They’re inextricably intertwined with the anti-population, proabortion left.

The global warming crowd seems to be preferring the phrase “climate change” instead of, well, “global warming”.  I guess they are tired of people mocking them when they give speeches on the subject during a cold spell in April.

Fine. Be that way.

But when the revolution comes, you’ll wish you had one.

(Said the man with the eco-friendly Subaru Forster)

My column in today’s Washington Examiner looks into the latest bogus mega-lawsuit strategy wherein ambitious pols and ambitious plaintiffs’ attorneys try to bring down an industry while generating big headlines and big cash. Read all about it. Hint: When a chicken poops in the chicken coop, does haste in disposing of waste make the chicken farmer environmentally unchaste?

According to Professor Bill Gray:

“I think we’re coming out of the little ice age, and warming is due to changes to ocean circulation patterns due to salinity variations,” Gray said. “I’m sure that’s it.”

. . . .

At the breakfast, Gray said Earth was warmer in some medieval periods than it is today. Current weather models are good at predicting weather as far as 10 days in advance, but predicting up to 100 years into the future is “a great act of faith, and I don’t believe any of it,” he said.

But even if humans cause global warming, there’s not much people can do, Gray said. China and India will continue to pump out greenhouse gases, and alternative energy sources are expensive.

“Why do it if it’s not going to make a difference anyway?” he said. “Whether I’m right or wrong, we can’t do anything about it anyway.”

On August 28, I posted this essay, in which I used the (thus far) gross meteorological miscalculation of the 2006 hurricane season to cast aspersions on those (particularly the global warming alarmists) who attempt to forecast climactic conditions decades from now.

Today, courtesy of this post by Iain Murray at National Review Online’s The Corner, I see that the climate change jihadis are not letting the facts get in the way of their argument. Murray’s piece links to this article in today’s Houston Chronicle, titled “Valid science or a perfect storm for controversy? Theory that warming spawns more hurricanes gains support but still has skeptics”. In it, reporter Eric Berger details the release on Monday of a research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluding that “human burning of fossil fuels has warmed the oceans, providing the fuel for tropical cyclones to become monster hurricanes.” Berger quotes Tom Wigley, one of the authors of the paper and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, as saying, “The work that we’ve done closes the loop”. What loop? The one that says that humans are the “primary driving force behind increased hurricane activity”, according to Robert Correll, a senior fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

To his credit, reporter Berger then gives us the other side of the story. It turns out that loopy is an appropriate characterization of Wigley, et al.’s report:

[S]ome researchers who study the complicated interplay between hurricanes and global warming suggest little has changed in the last few months to suggest that scientists have come to a consensus.

“Honestly, I don’t think anyone’s changed their mind,” said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. “To me, this looks like the same people saying the same thing over and over again.”

Earlier this year, Klotzbach published a paper suggesting that, despite a rise in ocean temperatures during the last 20 years, hurricane activity worldwide has decreased.

Klotzbach is not alone:

Some environmental groups, including the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, called for National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield and other officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to resign, saying they were covering up evidence linking global warming to hurricanes.

“I can honestly say that no one in NOAA, or anywhere in the government for that matter, has contacted me to tell me how to respond to the issue of what effects global warming might have on hurricanes,” Mayfield said earlier this summer.

Klotzbach, Mayfield and others say the data simply don’t exist to support the conclusion.

Add National Hurricane Center scientist Chris Landsea to the list of the unimpressed as well:

[L]andsea said warmer water doesn’t lead necessarily to stronger hurricanes.

“I agree with the paper’s conclusion that the warming trend in the tropical oceans is likely due, at least in part, to greenhouse gases,” Landsea said. “But this paper certainly isn’t the ‘key link’ between hurricanes and climate change. Its focus is on something that I thought was settled quite some time ago.”

The skepticism is not limited to the United States:

Johnny Chan, a hurricane researcher at the City University of Hong Kong, has studied the effect of sea-surface temperatures on hurricanes that form in the Pacific.

Chan said his research has shown that in years when Pacific sea temperatures are higher than normal, there tend to be fewer, and less-intense hurricanes.

“The problem with these guys is that they keep focusing on sea surface temperatures, and sea surface temperatures alone,” Chan said. “For the Pacific, I can confidently say that they are wrong if they latch onto sea surface temperatures and nothing else.”

What I found remarkable about Berger’s article was his complete omission of any reference to the 2006 hurricane season. If anthropogenic global warming / production of greenhouse gases / “human activity” is driving more frequent and more intense hurricanes, then WHERE ARE THEY? Answer: Not here, and, according to this September 1, 2006 hurricane season update from Klotzbach and his colleagues at the Colorado State University Tropical Meteorology Project, not on their way:

We now anticipate that the 2006 Atlantic basin tropical cyclone (TC) season will be considerably less active than the seasonal activity we anticipated in our earlier forecasts and in our updated 3 August forecast. We now expect that the 2006 hurricane season will have slightly less hurricane activity than the long-term average. This is due to an unexpected increase in tropical Atlantic mid-level dryness (with large amounts of African dust) and a continued trend towards El Niño-like conditions in the eastern and central Pacific.

Of course, I would expect the climate change / global warming Chicken Littles to now seize on the absence of hurricanes as evidence to support their thesis that Evil Mankind is despoiling Mother Earth. “Large amounts of African dust preventing hurricanes from forming?! See, it is global warming leading to the growth of the Sahara. Seize their SUVs now!”

As an aside, it appears that I was mistaken where, in prior post, I wrote that the field of hurricane research was “relatively non-politicized.” As the Houston Chronicle story and this post from Roger Pielke, Jr. make clear, it appears that hurricane research can be every bit as political as research into the issues of anthropogenic global warming / climate change. The good news is that where we’ll likely not live to see the debunking of The Day After Tomorrow fraud, we can observe right now what appears to be the disproving of the “global warming = more frequent hurricanes” canard.

With Ernesto having now been downgraded to tropical storm status, we have reached the eve of the first anniversary of Katrina’s landfall with no hurricanes having hit the continental United States in 2006. This despite predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from the leading hurricane researchers at Colorado State University that this season would be “very active”. For instance, in their December 6, 2005 prediction, the Colorado State University team wrote

We foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006. However, we do not expect to see as many landfalling major hurricanes in the United States as we have experienced in 2004 and 2005.

On May 31, 2006, the day before the official June 1st commencement of the hurricane season, the CSU researchers reiterated their prediction:

We continue to foresee another very active Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2006. Landfall probabilities for the 2006 hurricane season are well above their long-period averages.

In NOAA’s May 22, 2006 press release, the agency forecast that

“For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA is predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become ‘major’ hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher,” added retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

On average, the north Atlantic hurricane season produces 11 named storms, with six becoming hurricanes, including two major hurricanes. In 2005, the Atlantic hurricane season contained a record 28 storms, including 15 hurricanes. Seven of these hurricanes were considered “major,” of which a record four hit the United States. “Although NOAA is not forecasting a repeat of last year’s season, the potential for hurricanes striking the U.S. is high,” added Lautenbacher.

As this entry at Wikipedia describes, both the CSU and the NOAA teams have lowered their preseason estimates. And I am aware that we are are relatively early in the hurricane season, and that this post could prove to be dramatically wrong. Blogger Brendan Loy, for example, points us to this August 16 post from hurricane expert Dr. Jeff Masters, who in turn writes

Peak hurricane season starts about August 18 and runs through October 18. The worst part of hurricane season is in front of us, and I do anticipate that conditions will get active. Witness 1998, when only one named storm occurred prior to August 19, and 10 named storms and 7 hurricanes formed by the end of September. A similar pattern of activity occurred in 2000, with only two named storm by this date, and a season total of 15 named storms. So, those of you who doubt NOAA and Dr. Gray’s predictions of 15 named storms this season need to put your skepticism on hold.

But I am willing to risk the embarrassment of premature evaluation to say the following:

If the relatively non-politicized corps of hurricane researchers couldn’t get the 2006 hurricane season right just days before it began, then why are we supposed to believe that the uber-politicized cadre of so-called climate experts are correct about the existence and/or impact of global warming years and decades from now?

[As a pre-emptive strike against those who might claim that I am conflating weather with climate, please examine the linked May 31 document from CSU, which states, "Our research team has shown that a sizable portion of the year-to-year variability of Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity can be hindcast with skill exceeding climatology." Also note that the NOAA press release expressly says that, "The north Atlantic hurricane seasonal outlook is a product of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center and Hurricane Research Division."]

The next Ice Age is coming! Help me, Al Gore! Help me!

Too hot.

Too cold.

Make up your damn minds, people.

It’s like raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain on your wedding day.

Hypocrite.

(LvMike)

We’re all directly affected by the high price of gas, for example, I haven’t filled my truck’s gas tank in months. Instead, I put in about $15/week which lasts for 7 or 8 days (I drive maybe 135 miles a week). The important question to consider, though, is whether the current rise in prices will be sustained for an extended period of time. Only then will it be shown that people are actually changing their habits/lifestyle. This question is examined by an insightful article from the Christian Science Monitor that’s well worth the read.

If today’s prices are a temporary spike, then consumer habits are unlikely to change. Some economists have been surprised at how little the nation’s gasoline consumption has budged so far, even though prices are double what they were at the beginning of 2004. Americans are buying as many new vehicles as ever, and they have continued to favor light trucks over cars.

So far, Americans aren’t slowing down.

The Pacific Legal Foundation lists them here.

I have become quite numb to the politics of climate change.  Perhaps I just don’t respond well to boo! rhetoric.  It seems there are two kinds of scaring going on.  One directed at the general public to frighten the bejesus out of them….. as in this recent Time feature.

The other is the burn-the-witch mentality in the academy directed at those who dare dissent from popular global warming theory….. as noted in “The Climate of Fear in Climate Studies.” 

(Do you see me yawning?) If you guys are free this weekend, come on over and we’ll barbeque a goat and enrich some uranium. It’ll be fun. 

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla) has a new website up that highlights “Your Tax Money at Work.”

The Worldwatch Institute”s “State of the World 2006″ gets a thumbs-up from the The Heartland Institute, of all places.

On Tech Central Station, Hans Labohm reports on the French novel, Ras le Bol (= Fed Up), by Denis Castel:

Castel particularly addresses the civil service (”service publique”), which in France by far exceeds that in many other countries, and includes employees in public transport and many state-owned industries, as well as many big private companies that enjoy special status. Castel describes the employees working in this sector as an over-privileged class, who unlike those employed in the private sector are shielded from competition, do not face the persistent threat of being sacked, and enjoy (indexed) pensions guaranteed by the state. Despite all of this, they are prone to strike.

The Crimson Tide baseball team is rolling along nicely, currently ranked No. 8 by Collegiate Baseball. 

Mark Steyn has a long-view piece on Iran in the current issue of City Journal. 

Thoughts?