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February 17, 2010
Climate Meltdown
From planet San Francisco:
Seven months ago SFGate reported:
The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier.
That’s the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won’t be soaring everywhere.
Flash forward:
The Telegraph this week reported:
The sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay, scientists have found.
The coastal fog along the Californian coast has declined by a third over the past 100 years – the equivalent of three hours cover a day, new research shows.
Heads I win, tails you lose.
This perfectly encapsulates the derangement of the global warming/climate change cultists.
H/T Gateway Pundit
The house of cards that is an excuse for Soviet style social engineering is rapidly collapsing as evidenced by this morning's WSJ editorial:
Yesterday's corporate defections from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) won't be greeted with the same hosannas as last year's departures of Nike and Apple from the Chamber of Commerce over its global warming stance, but they're undoubtedly more important. This scales-from-eyes moment shows that some big American businesses are putting shareholders and consumers ahead of politics.
The departing are BP America, Conoco Phillips and Caterpillar, which were among the original members of USCAP, a coalition of green pressure groups and Fortune 500 businesses that tried to drive a cap-and-trade program into law. Some corporate members concluded that climate legislation was inevitable and hoped to tip it in a more business-friendly direction. Others—ahem, General Electric—are in our view engaged in little more than old-fashioned rent-seeking. Through regulatory gaming, Congress would choose business winners and losers, dispensing billions of dollars in carbon permits to the politically connected.
The climate bills the House passed in August and Senate liberals are contemplating have stripped away that illusion. Carbon tariffs and other regulations would have damaged heavy manufacturing against global competitors, which explains Caterpillar's exit, while oil companies would suffer as transportation, refining and power generation via natural gas were punished. Then there's the harm to long-run growth, which would slow under the economy-wide drag of new taxes and federal mandates.
Businesses thrive on regulatory certainty, and when cap and tax seemed inevitable maybe an outfit like USCAP could be justified. But the costly reality of the climate agenda is resulting in a change of heart among both the business and political classes even as climate science comes under new scrutiny—and we suspect that several other corporations may follow these three to the exits. It's a measure of liberal overreach that they've managed to alienate the biggest companies that were cheerleading their climate ambitions.
Robert F. Kennedy once remarked: “Liberals are suicidal.”
He was referring to the hard-core idealogues in the Democrat party who chronically overreach and alienate what is essentially a center right country.
I fully expect the climate cultists to persist in their cognitive dissonance.
Consuming valuable political bandwidth on fraudulent science that demands massive taxes and government regulations is a recipe for disaster in a country that is leaking jobs and facing a ruinous national deficit.
The outcome is predictible: a circular firing squad that will drive the Obama administration from office to be replaced by a Republican White House, Senate, and Congress.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at February 17, 2010 09:00 AM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
A theory that cannot be falsified is not a scientific theory. If any change in climate can be attributed to global warming, then it is impossible to falsify the theory, and it's not a scientific theory.
Posted by: Kent G. Budge at February 17, 2010 10:00 AM
Read Ann Althouse's takedown of today's Thomas Friedman column.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/02/avoid-term-global-warming-thomas.html
When you say that global warming will cause fog and the absence of fog or any of the nonsense Friedman promotes, it's no longer falsifiable
Posted by: soccer dad at February 17, 2010 10:44 AM
The "academic" world is filled with this kind of stuff. I was taught the same thing in college 20 years ago about the Biblical documentary hypothesis. Our professor told us that you couldn't disprove the theory by refuting any single elements in the theory. You had to prove EVERY aspect was false to disprove it. Say what?
Posted by: Jake at February 17, 2010 10:45 AM
Also, if you had the bad luck to invest in the greenie loonie Chicago Climate Exchange index two years ago, you bought those "carbon credits" for $7 apiece. They now trade for 10 cents a credit.
The "scientists" may lie, but the market never does.
Posted by: Jake at February 17, 2010 10:47 AM
I'm so confused?!
Posted by: Gregg at February 17, 2010 11:11 AM
Green is the new confused !
Posted by: Jackie W. at February 17, 2010 01:37 PM
"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco"
----Mark Twain, in his book Roughing It.
Looks like it will be truer than ever...
Posted by: Bill Brandt at February 17, 2010 03:38 PM
Robert
I'm watching "The Devil's Arithmetic" for the first time right now. Its on TV in Ireland.
Good Work !
Posted by: Ted at February 17, 2010 05:22 PM
Bill Brandt, I moved to San Francisco in August of 1979. Coming from Indiana I was excited to get to sunny California. Boy - it was SO cold. But I loved it. I got a $30 fast pass for the month and rode around on the green trolley cars, the famous cable car, BART and other great forms of transportation in the City -- like I was a kid in Disneyland. I know the locals probably thought I was nuts, but the only bus system where I lived was the school bus.
Too bad S.F. has gone so crazy since those days. Such a beautiful city. Such a waste.
Posted by: Beth Barnat at February 17, 2010 05:41 PM
Beth, the first time I visited San Francisco was with my family in 1960 or so. We came from Fresno, in the Central Valley. We stayed at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel, long ago converted to condos or apts.
My father lived in the Marina District as a boy, coming up from Los Angeles for only a couple of years and then going back.
San Francisco, through the 1950s, was really a magical place.
I went to school in the late 60s in Menlo Park and would take weekend drives up to SF to see it change. I used to take visiting family through the Haight Ashbury District - you had to see it to believe it. Stoned hippies sleeping on parked cars.
I suppose the saying that "If you can remember the 60s you weren't really there" is true.
In some ways the San Francisco of the 1960s was the epicenter of rock n roll - so many groups started there - many starting in an old ice skating rink called Winterland, promoted by Bill Graham.
But the drug culture was the beginning of its decline, I think.
It's still a beautiful city - maybe the most beautiful in the world, but it's an asylum now run by the inmates.
The only times I go there is to show visitors, and I have to drive up Market St to Twin Peaks and show them the most beautiful view of the Bay & City.
BTW I am sure I am not telling you anything new as an almost native but the way you spot tourists in San Francisco in the summer is that they are always wearing - summer clothes!
Posted by: Bill Brandt at February 17, 2010 10:14 PM
There are liars, Damned Liars, Politicians, and now Enviro-whacko cultists! Diogenes would be searching fruitlessly today.
Posted by: PCD at February 18, 2010 04:22 AM
All that snow that got dumped on NY must also have been from global warming...:)
Posted by: Merchant Services at February 18, 2010 08:36 AM
Ted:
Thanks so much for the kind words. Nice to know that my film is playing in Ireland. Now I can look forward to foreign residual checks.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at February 18, 2010 10:35 AM
Is there a scientist in the house? Why is every top leader in the UN's Climate Change group not trained in anything remotely germane? Yvo De Boer has a sociology degree, Raj Pachauri is a railroad industry economist. De Boer at least just had the decency to resign.
Posted by: Jake at February 18, 2010 11:24 AM
Bill, I don't know if you'll get this message. The post is a few days old, but if you do, you really conjured up some visuals for me. I actually got married in a Victorian house in San Francisco right by the Golden Gate Park in 1981 to a CA native from Long Beach.
I was selling insurance one time in Berkeley and went into a store that sold custom bathroom sinks and toilets, etc. The owner told me that it used to be a bar and all the greats of the hippie era used to hang out there -- Gracie Slick and others. I could almost hear the ghosts of the past in that room.
And you are right, it's still a beautiful city - maybe the most beautiful in the world, but it's an asylum now run by the inmates.
When even the liberals complain, as I heard them do, about how dirty and wretched the City has become, you know there is a problem.
Before I left CA to move back to Indiana, I wanted to go and eat at an old haunt - "Little Joe's, Baby Joe's on Columbus." I called and it looked like it was gone.
My ex-husband used to take me there on my birthday every year and I had their Veal Saltimbocca. Joe would walk around and flirt with all the girls and the cooks behind the front counter would pour the wine and oil generously into the pans of frying veal - the fire leaping up into the air. They would be yelling back and forth in Italian. People would be standing in line outside for blocks, many wearing shirts that read "Rain or Shine, there's always a line." I always felt like I was in New York City when I was there.
Posted by: Beth Barnat at February 18, 2010 05:07 PM