Mayor Bloomberg’s Snow Troubles
New York City is under siege right now. By that I mean that there is a lot of snow and the city hasn't done a good job of clearing it. Mayor Bloomberg (pictured right) is hearing it from all corners, but has nothing to say other than, "...the system broke."
National Review columnist and Ricochet.com founder/contributor Rob Long, who lives in L.A. but happens to be in NYC right now, had this to report from The Big Apple yesterday:
Mayor Bloomberg has made it his mission to rid his city of junk food, smokers, and bad vending machines. But right now -- and I just slogged my way from Penn Station to Soho, so I'm an eyewitness with two very wet shoes -- what New Yorkers really want is for the snowplows to get moving.
And they're letting him know. From the NYObserver:
As snow drifts remain piled high in most of the city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is receiving harsh criticism from one time allies who are dismayed at the city's clean-up efforts after the blizzard.
Yesterday, Brooklyn City Councilman David Greenfield, who Bloomberg endorsed in his election bid last year, even sending some of his political troops to help with get-out-the-vote efforts, appeared on a Jewish radio show and blasted the snow-removal.
"This could easily be the beginning of the end of Mayor Bloomberg's political career. It's such a big deal. And I am telling this as somebody who has always had a good relationship with the mayor and who has always worked well with him," Greenfield said. "This is a mayor who prides himself on saying the buck stops by him. And at the end of the day the buck does stop by him. We are going to hold him responsible. He is on notice. He better fix this or we are going to hold him personally accountable."
Queens councilman Eric Ulrich, who helped the mayor secure the backing of the Queens Republican Party and who was sworn in by Bloomberg when he won his seat in 2009, said the Mayor telling New Yorkers to go see a Broadway show was "like Marie Antoinette saying, 'Let the people eat cake.'
"I supported the mayor for a third term because I thought he was the best choice. I thought he was a good manager. Now I am starting to have doubts. You can't manage a snowstorm after Christmas? I think people are starting to question his leadership ability," Ulrich added.
There's a lesson in this, isn't there, for all of those politicians who just can't stop themselves from getting all up in our business? Make sure you fill the potholes and clear the streets first. Make sure the borders are secure and the post office delivers letters on time and kids know how to spell English words. When you've accomplished all of that, then maybe we can talk about French fries and smoking and free health care and every other crackpot, invasive, nanny-state scheme you've been cooking up.
I could not agree more with Mr. Long's assessment. One wishes that Mayor Bloomberg, and busy-body liberals everywhere, would put half the amount of time they spend trying to socially engineer our lives into performing the basic duties they have been elected to discharge.
More Shame For the Shameless
The people who have promoted the idea that the earth is in imminent peril because of man-made global warming will regret their blind faith in "science" some day. I'm not going to hold my breath for apologies from the likes of The Gore-acle, President Obama, or Leo DiCaprio, but a guy can dream, can't he?
The latest from the on-going Climate Gate saga is that the UN's "experts" at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used evidence collected from an usual source:
In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.
However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.
The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.
I took a Geography class in college. Maybe I can submit a paper saying this whole ruse is a pathetic back-door excuse for liberals the world over to both have a cause to fight for and attack capitalism.
Want more evidence?
From The Times of London:
The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.
Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.
The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.
Dr Pachauri, who played a leading role at the summit, corrected the error last week after coming under media pressure.
There is no bottom to the pool of shame the United Nations swims in. Luckily American politicians have avoided the hysteria, right?
See: Cap-and-Trade, the economically-crippling legislation Nancy Pelosi got through the House last June and President Obama brought up again in his State of the Union Address last Wednesday. Cap-and-Trade has been sold to the American people as a necessary bill to combat the global warming we're now finding out people had to manipulate statistics to "validate."
If you still don't believe me that this entire thing is a sham, watch this:
Aren’t the changes in climate “natural”?
So glad you asked...
The UK's Daily Express printed the top 100 reasons why global climate change, the kind the world's leading proponents of statism and collectivism are discussing in Copenhagen right now, is naturally caused. The list was put together by The European Foundation, a think-tank located in London.
Here are a few of my favorite things from the list:
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.
11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago
19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.
24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder
Read the rest of the list here.
I realize that it is not a fool-proof, case-closed argument to make, but does it not bother anyone else that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe have all been invited to speak at the Copenhagen conference? All three men are totalitarian thugs who want nothing more than to harm the United States, especially its economy. Does it send up any warning flare to you man-made global warming believers that these wicked leaders of suppressive regimes would be so happy to help the West all of the sudden?
What is being proposed at the Climate Summit is the massive re-distribution of wealth to poorer countries and higher taxes for Western nations (i.e. America). It will cripple our economy and hand portions of US sovereignty over to global governing bodies. Can we afford this right now (or ever)? Where are American climate change activists citing the Constitution in any of this?
Copenhagen is a joke
You can't make this stuff up. From the Telegraph in London:
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."
Oh, and it gets even better! Fox News reports:
Participants at Copenhagen's global climate summit will be meeting during the holiday season, but they will not be surrounded by festive Christmas decor, according to Denmark's Foreign Ministry.
Since Christmas is a religious holiday, it has no place at a United Nations event, said officials planning the event.
A sponsor providing fir trees for the conference's Christmas trees learned this the hard way when it was turned away by planners of the international event, the Copenhagen Post reported.
Tons of carbon, no Christmas trees, and Al Gore will be there? Any takers?
As The Heritage Foundation confirms, the global warming summit in Copenhagen is pathetic and potentially dangerous to U.S. sovereignty.
Compliance with such a treaty would require massive changes to the U.S. economy, and U.N. bodies would decide many of the details of those changes.
Is that the same U.N. that has no room for "religious" things? I wonder what they would say to the "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights" concept our nation was founded upon?
There are conservatives out there interested in being good stewards of our world without worshiping it, or destroying the world's economy to "fix" problems in that world that aren't even confirmed to exist.
Even John Stewart’s Covering This Story
It was recently discovered that many of the key, leading scientists advocating man-made global warming have been for years manipulating data that disagreed with their hypothesis.
"Shockingly", the mainstream media has ignored the story for two weeks. Two weeks!
Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart has even joined in the coverage of Climategate:
Peer-reviewed Madness
If you haven't seen the interview actor Ed Begley Jr. gave on Fox News last week, here's the stimulating exchange:
Ed Begley Jr., Al Gore, and any other liberal global warming advocate with a pulpit all tell us that "the science is settled." They tell us to look to the scientists and experts who affirm their climate change worries.
But, as Mark Steyn points out in his latest column, what do we non-experts do when the expers are exposed as frauds?
The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process.
When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the UN’s IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.
But don’t worry, it’s all “peer-reviewed.”
The problem with this entire global warming/climate change debate is of course that the science is NOT settled, and the current leaders in congress and the White House are pushing catastrophic pieces of legislation and public policies that assume it is.
Steyn also recently wrote this about the upcoming Copenhagen world summit that President Obama will be attending:
I’m always appreciative when a fellow says what he really means. Tim Flannery, the jet-setting doomsaying global warm-monger from down under, was in Ottawa the other day promoting his latest eco-tract, and offered a few thoughts on “Copenhagen”—which is transnational-speak for December’s UN Convention on Climate Change. “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will influence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.”
Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? But in a good way! So no need to worry. After all, we all care about the environment, don’t we? So we ought to do something about it, right? And, since “the environment” isn’t just in your town or county but spreads across the entire planet, we can only really do something at the planetary level.
But what to do? According to paragraph 38 on page 18 of the latest negotiating text, the convention will set up a “government” to manage the “new funds” and the “related facilitative processes.”
The Left has a totalitarian instinct that should alarm any proponent of liberty and free markets.
Climate Change Exposed
From The Boston Herald:
In an embarrassing blow to the movement to combat global warming, hackers have posted hundreds of e-mails from a world-renowned British institute that show researchers colluding to exaggerate warming and undermine skeptics.
Like most pet issues of the Left, global warming and climate change have become sacred cows that must be defended at all costs. Lying, misrepresenting the facts, or personal ad hominen attacks on skeptics are all fair-game tactics to advance the agenda and ultimate goal: global governing bodies to oversee nearly ever aspect of our lives.
Of course the average "Green" American or European is not necessarily thinking about how best to hand over control of their nation's sovereignty to foreign entities and unelected bureaucrats in Copenhagen or Brussels, rest assured your progressive leaders are.
In one leaked e-mail, the research center's director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to "hide the decline" in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.
Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had "just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline," according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine.
We're using manipulated data, presented to us by ideologically (and financially) driven people, to make decisions about our economy and country.
Plus many of these climate-obsessed people are just plain mean and heartless:
One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:
“In an odd way this is cheering news.”
Mark Steyn, as usual, has written a powerful column that encapsulates the bigger, broader implications of the climate change hysteria (and scam).
Heritage Foundation on Cap-and-Trade Legislation
Friday saw the US House of Representatives passing the largest tax increase in American history with the 219-212 victory of the cap-and-trade bill. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch the Heritage Foundation's YouTube video explaining what is actually going on in this piece of (crap) legislation.
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