A LEADING AUSTRALIAN COMEDIAN SAYS GLOBAL WARMING COULD DRAMATICALLY REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF HUMOR IN THE FORMER BRITISH COLONY AND PRISON CAMP.
“Because of climate change, in 25 years, we won’t have a comedy festival. . . . The money that we need for [a] comedy festival will be needed for solving the problems of the next cyclone or the next bushfire or the next flood,” Rod Quantock said at the opening of the 25th Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
While Quantock’s views represent the consensus among Australian humorists at the conference, which is heavily subsidized by the government, there are a handful of dissenting comedians who feel global warming has been a boon to the funny business. They’re skeptical that fossilized jesters are an accurate measure of the true state of planetary mirth. In fact, a little global warming may be good for belly laughs.
THEY POINT TO THE GORE EFFECT (“WHERE HE GOETH, IT SNOWETH”) AS WELL AS THE TENDENCY OF INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE SUMMITS TO BE OVERWHELMED BY COLD WEATHER, EVEN WHEN HELD IN TROPICAL SETTINGS SUCH AS CANCUN, MEXICO.
A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY BY THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE LAST WEEK FOUND THAT THE NAME “AL GORE” IN COMIC SKETCHES ELICITS LAUGHTER 63 PERCENT OF TIME, while the name “Dick Cheney” Does 24 percent of the time. Previous surveys for years showed most Americans felt Cheney was a bigger joke than the rotund activist and carbon millionaire. Gales of laughter from Republicans have even forced the current administration to scale back its signature anti-carbon initiative: ambitious plans for a national high-speed-rail network….
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/261138/global-warming-hits-our-funny-bone-lou-dolinar
Quite frankly what is funny is that Quantock actually takes AGW seriously when the rest of the world has seen through the smoke screen.
Climate Camp calls it a day
After five years of camps, composting toilets, vegan curry and run-ins with the police, CLIMATE CAMP IS CALLING IT A DAY.
There will be no camp for the climate activists this year and the loose-knit organisation will be disbanded in 2011. The decision follows a five-day meeting to reach a consensus.
In a statement, activists for the climate movement said THE CAMP WAS BEING DISBANDED TO LEAVE ROOM TO "LAUNCH NEW RADICAL EXPERIMENTS TO TACKLE THE INTERTWINED ECOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISES WE FACE."
The immediate reaction has been a mixture of excitement about the future and nostalgia for an organisation that, most agree, changed the way the UK talked about climate change.
Most camp graduates believe this was the right moment to call it a day. "There was a feeling that Climate Camp was committed to a certain kind of action, the annual camp, which is really a huge commitment in terms of energy and resources," said Kevin Smith, a key figure in the climate movement, who was at the Dorset meeting. "PEOPLE FROM CLIMATE CAMP ARE NOW INVOLVED AND HELPING TO ORGANISE SO MANY OF THE DIFFERENT MOVEMENTS AROUND, I THINK PEOPLE FELT THEY WANTED TO BE FREED UP TO GET ON WITH NEW THINGS."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/02/climate-camp-disbanded
It is over for the AGW proponents. This statement here is like the politician who decides to withdraw from a race to “spend more time with their family.”
Dem to co-sponsor bill to 'rein in' EPA
HOUSE REPUBLICANS CAN CLAIM "BIPARTISANSHIP" IN THEIR BID TO HANDCUFF THE EPA'S CLIMATE CHANGE RULES.
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) told POLITICO on Wednesday that he will be co-sponsoring the legislation from House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) that puts a freeze on EPA's regulatory agenda for major industrial polluters like power plants and petroleum refiners.
"THE EPA NEEDS TO BE REINED IN," SAID PETERSON, THE TOP DEMOCRAT ON THE HOUSE AGRICULTURE COMMITTEE AND A FREQUENT CRITIC OF THE AGENCY.
Upton and Whitfield, the chairman of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, have been offering small changes to their bill in their courtship of moderate and conservative Democrats like Peterson. SUPPORT FROM HOUSE DEMOCRATS, THEY HOPE, WILL PUT PRESSURE ON SENATE DEMOCRATS AND THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE TO ACCEPT THEIR LEGISLATION.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=798d1456-802a-23ad-47b1-efcb2226f46b
More evidence that the AGW movement is dead. The Obama attempted end run around congress seems to be meeting with bipartisan resistance.
On the House Vote to Defund the IPCC
THE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS HAVE NO ONE BUT THEMSELVES TO BLAME FOR LAST NIGHT’S VOTE.
I’m talking about those who deny NATURAL climate change. Like Al Gore, John Holdren, and everyone else who thinks climate change was only invented since they were born.
Politicians formed the IPCC over 20 years ago with an endgame in mind: to regulate CO2 emissions. I know, because I witnessed some of the behind-the-scenes planning. IT IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION. It was organized to use the government-funded scientific research establishment to achieve policy goals.
Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. BUT WHEN THEY ARE PORTRAYED AS REPRESENTING UNBIASED SCIENCE, THAT IS A BAD THING. If anthropogenic global warming – and ocean ‘acidification’ (now there’s a biased and totally incorrect term) — ends up being largely a false alarm, those who have run the IPCC are out of a job. More on that later.
I don’t want to be misunderstood on this. IF we are destroying the planet with our fossil fuel burning, then something SHOULD be done about it.
But the climate science community has allowed itself to be used on this issue, and as a result, politicians, activists, and the media have successfully portrayed the biased science as settled.
THEY APPARENTLY DO NOT REALIZE THAT ‘SETTLED SCIENCE’ IS AN OXYMORON.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/02/on-the-house-vote-to-defund-the-ipcc/
That last line is important. The language used by the warmists was never scientific , but political and it was used to try an achieve political objectives. And this really hasn’t been a secret.
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
Is Obama With Eye On '12 Mulling An EPA Rollback?
It looks as though President Obama may have decided that getting re-elected in 2012 is more important than saving the planet from the much-dreaded global warming.
But then how does he break it to the people who helped elect him and whose support he will need in 2012?
Political prognostication is always a chancy business, but a few new developments have occurred that seem to point to the president moving to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency's nascent regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions.
First, the left-wing British press reported Monday about how a government shutdown may force the EPA to delay its greenhouse-gas regulation by two years.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=564497&p=1
A politician doing something for political purposes. What a surprise! But it appears the climate change that Obama is now worried about is the political climate.
Public Unions and collective bargaining
….THERE IS NO “FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT’’ TO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN GOVERNMENT JOBS. Indeed, labor leaders themselves used to say so.
ARNOLD ZANDER, THE WISCONSIN UNION ORGANIZER who became the first president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, wrote in 1940 that AFSCME saw “LESS VALUE IN THE USE OF CONTRACTS AND AGREEMENTS IN PUBLIC SERVICE THAN . . . IN PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT.’’ Instead of collective bargaining, he explained, “OUR LOCAL UNIONS FIND PROMOTION AND ADOPTION OF CIVIL SERVICE LEGISLATION . . . THE MORE EFFECTIVE WAY’’ to serve the interests of government employees. As late as the 1950s, AFSCME considered collective bargaining in the public sector desirable but not essential, and viewed strong civil-service laws as the best protection for government workers.
In December 1955, in a New York Times Magazine essay on “Labor’s Future,’’ NO LESS A UNION ICON THAN AFL-CIO PRESIDENT GEORGE MEANY WROTE: “THE MAIN FUNCTION OF AMERICAN TRADE UNIONS IS COLLECTIVE BARGAINING. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BARGAIN COLLECTIVELY WITH THE GOVERNMENT.’’
Obviously, Big Labor’s outlook later changed. Dozens of states passed laws that authorized collective bargaining in the public sector, and public-sector unionism skyrocketed in the decades that followed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January that while UNION MEMBERSHIP HAS DWINDLED TO JUST 6.9 PERCENT OF THE PRIVATE-SECTOR WORKFORCE, AMONG PUBLIC EMPLOYEES IT HAS GROWN TO MORE THAN 36 PERCENT. Today most union members work for government. With public-employee dues swelling union coffers by hundreds of millions of dollars annually, it’s no surprise that organized labor and its allies now embrace collective-bargaining in the public sector as a “fundamental right’’ that only a union-busting tyrant would threaten…..
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/03/02/union_rights_that_arent/
Fundamental rights and destroying unions are the cry of the unions, but what we have here is an attempt to return to a more sane system than what has been allowed to develop in the past 50 years.
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