Global Warming News and Intrigue

Paul Ashton at Global Warming is Good is back bloging again as of a few days ago. Go there and get caught up. Also, in his post "AL Gore's Nemesis" Paul notices the "Gore Effect" which I mentioned in this post:

"(I like Mr. Motl's identification of the "Gore Effect" regarding Boston. Evidently Gore gave one of his GW speeches there and now they are iced over. This could be a new general principle: Al Gore says one thing and reality shows us the opposite. Seems to be working out.)"

And Paul says:

"I heard recently, while listening to an NPR podcast, that every time Al Gore gives one of his special presentations of the global warming scare movie "An Inconvenient Truth" the weather turns several degrees colder at the venue. Not that he has given a presentation at this location!"
(Baffin Island)
Like I said, seems to be working out.

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Gus Van Horn has a post on Canada's climatologist Timothy Ball who says AGW is " the greatest deception in the history of science." Definitely!

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I knew this was coming:

Today's Feb. 6th, Detroit Free Press has a guest editorial by Michigan's senior Senator Carl Levin titled "Rise to global warming challenge." The first half of the op-ed tells of the Senator's commitment to the GW "consensus" and calls for an international agreement that would include all the obstinate "developing" nations. The second half presents the big But:

"Unfortunately, many people in Washington have a misguided focus on increasing arbitrary fuel economy standards, known as CAFE. Expanding CAFE is a plan for plenty of economic pain but almost no environmental gain. By 2012, the world is projected to produce nearly 32 billion metric tons per year of carbon dioxide. The U.S. contribution to that will be about 6 1/2 billion metric tons. If CAFE standards were increased by 4% per year, as some are proposing, the U.S. contribution would be reduced by only about 5 million metric tons. That's a measly one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. contribution.

Because of the way CAFE is structured, it is highly discriminatory against U.S. companies and workers. It pushes consumers from U.S. vehicles to foreign-made vehicles that have the same fuel efficiency. With our automakers already facing trade barriers and an uneven international playing field, imposing on them the discriminatory features of the CAFE structure costs America jobs without improving the environment."

"[M]isguided"? "arbitrary"? "economic pain"? "highly discriminatory"? You'd think that if CAFE were so destructive, Mr. Levin would be introducing legislation to repeal all those regulations. We know however, that such a move would cost him his green credentials and probably the next election. So, by promising to go along with the impossible if someone can achieve it, (bringing all the dissenting nations aboard) he keeps his green cards while posturing as the reasonable moderate who doesn't want to go to extremes on this issue.

So, we have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who wants to bring the hammer down on auto emissions and a 30 yr. veteran Senator who is saying "cool it lady." This ought to be interesting.