Why is California burning?

This article by Robert J. Smith summarizes very well the real proven causes why we have so many (more and more) wildfires. It's not global warming as some lunatics in the media try to suggest, but the eco-policy that the Left has been promoting.

Court finds inaccuracies in Inconvenient Truth, labels it "political work"

In an event completely ignored by American media, a British court decided that Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" contains material falsehoods and shouldn't be shown in classrooms without a warning which among others say that "the film is a political work" and that showing it without pointing out the innacuracies is "political indoctrination".

Among the inacuracies discovered by the Court after the expert testimony of scientists are:

• The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
• The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
• The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
• The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
• The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
• The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
• The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
• The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
• The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

Climate news you'll not hear in the media: Arctic melt, ozone and silencing the experts

A NASA report just showed that the melting of Arctic ice has nothing to do with global warming. Of course noone in the media is reporting this, after all it's pure science, not political crap. In brief, "the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters"

Recently, the democratic governor of Virginia has sacked the state climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels just because he didn't agree with the global warming hype and repeatedly debunked with scientifical data Al Gore's claims. I didn't see any mention of this anywhere.

And finally, it was finally explained that the ozone hole is not manmade. What was considered "consensus" after just 25 years of measurements is now proven false. The ozone hole is expanding and shrinking due to unknown causes, but definitely not related to human activities. So we gave up sprays, aerosols, and every space shuttle launch is like a death watch because freon was banned and it was all for nothing.

The truth on the melting of the Arctic ice cap

You must probably be sick of all the hype around the melting of the Arctic ice cap. From TV news to children movies, we're assaulted every day with stories about breaking ice at the North Pole, standed polar bears, etc. Maybe we need a reality check.

First, all "historical" data regarding the Arctic ice cap covers only 28 years of the Earth's history, since satellite imaging of the North Pole began in 1979. And what happened before? Well, the ignoramus in the media don't have to read history to be qualified to report this historic news. But most people know about Roald Amundsen trip by boat to the North Pole at the beginning of the century. Oh yes, a hundred years ago, you could go to North Pole on a plain old wooden boat, without satellite weather updates. If you didn't hear about the Northwest Passage, then it's time to research the events of 1905. And aparrently, the polar bears were not extinct and New York didn't get covered by water. The North Pole used to get crossed regularly by boat until the late '40s when the climate got colder and North Pole froze up.

In stupid news, a Russian environmentalist wanted to draw attention to the melting of the ice caps and a few weeks ago, in the middle of August, he got stuck in thick ice...

The recipe for a bad CAFE

This article from the Brookings Institution highlights everything that's bad about the new CAFE regulations. As a political insanity not supported by any economists, it will result in billions of dollars wasted and further job losses in the auto industry.

The Truth about America's Poor

The media which was so hungry for poverty stories when it was all about Katrina and New Orleans, seems to have completely ignored reports that for the past two years the rate of poverty has declined. Since 2005, the poverty rate went down 12.5%.

But what is more important is what poor means. Here are just a few facts about America's poor:

• 46 percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
• 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
• Nearly three quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
• 97 percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
• 78 percent have a VCR or DVD player.

Ethanol and oil profits

Just two items... numbers I found about today:

• You know there haven't been any new gasoline refineries built in the US since the late '70s, right? This is the main cause for the high gas prices, because we have the oil, but we can't refine it. However.... in recent years, 119 ethanol refineries have been built and 77 are under construction! Can anybody get this? SO far, everybody I know puts gasoline in their cars. All my friends eat the corn. Could anybody find any logic in this?
• Oil companies make profits equal to about 10c/gallon. They have some of the smallest profit margins in our economy, however the liberals blame them for gas price gouging. At the same time, at the federal level, the US government makes about 18c/gallon from taxes. State taxes vary, but the highest is New York, which makes about 60c/gallon. So next time you blame oil companies profits for what you pay at the pump, think twice and blame the real profiteers of all this.

Thoughts about the environment after my Yosemite trip

A few random thoughts about the state of the planet, just went through my mind during my trip to the Yosemite, including the drive from the San Francisco airport:

• It was second half of June and I saw a lot of snow covered mountains during my flights. I have no idea what routes Al Gore flies in his private jet. EIther he makes a big detour, consumming extra fuel, or he just ignores it. I think it's the latter, since he proved that he doens't care about facts.
• Crossing the SF Bay, you can't see anything on the shores, everything being covered by thick pollution. Isn't it ironic that three of the most green, liberal and environmental cities in America (San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York) are the most polluted? Wanna see a clean city? Go to Houston, TX.
• Hiking the sequoia groves of Yosemite I learned about the effects of a hundred years of environmentalism in the park. Because of the special care these woods have received from the greens (the eco-equivalent of the Nanny state), sequoias are not seeding anymore and the ground is full of junk. Now they have to start controlled fires every year, until the natural balance of the forest returns to where it was before the enviro-wackos took over.
• For this, I credit Dennis Miller: Those hybrid car drivers in California don't care about the future of Mother Earth. Truth is that we won't come up with an alternative to oil until we actually run out of oil. That's why I drive an SUV: To deplete the oil reserves and force humanity to come up with something better. The hybrid owners just prolong this grueling ordeal...

More on Sicko: The Difference Between Health Care and Health Insurance

Dirty Harry at Libertas explains very clearly the biggest mistake Michael Moore is making in his latest movie, Sicko: not realizing the difference between health care and health insurance. Here's what he says:

No one in this country is without healthcare. No one in this country lacks healthcare. No one in this country is without access to healthcare. Anyone who wants healthcare in America can get it at any time. What people lack is health insurance. The difference between lacking healthcare and lacking health insurance is a profound one. If you don’t have insurance you can still get healthcare, you just have to pay for it yourself. If you can’t afford the $60,000 to have your finger re-attached, you can make payments.

I’ve had periods of my life where I’ve gone without health insurance. It was my own choice because I felt there was no way I would rack up yearly medical expenses that even came close to the policy costs. I’ve gone years with only a catastrophic insurance plan that had a $5,000 deductible and only cost $60 a month. It saved me a fortune but was there in the event the unforseen happened.

Contrary to popular belief Canada doesn’t have universal healthcare. What Canada has is universal health insurance. It can take years to get treated in Canada. That’s not healthcare. In Canada you’re insured by the state but can’t get treated. In America you can get treated but may have to pay yourself.

Which would you prefer?

Is the the end of the Duke lacrosse players story?

Now that the ordeal of the innocent Duke lacrosse players is over, questions still remain. Not only should prosecutor Mike Nifong be disbarred, indicted, and made to reimburse the players' families legal expenses, but Crystal Gail Mangum should be prosecuted and sent to jail. She was a cronic liar, who wanted to destroy innocent lives and, as John Podhoretz said today in NY Post, Let the Liar Be Named and Shamed!

But I heard a very interesting comparison today... After the Duke lacrosse players were smeared and falsely accused, the Duke faculty fired the coach and suspended the entire team. After the Rutgers basketball players were smeared and insultingly accused, the entire faculty stood by them, the entire country stood by them, and Hillary Clinton has already been invited to comfort them. So... where would you rather send your kids to? Duke or Rutgers? Which one is more probable of standing by your kids? Is this again a race issue? Well, it looks like the prediction that someone made when I became an American citizen is very true in America: the white American male is by far the most disadvantaged demographic...

The travesty of Justice in America

So the Duke lacrosse players' ordeal is over. Almost two years of disgracing the idea of justice by that scumbag called Mike Nifong. There was abolsutely no supporting evidence for continuing the case, even more, all evidence was against it, however he continued to pursue this liberal fantasy of rich smart white kids abusing the eternal black victim. Now that the case is over, not only should Nifong be disbarred and indicted for racketeering and intimidation charges, but the accuser should be arrested right away. Remember the Libby case? He was convicted for not remembering the details of one discussion. This girl gave 7 completely different testimonies, and they were all plain lies... and it was not just about a forgotten discussion, but they were all severe accusations made under oath. She said she was raped, then that she wasn't, she mentioned 20 guys, then only 3, she knew their names very well but was unable to pick them from a lineup, she said it was half an hour, then it was only 2 minutes, and so on. And who's gonna pay the families of the innocent students for the millions they spent fighting an unjust judicial process?

This says a lot about the state of Justice in America. These are our prosecutors... Nifong pursuing a losing case, Fitzgerald accusing Libby of a crime that wasn't committed and even if it were, he knew exactly who committed it (liberal darling Richard Armitage). Oh, and that loser who was investigating Tom Delay while making a film about his heroism. So when is Bush going to fire the other 80 attorneys?? What is he waiting for?? He should replace them with some real prosecutors, not the scumbags who apply the MoveOn.org agenda.

Why was no prosecutor to investigate Harry Reid's shady land deals? Or New York Times repeated leaks which endangered the national security? Or Sandy Berger for stealing and destroying classified documents? Or Patrick Kennedy for driving while impaired and destruction of property? Or Hussein Obama for using Senate office space for campaign activities, against federal law? Or Mary Mapes and Dan Rather for falsifying national guard documents? Or Michael Isikoff of Newsweek for a deliberate lie which resulted in 15 deaths (it's called inciting to mass murder)? Who's gonna indict Nigong? Why are all those US attorneys still being paid with our tax money?

The Problem with Firing the Prosecutors

I don't know how long I can stand the media anymore. I get sick at looking at all this coverage about the firing of the 8 attorneys. It's just mind-boggling, I can't understand it. So people, you mentally disabled losers at NY Times, CNN, CBS, LA Times and so on: US attorneys are named by the President, they are employee of the federal government, and they can be fired at will! Bill Clinton fired ALL 95 US Attorneys in 1993 (the reason? one attorney was investigating a crook, good friend of the Clintons) ! So the only 2 problems I see here are:

1. Why only 8?
2. Why so late, in the 6th year of his presidency??

The US attorneys have been a disgrace since Bush took over the White House. THEY SHOULD ALL GO!

Is 300 a Conservative Movie? No. Illiberal? Yes

There were some discussions about whether the new movie 300 is an attack on Bush's militarism? Or is it in support of it? So why do every war movie have to have a political message? Maybe it's just a simple historical movie with awesome CG graphics. The answer to "Is it a conservative movie"? is a simple NO. Why? Because if it were, it couldn't have been made in Hollywood. But what it is for sure, it's an illiberal movie. Our friends at Libertas clearly explained why it is illiberal: 300 is about bravery, freedom, honor, and country. These are universal themes. But universal themes that will offend liberals because they’re not defended in a PC fashion. Liberals believe bravery is being brave enough to kiss despot hiney in the corrupt UN. Liberals believe freedom is porn in school libraries. Liberals believe honor is leaking national security secrets to the New York Times. Liberals believe ”country” is about everybodys counry but ours, so it’s okay to give mass murderers autographed basketballs and ask them to dance. The men in 300 believe they are good, their families are good, their country is good, and worth dying and fighting for. Now, that is not a conservative value. But it is an illiberal one.

Now the best take on 300 that I found is the article on National Review. David Kahane hits a lot of right notes about the movie. Among them: When, early in the film, a sneering Persian emissary insults King Leonidas’s wife, threatens the kingdom, and rages about blasphemy, the king kicks him down a bottomless well. And yet nobody in Sparta asks, “Why do they hate us?” and seeks to find common ground with the Persians on their doorstep. The Spartans mock the god-king Xerxes (whose traveling throne resembles a particularly louche Brazilian gay-pride carnival float), mow down his armored “immortal” holy warriors and generally give their last full measure to defend Greek civilization against superstition and tyranny. Where are the liberal Spartan voices raised in protest against this blatant homophobia, xenophobia, and racism?

After seeing the movie, I found out it has a lot of other anti-liberal themes. Mocking the metrosexual fags, like Mr. Kahane said, is one of them. Going to a pre-emptive war to face the enemy away from home is another one. Reminds me of a team sports principle, that offense is the best defense. But aside from this, it was a great movie, and anybody who liked Lord of the Rings, Gladiator or even Kill Bill should like it.

Again on the "net neutrality" nonsense

There was an interesting article in NRO today about the Net-Neutrality Nonsense. With Dems in power, we could have expected the rebirth of this socialist idea, which is clearly against free markets and technological development. But you know, Dems are back in Congress, and there main economical philosophy is to regulate everything that moves. As Dena battle says in her closing remarks: If you want the Internet to both grow and grow faster, leave it to the private sector. If you want to keep it equal and equally slow, bring in the government to regulate it.

To save the planet, we must defeat the climate models

And again, the climate models tried to destroy us. Fortunately, Earth responded back and crushed their (always wrong) predictions.
In a new report, Antarctic temperatures disagreed with climate model predictions.
It's something that Earth has been doing for a long time... don't forget that the IPCC reports are primarily based on a model which overestimated the warming over the past 2 decades by 300%.

Regarding the latest global warming scare, nobody said it better than Czech president Vaclav Klaus. A few excerpts from his recent interview, which received a lot less coverage (almost non-existent) than the political IPCC summary:
Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.
Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.

Fighting the Church of Global Panic

Two articles today in National Review are trying to calm down the global warming panic.

First, in The Church of Global Panic, Rich Lowry points out that the much-hyped IPCC report is actually less grim than the prior version from 2001. For example, the worst estimate for the effect of the CO2 over this century, was 3.5 C in the 2001 report. Now it is down to 3 C. Also, the report more than halved its high-end best estimate of the rise in sea level by 2100 from 3 feet to just 17 inches.” In his scare-documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore posited a catastrophic sea-level rise of more than 20 feet (feet, not inches). Again, these are not observations, they are just computer models. For now, it's not the climate that's gonna kill us, but the computers. And don't forget, the favorite computer model is one that overestimated the temperature increase over the last 20 years by 300%!

No one knows how to create a reliable model of the planet’s climate, and inconvenient anomalies muddy the story line of the warming zealots. From 1940 to 1975, the global temperature fell even as CO2 emission rose. Since 2001, global temperatures have only gone up a statistically insignificant 0.03 degrees Celsius. And in recent years, the oceans have actually gotten cooler.

In the other article, Global Cooling Costs Too Much, Jonah Goldberg tries to weigh the benefits and liabilities of the warming weather. Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800 percent. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800 percent is unknowable, but let’s stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious). That’s still an amazing bargain. Life expectancies in the United States increased from about 47 years to about 77 years. Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West. Given the option of getting another 1,800 percent richer in exchange for another 0.7 degrees warmer, I’d take the heat in a heartbeat, Mr. Goldberg says.

The costs are just too high for too little payoff. Even if the Kyoto Protocol were put into effect tomorrow — a total impossibility — we’d barely affect global warming. Especially considering that China alone plans on building an additional 2,200 coal plants by 2030. Oh, but because China (like India) is exempt from Kyoto as a developing country, the West will just have to reduce its own emissions even more. Also, ethanol requires almost as much energy to make as it provides, and the costs to the environment and the economy may be staggering.

Eco-Chondriacs: About the Global Warming Alarmists

Mark Steyn published an piece on the global warming alarmists in today's Chicago Sun Times, called What's so hot about fickle science?
Here are two paragraphs from his article, but I recommend you to read it in its entirety:

A thousand years ago, the Arctic was warmer than it is now. Circa 982, Erik the Red and a bunch of other Vikings landed in Greenland and thought, "Wow! This land really is green! Who knew?" So they started farming it, and were living it up for a couple of centuries. Then the Little Ice Age showed up, and they all died. A terrible warning to us all about "unsustainable development": If a few hundred Vikings doing a little light hunter-gathering can totally unbalance the environment, imagine the havoc John Edwards' new house must be wreaking.

If "global warming" is real and if man is responsible, why then do so many "experts" need to rely on obviously fraudulent data? The famous "hockey stick" graph showed the planet's climate history as basically one long bungalow with the Empire State Building tacked on the end. Completely false. In evaluating industrial impact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used GDP estimates based on exchange rates rather than purchasing power: As a result, they assume by the year 2100 that not only South Africans but also North Koreans will have a higher per capita income than Americans. That's why the climate-change computer models look scary. That's how "solid" the science is: It's predicated on the North Korean economy overtaking the United States.

Are climate "experts" really muffled by the White House?

Yesterday, a House Committee held a hearing on political interference into global warming, led by Henry Waxman (D, Calif.) As you probably heard from the media, it produced irrefutable evidence that the White House is censoring honest climate scientists. Let's see who the three star witnesses were: Francesca Griffo os UCS released the results of a questionnaire sent to 1,600 climate scientists at 7 federal agencies. Some 150 scientists — 58 percent of those responding — reported at least one incident of political interference with their work during the past 5 years. But only 19 percent of the 1,600 scientists responded to the questionnaire, which means the report draws inferences from a self-selected minority rather than from an unbiased sample. Then Drew Shindell of NASA, recounted what happened when he published a paper forecasting a warming trend in Antarctica. The Bush White House did not try to stop him from publishing the paper, nor did it try to stop NASA from putting out a press release on it. White House officials committed the crime of twice rejecting the titles he and the NASA press corps proposed for the press release, and eventually told them what title to use.

But the biggest testimony came from self-styled whistleblower Rick Piltz, who resigned in a huff from the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) in March 2005. First of all, as Piltz acknowledged at the hearing, he is himself not a climatologist but a political scientist, and his job at the CCSP was to produce reports by editing the contributions of agency scientists. You can read everything about the hearing in Marlo Lewis' article Waxman’s Kyoto Strategy but here are a few things to be considered:

It is worth noting that the two CCSP reports cited by Piltz were not strictly speaking science studies but policy documents. For example, the latest edition of Our Changing Planet, says as part of its subtitle, “A Supplement to the President’s Fiscal Year 2004 and 2005 Budgets.” One would think that is exactly the sort of document the White House has a legitimate interest in reviewing before publishing and sending to the Hill. In one of the drafts, Phil Cooney of CEQ crossed out several lines predicting “reductions” in mountain glaciers and snow pack in “polar regions” and “serious impacts on native populations that rely on fishing and hunting.” His marginal note says the deleted material was “straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings.” True or false? A team of researchers led by Curt Davis of the University of Missouri-Columbia found that Antarctica’s snow pack is thickening. Similarly, a team led by Ola Johannessen of the University of Bergen found that the interior of Greenland’s ice sheet is thickening. So in the case of these polar areas, the draft report’s prediction appears to be not only speculative but wrong. As for impacts on native peoples, there is evidence that Inuit culture flourished during previous periods when the Arctic was as warm as or warmer than it is today. In short, Cooney’s description of the deleted material as “speculative findings/musings” is correct.

Cooney also inserted in a draft of Our Changing Planet the word “extremely” before the word “difficult,” in this sentence: “The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult.” As proof, Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels points out that in Arctic areas where it is warming, polar bear populations are increasing, and in areas where it is cooling, bear populations are declining.

Environmentalist Lunacies: Billions to go Waterless

Part of the renewed environmentalist frenzy caused by the upcoming IPCC report, one headline was present through all the media: Billions to go Waterless in Climate Shock! I'm struggling to grasp the idea behind the headline (I'm not talking about logic, or fact, but just the idea that came out of some wacko mind). How can anybody on our planet go waterless?? The Earth is 71% covered by water. The human body is 72% water. There is water everywhere. Just live with this: we'll never run out of water! More than this, the doomsday theories say that ocean levels will rise considerably with the global warming. You understand what that means? It means even more water!

Hollywood Values

Very well said by our friends at Libertas, about the real values of Hollywood:

Save a tree, kill a baby. Ban cigarettes, legalize pot. Screw the Iraqi’s, save Darfur. McCarthy is bad, Castro is good. Bush is Hitler, Che is a hero. Save the planet, live in a mansion.

On "Greed" and Economic Success

Two articles drew my attention today. First one is Thomas Sewell's The “Greed” Fallacy which counters the Marxist-inspired viewpoint that equivalates business success with greed. It explains that the labor market for CEO's is what's driving compensations so high (to the outrage of the socialists). And in the end he turns to oil prices: Every time oil prices shoot up, there are cries of “greed” and demands by politicians for an investigation of collusion by Big Oil. Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their “greed”? Or could it all be supply and demand — a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like “greed”?

In An Excellent Economic State of the Union, Larry Kudlow tries to point out something that the media is struggling to avoid: that the economy is doing exceptionally well. Jobs continue to boom. So do real incomes, productivity, and profits. Economist Michael Darda points out that real wages over the first five years of the Bush expansion are actually growing more rapidly than over the first five years of the Papa Bush/Bill Clinton boom. Meanwhile, unemployment today is only 4.5 percent. Federal, state, and local tax collections are soaring through the roof. Budget deficits are plunging. Inflation-adjusted GDP is averaging just more than 3 percent. Family wealth stands at a record of slightly more than $54 trillion. Total employment is at a record 146 million.

Then, defying the liberal dreams that America doens't matter in the world anymore, he says that in fact, this America boom is spearheading a global economic surge. While the American free-market model is often derided as “cowboy capitalism,” imitation remains the sincerest form of flattery. And it isn’t just China, India, and Russia who are acquiescing to the worldwide spread of American capitalism. It’s also Eastern Europe and parts of South America. Heck, even the socialists in Old Europe — like France and Germany — are getting into the act by reducing individual and corporate tax rates to promote growth. Mr. Kudlow takes on Kyoto as well: As for the global-warming alarmists, imposing carbon caps or carbon taxes won’t do anyone any good. On the economic side of things, this will severely depress production and employment. And for what? An estimated global temperature reduction of 4/100ths of 1 degree Fahrenheit?

Al Gore afraid to debate his Junk Science with Scientists

While in Denmark to promote his environmental lunacies, Al Gore had the opportunity to debate it with an actual scientist, not the regular activists who create the "global warming consensus". Bjorn Lomborg, a famed European scientist and expert climatologist was supposed to publicly debate Al Gore, but Gore withdrew from the planned meeting. Flemming Rose, the Jyllands-Posten culture editor, penned an interesting expose of the former VP ducking out on the Wall Street journal's Opinion Journal site today taking the former VP to task. How many other papers do you think will mention Gore's cowardice?

Among the specific facts that Rose pointed out are:

• Gore says global warming has increased malaria in Nairobi, but the World Health Organization says the country is considered malaria free, unlike in the 1920's and 30's when it had epidemics regularly.
• Gore says that Antarctica is melting and presents picture to "prove" it, but those pictures are from only 2 percent of Antarctica whereas 98 percent of the continent has actually COOLED over the last 35 years.
• Gore says seas will rise 20 feet, but the U.N. climate panel only thinks it will be 1 foot. Also seas rose only 1 foot over the last 150 years already with little real trouble world wide.
• Gore says the heat of global warming will kill "2,000" people in the U.K., but freezing temperatures will kill 20,000 more without such "warming". Why are the 2,000 killed by warming more important than the 20,000 who would be killed by freezing?

The Case for Global Warming

With these warm temperatures in the Northeast, you start hearing all the reputed weather experts, from Al Gore and Barbara Boxer to Matt Lauer and Matt Damon warning us about the big dangers of global warming. They are ignoring the non-stop storms in the Rockies, 1 foot of snow in New Mexico, snowstorms in Israel, snowflakes in Florida and 6 feet of snow in my native Romania, but this is not the point I'm trying to make.

Let's suppose that we, the Americans (this is a very important detail, since Europeans, Chinese, Russians, Indians and South Americans seem to have 0 impact on the climate), are causing global warming. Let's also suppose that temperatures this century will raise 5 degrees, not the 2 degrees prophecied by Al Gore. And now let's see what this will mean. It will mean nicer weather, fewer snowstorms, fewer winter accidents, lower energy consumption, better resource conservation, decreased oil prices, bigger crops, less famine, less floods caused by spring thawing. It will also mean cheaper gas, lower heating costs, a superbowl at Giants Stadium, better agricultural yields, less traffic jams during the winter, less ice-related accidents.

OK, the global warming nuts will scream ocean levels will rise! Well, if you smart-ass liberals would have actually attended high-school, you'd have learned that when ice turns into water, it reduces its volume... so much for those icebergs meltdown resulting in higher oceans. Plus, while higher temperatures would melt some icebergs, they would also cause evaporation at lower latitudes, which would further compensate for the alleged oceans rise. And if the waters will really rise, as those polito-metheorologists are preaching: As long as one third of the Netherlands is situated up to 2 feet below sea level, believe me, a few American cities will somehow find a way to cope with 3 inches of water.