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Most of us in the continental United States have been dealing with an extremely cold winter.  Here in Virginia, we had a wind chill of 5 below zero yesterday morning.  That’s cold… especially when your average winter temperature is around 35 degrees!  Now it appears that the sunshine state of Florida is getting a rare visit from Jack Frost.   On Sunday night Orlando is expecting a low of 27 degrees F.  So much for the orange crop!  This cold weather is not only affecting those of us in North America, but the rest of the northern hemisphere as well.  The UK and Ireland have been hit with a lot of snow as has most of Europe.  Beijing and Seoul are reporting record cold temperatures and snowfall amounts and India has had over 100 people in it’s northern region die from the cold so far this winter.  This winter is on a course to be the worst in over a generation.

Remember all the global warming scientists who predicted that 2010 would be the hottest year on record?  Well, the first couple of weeks may go on record as some of the coldest.  We’ll have to wait and see if their prediction comes true, but I’m not holding my breath.  These scientists have been making the same prediction every year for the last decade and they have been wrong every time.  But who am I to say they won’t get lucky this year?  Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.  Of course, most of the ground is covered in snow so the chances of any squirrel finding a nut right now is pretty slim.

With all of the deaths and travel delays this winter is causing the world, I hereby propose an emergency CO2 emitting day.  Since scientists tell us (although the raw data appears to be missing) that increases in CO2 emissions is causing the Earth to warm, it should make sense that if we all started emitting more CO2, we should be able to warm the Earth.  We could start all the fossil fuel burning engines we have (cars, lawnmowers, chainsaws), crank up our thermostats to 85, start a bunch of bonfires, burn any coal we find laying around, and take off all the CO2 reducing components on factory smokestacks.  Does that sound like a plan?  I’m willing to try anything to warm the temperature up enough so I can at least take my dog for a walk.

So, does anyone want to join me in an emergency CO2 emitting day?

I saw this story on Drudge and thought it was too funny not to post here.  Some guys in Alaska have created an ice sculpture of Al Gore.  Rudy Gavora and Craig Compeau, of Fairbanks, came up with the idea for the sculpture last winter and tied the event into a way to raise money for the Presbyterian Hospitality House .  They have done the same thing this year and plan to do it every winter until Gore comes to Fairbanks for a debate on global warming.  They also run a competition centered around the ice sculpture where contestants have to guess how much colder this years winter will be in Fairbanks than it was in the year Al Gore was born.  The grand prize is 300 gallons of heating oil.

The sculpture was carved by Steve Dean and is mounted on the back of a Ford F-350.  It is complete with a hole that has had the exhaust from the truck routed through it to appear as if hot air is spewing out of Gore’s mouth.  Fitting, don’t you think?  Check out the video below to see hot air spewing from Gore’s “ice hole”!

Former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel prize for telling lies about global warming, is at it again.   Unless you get all of your news from the main stream media, you have probably heard about the Climategate scandal involving  hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia.  These emails show how some of the most prominent global warming/climate change scientists have been distorting the data and keeping contradictory evidence out of peer reviewed journals.  When Al Gore was asked about these emails and if they damaged his position, he simply blew them off and lied about them  From Slate.com,

Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?

A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus. But the noise machine built by the climate deniers often seizes on what they can blow out of proportion, so they’ve thought this is a bigger deal than it is.

Either Al Gore is stupid (which is highly possible), or he is lying to cover up the crumbling foundation of man caused global warming.  He claims that the most recent Climategate email is over 10 years old, but the most recent email is clearly dated “Thu Nov 12 10:18:54 2009″.  It’s not even a month old!

He didn’t just make the claim once.  He continued to repeat the lie,

This video is hilarious.  When the numbers don’t support your political position on global warming and climate change, just hide the them and make up some new ones!  Hat tip to A Disgruntled Republican.

Part 3 in the Is Global Warming A Hoax? series.

The global warming debate is far from settled.  Both sides will continue to argue their points, but seldom does any one ask what the ideal temperature of the Earth is.  To me this seems like an important question.   Many politicians have recently given us dire warnings about what will happen if we don’t support their environmental plans and implement their legislation… but is a warming Earth actually a bad thing?

There is evidence that shows the Earth may be entering a cooling cycle due to sun spot activity, but for the sake of argument, let us assume it’s a proven fact that the Earth is warming and will continue to warm for some time.  Could a warming Earth be beneficial to life?  If so, why should we listen to the politicians who want to drastically change our economy and way of life in hopes of avoiding a slight increase in global temperature?  This question must be answered before we can consider believing those who keep telling us the sky is falling.

A warming Earth has both positives and negatives.  Generally speaking, life is most abundant closer to the equator (rain forests for example) and least abundant at the poles.  A slightly warmer Earth would theoretically support more life because a larger amount of land mass would have a tropical climate.  Agriculture would also benefit because more land would be available to farm and growing seasons would be longer.  However, if the Earth warms enough to increase the size of the tropical regions, large amounts of Arctic and Antarctic ice would melt causing sea levels to rise.  This would cause low lying cities to be swallowed by the sea.

Duncan Steel, from the University of Salford, wrote an article about climate that I think partially sheds some light on this question.

Looking at the climate over an extended timescale, longer than the Holocene (the relatively warm past 12,000 years), one sees that the usual condition of Earth is far colder than that enjoyed now. The norm is Ice Age. Cool the climate just a little, and a feedback effect drops the temperature further: the Arctic snowfields creep further south and, because snow reflects away more sunlight than bare ground, the temperature drops lower, more snow falls, and on it goes.

Metaphorically, the global climate is similar to a cliff edge, next to which a drunk is staggering. One step in the wrong direction and over he goes. Although we’d all like things to remain the same, the reality is that nothing, most especially the weather, is constant. Coolings seem to be rapid, and cause disastrous downfalls of civilisation. But we can cope with slow upward trends in temperature. Our mantra should be slow change good, fast change bad.

Given that we cannot stop the occurrence of random steps toward the precipice, what we need to do is arrange for our drunkard to be a safe distance from the cliff edge. That is why global warming is a good thing.

According to Mr. Steel, a warming Earth is a good thing because

Part 2 in the Is Global Warming a Hoax? series.

Is global warming, aka climate change, caused by humans?   Many political leaders and environmentalist groups swear that it is. They warn that if we don’t do something soon, the consequences will be catastrophic.  If humans are the cause of global warming, then maybe there is something we can do, but if we are not the cause and global warming is a natural cycle, then we are pretty much just along for the ride.

In part 1 of this series, I discussed whether the Earth is warming or cooling.  The conclusion I came to is that it appears to be both.  The temperature of the Earth rises and falls quite regularly.  In recent years, it seems to have stabilized and may now be starting to fall.  There is not a constant climb in average temperatures that can be seen on a graph.  It’s more of a roller coaster with the temperature going up for a period and then  going down.  So, are these swings in temperature caused by humans?

There are plenty of people out there who say, “Yes, global warming is caused by humans.”  They claim that when CO2 is released into the atmosphere, it traps heat.  Humans keep emitting more and more CO2 into the atmosphere, and this increase in CO2 causes more heat to be trapped. This in turn causes temperatures to rise.  That seems to be the global warming theory in a nutshell.  Is this what is actually happening?  If temperatures are now stabilizing or falling, it appears unlikely but lets examine it a little closer.