Well, looky here!

Some cracks are appearing in the climate-change monolith:

The “Pause” in global warming is real – not an urban myth concocted by evil ‘deniers’ – a study has found, signalling the development of a major schism within the climate alarmist camp.

“It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims,” the paper in Nature Climate Change says.

Though the paper’s findings are not controversial – few serious scientists dispute the evidence of the temperature datasets showing that there has been little if any global warming for nearly 19 years – they represent a tremendous blow to the climate alarmist “consensus”, which has long sought to deny the “Pause’s” existence.

First, the study was published in Nature Climate Change a fervently alarmist journal which rarely if ever runs papers that cast doubt on the man-made-global-warming scare narrative.

Secondly, it directly contradicts a widely-reported study produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last year which attempted to deny the existence of the “Pause” (also known as the “hiatus”). This NOAA study was widely mocked, quickly debunked and is now the subject of a Congressional investigation by 

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)

60%

. What’s novel about this new study in Nature Climate Change, though, is that it’s not skeptics and Republicans doing the mocking and the debunking: it’s the kind of people who in the past were very much in the alarmist camp, including – bizarrely – none other than Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, who co-authored the paper.

What we have here, in other words, is signs of a major rift within the climate alarmist camp with different factions adopting different tactics to cope with the failure of their collapsing narrative.

On one side are people like Thomas Karl and Thomas Petersen, the hapless NOAA scientists given the unenviable task of producing that risible paper last year which did its best to deny that the Pause was a thing.

On the other are what might be called the “rats deserting the sinking ship” faction who have produced this new paper for Nature Climate Change, in which finally they concede what skeptics have been saying for many years: that there has been no “global warming” since 1998.

This divergence in the alarmist camp is now going to create a dilemma for all those liberal media outlets – from the BBC to the Guardian to the LA Times – which reported on NOAA’s “death of the pause” study as if it were a reliable and credible thing.

I knew that someday the lack of credibility would overwhelm the narrative.

Just become a Democrat, Mitt

One of the two Squish Titans of the upcoming presidential cycle just stepped on his own you-know-what, big time.

Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s contemplating another White House run, said climate change was real, that humans helped it along and that it was the responsibility of the world to turn back the environmental tide.

“I’m one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that,” he said during a Wednesday night speech at an investment management conference, The Associated Press reported.

Tell you what, Mitt.  Change parties, take Renee Ellmers with you, and and give the Freedom-Haters a slightly less America-destroying option than the Hillary ticket.

 

Dennis Prager on Pope Francis

He calls his latest column "probably . . . the most painful . . . I've ever had to write."

I think his take on why we've seen what we have out of the current pontiff is the best explanation out there, because it encompasses more than one man or one wing of Catholicism:

How are we to explain that at the very moment that the oldest Christian communities in the world are being violently destroyed; that while Christians are murdered, raped and tortured in Africa and the Middle East; and while horrific barbarities are committed daily in the name of God, the pope issues an encyclical and travels around the world to talk about climate change?

It is happening because leftism has taken over much of Catholicism, most of mainstream Protestantism, increasing numbers of evangelicals and most of non-Orthodox Judaism. Not to mention the secular worlds of the news media, entertainment media and academia.

It is happening because the default philosophic, moral and political position in Latin America is leftism. Support for big government and the redistribution of income, and condemnation of capitalism and corporate profits — these are givens in Latin America. And Pope Francis is Latin American to the core.

His leftism was the primary reason he worked so diligently to get the United States to normalize relations with the Castro brothers in Cuba — instead of using his moral authority to condemn a brutal tyranny that has crushed and impoverished the Cuban people for 55 years.

Senator Marco Rubio, a practicing Catholic, put it succinctly:

“I would also ask His Holiness to take up the cause of freedom and democracy.”

In the long run, this will bring down the Church — just as it has mainstream Protestantism and non-Orthodox Judaism — as well as diminish decency on earth.

It is, moreover, clear that the pope has been so influenced by leftism that he appears to know only the propaganda, not the science. For example, the typhoon in the Philippines had nothing to do with global warming. The leading science journal, Nature, wrote as much:

“Did climate change cause Typhoon Haiyan? There is limited evidence that warming oceans could make superstorms more likely.”

Defenders of Pope Francis note that Pope Benedict, too, spoke eloquently about man’s obligations to protect nature. That is true. And it is irrelevant. First, he issued no encyclical on the issue; his encyclicals were, like almost every papal encyclical, non-political. Second, everyone knows we have an obligation to care for the planet. But caring for the planet has as much to do with left-wing environmentalism as protecting workers had to do with Communism.

It's as painful to read as it was for Prager to write.  Leftism is indeed the most dynamic religion in the world today, and it's getting pretty late for turning back to real worship of the real God without incurring regrettable results.

Before you go concluding that the Most Equal Comrade has suddenly found patriotism . . .

He lets the UN crowd know he's still a hopeless Freedom-Hater and junk-science enthusiast:

Even as American warplanes struck targets in Syria, even as regimes tottered in Jordan and Iraq and Yemen, among others, even as the Japanese economy collapses and the economies of India, China and Brazil shake, even as Ebola virus runs rampant through Africa, Obama announced that terrorism, instability, inequality and disease represented secondary threats. “There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other,” Obama said, “and that is the urgent and growing threat of climate change.” 

Obama then went on a non-scientific rant about the pseudoscience of manmade climate change. “In America,” he said, “the past decade has been our hottest on record” – neglecting, of course, to mention that according to Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph, “The US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record.” Obama continued with his litany of alarmism: floods, wildfire seasons getting longer, droughts, rainstorms.

“Worldwide,” Obama concluded, “this summer was the hottest ever recorded – with global carbon emissions still on the rise.” In the United States, however, better technologies are stanching the rise of carbon emissions – while 2013 saw a rise in American carbon emissions, America saw a steady decline in CO2 emissions from 2006 on, thanks in large part to recession. That process, by the way, works in reverse as well: purposefully cutting carbon emissions can destroy economies.

But not according to Obama. According to Obama, he has heard the call of the people:

The alarm bells keep ringing. Our citizens keep marching. We cannot pretend we do not hear them. We have to answer the call. We know what we have to do to avoid irreparable harm. We have to cut carbon pollution in our own countries to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

Still the king of planned decline:

Obama then said there was good news: “we have the means -- the technological innovation and the scientific imagination -- to begin the work of repairing it right now.” What are those means?
Cutting American growth, first and foremost. Which, to Obama, is a net positive, since he believes that global economic inequality leads to all social ills. “[T]oday,” Obama explained, “I’m here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its second largest emitter, to say that we have begun to do something about it.”
For example, Obama stated, we “now harness three times as much electricity from the wind and 10 times as much from the sun as we did when I came into office.” Obama neglected to mention that an utterly negligible amount of America’s electricity comes from wind and solar – 4.13 percent and 0.23 percent, respectively. By way of contrast, 39 percent of our electricity comes from coal, another 27 percent from natural gas, and 19 percent from nuclear.
Nonetheless, Obama continued, “these advances have helped create jobs, grow our economy, and drive our carbon pollution to its lowest levels in nearly two decades -- proving that there does not have to be a conflict between a sound environment and strong economic growth.” Actually, Obama’s stimulus packages have helped stagnate the economy, and carbon emissions were declining before Obama took office. But facts are merely propaganda waiting to be rewritten.
But Obama wasn’t done yet: he had more wonderful initiatives to announce. He said he would move forward with his Climate Action Plan, which will force power plants not to emit as much CO2, thereby radically driving up the price of energy for everyone in the United States. But this crippling sanction on American power generation was a big win, Obama chortled: “when completed, this will mark the single most important and significant step the United States has ever taken to reduce our carbon emissions.”

Obama announced that he had “new actions in renewable energy and energy efficiency” to push which would supposedly “save consumers more than $10 billion on their energy bills” – small comfort for those who will see their electricity bills skyrocket. According to the Obama-associated Associated Press, American electricity bills will rise 13 percent by 2020 thanks to Obama’s Climate Action Plan. 

He reaches his crescendo - or maybe "nadir" is the word I'm looking for - when he lays on thick that the-mere-fact-that-it's-the-21st-century-means-there's-something-evolved-about-human-nature / shrink-it-to-a-manageable-problem mindset for the assemblage:

To end, Obama dismissed the world’s worries over “the swarm of current events” and bothersome “economic challenges and political challenges.” After all, Obama said, we all need food and air and hopes and dreams!

[I]f we act now, if we can look beyond the swarm of current events and some of the economic challenges and political challenges involved, if we place the air that our children will breathe and the food that they will eat and the hopes and dreams of all posterity above our own short-term interests, we may not be too late for them. While you and I may not live to see all the fruits of our labor, we can act to see that the century ahead is marked not by conflict, but by cooperation; not by human suffering, but by human progress; and that the world we leave to our children, and our children’s children, will be cleaner and healthier, and more prosperous and secure.

This is our president: a man more focused on weaving together beautiful sentiments and pledging beautiful sacrifices in order to stop the weather than he is on leading America to victory against actual enemies and challenges. But that’s also the wonderful thing about fighting shadows: nobody expects you to win.

That's our MEC.  Still the same old poisonous and destructive menace he's always been.

The Most Equal Comrade's great leap forward in his agenda to destroy the West

Well, he's made good on his promise to strangle the coal industry.  Couldn't do it through Constutitional, Congressional avenues, so he's going for EPA edicts.

The controversial regulation is one of the most sweeping efforts to tackle global warming by this or any other administration. 

The 645-page rule, expected to be final next year, is a centerpiece of President Obama's climate change agenda, and a step that the administration hopes will get other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year. 

While the plan drew praise from environmental groups, the coal industry was immediately suspect. 

Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, said he's "certain that it will be very bad news for states like Kentucky who mine and use coal to create electricity." 

The draft regulation sidesteps Congress, where Obama's Democratic allies have failed to pass a so-called "cap-and-trade" plan to limit such emissions. 

Under the plan, states could have until 2017 to submit a plan to cut power plant pollution, and 2018 if they join with other states to tackle the problem, according to the EPA's proposal. 

States are expected to be allowed to require power plants to make changes such as switching from coal to natural gas or enact other programs to reduce demand for electricity and produce more energy from renewable sources.

They also can set up pollution-trading markets as some states already have done to offer more flexibility in how plants cut emissions.

If a state refuses to create a plan, the EPA can make its own.

There will be ample opportunity to delve into the damage this will wreak.  But let's take a moment to examine the origins of the ideological impetus behind such a move.  The MEC's science czar had this to say in 1975:

he essay appeared in The Windsor Star of August 1975 under the title Too Much Energy, Too Soon, A Hazard and was an attack personally penned by Holdren against the idea of trying to provide plentiful, cheap energy for the future. This, he said, would be totally the wrong move, and begins his article by handing down the following warning:

The United States is threatened far more by the hazards of too much energy, too soon, than by the hazards of too little energy, too late.

The Windsor Star. Aug. 1975. Too Much Energy, Too Soon, A Hazard.

Of course – all those foolish people worrying about what they’d do if the aging power stations weren’t replaced should’ve been worrying about too much cheap, plentiful energy. We all know how dangerous that can be, right? Holdren lists some of these dangers as:

. . . diverting financial resources from compelling social needs, making hasty commitments to unproved technologies, and generating environmental and social costs that harm human welfare more than the extra energy improves it.

And it doesn’t get much clearer than that, I’m afraid, not least because there’s not really much of an argument here to start with. Holdren’s basic position, I think, is that rather than investing in silly things like power stations and infrastructure, the nation should be investing in social goods like modern dance workshops and radical art seminars that are a real investment for the future.

What, for example, can we make of the following warning?

Mounting evidence suggests that the United States is approaching (if not beyond) the level where further energy growth costs more than it is worth.

Planned decline, friends.  The Freedom-Haters have been preparing for this moment a very long time.

Would you turn your society over to people with a worldview this utterly mad?

Nafeez Ahmed at The Guardian says that the economics of fossil fuels and the supposed resultant "climate change" are to blame for the menace of Boko Haram.

What, again, is the point of the UN's existence?

In a world currently beset by Russian expansionism, European instability, Chinese aggression in the Pacific, a nuclear-armed and utterly mad regime in North Korea, a Syrian civil war, an Iranian nuke program, and several failed states in northern Africa, Ban Ki Moon thinks the EU should make "climate change" its first priority.