Green ‘drivel’ exposed By James Lovelock

From: Toronto Sun

Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.

The implications were extraordinary.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.

Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.

Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this century.

Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.

He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.

Among his observations to the Guardian:

(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.

As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)

(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.

“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed.

“I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”

(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”

(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”

NASA Climate Change Alarmist James Hansen Caught Profiting Off of Climate Change Advocacy

From: Left Coast REbel

Climate change advocacy is proving very lucrative. Al Gore has made nearly a billion dollars. Now it appears James Hansen of NASA, has been caught profiting off of climate change as well:

The NASA scientist who once claimed the Bush administration tried to "silence" his global warming claims is now accused of receiving more than $1.2 million from the very environmental organizations whose agenda he advocated.

100 Percent Tax on Those Earning $500K or More Leaves U.S. With $839B Deficit

From: CNS NEWS

When he presented his plan for dealing with the national debt last week, President Barack Obama suggested a number of ways he would like to increase taxes on people he referred to as “millionaires and billionaires.”

However, recently released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service indicate that taxing away 100 percent of the income of every American who earned $500,000 or more in 2009 would still have left the United States with a massive annual deficit.

In fact, in tax year 2009 (the last year for which IRS has published statistics), the combined gross income of all Americans earning $500,000 per year or more was about $1.03 trillion ($1,029,256,075,000.00) of which these Americans paid $256.7 billion ($256,699,499,000.00) in federal income taxes.

That left this group of Americans about $773 billion ($772,556,576,000.00) in income that the federal government had not taken away in income taxes.

Also during tax year 2009, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt increased by $1.61 trillion ($1,611,544,812,899.90).

What Downgrade? Pros Shrug Off Warning From S&P

From: CNBC

Investor reaction to the Standard & Poor's warning about burgeoning US fiscal problems was swift if unpredictable: Bonds and currencies, which otherwise might have fallen, gained, while stocks, which could have benefited, lost.

The S&P cut to the US outlook, after all, should have reflected itself in the nation's credit quality.

That in turn would have hit debt prices and shaken faith in the currency. At the same time, equities should have gone on their merry way on the belief that the money flowing out of fixed income would have found a home in stocks.

Seeing that none of the logical events actually occurred led to the belief in some quarters that the reaction from capital markets to the S&P move was a lot less than met the eye.

"The whole thing makes no sense to me," said Aaron Gurwitz, chief investment officer at Barclays Wealth in New York. "I can't tell a consistent story that explains all of these facts. My working hypothesis is this whole things is ephemeral—people were looking for a reason to sell stocks today."

From an investment perspective, Gurwitz said the only real takeaway is perhaps a less constructive view on the US dollar, which continues to be in jeopardy of losing its status as the world's reserve currency. Even in that case, the dollar gained Monday as measured against a basket of foreign currencies.

Gurwitz, like others, expects the stock plunge to be a short-term event that will lose steam quickly.

"We're encouraging our clients everywhere and in the US in particular to ask, 'What percentage of my assets are denominated in dollars?'" he said. "If it's about 85 percent, then people may want to think about diversifying a little bit more."

But elsewhere, it was almost as if the steep sell off in the stock market was happening on some other plane.

Theories regarding the day's pullback ran beyond the S&P move, and many strategists advised against using the news as a selling point. Dave Lutz, managing director of trading at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore, surmised that it was far more about a rally in the yen than a threat of US debt default.

Others, in fact, said pay no attention to the pullback, or at worst use it as reason to build up some more stocks.

"The more likely outcome is this is a buying opportunity," said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. "We're down almost 2 percent today because of some agency's stated opinion on something. There's a lot of opinions every day. It's not like there's a fundamental change from where we were last Friday."

In fact, several economists said the S&P warning could serve as an effective cattle prod to get Washington's warring parties to the bargaining table.

"S&P's actions could help advance the process toward a long-run strategy," David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities in New York, wrote in a note to clients. "By entering the debate in this way and at this time, S&P has served a useful public service by putting all parties on notice that words and actions in the political debate have consequences."

John Higgins, senior market economist at Capital Economics in London, combined the theme of a buying opportunity with the notion of good timing by S&P—even as Paul Ashworth, his Toronto colleague and chief US economist at the firm, said it was "hard to argue" with the downgrade.

"Investors might come to see S&P’s decision in a positive light if it prompts Congress to focus on delivering a credible deficit reduction plan," Higgins wrote in a research note. "After all, the rating agency’s decision to put the UK’s AAA-rating on negative outlook in May 2009 fueled a debate on the need for massive fiscal tightening, and the tough decisions taken by the new coalition government were eventually rewarded by S&P with the UK’s outlook being revised back up to stable in October last year."

Indeed, those looking for positive straws to grasp at considering the S&P's bleak assessment of US finances turned their gaze around the world and found few rivals for the dollar and the US as an investment destination. 

"In this world today, the United States, from the size of capital markets and its political system, even though we're all frustrated, screams out stability," said Bob Andres, CIO at Merion Wealth Partners, in Berwyn, Pa. "That's reality vis-a-vis the rest of the world. With the amount of money out there there's not a lot of capital markets that do what the United States does, so where are these guys going to go?"

Still, disregarding the S&P warnings comes with risk, particularly if all of the buoyant voices are wrong and Washington pays no heed to S&P's shot across the bow. 

The Federal Reserve can't keep printing money forever to pay the US debt, and the market faces its sternest test yet in two months when the central bank pulls its Treasury-buying program that has injected so much liquidity into the investing stream.

If any reason, then, is to be taken from Monday's market action, it's that for once the equity side, rather than the bond crowd, may become the new vigilantes. That's usually the job for fixed income, but short-dated Treasurys recouped losses that came immediately after the S&P news broke.

"It's just a warning, and there's still enough credibility in the government that the drop in price and rise in yields was attractive to some investors considering what's going on in Europe," said Kim Rupert, managing director of global fixed income analyst at Action Economics in San Francisco. "There's going to be a day where that's not going to happen unless we start to get our house in order."

NASA Hack James Hansen in 1986: 2°-4° warmer in 2010. The Reality: No Change!

From: The Blog Prof

Don Surber made this great catch today:

Don writes:

From the Miami News on June 11, 1986: Dr. James “Hansen said the global temperatures would rise by 2 to 4 degrees in the following decade,” meaning 2001-2010.

...Steven Goddard mocked James Hansen.

This is what has happened with global temperatures over the last decade:

...How can a man who has been consistently wrong for 35 years be considered a scientist, let alone an expert?

A good question. Another one: what does Hansen have to do to be discredited in his own field of study? Since the 90s, every single IPCC 'model' (they aren't really models - they're scenarios) have been proven to be no better than what comes out of your butt after spicy food that you're not used to. See here:

In science, every theory is supposed to be judged by it's predictive capability versus actual reality. Not in the case of global warming where instead of proving the model is right or wrong, the experimental reality is being fudged. For the alarmist, anything that seems out of the norm (whatever that means) is due to global warming. If it doesn't snow enough, it's obviously global warming. If it snows too much? Well, that's global warming too. Never mind that no IPCC model predicts any such thing.