turkey. Their parents said these boys are out of control. We say: ‘That’s not acceptable. It’s your job to control them and if you can’t do that you’ll have to leave’. It’s a punishment everyone understands.” [snip]

What an agreeably cogent approach to parenting and crime control this is.

And it is all so worrying to human rights campaigners that the UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, warned earlier this year that a “racist and xenophobic dynamic” which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland.

Dr Schlüer shrugged. “He’s from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don’t know why he comes here instead of getting on with that.”

Such remarks only confirm the opinions of his opponents. Mario Fehr is a Social Democrat MP for the Zürich area. He says: “Deporting people who have committed no crime is not just unjust and inhumane, it’s stupid. Three quarters of the Swiss people think that foreigners who work here are helping the economy. We have a lot of qualified workers – IT specialists, doctors, dentists.” To get rid of foreigners, which opponents suspect is the SVP’s real agenda, “would be an economic disaster”.

Here’s the usual liberal drek, a leap from the logical Particular to the Universal where every foreigner is frogmarched out of the country. Sounds suspiciously like our own brand of loons. With the left, there is only all, no terms used like some, few or most.

Dr Schlüer insists the SVP is not against all foreigners. “Until war broke out in the Balkans, we had some good workers who came from Yugoslavia. [snip]

The abuse of social security is a key problem. It’s estimated to cost £750m a year. More than 50 per cent of it is by foreigners.”

Does this not sound familiar? This is happening in our own social programs.

There is no disguising his suspicion of Islam. He has alarmed many of Switzerland’s Muslims (some 4.3 per cent of the 7.5 million population) with his campaign to ban the minaret. “We’re not against mosques but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established.” And Islamic law, he says, is incompatible with Switzerland’s legal system.

Islamic law (Shari’a) is incompatible with any democratic form of law, no exceptions.

To date there are only two mosques in the country with minarets but planners are turning down applications for more, after opinion polls showed almost half the population favours a ban. What is at stake here in Switzerland…is a clash that goes to the heart of an identity crisis…of a globalised economy, increased immigration flows, the rise of Islam as an international force and the terrorism of 9/11. Switzerland only illustrates it more graphically than elsewhere. [snip]

He is fiercely proud of his nation’s independence, which can be traced back to a defensive alliance of cantons in 1291. He is a staunch defender of its policy of armed neutrality, under which Switzerland has no standing army but all young men are trained and on standby; they call it the porcupine approach – with millions of individuals ready to stiffen like spines if the nation is threatened. [snip] The transfer of power from the commune to Brussels would seriously change things for the ordinary Swiss citizen.”

Switzerland has the toughest naturalisation rules in Europe. To apply, you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years, pay taxes, and have no criminal record. The application can still be turned down by your local commune which meets to ask “Can you speak German? Do you work? Are you integrated with Swiss people?”

It can also ask, as one commune did of 23-year-old Fatma Karademir – who was born in Switzerland but who under Swiss law is Turkish like her parents – if she knew the words of the Swiss national anthem, if she could imagine marrying a Swiss boy and who she would support if the Swiss football team played Turkey. “Those kinds of questions are outside the law,” says Mario Fehr. “But in some more remote villages you have a problem if you’re from ex-Yugoslavia.”

The federal government in Berne wants to take the decision out of the hands of local communities, one of which only gave the vote to women as recently as 1990. But the government’s proposals have twice been defeated in referendums.

The big unspoken fact here is how a citizen is to be defined. “When a Swiss woman who has emigrated to Canada has a baby, that child automatically gets citizenship,” Dr Schlüer says. But in what sense is a boy born in Canada, who may be brought up with an entirely different world view and set of values, more Swiss than someone like Fatma Karademir who has never lived anywhere but Switzerland?

The truth is that at the heart of the Swiss People’s Party’s vision is a visceral notion of kinship, breeding and blood that liberals would like to think sits very much at odds with the received wisdom of most of the Western world. It is what lies behind the SVP’s fear of even moderate Islam. It has warned that because of their higher birth rates Muslims would eventually become a majority in Switzerland if the citizenship rules were eased. It is what lies behind his fierce support for the militia system. [snip]

The drama which is being played out in such direct politically incorrect language in Switzerland is one which has repercussions all across Europe, and wider.

Neutrality and nationality
* Switzerland has four national languages – German, Italian, French and Romansh. Most Swiss residents speak German as their first language.

* Switzerland’s population has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 7.5 million in 2006. The population has risen by 750,000 since 1990.

* Swiss nationality law demands that candidates for Swiss naturalisation spend a minimum of years of permanent, legal residence in Switzerland, and gain fluency in one of the national languages.

* More than 20 per cent of the Swiss population, and 25 per cent of its workforce, is non-naturalised.

* At the end of 2006, 5,888 people were interned in Swiss prisons. 31 per cent were Swiss citizens – 69 per cent were foreigners or asylum-seekers.

* The number of unauthorised migrant workers currently employed is estimated at 100,000.

Sippenhaft or Sippenhaftung-Liberals ought to love this concept:

It should be noted that other totalitarian regimes have used similar practices, even if they have not codified them in law. During Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s many thousands of people were arrested and executed or sent to labour camps as “relatives of the enemies of the people.” One well-known example was Anna Larina, wife of Nikolai Bukharin. Similar practices took place in the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. A prominent example is Deng Pufang, son of Deng Xiaoping. They also take place currently in North Korea.

Would the UN treat US soldiers accused of widespread sexual abuse so leniently?

The United Nations said on Saturday it had suspended a Moroccan military contingent from its peacekeeping mission in Cote d’Ivoire while it investigated allegations of widespread sexual abuse.

“It means they don’t participate in our operations,” said Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Cote d’Ivoire (ONUCI). “Those who are found guilty will be sent back home.”

Are you sure this punishment isn’t too harsh? Maybe the UN could just send them to bed one night without supper. Although I’m not surprised by UN hypocrisy, their peacekeeping missions need to be controlled better.

And the best way to ensure control is making UN officials accountable for their peacekeeping operations. When forces under UN command commit war crimes, UN officials should answer before the International Criminal Court. They’d certainly demand that our generals and leaders be accountable. If the UN wants the power, we should force them to take responsibility too.

Palefaces in deep doo-doo

‘Earth Mother getting angry’ American Indians fight climate change

From New Hampshire to California, American Indian leaders are speaking out more forcefully about the danger of climate change.

Members of six tribes recently gathered near the Baker River in the White Mountains for a sacred ceremony honoring “Earth Mother.” [snip]

“Earth Mother is fighting back - not only from the four winds, but also from underneath,” he said. “Scientists call it global warming. We call it Earth Mother getting angry.”

At a United Nations meeting last month, several American Indian leaders spoke at a session called “Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change.” [snip]

“Within the last six months, there’s just been a loss of faith in the insistence (by some politicians) that global warming isn’t happening and that we have nothing to do with it,” said Shepard Krech III, an anthropology and environmental studies professor at Brown University.

Krech is the author of The Ecological Indian, which examines the relationship between American Indians and nature.

Though many people will look for “a consensus in the scientific community” to convince them of climate change, Krech said, others will seek “perspectives from Indian society. . . . Native Americans have a rich tradition that springs from this belief they have always been close to the land and always treated the land well.”

The New Hampshire ceremony was attended by members of the Passamaquoddy, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Micmac, Lakota Sioux and Abenaki tribes.

Thunderbull, a Lakota Sioux, offered a prayer for people who had suffered from recent flooding in the Midwest. Talking Hawk prayed for those who would suffer from natural disasters ahead.

“Think of the people who will die in the cleansing of Earth Mother, all around the world,” he said. “Think of their spirits.”

In the UN, this will resonate like a fart in a tipi. Anything that obscures Darfur works for them. Animistic science will save Al “Spirit Talker” Gore from having to answer for his folly. He’ll point to the “Ecological Indian” (how incorrect) for his source.

“Scientists call it global warming. We call it Earth Mother getting angry.” This really ‘splains it, in language even a moonbat can understand.

I’m a believer now.

This article is long. I’ve cut much to get it to this size.

Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate’s vote today on a global warming measure (see today’s 5/15/07 AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. [snip]

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg. A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. [snip]

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007. Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” )

The media’s climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it’s ‘completely immoral’ to doubt global warming fears )

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006.[snip]

The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. [snip]

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. [snip]

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel’s top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. “”Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. [snip]

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. [snip] (Evans bio link )

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. [snip]

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears “poppycock.” According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. [snip]
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, [snip]

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. [snip] However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,” Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” [snip]

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” [snip] I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. [snip] In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics.[snip]

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. [snip]

“With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” [snip]

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. [snip] “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. [snip]

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” [snip]

More to follow…

Related Links:

Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate

Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven “Consensus’

Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics

Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic

Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming

Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune’s Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say

Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical

MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming ‘Silly’ - Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids’ Attempting to “Scare Each Other”

Weather Channel TV Host Goes ‘Political’- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect’

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don’t Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes ‘Man-Made Global Warming Hype’

The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics

Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of “Skeptic’s Guide To Debunking Global Warming”

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036. [snip]

Wouldn’t it be great if the UN had these odds of solving Darfur, Iran, North Korea, the Moros in the Philippines or Bosnia.

“It’s not just Apophis we’re looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue,” Schweickart, a member of the Apollo 9 crew that orbited the earth in March 1969, told an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco. [snip]

Schweickart wants to see the United Nations adopt procedures for assessing asteroid threats and deciding if and when to take action. [snip]

Perhaps lofting the entire UN complex on an intercept trajectory might deflect the asteroid; at the minimum, it would solve the problem of the UN. On second thought, make it a manned mission.

Anyway, go here for great photos, much information on space and of course lots of data on NEA’s (Near Earth Asteroids with dates, sizes and distances)

I’m taking bets this report didn’t do well in Mumbai.

Published: 10 December 2006

Meet the world’s top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane, or even George Bush: it is the cow.

A United Nations report has identified the world’s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation [sic], entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world’s 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
[snip]

…their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.
Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world’s emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.
[snip]

We have to toss in Al Gore’s flying around the planet as a contributor too. Up here in the lost world, the flatlanders and granolas have been trying to force all to break in their new Bierkenstocks by hiking and biking. Have to rethink this bit of wisdom.

While on the topic of “be nice to the planet” every time I have one of these enviro-blowfish pontificate on the virtues of electric vehicles, I merely ask them how they intend to heat the buggy here in the winter. That always terminates the lecture.

Perhaps we should ride the cows.

Half of Tsunami donations still unused: BBC

About half of the billions of dollars donated by individuals, companies and governments worldwide to help the victims of the southeast Asian tsunami two years ago has still not been spent, the BBC said.

According to figures obtained by the broadcaster from a database compiled by the United Nations Department for Aid and Development, several foreign governments have also only given only a small proportion, and at times none, of the money they promised.

Of the 6.7 billion dollars (5.1 billion euros) pledged, about a tenth has yet to be delivered, and only 3.4 billion dollars has been spent thus far, the BBC said.

Among the countries that came up with a fraction of what they promised, China offered 301 million dollars to help Sri Lanka recover from the disaster, but has thus far delivered just one million dollars, the broadcaster said.

Spain pledged 60 million dollars to Sri Lanka, but came up with less than a million, while France said it would give 79 million dollars, but delivered just over a million dollars.

Kuwait had pledged slightly less than 10 million dollars to the Maldives, but has yet to actually hand over any money.
[snip]

All Libs work on the principle of “Out of sight, out of mind.” Once one throws the money at the problem, all responsibility ceases.

Nothing appears in the press about whether the results satisfied the goal. Graft, ineptitude, or outright deception carries no denunciation of the culprits.

But future hand wringing disasters bring the Libs back for more money. How else might one show concern and sensitivity to the plight du jour?