So in the last few weeks, I have given thought to an exchange I have been having with a coworker.

He (we’ll call him ‘Bob’) is a liberal, and an atheist.  He is also what I would affectionately describe as passionate and a bit argumentative.  I mean that too, by the way, as I like Bob a great deal.  Politically we are actually both much closer to the center and too each other than our peers might think.  Where we are close in opinions, we find a great deal of value in our debates.

But, there are a couple of problems in there too, which is where the revelation comes in.

Take the debate that lead me to this blog.  I was making a mention to another coworker about an article I had seen on Drudge, I believe, regarding the Global Climate Change proponents famed Hockey stick chart.  The article was noting that a chief contributer to the chart, Keith Briffa, had never released the raw data his studies were based on.  This was (or should have been) a serious issue in the scientific community, as your science must be demonstrable and verifiable, and the only way to do so is to examine the data.  After 10 years of fruitless and frustrating requests by a statistician named Steve McIntyre, Briffa was finally forced to give it up, and the data was shocking.  It appears that Briffa cherry picked his data to deliberately give the results he wanted, the hockey stick. 

Americans are finally slowing the stampede on the Global Warming fraud, but is it enough?  Too little too late?

Political climate for energy policies cools

Poll: Economy outweighs environment 

Monday’s National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 will bring a parade of celebrated public policy experts to Las Vegas to discuss greening the country’s economy.

But as leaders including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger encourage investments in alternative energy, their policy prescriptions could face serious headwinds from changing public opinions. 

Recent surveys show Americans cooling to global warming, and they’re even less keen on environmental policies they believe might raise power bills or imperil jobs. Those sentiments could mean a tougher road ahead for elected officials looking to fund investments in renewable power or install a carbon cap-and-trade system.

“Right now, Americans are more concerned about the economy than the environment,” said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. “The politician who says, ‘I’m going to cripple jobs and shut down factories’ would be in trouble in this economy.”

You can’t make this stuff up :

Carbon Neutral Sailboat Rescued by Oil Tanker (H/T Sister Toldjah)

What is it about those Brit’s and their love of extreme danger… Last week we had the Catlin Arctic expedition in trouble and today we have the Carbon Neutral Expedition’s sailboat being saved by an oil tanker (gulp) of all things.

The Carbon Neutral Expedition, consisting of two guys and a 40 ft.sailboat, set off on April19; their goal was to reach Greenland’s polar ice cap and be the first carbon-neutral crossing of that country. But gale-force winds caused the boat to capsize, destroying the solar panels and generator.

Richard Spink, a physiotherapist and Raoul Surcouf , a landscape gardener, set up Carbon Neutral Expeditions (CNE) in 2006 to show how journeys to some of the wildest, untouched places on the planet can be undertaken with minimal impact on the environment. Their Greenland mission was to make the first carbon neutral, double crossing of Greenland by sailing across the North Atlantic in 18 days and then skiing across the Arctic ice cap and back to the boat (over 550 miles). All done under the most horrific weather conditions.

I haven’t had a Global Warming Roundup in a while, so let’s see what’s new.

Straight out of the starting blocks is Al Gore who apparently salted his presentation with a lie so big he even noticed.

Gore Pulls ‘Misleading’ Slide of Disaster Trends/p>

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said.

Yesterday I blogged the latest Global Warming nuttery, where they figured out the CO2 footprint of a Google Search.

Of course Google, never at a loss for words, responded:

Not long ago, answering a query meant traveling to the reference desk of your local library. Today, search engines enable us to access immense quantities of useful information in an instant, without leaving home. Tools like email, online books and photos, and video chat all increase productivity while decreasing our reliance on car trips, pulp and paper.

But as computers become a bigger part of more people’s lives, information technology consumes an increasing amount of energy, and Google takes this impact seriously. That’s why we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query.

In the “you can’t make this stuff up” department, comes this story:

Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches:  Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea.

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”

Not from the tractors, mind you, but from the cows.  Hat Tip Pink Flamingo:

“…The proposed EPA initiative would force family farmers in New York to pay a permit fee  in order to continue to operate, claiming that farm animals are emitting massive amounts  of greenhouse gases.

Apparently someone finally noticed that methane is more dangerous than CO2… 

“We know that the industrial and transportation sectors emit an overwhelmingly large  percentage of greenhouse gases when compared to livestock farms, but farms are being painted with the same broad brush,” said Lincoln.

The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle.  The tax on hogs would upwards of $20 per hog.  Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits.

This would cover about 99 percent of dairy production, more than 90 percent of beef production, and more than 95 percent of all hog production in New York, according to USDA statistics.

I had to check to make sure this wasn’t a joke, but it is real.  Cow farts are the new enemy of the green lobby.

Global Warming is the scare you silly movement of our generation, one that people like Al Gore are lining their pockets with as they spread global panic over this junk science demagoguery.

Now, the WAPO jumps in the tank with the Goracle and delivers a scarefest of new dimension:  Global Warming will lead to Global War.  Coming soon, Climate Wars!:

Global Warming Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

The Cold War shaped world politics for half a century. But global warming may shape the patterns of global conflict for much longer than that — and help spark clashes that will be, in every sense of the word, hot wars.

We’re used to thinking of climate change as an environmental problem, not a military one, but it’s long past time to alter that mindset. Climate change may mean changes in Western lifestyles, but in some parts of the world, it will mean far more. Living in Washington, I may respond to global warming by buying a Prius, planting a tree or lowering my thermostat. But elsewhere, people will respond to climate change by building bomb shelters and buying guns.

Last week, AP writer Seth Borenstein penned a story on Global Warming entitled “Obama left with little time to curb global warming“.  The story was an extremely over the top alarmist piece that Hot Air call a global-warming wet kiss (my vote for the coolest quip of the year).

For the record, our below-zero days usually come in January and February, not December.  It looks as though we will have a second long, cold winter in a row.  That’s what makes this report from the AP so ludicrous:

When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can’t avoid. …

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.

The UN continues to embrace and steam roll Al Gore’s delusions and science fantasy:

Thousands Negotiate New Climate Treaty

Scientists studying the changing nature of the Earth’s climate say they have completed one crucial task — proving beyond a doubt that global warming is real.

Now they have to figure out just what to do about it.

…

Last year, Pachauri’s IPCC, which collected the work of more than 2,000 scientists, said climate change is “unequivocal, is already happening, and is caused by human activity.”

It listed likely effects of global warming: arid regions will grow dryer, rising seas will flood coastal areas, melting glaciers will flood communities downstream and then dry up the source of future water supplies, and up to 30 percent of all plant and animal species may become extinct.

…

“The skeptics are doing a good job because they are making us present ironclad proof,” said Lawrence E. Buja, a climate change researcher for the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

But since that battle is over, he said scientists need to move on and look at the detailed impact of climate change.