Garden State Patriot

Do you think ABC, CBS, NBC, et al, showed this video on their news shows after the Bush shoe throwing incident? I doubt it.

Bravo Ambassador Sumaida’ie!!!

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers is yet another expert in the cimate field who didn’t get Al Gore’s memo that the debate over global warming is over. Among the interesting tidbits from Mr. Myers is this comment which throws some, err, cold water on the man-made global warming myth:

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers went on…

“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.

Another expert who appeared with Myers on the Dobbs show, Dr. Jay Lehr, put things into a more historical perspective.

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man. 

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

Whoa?! Did you get that? The SUN actually is the cause of all this? Imagine that!

Well, once again we have dissent regarding the global warming hoax among reasonable voices in the field. Yet, Al Gore and his minions are pushing to have us spend trillions of dollars we don’t have to ‘fix’ a problem that doesn’t exist. What’s worse is we have a Congress and President-elect prepared to follow him.

By the way, there were also several interesting links at the end of the linked article also worth checking out.

• Global Warming Censored: How The Major Networks Silence Debate On Climate Change
• Fire and Ice: Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming
• Climate of Bias

Yes, that’s what you get for a job well badly done in Washington at a time of economic crisis in the country – a pay raise totaling $2.5 million. Next time you hear Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi talk about fairness or golden parachutes or greed on Wall Street, remember that the true greed is theirs. The real greed isn’t on Wall Street it’s on Capitol Hill.

Link: With the economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise

According to the Bergen Record, Fair Lawn borough prosecutor Mark Fierro has violated the town’s pay-to-play-ordinance. And, like all roads leading to Rome, this one leads directly to the already tainted Bergen County Democratic Organization (BCDO). Per The Record:

The borough prosecutor violated a Fair Lawn ordinance meant to curb political donations in return for no-bid contracts when his wife gave money to the Bergen County Democratic Organization, the borough attorney said Tuesday night.

In a letter to Borough Attorney Bruce Rosenberg, Prosecutor Mark Fierro wrote that his wife made out the $2,500 check in the summer of 2006, shortly after the borough passed the ordinance and asked all contractors to sign disclosure forms stating that neither they or their family members had made donations to the BCDO, Rosenberg said.

Moreover, according to town Republicans, the Democrats have set up a PAC to get around the new pay-to-pay ordinances.

Councilwoman Jeanne Baratta and fellow Republican council member Ed Trawinski have questioned donations from about 10 companies with borough contracts to accounts registered with a political action committee called Victory, because they say the political action committee has close ties to the Bergen County Democratic Organization.

“It’s the alter-ego of the BCDO for the precise purpose of being able to avoid local pay-to-play laws,” Trawinski said.

Democrats, of course, deny the charges yet somehow donations somehow ‘mistakenly’ have wound up in BCDO coffers.

But Rosenberg said he found that the Victory accounts were opened to raise money for county freeholder candidates, not borough candidates, and are therefore allowed under the ordinance. All the companies disclosed their donations to Victory before they were given contracts in the borough, he said.

In addition to the 10, Baratta has singled out the borough auditor, Ferraioli Weilkotz, Cerulla & Cuva, which she says violated the ordinance when one of its partners made a donation to the BCDO.

The firm — along with Rosenberg — says it did not violate the ordinance because a $1,750 check from partner Charles Ferraioli was made out to the Victory PAC, but was mistakenly deposited in a BCDO account. The two political organizations share an address and account administrator. 

At this point one wonders just how long Bergen County residents will continue to tolerate the rampant corruption of Bergen County Democrats. And one wonders, too, if Bergen Republicans can actually begin to make this a salient issue for voters.

Does this look like someplace you would want to live or raise a family?

Well, that may well be a preview of things to come for New Jerseyans. Yesterday the legislature approved a measure legalizing the medical use of marijuana and Governor Corzine has promised to sign the bill. Essentially, this will just make it easier for recreational users to get their hands on it. In San Francisco, this has already happened where there is little oversight and law enforcement has shown little desire to address the problem as evidenced by the city’s police commissioner here:

Moreover, law enforcement has uncovered that cannabis shops often times are simply fronts for organized crime. See here for example.

The shops also tend to attract more crime. As such, a number of California cities/towns such as Oakley have banned them.

If you don’t want New Jersey to morph into San Francisco East, then start calling and e-mailing the Governor now and tell him “NO” to medical marijuana.

Over at Alice’s Restaurant blog, Alice provides a firsthand account of a COAH meeting she attended regarding New Jersey’s Highlands region. The Highlands region is considered by state law a ‘Special Resource Area,’ limiting the area to development. This, of course, creates a dilemma for the region – trying to preserve the area while also trying to comply with mandated ’affordable housing’ units under COHA.

Alice does a great job in narrating for us the events at the meeting but also provides an excellent historical perspective of how we have reached this point.

In addition to the numerous problems I have outlined in previous posts on this subject, Alice points out another heretofore unmentioned problem — the inherent unfairness of the entire plan for some homeowners:

I questioned the ‘panel’ on the fairness of the many residents living in homes valued at less than the ‘affordable units’.  Many have incomes less than the qualifying incomes for an ‘affordable unit’, but will pay for others.  Many homes are in need of repair yet these owners are also paying a share toward affordable housing for others who are getting living quarters that are new or refurbished.

I highly recommend reading Alice’s entire post here.

While on this subject, I would also say ‘kudos’ to Assemblyman Merkt who actually introduced legislation yesterday to abolish COHA.

One of the things I’ve always found fascinating is how so much of our planet has yet to be explored and how many species have yet to be discovered. Amazingly, scientists from the World Wildlife Fund have discovered over a 1,000 new species in one such unexplored place – “along the Mekong River, which flows through Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.”

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Stuart Chapman, director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme, was quoted as saying in a statement by the group.

“We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books.”

Among the finds are “…a spider as big as a dinner plate…a rat thought to have become extinct 11 million years ago and a cyanide-laced, shocking pink millipede.”

You can read the rest of the story here. And if you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend watching the terrific Planet Earth series which ran on The Discovery Channel not too long ago. It is perhaps the best nature series ever done.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all…

In a report detailing New York Governor Paterson’s proposed ‘09 budget, the Governor is planning, among other things, to propose cuts in education and health care while imposing taxes on hospitals and insurance policies. The fact that the Governor is going to, ahem, force seniors to choose between food and medicine is bad enough but here’s the kicker…

Paterson wants to levy a tax on those dreaded menaces to society – soda drinkers! Yes, in order to help close the state’s ever-widening budget gap, what better way than to impose an ’obesity tax’ on fatties who imbibe sugary-laced carbonated beverages, eh?

But whatever you do, don’t think for a moment that this is a liberal telling us how to run our lives or unfairly treating one group of people over another. No, no, no. Only mean Republicans do that. You see, this is just the Governor looking out for us. His intentions are good so who are we to question him or this blatant misuse of the tax system?

All I can say is I hope this is one budget proposal that falls…flat.

The final installment of Matt Rooney’s interview is up at The Save Jersey Blog. In this last part, Matt asks Steve about public financing of campaigns, paid family leave and more. Check it out here.

If you’re sitting around worried about the economy, bailouts or losing your job, no need to worry any more. The sky is indeed falling. The end is in fact near. Pretty soon we will all just be ingredients in an environmental beef stew. 

Don’t believe me? Well Obama and Al Gore say so – and the AP ran a story on it – so it must be true.  

“The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over,” he [Obama] said on Tuesday after meeting with former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. “We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way.”

Gore goes on…

“We need to start in January making significant changes,” Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. “This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis.”

Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding “tipping points.”

“We’re out of time,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. “Things are going extinct.”

Scientists are increasingly anxious? Well, apparently only those in Gore’s circle of friends because apparently these credible scientists must all be frauds (Hat tip to Conservatives with Attitude!).

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” – Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” – Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” – Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” – Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” – Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata.

But what is the global warming alarmists’ solution to stopping this pending environmental catastrophe, you might ask?

Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level.

The President-elect has said that one of the first things he will do when he gets to Washington is grant California and other states permission to control car tailpipe emissions, something the Bush administration denied.

And though congressional action may take time, the incoming Congress will be more inclined to act on global warming. In the House, liberal California Democrat Henry Waxman’s unseating of Michigan Rep. John Dingell – a staunch defender of Detroit automakers – as head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was a sign that global warming will be on the fast track.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., vowed to push two global warming bills starting in January: one to promote energy efficiency as an economic stimulus and the other to create a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from utilities. “The time is now,” she wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to Obama.

Sounds reasonable, right? It’s the least we can do you might think. Just stop spewing so much of that bad old CO2 stuff – you know that pesky gas that comes from things like trees and plants - into the air and everything will be just dandy. And I’m sure it won’t affect our economy much, right?

Well, wrong.

Most econometric studies agree that restricting greenhouse-gas emissions would slow our already sluggish economy.

A study by the National Association of Manufacturers projected that emissions caps similar to those rejected earlier this year by the U.S. Senate calling for a 63-percent cut in emissions by 2050, would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by up to $269 billion and cost 850,000 jobs by 2014.

The Heritage Foundation estimated such restrictions would result in cumulative GDP losses of up to $4.8 trillion and employment losses of more than 500,000 a year by 2030.

Other studies suggest smaller economic costs: Duke University’s Nicholas Institute estimates a GDP loss of $245 billion by 2030 while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates a GDP drop of $238 billion to $983 billion.

Sharp emissions restrictions would also push the costs of energy and other consumer products higher. According to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the restrictions could raise gasoline prices 29 percent, electricity prices 55 percent and natural-gas prices 15 percent by 2015.

Further…

And it appears that all this economic pain would be an utterly meaningless gesture. Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists, who is now with the Cato Institute, says reducing U.S. emissions 63 percent would prevent a mere 0.013 degrees Celsius in warming. With emissions from China, India and other developing nations growing at breakneck speed, even this modest benefit would be completely erased.

In the meantime, there’s just one other little thing. Temeratures are actually starting to cool.

Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government’s machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it’s thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

Yes, you see cooling actually means warming. Got that?

Well, I don’t know about you but I think I won’t be suckered in by all this fear-mongering and global warming hot air. I’d much prefer that we let Mother Nature do her thing and not interfere – and not have politicians sticking their hands in our pockets and lowering our standard of living all in the name of some made-up environmental crisis.