Environmentalist wackos are upset because the Gulf Oil Spill is diverting attention away from Global Warming. Christopher Reddy even asks: "What if carbon dioxide were as black as oil?"

But while we have readily and rightfully committed ourselves to understanding the cause of the spill, its effects and how to help restore the affected Gulf Coast region, we still can't seem to come to grips with a much more dangerous, far-reaching pollutant that is changing the fundamental chemistry of our entire planet: carbon dioxide.

You would have to be a complete moron to think that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and is "changing the fundamental chemistry of our entire planet."

CO2 is necessary for life, and without it we would all die. It is what plants breathe, what we exhale, and is fundamental for the world's ecosystem. If we eliminated or even severely reduced CO2 on earth, we wouldn't last 6 months. Plants would die, animals that eat plants would die, and we would die.

We learned that in elementary school, but Reddy must have had the chicken pox that day.

"Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent." -- Sen. John Kerry D-Mass., promoting the Cap'n Tax bill.

Snubbing the auto industry and instead choosing to pimp environmentalism, Obama recycled a tired old cannard from the Sierra Club: that modern day cars are no better than the venerable old Model T.

Obama parrots:

"The 1908 Model T -- think about this -- the 1908 Model T earned better gas mileage than the typical SUV in 2008. Think about that -- a hundred years later and we're getting less gas mileage, not better, on SUVs. Even as our economy has been transformed by new forms of technology, our electric grid looks largely the same as it did half a century ago."

Of course, we debunked this argument way back in 2003.

Of course, there are also staggering differences between vehicles made in the early 1900s and the early 2000s so any one on one comparison would be extremely flawed.

For instance, a 1908 Model T weighed a mere 1200 pounds. Compare this to the 1993 Ford Festiva, that I used to own. It weighed 1700 pounds and got 44 miles to the gallon. The Model T boasted a 4 cylinder engine that made a whopping 20 horsepower. Most modern small cars get over 100 horsepower. The Model T also burned oil for the headlights and various other lamps that adorned the vehicle. It wasn't exactly eco-friendly. Compare this to the 2003 Ford Focus. The Focus weighs over 2600 lbs, and it's 4 cylinder engine makes 110 horsepower and gets 27 to 36 miles to the gallon. Of course, they also don't bother to take into account that today's vehicles are subjected to countless government mandated safety standards.

Modern cars are larger, faster, safer, and more powerful. They hold more people, more stuff, and only emit a fraction of the pollutants compared to that of older cars. Pound for pound, we are all much better off. Who cares if they burn a few more gallons of fuel.

The 2008 Ford Focus SES weighs in at 2588 lbs, makes 140 horsepower from its I-4 engine, and 24 to 35 miles per gallon. It also gets to 60 in less than 10 seconds. Lets see a Model T do that!

Three skiers, trying to prove global warming is melting arctic sea ice, decided to ski to the North Pole.

Three British explorers have set out on a 90-day skiing expedition to the North Pole, measuring sea ice thickness the whole way to find out exactly how fast it is disappearing, according to the Catlin Arctic Survey.

The data gathered will complement satellite and submarine observations and help ice modelling of the polar ice by experts, including Wieslaw Maslowski, who recently predicted the Arctic Ocean could be ice free as early as 2013, the London-based survey said in a statement.

Global warming is believed to be the main culprit in the rapidly melting north polar ice cap that is freeing up new sea routes and untapped mineral resources on the ocean bottom.

That was on March 1st. It seems, however, that Mother Nature can be a real bitch sometimes. In stunning irony, the team has been trapped by a blizzard.

Project director and ice team leader Pen Hadow and his colleagues Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels are now down to half rations and fighting to survive in brutal sub-zero weather conditions.

"We're hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice and, because we're not moving, the colder we get," Hadow said Tuesday in a statement from the London headquarters of the Catlin Arctic Survey.

[...]

During the past 17 days temperatures have consistently dropped below minus 40 degrees Celsius [in real degrees (F) that's also minus 40], and have been accompanied by strong winds increasing the chill factor.

Bad weather has forced three attempts to drop food supplies to the team on a landing strip close to their camp to turn back.

CNN offers more proof that Global Warming causes everything...

"Climate Change Makes Island Kids Bony, Stunted" -- CNN Headline, July 7, 2008

When I was in high school some friends turned me on to what would become one of my favorite bands. They were an obscure group that had a small niche following. I loved their music and they were one of the few bands that I could listen to every song on their albums. Then something happened.

They had a hit single. Next thing I knew they were on the radio, had a video on MTV, and everyone was buying their new album. It bugged me. I liked them when they were nothing. Now everyone and their brother is a fan. It became cliche to like them. I had been a loyal fan for years, but now I felt like just another rider on the bandwagon. The fame was too much too soon and the band quickly broke up. They had been killed by their own bandwagon.

I think this is what's happening to the environmental movement. It's become cliche. It used to be a small group of treehuggers and maggot infested hippies. But now there's a huge bandwagon and big corporations are looking to fleece the riders. The news is filled with story after story about gas prices, global warming, and green marketing. How long the green movement will last is anybody's guess. But the hotter it burns, the quicker it will burn out. I can hardly wait.

(Burn baby burn.. Muahahaha.)

Apparently a natural cooling trend means that Global Warming is going to take a 10-year break.

The press release says that with this additional information, natural decadal climate variations, which are superimposed on the long-term anthropogenic warming trend, can be predicted. The improved predictions suggest that global warming will weaken slightly during the next decade.

So when there's a cooling trend, it's considered a natural climate variation, but the warming trends are definitely man-made.

I've long thought that the Global Warming movement is on the way out. It is only a matter of time before people are sick of hearing about how everything causes global warming.

I just want to go on record as saying that the latest Green Marketing push will only help accelerate the demise of the environmental movement. What is even more deliciously ironic is that much of the green marketing is just that, marketing. There is no environmental benefit at all. It will probably cause more environmental damage when all that green crap gets tossed in the trash.

Still don't believe us that the Global Warming movement has jumped the shark?

"Not doing it will be catastrophic. We'll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals." -- Ted Turner on the dangers of not overreacting to Global Warming.

How can anyone take such a Nostradamus-like prediction seriously?

Spring has officially started, but someone forgot to tell Mother Nature.

With above-average levels of snow in some parts of the country this winter, a few ski resorts are taking advantage by staying open longer.

Aspen Skiing Co. announced Aspen Highlands in Colorado will stay open until April 27, making that area the fourth in Colorado to announce an extended ski season this spring. . .

The state's snowpack was at 125 percent of its 30-year historical average.

Then there's this:

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. . .

The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

But the global warming zealots are not convinced.

A new study has suggested that the yields of rice, which is a major food source, will drop in many areas in the future, as a result of increasing global warming.

Global Warming has definitely jumped the shark.

"I say, we slaughter all the whales..." -- Ravenwood, January 3, 2003.

"Eat Whale And Save The Planet" - Norwegian Lobby, March 4, 2008.

"11 inches of snow -- in March -- in Arkansas" -- CNN Headline, March 4, 2008.

Global Warming is being blamed for killing the Loch Ness Monster.

With yet more proof that the Global Warming movement has jumped the shark, Kevin Baker points to this news from the land of the rising sun:

The project that brings (Ken Watanabe) back from hibernation is the BBC nature series "Planet Earth" (titled "Earth" in Japan) by documentary maker Alastair Fothergill, the creative force behind the huge worldwide hit "Deep Blue." A filmic plea to rescue the planet from environmental destruction, "Earth" opens with a haunting shot of that polar bear coming out of hibernation and searching for footing on melting ice.

Watanabe, who narrates the movie's Japanese version, recalls what he saw when he spent a month in the Arctic filming on a different project, before he got the call from the producers of "Earth."

"The first dawn after winter up there is supposed to be mid-February, but the sun appeared to rise two weeks earlier. When I asked the locals about it, they said there have been huge changes here in the last few years.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV delivers Breaking News on October 30th:

Last night, temperatures fell on many parts of the East Coast and, frankly, even in the West Coast. It's been getting cold all over America. Then this meant this morning and in the DC area for the first time this year, people had to reach into their closets for scarves, heavier suits -- even coats -- for the first time this season.

There are parts of Nevada that are really cold.

We've had freezing temperatures in Ely and Elko already this year. As the temperature falls all over the country, we begin to think about the cost of heating our homes for the winter.

I live near D.C., and Harry Reid is right. Even I had to take precautionary measures this morning. Luckily I've won life's lottery. I can afford a coat. But I'm doing my part. I drove my gas guzzling SUV to work, hoping it would raise the Earth's temperature a few degrees.

As a preview to it's "Planet in Peril" series, CNN offers a story entitled, Overpopulation could be people, planet problem.

Consequences of overpopulation
Overpopulation occurs when a population's density exceeds the capacity of the environment to supply the health requirements of an individual, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Environmentalists have long been concerned about the resources threatened by rapidly growing human populations, focusing on phenomenon such as deforestation, desertification, air pollution and global warming. But the worst-case scenario for people experiencing overpopulation, according to Lawrence Smith, president of the Population Institute, is a lack of fresh, clean water.

"If the water goes, the species goes," he said.

This all sounds a bit familiar. Oh yeah, party like it's 1968.

The Population Bomb (1968) is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich. A best-selling work, it predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion". The book predicted that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death", that nothing can be done to avoid mass famine greater than any in the history, and radical action is needed to limit the overpopulation.

Reader Mike A sends more evidence that Global Warming has jumped the shark.

Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven "consensus" on man-made global warming.

UPDATE: People are probably tired of hearing doom and gloom crap like this:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists reported Thursday.

Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le Quere, who called the finding very alarming.

They got all the cliches out in the first two paragraphs.

When it comes to Global Warming, I had it figured out years ago. My Global Warming theory dates back to the early 1990s, and it's been documented on this blog as early as 2003.

"...the largest consumer of carbon dioxide (and maker of oxygen) is not trees, it's plant plankton. Who destroys all of this preciousss, life giving plant plankton? Whales. I say, we slaughter all the whales to prevent them from eating the plant plankton." -- Ravenwood, 01/03/2003

"Most people think that most of our oxygen comes from trees. But with two-thirds of the Earth's surface covered with water, it actually comes from oceans full of plant plankton, who dutifully convert CO2 to oxygen through photosynthesis. The biggest harm to plant plankton is not global warming, since a spike in CO2 would just mean that plant life thrives. Instead, plant plankton's biggest predator is whales. Whales scoop up plankton by the truckload. It would seem obvious then, that the solution is to protect plant plankton by slaughtering whales. With an absence of predators, plant plankton will overpopulate and drastically cut CO2 levels". -- Ravenwood, 03/03/2005

At the time people called me nuts, but then there's this, and this:

Can plankton production address the climate change problem? A crew from a company called Planktos will travel to waters near the Galapagos Islands later this month to create plankton "blooms," or large-scale growth, by seeding the ocean with iron, which stimulates plankton growth. As the plankton grows, it consumes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and removes it from the atmosphere.

All this is going to do is make the whales flourish. This may help some, but they should also try eliminating the predators (whales) to yield bigger gains.

Somebody named Sheryl Crow solves global warming. I wonder who would police this:

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting," she explained.

"I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required."

Other plans she has included not using paper napkins.

"I have designed a clothing line that has what's called a 'dining sleeve.' The sleeve is detachable and can be replaced with another 'dining sleeve,' after usage," she explained in the increasingly bizarre posting.

"The design will offer the 'diner' the convenience of wiping his mouth on his sleeve rather than throwing out yet another barely used paper product... I think this idea could also translate quite well to those suffering with an annoying head cold."

Better start buying those toilet paper offsets.

A gaggle of retired generals and admirals are making the claim the Global Warming will start the next World War.

The study, titled National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, predicts: "Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states ... The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide, and the growth of terrorism.

It is my opinion that this winter Global Warming has finally jumped the shark. The alarmism will not end right away, but I get the feeling that much of America is ready to tune it out. Every little weather event (hot and cold) is blamed on "climate change" and the only way to fix it is to hamstring the American economy.

The louder "the end is near" predictions get, the more they will fall deaf ears. Frankly, I know I'm tired of it.

Reader Mike sends news that Global Warming might not be caused by man after all: Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says. But it's hilariously treated with kid gloves by the media. First paragraph:

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural - and not a human- induced - cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

Heh. So one scientist has a controversial theory that the source of all our power (the sun) might be responsible for warming the Earf. Let the stoning begin:

[Habibullo] Abdussamatov's work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.

"His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion," said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University.

"And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report."

How dare he question mainstream scientific opinion. If a majority of people agree that the sun revolves around the earth, it must be true.

Via Drudge:

The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled "Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?"

The Reuters "news agency" is back to beating the global warming drum. This time they say that "scientists" have temperature data going back a full million years, and that the Earf is hot hot hot.

Overall, Earth is within 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) of its highest temperature levels in the past million years, Hansen and the others wrote. They noted a recent steep rise in average temperatures, with global surface temperatures increasing about 0.4 degrees F (0.2 degrees C) for each of the last three decades.

Scientists attribute this rise to human activities, specifically the release into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases--notably carbon dioxide--which let in sunlight and trap its heat like the glass walls of a greenhouse.

So, to what do scientists attribute the rest of the increase? Well, they don't. What's more, they don't explain what happened to the ice age if there was no significant temperature increase until SUVs came along during modern times.

Of course any global warming trends that may be occurring are not caused by carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. It's caused by THE SUN, which has been at the highest level of solar output in the last 1100 years. And everyone seems to have forgotten that the globe has been warming for 20,000 years.

UPDATE: Heh. Unpartisan thinks I'm "from the left".

Have you been wondering where all the froggies have gone? If so, scientists have finally solved the mystery. The world's frog population has been all but wiped out by (you guessed it) global warming.

The study, published in the journal Nature, provides compelling evidence that climate change has already helped wipe out a slew of species and could spur more extinctions and the spread of diseases worldwide. It also helps solve the international mystery of why amphibians around the globe have been vanishing from their usual habitats over the past quarter-century -- as many as 112 species have disappeared since 1980.

And I never had a chance to try my recipe for frogs legs.

Previous scientific estimates have dated the dawn of Man back to no more than a few hundred thousand years ago. But new evidence suggests that people started screwing up the environment hundreds of thousands of years earlier.

Scientists are looking back to a time when "greenhouse gases" were not the problem they are today, and it is giving them a clearer picture of how people are making it worse.

A team of European researchers analyzed tiny air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for millennia and determined there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than at any point during the last 650,000 years.

There are also more SUVs now, so the two must be related.

Global Warming is killing 150,000 people each year and turning poor countries into a teenage wasteland reports the WHO.

Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030...

Health and climate scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who conducted one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to measure the impact of global warming on health, said the WHO data also show that rising temperatures disproportionately affect poor countries that have done little to create the problem. They reached their conclusions after entering data on climate-sensitive diseases into mapping software.

So they plotted malaria cases against a map and discovered that poor equatorial countries are afflicted more than the United States. (Yes, they actually get paid to do this.) Ironically, since most of these "climate-sensitive diseases" are spread by insects this probably has more to do with the environmentalist wackos and the EPA ban on DDT than anything else. But at least somebody gets it:

"Wealth is the number one factor in determining vulnerability or adaptability of a country to any of the threats out there," said John R. Christy, a climatologist who directs the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Christy, who lived in Kenya in the mid-1970s, added, "Thugocracies and other non-democratically accountable governments . . . have no real incentive to create a healthy populace with free markets and therefore free people."

In other words, spreading freedom and capitalistic free markets would be the most effective way to rescue people from third world threats like malaria and diarrhea. Of course any global warming trends that may be occurring are not caused by carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. It's caused by THE SUN, which has been at the highest level of solar output in the last 1100 years. And everyone seems to have forgotten that the globe has been warming for 20,000 years...

The Greenland ice cap has actually thickened due to increased snowfall. You would think that the thicker ice cap would contradict the environmentalist wacko's claim that the ice caps are melting and global sea levels are rising. Well, you'd be wrong.

they said that the thickening seemed consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

Warmer air, even if it is still below freezing, can carry more moisture. That extra moisture falls as snow below 32 Fahrenheit.

You see, being an environmentalist wacko means you're always right. If it gets warmer, that's global warming. If it gets colder, that's climate change (a/k/a global warming_. If we get more snow or less snow, it's all your fault for driving your evil SUV too much last year.

Since Hurricane Katrinarita was heralded as proof that Global Warming is intensifying, it only makes sense that the lack of hurricanes in recent weeks are proof that Global Warming is subsiding. In fact, I can safely predict that the Northern Hemisphere will undergo a general cooling period in the coming months, followed by several more months without any hurricanes at all.

One theory is that this is caused by decreased vehicular activity due to high gas prices. Still another would suggest that more people will simply be staying put due to other commitments like school and work.

Whatever the reason, we appear to have this global warming thing licked. And the absence of any severe hurricanes is proof of that.

The Washington Post contends that they're all related, and that insurance companies are eyeing human factors for natural disasters. Steven Milloy, on the other hand, calls them out for their junk science. If insurers can make the case that natural disasters are man made, they'll have an inroad into lobbying congress into controlling our lives. We are already forced to wear seat-belts, buy cars with airbags, and watch what we eat because insurance companies have a vested interest in our not dying. Wait until they start hitting up the auto industry, energy companies, and "big oil" for financial reparations.

We all know that global warming is man made, so I want to know who's been driving their SUVs on Mars?

Mars is still nothing like Earth, but earthquakes and global warming may be changing the face of the Red Planet, new NASA photos taken from orbit suggest...

The latest findings, made by comparing photos taken by a camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, were announced yesterday.

"What the Mars orbital camera has revealed from this long and detailed study of the Red Planet is a dynamic Mars, a planet that can change � not on the mind-boggling millions and billions of years, but on the order of years and decades," said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program...

Placing photographs side by side, researchers at the company discovered mysterious gullies appearing on the walls of sand dunes in less than three years, tracks from boulders that had tumbled down the steep wall of a crater between November 2003 and December 2004, dramatic melting of ice at the south pole over three consecutive martian summers, and even a meteorite crater that hadn't existed 20 years ago...

At Mars' south pole, an escarpment of frozen carbon dioxide has retreated nearly 10 feet a year over the past three summers.

"It's evaporating now at a prodigious rate," said Malin.

The significance of this is Mars is experiencing climate change, or has experienced climate change."

Why Mars may be warming is a mystery, he said.

Oh really? Maybe it has something to do with increased solar output. The output of the sun is higher now than at any time in the last 1000 years. Considering the sun is where we get ALL of our energy, maybe.. just maybe, that has something to do with it.

Of course if you admitted that, you might also have to admit that it's also what's caused global warming here on Earth.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has backed away from Kyoto. On the first day of Bill Clinton's Global Initiative, Blair said that the only way to solve global warming is through science and technology. Further, he said that hamstringing developed nations is never going to work.

Onstage with former president Bill Clinton at a midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was going to speak with "brutal honesty" about Kyoto and global warming, and he did...

Blair, a longtime supporter of the Kyoto treaty, further prefaced his remarks by noting, "My thinking has changed in the past three or four years." So what does he think now? "No country, he declared, "is going to cut its growth." That is, no country is going to allow the Kyoto treaty, or any other such global-warming treaty, to crimp -- some say cripple -- its economy.

Okay, so I haven't had much to say about the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Basically, I don't know what there really is to say. I certainly hope those impacted by the storm recover and rebuild. My heart goes out to them. It looks like construction workers along the Gulf Coast will be very busy for months (if not years) to come.

Then there's the nut cases. If there's one thing this storm has done is separate the environmentalists wackos from the regular folks. First of all, anyone who says the Hurricane was caused by global warming is an idiot. They probably deserve a swift kick in the nuts, but you're better off just rolling your eyes at them and walking away. The idea that man can cause hurricanes is patently absurd. Not only that, but global warming actually lessens the affects of hurricanes. All those melting ice caps and glaciers that the enviroweenies are crying about would actually cool the oceans down at the equator. But the facts don't fit the agenda, so they just make it up as they go along. It's gotten so bad that any weather event at all is attributed to global warming.

If man caused the hurricane, why didn't man stop it? Why didn't we all just stop driving our SUVs last week to make the hurricane go away? When we saw the storm coming, why not just close all the gas stations? I mean if we can cause the hurricane, than certainly we have the power to stop it.

Know this. Anyone who blames this on global warming and the actions of man is a moron and should be treated as such. Period.

Hurricanes have always been an annual event, but the environmentalist wackos think they're man made. (And probably all Bush's fault.)

Florida has been pummelled by six powerful hurricanes since last August, in what forecasters describe as an "unusually active season". Environmental campaigners say the turbulence is a product of global warming disrupting world weather patterns. Katrina is the 11th storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began on 1 June.

If this really is the start of something sinister, perhaps they should check the angular vector of the moon.

You've heard of red light cameras and speed cameras. Now California is coming out with an emissions camera. The device will measure the emissions coming from the tailpipe of your car, take a photo of your license plate, and dispatch the local environmental gestapo to force you to fix your car.

The program, perhaps the largest of its kind, would measure vehicles entering freeways in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside.

The sensors measure pollutants as vehicles accelerate and the cameras snap an image of the license plates.

But leave it to Californiastan to put a socialist spin on the crack down:

There's even an incentive to getting caught.

Owners of smoky clunkers would receive letters informing them that the government would help pay to fix or scrap the vehicles. Between 10,000 to 20,000 of the dirtiest vehicles would be spotted, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

That makes perfect sense. After all this unfairly targets older cars, meaning the poor will be hardest hit.

You may never take your SUV off-road, but you are still destroying the mountains (if the environmentalist wackos are to be believed).

Edmund Hillary, the first climber to conquer Mount Everest with his Sherpa guide, on Monday urged that the world's highest mountain be placed on the United Nations' list of endangered heritage sites because of the risks of climate change. . .

Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries also threatens the coral reefs in Belize and glaciers in Peru, according to activists who have petitioned for their inclusion too on the endangered list.

It's going to get so hot the mountain will melt away.

As if you needed more evidence that the environmental movement has been hijacked by wackos.

A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth to shade the tropics and moderate climate extremes.

There would be side effects, proponents admit. An effective sunlight-scattering particle ring would illuminate our night sky as much as the full Moon, for example.

And the price tag would knock the socks off even a big-budget agency like NASA: $6 trillion to $200 trillion for the particle approach. Deploying tiny spacecraft would come at a relative bargain: a mere $500 billion tops.

Maybe we should just bomb the shit out of North Korea and Iran. A little nuclear winter should give the Global Warming idiots something else to whine about.

The idea that most of the world's oxygen comes from rain forests is all a big myth. The Los Angeles Times reports that massive burning means that the Amazon Rain Forest is actually causing pollution instead of helping clean it up. Most of the article deals with logging and 'save the rainforests' crap, but if you read down far enough you'll discover that even without the burning, we still wouldn't get any oxygen gain from rain forests.

Even without the massive burning, the popular conception of the Amazon as a giant oxygen factory for the rest of the planet is misguided, scientists say. Left unmolested, the forest does generate enormous amounts of oxygen through photosynthesis, but it consumes most of it itself in the decomposition of organic matter. . .

"Concern about the environmental aspects of deforestation now is more over climate rather than [carbon emissions] or whether the Amazon is the 'lungs of the world,' " said Paulo Barreto, a researcher with the Amazon Institute of People and Environment.

"For sure, the Amazon is not the lungs of the world," he added. "It never was."

Of course if you've been reading Ravenwood's Universe regularly you already know that the "lungs of the world" are the oceans, filled with plant plankton. Two-thirds of the earth's surface is water, and plant plankton dutifully converts carbon dioxide into oxygen. That is, when the whales aren't scooping them up by the truck load for food. It would seem obvious then, that the solution to global warming is to protect plant plankton by slaughtering whales. With an absence of predators, plant plankton will overpopulate and drastically cut CO₂ levels.

Reader Mike A. writes to point out that even shark attacks are being blamed on Global Warming. A spear fisherman (who may or may not drive an SUV) was killed when a great white shark was attracted to blood in the water from speared fish. Vic Cockcroft from South Africa's Center for Dolphin Studies blames Americans and their love of greenhouse gases.

"The incidents of shark presence seem to be much higher around the coasts (than they used to be) ... There is evidence that our waters are warming up because of climate change, but whether this is making them more productive or not we don't know," Cockcroft said.

Since great white sharks enjoy temperate water (not hot or cold) global warming will eventually drive them all away.

"Antarctica ice cap growing, another sign of warming" -- Palm Beach Post, May 20, 2004.

Global Warming doomsayers have ventured into the absurd.

Spoons beat me to the punch with this delightful story about how Global Warming is actually causing Antarctic ice to increase.

Scientists now have incontrovertable proof that the global warming that is shrinking the polar ice caps and raising sea levels is now growing the polar ice caps and lowering sea levels -- just as they predicted.

My biggest fear now is the obvious implication that a rise in global temeratures may cause the next ice age!

In that spirit, I'd like to make the following predictions:

• The stock market will continue to skyrocket, causing a dramatic decline in stock prices;
• Hillary Clinton's universal unpopularity will catapult her to electoral success in the 2008 Presidential race;
• The spread of democracy throughout the Middle East will spread totalitarianism throughout the Middle East.

So basically, if it gets warmer, they're right; if it gets cooler, they're right.

The Swiss are deeply concerned over melting ice. So much so, that they are taking radical steps to keep it from happening.

Alarmed by the retreat of its Alpine glacier, a Swiss ski resort on Tuesday wrapped part of the shrinking ice-cap in a giant blanket in a bid to reduce the summer melt.

If successful, officials at the Gemsstock resort above Andermatt in central Switzerland expect the example to be followed elsewhere in the Alps, where scientists say glaciers are under threat from global warming...

Of course envirowackos aren't impressed.

For Martin Hiller, spokesman on climate change for environmentalist group WWF International, who was on hand to witness the Alpine experiment, the move was positive but offered no real answer to ice loss.

"The solution is to switch to clean energy, we need to cut down on harmful pollutants, such as CO2 (carbon dioxide)," he said.

Just switch to clean energy. How simple. Never-mind that there's no such thing as clean energy. Fossile Fuels: duh; Nuclear: nuclear waste; Solar: destroys the landscape; Hydroelectric: destroys the river and acres of land; Wind farms: chop up the birds. There is no easy solution to our energy needs.

Also, CO₂ is not a pollutant. It is a naturally occuring gas just like Nitrogen or Oxygen. It's also what plants breathe. If you get rid of CO₂, you have to get rid of plants and all the animals that eat plants and all the animals that eat animals that eat plants.

Of course I've already solved the CO2 problem. For those of you that missed it, I'll say it again:

Most people think that most of our oxygen comes from trees. But with two-thirds of the Earth's surface covered with water, it actually comes from oceans full of plant plankton, who dutifully convert CO₂ to oxygen through photosynthesis. The biggest harm to plant plankton is not global warming, since a spike in CO₂ would just mean that plant life thrives. Instead, plant plankton's biggest predator is whales. Whales scoop up plankton by the truckload. It would seem obvious then, that the solution is to protect plant plankton by slaughtering whales. With an absence of predators, plant plankton will overpopulate and drastically cut CO₂ levels.

Selfish American SUV drivers could turn England and Northern Europe into Siberia. CNN reports:

Scientists now have evidence that changes are occurring in the Gulf Stream, the warm and powerful ocean current that tempers the western European climate.

Without the influence of the Gulf Stream and its two northern branches, the North Atlantic Drift and the Canary Current, the weather in Britain could be more like that of Siberia, which shares the same latitude.

Clean air is a good thing, right? Well, not if you believe the enviro-weenies. Less pollution in the air means clear skies. Clear skies means more sunlight reaches the Earth, and that contributes to Global Warming.

This latest report conflicts a previous report that said the Earth had continued dimming since the year 2000. But no matter how their views conflict, when you get to the heart of it all scientists seem to have a common goal. More funding.

Dr. Robert J. Charlson, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and an author of a commentary that accompanied the three papers, said, "This set of papers, taken together, calls attention for more emphasis on research in these topics."

But he added, "Unfortunately, impediments have come up." Four years' worth of data from the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite is unanalyzed, he said, because there is no money for scientists to work with it.

Another satellite, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, which was scheduled to be launched on a space shuttle, awaits in storage. Proposed budget cuts in earth science research at NASA could limit the analysis of data from other satellites, Dr. Charlson said.

It's the same old formula; sound the alarm and then ask for more funding.

Retailers don't buy into the global warming hype. Last month's poor sales figures are being blamed on cold weather.

Spring sales provided little bounce for many retailers in April as unseasonably chilly - even downright cold - weather and never-seen- before prices at the gas pump kept most shoppers at home.

Teens, however, bundled up and headed to the store anyway, picking up hot fashions for spring-break vacations.

Despite what the anti-capitalists are saying, Global Warming is not a new phenomenon. Scientists now claim that a global warming period that occured 3 million years ago was due to increased carbon dioxide.

This will undoubtedly be blamed on prehistoric sport utility vehicles.

Spring started more than a month ago, but parts of the midwest are still getting buried by snow. The Twins/Tigers game in Detroit was snowed out on Saturday, and snow continued to fall in Ohio and Michigan on Sunday.

Combine this with record snow depths in Alaska, and perhaps all of this is all part of that Global Cooling they've been warning us about.

"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age." -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

I blame Global Warming:

Hundreds of travelers were stranded at the Denver airport and along highways Sunday as a blizzard blew across eastern Colorado with wet, heavy snow.

Almost a foot of snow fell in Denver and two feet in Greenland, about 20 miles north of Colorado Springs, the National Weather Service said. Heavy snow was still coming down Sunday evening but was expected to fade overnight.

Or maybe Global Cooling. Either way, you can bet it's man's fault.

In the spirit of Blame America First, now environmentalists are saying that the United States exports pollution beyond its borders, while Europe's pollution stays put.

The United States exports nitrogen pollution beyond its borders and some of this nitrogen may end up in Western Europe, according to a recent data analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of New Hampshire. Most of the nitrogen pollution produced in Western Europe is deposited within its own boundaries, the authors found.

Sucks to be them.

Apparently pre-historic man's switch from hunting and gathering to farming turned the tide of the ice age. If it weren't for them, we'd all be ice cubes by now.

Ancient man saved the world from a new Ice Age. That is the startling conclusion of climate researchers who say man-made global warming is not a modern phenomenon and has been going on for thousands of years.

Prehistoric farmers who slashed down trees and laid out the first rice paddies and wheatfields triggered major alterations to levels of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they say.

As a result, global temperatures - which were slowly falling around 8,000 years ago - began to rise. 'Current temperatures would be well on the way toward typical glacial temperatures, had it not been for the greenhouse gas contributions from early farming practices,' says Professor William Ruddiman of Virginia University.

Dammit there's that pesky ice age again. For some reason the Global Warming anti-capitalists never want to discuss the ice age. That's because glaciers and ice caps haven't just been melting for the last 100 years (which coincidentally corresponds with the industrial revolution), and instead have been receding over the last 20,000 years. Not to mention the fact that solar output (where all of our energy comes from to begin with) is higher now than it has been in the past 1100 years.

I've spent the better part of two weeks debating Global Warming and showcasing the neverending lineup of media harping, but apparently it's all for naught. Aside from bullheaded politicians, America has made up it's mind, so says Peter Goldmark.

...outside Washington, in state capitols, business boardrooms, in churches and universities, America is making up its mind. And what Americans are deciding is that global warming is a serious problem, it is here now, and it would be smart to deal with it carefully, in measured steps, in order to avoid drastic alternatives later.

The brainwashing is working. The only people who don't support the Global Warming theory are the extremists at the VRWC and of course, Big Oil.

It is a familiar crowd. The coal industry figures prominently among them. Many electric utilities are against it, although some of their leaders privately acknowledge that something has to be done. Many of the right-wing think tanks have inveighed against doing anything; some of this polemic has been quietly financed by Exxon/Mobil.

Speaking of which, my royalty check from Exxon is late this month. Maybe I'll have to start beating my drums for the highest bidder. Any socialist enviroweenies out there want to try to buy my support?