Live from Copenhagen

I'm sitting here at the Texas State Capitol with Americans for Prosperity watching the AFP News conference live from Copenhagen, Denmark where the elite of the elite are discussing how to strap the West with a tax and trade system based on a myth, a system that would bring us to our knees and deprive us of freedom and prosperity.

I got lost in the Capitol looking for E2.102 when the event was being held in E2.012. When I came in the room Lord Monckton was up and Cindy Mallette told me I had just missed the protestors. Shucks!

Lord Monckton warned of Obama's potential signing away of US sovereignty though such an executive action, even if confirmed by Congress, could be reversed by a subsequent Administration, thank God, but we can't let it get confirmed in the first place.

Next up was a German, Wolfgang Muller, who talked about the cost of going sustainable/green as experienced in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The cost of living will at least double. The implication of that, though not stated, is the expansion of poverty.

Then Phil Kerpen, policy director took the podium. Sorry, I didn't catch that.

Now Rick Perry is up via video talking about the issue form a Texas perspective. Cost to Texans will be at least $1100 per year. Texas will loose 400,000 jobs. Any limits the EPA impose won't make a dent in CO2 levels, according to the EPA itself. He encouraged us to speak out against the EPA and those in Congress who support cap and trade.

Steve Lonegan, from Philadelphia, is up decrying the Little Red Book that the left is using to promote the climate change agenda. They unabashedly use such a communist symbol to indoctrinate the world.

Steve Moore of the WSJ just joined Lonegan on the stage. It's 10 degrees below zero today in North Dakota. It snowed in Houston last week. Not sure where the evidence for global warming is. Just a couple of decades ago the consensus was that the planet was cooling. Over the last ten years the earth has cooled, not warmed.

Only FOX News is following the climategate story. Steve took an informal poll of the audience and found that about half thought Obamacare was the biggest threat to freedom, about half thought that Cap&Trade was the biggest threat to freedom and a minority thought Card Check was the greatest threat to freedom. The climate alarmists say that hurricanes will increase because of global warming effects but this year we had few hurricanes and none that reached category 4.

Tim Philips from Copenhagen is talking about the events going on around the US.

Phil is now talking about the economic impact of C&T. The average family will loose 1000s of dollars of disposable income. It seems that the leftist want Americans to dispose of their money into the hands of leftists like themselves to spend as the left pleases. He said that what will come out of Copenhagen will be an executive agreement and in the Spring they will try to bring it up in Congress. Of more immediate concern are regulatory changes at the EPA, such as the recent "finding" that CO2 is a pollutant.

Now we have a speaker here at the Capitol, Kathleen Harnett White. She said that either the protesters or the counter-protesters (I'm not sure which she was referring to since I missed the protest but I expect it was the counter-protesters defending the status quo at the conference there in Copenhagen) were representative of those "scientists" who say that we are ignorant climate change deniers, just as some people are Holocaust deniers. The C&T bill is so complex and would produce 1000s of regulations and corresponding bureaucracies. Those "scientists" who say that global warming is unequivocally proven are spouting dogma rather than science. The EPA in it's endangerment finding last week regarding CO2 is regurgitated the "findings" of the IPCC. Texas needs to litigate this finding. We need to reverse it. The scientists that testified before the Texas Legislature last session were uniformly believers in climate change. The members of the Legislators were afraid to ask these "scientists" questions for fear of being tagged a denier. Texas leads the nation in CO2 emissions producing 670 million metric tons of CO2 per year. This is a sign of our vibrant economy, size, and the fact that we prove the country with a large part of its energy needs.

The best that could come out of this focus on CO2 would be if scientists arise that tried to measure in the troposphere the man caused CO2 and how it interacts with the other molecules and compounds up there. In other words doe real science.

Now Ms. White is taking questions. A couple of lively ones, including one from the blogger (me) about the implications of the reports of doctored data and why people don't realize that the entire man-causes-climate-change "science" is a fraud. If the proponents have to stoop to such measures (as faked hockey stick graphs) is it any doubt what is going on. Such "scientist" can make the data support whatever they want it to support.

Another lady commented that we need to not skip over explaining what CO2 is. It is not soot. It is an invisible and odorless gas at normal atmospheric conditions. It is not the bellowing black smoke that used to come out of smokestacks before we decided to cleaned up the air from real pollutants.

Ms. White ended with the costs of fuel (below) and with the statement that if you care about people you will care about and promoting freedom and prosperity, and you will fight the EPA and Cap & Trade.

Cost of alternative sources of fuel for electric generation (cost per kwh):

Wind

$24

Natural Gas

$0.23

Coal

$0.08

End Report.

EPA to People: Drop Dead

In their eco-Fatwa against CO2, the EPA has now declared the act of breathing an offensive act of pollution! A climate date that will live in infamy, CheifIO says:

"From this day forward, EPA has taken responsibility for the climate with a goal of making it colder. Every time there is a cold excursion that causes loss or damage, the EPA ought to be presented the bill."

I signed up to Stop the Copenhagen treaty. We all will have to do our part for the greater good of humanity and save us from the anti-CO2 lunacy.



UPDATE - Next April 1st, they go after Water Vapor! Dihydrogen Monoxide, the most dangerous greenhouse gas - "(Washington, DC) The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to classify water vapor as a pollutant, due to its central role in global warming. Because water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for at least 90% of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, its emission during many human activities, such as the burning of fuels, is coming under increasing scrutiny by federal regulators...." See Eco_examiner.

RealClimate Blog: Part of the ClimateGate "Front"

I posted the following comment to the RealClimate website on This thread. It was a challenge for the website to 'come clean'. They moderate comments and did not deign to allow this comment to get published:

Prof Mann had a letter to the editor in the Washington Post this Sunday, and directed people to RealClimate website - here.

This is what Prof Mann said of RealClimate website in one of the CRU emails to colleagues writing a 'helpful' paper: " We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd like us to include. You're also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put

forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We'll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont' get to use the RC comments as a megaphone..."

#18 says "I was under the impression that this is supposed to be a neutral website discussing climate." Well, #18 - I was too - once. We and a lot of other folks who decided to take it all on trust were apparently 'played'. The question the above quote raises is - Is RealClimate about science, where-ever it leads, or is it stage-managed PR on behalf of the Jones/Mann/IPCC viewpoint?

If RealClimate wants to extricate itself from the widening scandal that has now has seen Jones step down and Mann be put under investigation, it can take steps to rehabilitation:

1. Offer an apology to the McIntyre's of the world. Acknowledge that McIntyre and ANYONE who wants the data backing up ANY peer-reviewed paper or ANYTHING that appears in IPCC has the right to get it. No complaints about the burden of such request is legitimate, replicating results is vital to science. We now know that several of the items and issues he has raised have been legitimate, valid and have ADVANCED the science. Whether McIntyre and ClimateAudit is right or wrong on a particular item, we now have seen - shockingly - how groupthink and attempts to hide information leads to bad science.

2. End the policy of moderating comments at RealClimate. It's a poor way of way of stifling the knowledgeable skeptics, since I would guess their sites are now more visited. Attempts to stifle the skeptic voices has been the Mann & Jones way, as shown in the CRU emails - trying to get journal editors canned, refusing to allow certain peer-reviewed publication into the IPCC chapters, steering people into illegally obstructing FOI requests - and it has destroyed their credibility as professional scientists. It has done NO GOOD.

It's time for a New Era of Openness. Engage and accept the alternative views, not as correct per se, but as worthy of respect instead of revulsion and shunning. As of now, there has been enough of a breach of trust that at minimum the IPCC will need a whole new set of Lead Authors and a whole new level of transparency and open-ness to the next round, or the entire enterprise will be treated as a farce.

We will see if RealClimate / Gavin realizes how seriously this has damaged the credibility of ALL involved in these emails and work, and works diligently to repair it. Your actions will tell all. As Jesus put it, 'know them by their fruits'.

Postscript - we have our answer: RealClimate didn't post this comment. The blog, which was founded by Prof Mann among others, is part of the 'front' to deny the legitimacy of questions about the theory of man-made global warming, calling the skeptics of AGW theory 'deniers'. They have no interest in admitting the errors of their sponsors or changing their ways.

Climategate Aftershocks

I knew it would be a bombshell, but it's gotten bigger and more fundamental than many thought possible: Dr Phil Jones - who in emails wrote about deleting data and emails rather than submit to FOI requests, who spoke of using the 'trick' to 'hide the decline', and who conspired to can journal editors - stepped down ('temporarily'). Penn State is putting Prof Mann of hockey stick infamy under investigation. As usual, the Lamestream Media is in "denial" mode, underplaying how serious this is, and the real story is on the internet, where you can find the real emails and judge for yourself.

Climate Depot is having a field day with this story - links galore. Here is a good summary by Lord Monkton (PDF): http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf

What it all means is the skeptics have been proved right in several areas:
1. Skeptics were suspicious of 'data massaging' and the error of torturing data to fit conclusions - and the emails and data released shows things even WORSE than we might have thought: outright fudging of temperature series, skewing of data, using 'tricks' to make misleading presentations of data, mistakes in how proxies are used are admitted in emails but not shared with others, so bad data is reused, and now CRU claims the underlying raw data doesnt even exist! They have a 'dog ate my homework' excuse.
2. Skeptics claimed the IPCC was shutting out dissenters - the emails prove it now; attempts to get Journal editors who didnt toe the line canned, attempts to keep dissent out of IPCC reports, refusal to public review notes, and a complete paranoid approach to any questioning of their 'science'
3. Skeptics were claiming that the 'Hockey Stick Team' scientists were denying access to data to replicate results - we now have emails where Jones and Mann talking about how to subvert FOI requests and how to stop the skeptics from figuring out their 'tricks'.

What is left of the 'science'?
#1 - The temperature trends for the last century were skewed - Lord Monckton explains more in above summary, using the example of New Zealand, where "official" temperature took raw temp data and 'adjusted' it to create a warming trend that in the raw data doesnt even exist!
#2 - The IPCC's credibility is now complete shot. The 'system' was gamed to create a phony 'consensus'; we skeptics knew that, but this email release proved it.
#3 - The credibility of ANYONE who claims "the science is settled" is now shot.
There IS no science left to trust, we have to hit the 'reset' button on every brick of evidence
in the whole chain, because the behavior of these men so skewed the 'science' it is all tainted.
#4 - The hockey stick is busted - unproven if not a myth.
#5 - The IPCC models were based on suppositions, and the 'skeptic' theories that pointed out the data that undermined the models was shunned. These too need to be reviewed from the ground up, and until this is done the models have no value.

Without models, a hockey stick ramp up and temperature records worthy of trust, there is not much to go on.

What to do now?
- Removal of any global warming theory nonsense from schools. This stuff has the credibility of Piltdown Man and Lysenko-ism as of now.
- They need to FIRE Prof Mann and Dr Jones and possibly charge them with FOIA violations.
- The IPCC needs to fire all lead authors, and start from scratch with a whole other team
and a process based on 100% transparency. Or failing that, the IPCC needs to disband.
- Congress needs to have an investigation and needs to put a rule into Govt-funded research requiring the full and complete sharing of data produced to support published articles; less than that is not acceptable.

UPDATE 12/2: House and Senate GOP Leaders Call for Withdrawal of EPA Endangerment Finding, Other Rules Based on Dubious Science Exposed by E-mails .

ACES Massive Failure: No Nukes

Betting Blind on ACES describes the sausage-making process of side-deals and payofss used to make the cap-and-trade-and-tax-regulate Waxman-Markey bill, also known as ACES. Among the many dangerous provisions of this assault on the middle class and working families was this:

Among other things, Waxman-Markey would impose a federal renewable-portfolio standard, requiring 15 percent of electricity from each utility to come from renewable energy sources, and an additional 5 percent to come from conservation and efficiency improvements.

Here's the problem: That's an expensive and wrongheaded way to address CO2 emissions. Only certain 'renewables'? The smart way would be to look at ANY ALTERNATIVE THAT REDUCES CO2 EMISSIONS and treat them according to the CO2 reduction. (That is, if your goal is CO2 reduction and not some other hair-shirt eco-extremist de-industrialization goal.) Accordingly, you wouldn't have a renewable mandate so much as alternative or GHG-free energy mandate. That would include 'clean coal', nuclear, hydro, as well as the much-subsidized wind and solar.

Now, Rep Bilbray had an interesting amendment that if enacted could have solved the US contributation to the hypothesized global warming problem. Rep Bilbray extended the definition of 'renewable' to include nuclear and then increased the renewable mandate percentage so the mandate would have a truly significant impact on reducing CO2 emissions from power plants. This one simple provision, which probably is only a few pages could replace this entire 1200 page monstrosity and yet do more to reduce CO2 emissions. You see, almost half of our CO2 emissions comes from power plants; the CO2 emissions are directly linked to the type of power plants built. Build coal plants, get lots of emissions; build gas-fired, get less; build nuclear, get zero CO2 emissions. Nuclear energy is responsible for more CO2 emissions reduction than any other form of non-fossil-fuel energy. I have stated previously on the blog that the solution to global warming was simply to build 400 nuclear power plants. Change 70% of our baseload electricity generation to nuclear, and we will have cut US CO2 emissions almost in half, a more than adequate goal for 2050.

I have described this bill as a "all pain, no gain" bill. It will create huge regulatory overheads, massive cost-shifting, incentivizes shipping industrial jobs overseas (refinery companies have said directly that this bill will make us import refined fuel instead of processing it here, in effect exporting the oil refinery business). And what's the 'gain'? To global CO2 emissions, almost nothing. ACES is a failure on many levels, but its failure to even do the job the bill is supposed to is perhaps the worst. Fixing the renewable mandate to include nuclear would be a major improvement that would go a long way

This Pelosi Congress is incapable of doing anything right, so the best hope is for this bill to hit a quagmire in the US Senate. Unfortunately, that is less likely now that the Senate Democrats have 60 Senators, a filibuster proof majority.

Doggett votes to destroy American jobs

So the House voted 219-212 for Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, with 8 quisling Republicans joining 213 Democrats. The roll call shows Rep Doggett and Rep Gene Green voted aye to destroy American jobs, while Rep Ciro Rodriguez and Rep Chet Edwards, feeling heat from his district no doubt, voted no.

LGF comment: "... don't underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

That could explain how this dangerous, non-workable, corrupt bill got this far. The bill wasn't even written properly and deals were made on the floor of the House to buy votes for it.

Cap and Trade is bad for Texas:

Texas could lose 135,000 to 277,000 jobs in 2012, the first year of the proposed cap-and-trade regulation. The average Texas household could pay up to an extra $1,136 on household goods and services over a year with a total potential cost to Texas families of 6.9 billion.

The bill is a con:

The ACES bill allows polluters to purchase up to 2bn tonnes a year in carbon “offsets”, over and above the total allowance provided by the permits of the Cap & Trade scheme. This 2bn-tonne annual offset allowance exceeds all the CO2E emission reductions envisaged between now and 2040! ...

The political economy of the birth of this demented carbon credit/offset scheme was the perception in the rich industrial countries that the developing countries had to ‘get something’ out of the war on global warming. Perhaps they should. Carbon credits/offsets, however, are not the way to do it. An elaborate con, employing mainly consultants and specialised businesses from the advanced industrial countries, is not a solid foundation for economic development.

... The American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act of 2009 is worse than nothing: it is a con and a fraud. It pretends to be a vehicle for reductions in CO2E emissions. In fact it is designed to permit increases in CO2E emissions.

The Democrats and Pelosi Congress passed a bill that: attempts to solve a crisis that really isn't a crisis (global warming is not a crisis); fails to achieve what it claims to achieve, but is in fact a con that will not reduce emissions to targets; will add enormously to energy costs and in the process ship industrial production and industrial jobs overseas to competitors like China. And will leave American energy consumers poorer.

God help us all if the Senate takes up this "all pain, no gain" bill.

Obama admin EPA stifles scientific dissent

EPA Stifles Dissent in order to push CO2 Regulations. Anti-real-science Obama administrators don't want the whole truth about climate science shared. If it was, the justification for regulations would get weaker. These hypocrites are doing exactly what they accused the Bush administration of doing. Amazing!

CEI is submitting a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of EPA’s position on Endangerment was essentially put under wraps and concealed. The study was barred from being circulated within EPA, it was never disclosed to the public, and it was not placed in the docket of this proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.

Gore's pseudo-science now unsafe in Texas schools?

"In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking by the students." - new science TEKS standard guidelines.

Ken Mercer, SBOE board member says: "Friday morning, my fellow conservative board member, Cynthia Dunbar (R- Richmond), proposed a final amendment to the language [shown above]. The majority of the Board united behind the amendment and voted 13-2 to pass the final TEKS language regarding science curriculum."

And why not. This compromise language was an 'evolution' from a previous standard of 'strengths and weaknesses' that was a lightning rod in the evolution versus Intelligent Design/creationism debate. It has (I hope) diffused that debate somewhat. Schoolchildren in Texas are taught evolution and not creationism, and it's taught as a scientific theory.

But the possibility now exists for all fields of science to be subject to the same scrutiny. Cool. Ontario public schools have been given Gore's Inconvenient Truth, a mockumentary that is riddled with falsehoods. The Globaloney Warming nonsense Gore spouts is creeping into US public schools as part of liberal indoctrination in US public schools. It will have a much rougher go of it when they try to peddle it in Texas public schools, thanks to Cynthia Dunbar and the SBOE for (perhaps accidently) giving us a tool to fight Global Warming Alarmist pseudo-science. If Gore's garbage pops up, we can respond with and permitting analysis from Lindzen's empirical evidence and Climate Audit's critiques to point out the holes in Gore's Globaloney alarmism.

Global non-Warming 1997-2009

This chart is from an article Comparisons of 4 global temperature sets.

The article's main conclusions:
1. Substantial general agreement between the data sets,
2. Substantial short-term variation in global temperature in all data sets and
3. No data set shows a significant measurable rise in global temperature over the twelve year period since 1997.

Waxman-Markey is "badly flawed piece of public policy"

I had previously argued that Waxman-Markey was mindless, rampant nanny-statist eco-tyranny.

Amazingly, Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein agrees. Consider this stunning indictment:

The other thing to say about it is that it is a badly flawed piece of public policy. It is so broad in its reach and complex in its details that it would be difficult to implement even in Sweden, let alone in a diverse and contentious country like the United States. It would createdozens of new government agencies with broad powers to set standards, dole out rebates and tax subsidies, and pick winning and losing technologies, even as it relies on newly created markets with newly created regulators to set prices and allocate resources. Its elaborate allocation of pollution allowances and offsets reads like a parody of industrial policy authored by the editorial page writers of the Wall Street Journal. The opportunities for waste, fraud and regulatory screwup look enormous.

This seems certainly the case based on a reading of this bill. The level of economic intervention is huge. The needless redundancy ('belt-and-suspenders' regulations) adds huge economic costs with zero benefit. Corruption, waste and job-killing cost-hikes for utilities, energy using industries, etc. will cripple our economy for years to come. It will kill jobs and productivity. How on earth can such a slew of terrible (unintended) consequences be better than the status quo?

Answer: It isn't.

The rise in CO2 from 1950 to today has paralleled an increase in temperatures over 60 years of ... 0.4C. That's all. The next 50 years will not see a marked increase from that; in the past 10 years we have seen no warming. The Waxman-Markey goal is 17% reduction by 2020, even though Europe's cap-and-trade scheme seems not to have worked much at all. This amounts to about a 4% impact on global CO2 generation in the 2020 timeframe. In short, miniscule and meaningless impact on actual global termperatures. The phrase "Costs too much, does too little" comes to mind.

The excellent column on the dreadful Waxman-Markey bill had one jarring and out-of-step statement:

"The Waxman-Markey bill may be the best bill that the political system can produce, and surely it is far preferable to doing nothing."

I challenge this. Doing nothing, ie, doing nothing to regulate the harmless and benign CO2 is PRECISELY the better answer compared to this horrible bill. And if this is the best the political system can muster, disband Congress!

"Doing nothing" does not need to mean doing nothing forever. This bill is far worse than doing nothing to regulate CO2 for the next 5-10 years. "Doing nothing" could mean "Do nothing to regulate CO2 for the next 5 year, but do everything else you can to get ready for the future."
To wit:
In the next 5 years, we can see if the trend of non-warming that we have seen for the past 10 years is a blip in an up-trend or an actual refutation of the man-made global warming models. In the next 5 years, we can take an R&D only approach and build the technologies that are needed, such as next-generation nuclear, energy efficient lighting LEDs, plug-in- electric vehicles, etc. None of this requires cap-and-trade nor the heavy hand on eco-nanny-statism.

Yes, a carbon tax would be better. But even better would be a carbon tax with a global temperature trigger. That is to say: Tax CO2 emissions, but only start to tax CO2 emissions if and when the temperatures do in fact rise. Why tax something that causes 'warming' when the earth is cooling?

UPDATE: Waxman-Markey "stuffed full of unpleasant surprises."

Waxman admits: "I don't know the details" and hires speed-reader to read the bill.

Sono Bono Mack casts lone GOP vote for Waxman-Markey: "While I still have significant concerns about this bill, particularly with regard to its cost and its failure to recognize innovative technologies like advanced nuclear energy, I believe this is the right direction for our district, for our nation and for our future." Wait, it has huge costs and is wrong about key real solutions, but stupidity like this is the 'right direction'? ... oh wait ... “Already, (the Coachella Valley is) seeing exciting new developments in wind, solar and geothermal energy, and this bill will help us grasp this potential.” ... Translation: It's all about the Greendoggle PORK money!

Cap-and-trade does the cut-and-run

Rep Waxman pulls cap-and-trade from subcommittee, doing an end run legislatively. This is good for opponents of cap-and-trade, as it shows that the liberals have to pull stunts to avoid their own bill from getting cut up.

Democrats are wavering and Al Gore is losing the argument. If only I could say the same for the rest of Obama's agenda.

UPDATE: Waxman reverses course on pulling the bill out of subcommittee. The global warming tax is becoming a hard sell to Democrats who see it as a possible career ender to do something that would destroy so many jobs.

UPDATE2: Fight over how much cap-and-trade will cost goes on.

Eco-activists redefining "Global Warming"

Liberal environmentalists are losing the "Global Warming" argument, so attempt to redefine terms. They tried to rename it 'climate change' (joking retort: "Here in Texas we call it 'Spring'.") Now they are moving on to new focus-group tested terms to cover up the failed attempt to hype the "Climate Crisis" (that isn't a crisis). It's all about marketing - the sham-wow of environmental issues!

Hmmm, about instead of redefining terms ... you just stick to the facts, truth, and logic?

Cap-and-trade cost is huge, but media misleads

According to an MIT study, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year, $3100 a year in taxes and $800 a year in other economic losses. Yet somehow the MSNBC/ThinkProgress/twisted-liberal media "Fuzzy Math" made it a 'lie' when Republicans reported this fact (HT FR). How did the Liberals pretend it wouldnt cost that much? By assuming that cap-and-trade taxation is 'free' because taxes that go to the Federal Govt get 'recycled' back to households.

In reality, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year.

The $800 paid annually per household is merely the "cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases]," Reilly wrote. "So that might involve spending money on insulating your home, or buying a more expensive hybrid vehicle to drive, or electric utilities substituting gas (or wind, nuclear, or solar) instead of coal in power generation, or industry investing in more efficient motors or production processes, etc. with all of these things ending up reflected in the costs of good and services in the economy."

Reilly estimates that "the amount of tax collected" through companies would equal $3,128 per household--and "Those costs do get passed to consumers and income earners in one way or another"--but those costs have "nothing to do with the real cost" to the economy. Reilly assumes that the $3,128 will be "returned" to each household. Without that assumption, Reilly wrote, "the cost would then be the Republican estimate [$3,128] plus the cost I estimate [$800]."

In Reilly's view, the $3,128 taken through taxes will be "returned" to each household whether or not the government cuts a $3,128 rebate check to each household.

How People Lose Their Freedom

Found here, a comment to a story of a farmer unwilling to sell out for a carbon trading scam, is a story on how people can get led astray by people they trust.

The following is an article that appeared in the book, Welcome to Hovezi, 1504-2004. The book was originally published in the Czech Republic in the Czech language and was translated and republished by the Texas Czech Genealogical Society. The following excerpt is found on pages 168-169 of the English translation:

Wallachian People Want to Know the Truth

Trying to get the most votes, the statement above was the motto the Communists came up with on Tuesday, May 14, 1946, at Horni Vsacko. The featured speaker was nobody else but Catholic priest, Father Bohus Cernocky, the Slatina in Silesia. It was understood that in an area with a high number of Catholics, the meeting would attract attention. Comrade (Father)Cernocky was accompanied by Comrade Klicha. Both of the were candidates of the UNS. In a stormy environment in front of the community house at Novy Hrozenkov, Cernocky tried to convince the present Christian voters that voting for the Communists was not in disagreement with Catholic faith. Using citations out of the Bible, he condemned rich people and the first republic, which did not have an understanding for the poor. A harsh discussion opened between Cernocky and the local chaplain, Father Dronger, who publicly stated that a God-believing person could not agree with the Communist ideology, which was anti-Christian. Comrade (Father) Cernocky tried to prove the opposite. Both Communist speakers, Kilcha and Cernocky, felt the situation could result with physical contact. They expressed their opinion that the meeting was deliberately put into chaos and most of the people supported their chaplain. (who said)

…Paragraph deleted here…

“The ideals of Christ, in the basic form, are in agreement with the requirements of modern socialism, as they are pursued by the Communist Party.”

There was no doubt that during the election campaign the faithful people trusted Comrade (Father) Cernocky, and they were tricked. It surfaced after the election. The Communists, Klicha and Cernocky were elected into the National parliament with the help of the local Christians. Antonin Surovcak, a local farmer and an honest man, was not elected.

After the Communist uprising in February 1948, Father Bohus Cernocky, advanced in his spiritual career. Unlike his spiritual brothers, who stayed true to the church and the bishops and were persecuted, he became the Provost of the Vysehrad’s Chapter. The good people of Wallachia, as they were called by the Communist weekly paper, Break Through, soon realized the truth. Unfortunately, it was too late. The permanently valid saying states: “Before they catch a bird, they talk to it in nice words.” It was true then and is true today as well.

How do people lose their freedom? We give it away, lured and sold out by sweet-talking liars who promise something for nothing. Now, reread the link and appreciate what this brave farmer did. How do we keep our freedom? By saying "NO" and holding fast to principles. The farmer who Said No closed with this:

I’ll leave you with a quote from Roy Disney: “Decision making becomes easier when your values are clear to you”

Worst Climate Predictions of 2008

Watts Up With That shares the worst climate predications of 2008. 2008 was the year where temperature facts upended global warming hysteria, and the climate fearmongering predictions were put on ice, so to speak.
It may have even disproved the AGW hypothesis. To put it in graphic terms:

Live Blog from AFP-Texas Defending the American Dream (Day Two)

Day 2 of the Defending the Dream Summit is underway. It's 9:10 AM. This morning we're all in a general session awaiting the speakers, who will be:

Michael Steel, Chairman of GOPAC and former Maryland Lt. Gov.
Hon. John Carter, U.S. Congressman - 31st District of Texas
Grover Norquist - President of Americans for Tax Reform
John Fund - Editorial Writer for the The Wall Street Journal
Steve Moore - The Wall Street Journal
Hon. Michael Williams - Texas Railroad Commission Chairman
Hon. Elizabeth Ames Jones - Texas Railroad Commission Member
Marrie Spaeth - Spaeth Communications, Swift Veterans for Truth
Erik Erickson - RedState.com
Hon. Steve Lonegan - State Director, American for Prosperity Foundation New Jersey
Peggy Venable - State Director, American for Prosperity Foundation - Texas
Tim Phillips - President, American for Prosperity Foundation

Tim Phillips opens with a pep talk to the attendees. He says that it is time for conservatives to not just be online but to take on the liberals online. We are establishing our own netroots.

Cap and Trade really ought to be called "duck and cover". The Cap and Trade legislation killed recently in Congress would increase our taxes by 1.2 trillion dollars at the Federal level. Al Gore and company "need" 32 such bills. Cap and Trade would mean a loss of 1.2 million jobs across the economy. State legislation would drain more on top of that out of our economy. Incandescent light bulbs will be banned starting in 2012 and the alternative bulbs are hazardous substances if they are broken (they can't be disposed of in the trash like regular bulbs). Lifestyle changes that Al Gore and company want are changes that government will decide for us on our behalf (how sweet). It means giving away the freedom to determine our own destiny.

Peggy "the Invincible" Venable (dubbed that by Robert Novak last night) is now at the podium. Lone Star Times is the most visited political website in Texas. When we say we are behind online we only mean we are behind where we want to be. Texas Public Policy Foundations has built a web site where citizens can investigate the spending of local government entities.

David Hartman just introduced Steve Moore of The Wall Street Journal who told a joke on himself about how he is so bad at shooting a gun that his fellow skeet shooter told him he must be from the New York Times. See The Nanny-State Diaries.

The top 1 % of income earners pay 40% of the income taxes collected. Those who make above the marginal income level in this country pay 97% of the taxes. Obama's sweet spot is a 53% marginal tax rate. Twenty-three countries in Eastern Europe have a flat tax, some as low as 10%. Ireland has the most robust economy in Europe after cutting the marginal tax rate from 48% to 12% fifteen years ago.

Moore says that the death tax goes to zero in 2010 (I believe that was the year he said) and back up the next near. Dr. Kevorkian will be very busy in 2010 offing grandmas for their heirs' sake, he jokes.

Cap and trade should be called Cap and Kill because it is going to kill our economy.

Grover Norquist is up. He talks about how Republican's in Washington have kept their promise not to raise taxes and to cut taxes (8 times), about the importance of freedom, and about keeping government out of our lives. This is the "Leave Us Alone Coalition". The left's list of what they want to make us do is "slightly longer than Leviticus" (and much less beneficial, I might add). "The left is made up of competing parasites." "Republican's who vote for tax increases are like rat heads in Coke bottles. They destroy the Republican brand." Grover talks about the dangers of increasing capital gains and dividend taxes and recommends www.congressionaleffect.com, which is a mutual fund that invests in the market only when Congress is out of session.

Marrie Spaeth - Spaeth Communications, Swift Veterans for Truth is up now talking about the power of negative words. Negative words are more memorable. Her role today is to introduce the Hon. Michael Williams - Texas Railroad Commission Chairman.

Michael Williams breaks into the middle of Marrie's intro of him. He graciously thanks the Texans in the crowd for giving him the opportunities he has had to serve them and the rest of the citizens of Texas. We are going to take over the online community from the left. Regarding energy he says increased supply is a good thing. We have resources in America that we can use to meet our needs. We don't need to sue OPEC, as some have suggested. We need to use the full plate of energy sources. In Texas we have a 200 year supply of coal. People are worried about that black stuff. "I'm partial to black stuff" (lots of laughter from the crowd). But we need to use coal in a clean way and we have the technology to do that. We need to use nuclear power. We need to innovate in energy. This summer Micheal is sponsoring two workshops for kids to create video games that are energy related. We want to make sure that liberty is protected and opportunity is expanded.

Alan Sager is at the podium to introduce John Fund - Editorial Writer for the The Wall Street Journal.

John thanks all the Wall Street Journal subscribers in the room - "they help pay my salary". There are several reason things will turn around for us in this election. The news we get is filtered. Reagan followed the people who bought the theater tickets rather than the pundits. The "lamestream media" are following their candidate around rather than reporting because they know that mainstream America is not with them. This is a center right country. They (the left) are using psychological warfare. They fear the fall campaigns. Eight out of 10 times Democrats have been ahead in the July poles. Only 3 times did they actually win. Since 1944 only one Democrat has run for President and got a majority of the vote. This election matters. Republicans can't afford to sit it out. If Democrats win we will have "card check for unions," same day registration for voters, and no excuse absentee voting. They will change the rules and consolidate their power for a generation. "If we we flight we win, if we flinch we loose."

Peggy introduces Hon. Elizabeth Ames Jones - Texas Railroad Commission Member. Texas develops 30% of the natural gas and about 20% of the oil used in America. Don't listen to the naysayers about our country's energy supplies. We are developing and will develop natural resources in a responsible way. For example, Barnett shale contributes about 6% of the natural gas used in our country. Texas is again playing our part to supply secure energy sources for the future. We need to develop nuclear energy. Wind, solar, and bio fuels cannot meet the demand alone. Texans and Texas companies have found and created these energy sources, not the Texas Railroad Commission or any other government entity or program.

Hon. Steve Lonegan - State Director, American for Prosperity Foundation New Jersey is now speaking. He is telling his personal story about dealing with Retinitis pigmentosa and how he rejected all the social programs set up to keep him hitched to his disability. He got an MBA. As his eyesight deteriorated, he found that no one would hire him but did not give up. He got a job selling kitchen cabinets and the company he was working for went out of business. So, he bought the business after getting some financing from "the bank of mom". That was 1981, after Reagan took office. His business prospered and he then got elected as the mayor in a Democrat town. His first act was to call together city departments and ask them to cut their budgets by 5%. He stayed mayor for 12 years and made that city the envy of New Jersey in terms of fiscal responsibility.

Up now is The Hon. John Carter, U.S. Congressman - 31st District of Texas. "Judge Carter" just got back from the "Devil's town (DC). He's glad to be back in "God's country". The Supreme court ruled on the Second Amendment and, "you live in Travis County. You really need the right to bare arms here." The Democrats want to take over production of oil and gas. They say that if energy prices get high enough they can get their Energy policy enacted, which is to tax exploration and to get away from oil. Just a few words by President Bush about expanding oil exploration/production and the price drops $11. The Democrats are wrong on oil.

Erik Erickson - RedState.com opens by saying "it is nice to be Travis County and not indited by Ronnie Earle." You can get online on Redstate.com and tell your story about what is going on in your town, in your state.

Michael Steel, Chairman of GOPAC and former Maryland Lt. Gov. is up. "You can't please everyone, but you can tick them all off at the same time." That's what happened in 1996...."We don't create wealth by robbing Peter to pay Paul and then robbing Paul," but that is what liberals do....Reagan made it cool to be Conservative. Now we've "lost our mojo." The issues that motivated voters in the days of Reagan still motivate people in America today...We need to be colorblind and reject the ideology that looks at people as members of hyphenated classes...Individuals transform a nation....There is a socialist-Marxist trend in America...The great opportunities in American rest in the hands of individuals...Tell the story of our cause, of why we link arms as conservatives...

Lunch with Michelle Malkin

Michelle starts off by telling how across the city the net roots are calling us freaks and our candidate not fit for leadership. She did a comparison of Obama and McCain's leadership credentials and asked in Sesame Street style "which one of these is not like the other." She said a lot more but I'm about brain dead by now...

Panel Sessions

(1:45 PM - 2:45 PM)

I'm sitting in on a session titled Map to Victory: How the Right Can Win Online. Panel members include,

Ken Emanuelson, FredHead.com; Blogger; ReaganCoalition.org
Ryan Gravatt, RedState.com
David Kralik, Director of Internet Strategy - American Solutions for Winning the Future
Maggie Thurber, Ohio Blogger

Get the substance down first, then the form. Put links high up in your emails. In emails the Subject line is very important. Remember that we have the conservative message and that people want to hear it. We do not tout something that the Party tells us to tout like the Netroots do. We are more independent....User generated content...Book Recommendation: Wisdom of the Crowds...Take your online energy into a brick and mortar world. Build a conservative group. Raise money...(a lot more was said than reported here).

Time for a 15 minute break.

(3:00 PM - 4:00 PM)

This is a session titled Old Media vs. New Media. Panel members include,

Dan Gainer, Vice President - Business & Media Institute; T. Boone Pickens Fellow
Douglas Kirk, Editor of the Bulverde Standard
Sherry Sylvester, Sherry Sylvester Communications

Sylvester: Gave an impassioned intro about which I did not write down anything. She did say that the small town papers are the real place where journalism is vibrant and growing, while the old regional papers are struggling.

Gainer: Traditional journalists have switched from print/TV media to the Internet. They are competing with us, the bloggers. They are doing this because we are putting out unedited content that they cannot control. Your credibility matters quite a lot. If you make a mistake your credibility is on the line. Ask fellow bloggers to edit your work. You can do creative things. Keep files on the reporters and others you blog about. Responding to a question he said there are two models that will keep local papers alive - non-profit, supported by a benefactor, and for profit supported by traditional advertising.

Kirk: Been in the newspaper business for 40 years. First newspaper called the Anti-P.U.D. (Passive, Uninvolved and Docile) Express was an underground paper he published underground in Holland (see Opinions Make A Difference), because the school paper would not publish his letters. Now as a newspaper editor ( of the Bulverde Standard) he publishes every letter to the editor sent to him. The objective of both old and new media is mass communication. He gets 6000 man hours of impact per publishing day. Both new and old have a target audience. New media comes out immediately. Newspapers are comparatively slow in distribution and are permanent, tending to get archived. Google has now put smalltown newspapers (smalltownpapers.com) online in a searchable format. Small town politics are by definition localized. Old media publishers and editors will let their bias block certain content. The new media, by contrast, has too much freedom, but that is turning around a bit.

Time for another 15 minute break.

(4:15 PM - 5:15 PM)

This is a session titled Global Warming: The Cost of Climate Change Hysteria. Panel members include,

Cathie Adams, President - Texas Eagle Forum
Sterling Burnett, National Center for Policy Analysis
Phil Kerpen, Policy Director - American for Prosperity Foundation
Iain Murray - Competitive Enterprise Institute

The biggest threat today to freedom and prosperity in our country.

Adams: Was at Kyoto. It was all about politics. Global Warming is a "moral challenge" - All Gore. The only place Global Warming is known to occur is in computer models. "This conference has nothing to do about science and everything to do about the [world] economy." - a delegate at Kyoto. 17,000 scientist who know say there is "no convincing evidence for global warming". In Bali All Gore said "My country is obstructing progress in Bali, but in two years it is [not going to be the same]." Does he mean when his country becomes the Obamanation. Congress is appropriating more and more to subsidize green energy. Wind and solar creates less than 1% of the electricity in this country. Windfall profits tax on oil has taken us for 20% to 8o% dependency on foreign oil. We must drill in Anwar. Drill here, drill now, and pay less. Global warming is a hoax.

Murray: UK is looking into carbon rationing. The fight against Global Warming is following the same game plan as that used to ban DDT in the 1960s and as a result 50,000,000 people (mainly in Africa) have died of Malaria. The Global Warming hoax could kill more than that. When people give "evidence" of global warming they usually don't give the whole story. The subsidies needed to "go renewable" is $88 billion dollars per year and will cost twice as much for the energy consumer. Since 1997 European (Kyoto) nations have had larger increases in emissions than the US has had. In terms of emissions during that period Kyoto nations have increased their emissions 4 times more than the US has (US=5%; Kyoto compliant nations in Europe - 20%). Gore's plan would increase the cost to the world by $44 trillion. See Senate Bill S3036.

Resources on The Global Warming Hoax:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
http://www.globalwarming.org/
http://icecap.us/
http://www.noclimatetax.com/
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/
http://www.regulations.gov/
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/
http://cei.org/
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/
http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com/
http://www.acton.org/
http://thechillingeffect.org/
http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/
http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org/
http://www.hartland.edu/cms/
Book: Unstoppable Global Warming
Film: The Great Global Warming Swindle


Bob Barr, the Presidential Spoiler Wannabe

I'm home now but spending a little time cleaning up my live blog posts. The last "event" I attended at the Summit was a speech by the Libertarian candidate for President, Bob Barr. He talked about his involvement in the impeachment of Clinton and other good things he had done for our Freedom and Civil Liberties. I genuinely appreciate what he has done.

However, the degree of success he has in his campaign for the Presidency could be the degree that McCain will lose to Obama. Barr is setting himself up to draw votes away from McCain, and with the shaky relationship between the base of the Republican Party and McCain, that could spell disaster for our Republic. That's because Obama will be the prime beneficiary of Barr's campaign success, and if Obama wins the election we won't be saying "God Bless America," but we'll be crying out "God have mercy on America." Based on Novak's comments last night, he does not consider a 3rd Party Candidate a viable option for conservatives. Neither do I.

I suppose Barr thinks he can have it both ways. He thinks he will draw from the left and the right. Why he even showed up at the Netroots Nation event across town:

A surprise visit by Bob Barr

Jul 19

The Washington Post notes that Bob Barr made a surprise stop by the Netroots Nation 2008 conference in Austin, Texas:

A second surprise guest at Netroots Nation 2008 is generating hallway buzz: Bob Barr. Yep — that Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential ...

Read about it here in his own words., so to speak

All I have to say about that is "Give me a break."

A response to AGW Fearmongerer McKibben

McKibben opines about the need for 350ppm CO2 an extremist and unnecessary goal. I respond in a letter-to-LATimes:

Bill McKibben's op-ed that claims we are at a climate "tipping point" is alarmist nonsense. In 1988, McKibben predicted in a book that global warming would raise temperatures by 0.8C by 2000. It never happened. The global temperature readings are no higher this April 2008 than twenty years ago (based on RSS MSU measurements) .

Although disproven, McKibben keeps predicting doomsday. We have 380 ppm CO2 and increasing,
but in the last ten years, the globe has stopped warming and in the past year the world has been cooling.
Recent data is showing that Antarctica is not losing ice mass overall, and will not lose ice in any realistic climate change scenario for centuries; further, has been a lot cooler than climate models predicted.
Arctic ice is right now above mean levels of the last 30 years, and the sea level increase that was advancing a tiny 2mm per year, has stopped. This all means the "massive sea level rise" McKibben speaks of is a myth based on false speculation. It won't happen, just like his predicted warming didn't happen. The extreme scenarios he touts have been disproven by the actual temperature record.

McKibben is fear-mongering on the basis of models that are inaccurate, predictions that never happened, and a crisis that isn't there. As the real data comes in and disproves the doomsayers wrong, they get more desperate to get us to act before we realize the crisis is concocted.

It's time we put fear in the backseat and put facts in the front seat on climate change. Man-made global warming is not a crisis, and those who claim it is are fear-mongering.

Global Warming on Ice

I previously speculated that the current global cool temperatures might be something more than a cold winter. Well, NASA's Earths Observatory has confirmed that we are in a cool PDO phase. PDO is the pacific Decadal Oscillation that is tied to solar cycles and El Ninos. This may lead to multi-decade shift to coooler weather and raises questions about IPCC estimates of man-made global warming (the estimates that people use to tell us we have to do something drastic or the ice caps will melt) that are increasingly out-of-step with reality.

A paper in the science journal "Nature" looks at the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and predicts a cool trend for the next 10 years. Motl reacts. There is evidence that AMO (also called NAO) is also tied to solar variability forcing factors including solar cycles.

New York Times calls it "Cooling in a Warming World" - that takes the oxymoronic cake! Are we warming? This future cooling phase extends a non-warming period that is now 9 years long. David Whitehouse, former online science editor for the BBC, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society said it this way last December:

“For the past decade the world has not warmed. Global warming has stopped. It’s not a viewpoint or a sceptic’s inaccuracy. It’s an observational fact. Clearly the world of the past 30 years is warmer than the previous decades and there is abundant evidence (in the northern hemisphere at least) that the world is responding to those elevated temperatures. But the evidence shows that global warming as such has ceased.

We now have a decade of level and declining temperatures: SSTs, land surface, deep ocean and above all lower troposphere, have all flat-lined. There is no global warming, and people will start asking: why policies to deal with something that is not happening? It disabuses people of the alarmist notion that every jot and tittle in the climate lately have been due to man. Nature (sun spots), not man, is in charge. This comment is quite relevent:

"The first hypothesis is that climate naturally and constantly has changed through Earth’s history, growing both warmer and cooler, and at many rates and scales. This hypothesis is supported by recorded human history and all paleoclimate evidence, and confirms that natural climate changes are the rule, not the exception. That hypothesis is now established theory. IT IS INCUMBENT ON THE GEOSCIENCE PROFESSION TO BETTER COMMUNICATE THIS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE."

Global Warming Videos

Many children are getting a miseducation on Global Warming due to the political indoctrinators in our schools foisting Al Gore's scaremongering mock-umentary on them. What they need is some balance. Here is a list of the best global warming documentary videos that respond to the alarmism. YouTube has many of them; here are some good ones:

• John Stossel on why the debate is not over.
  
• Glen Beck debunks Al Gore here.
  
• Polar bear hoax exposed.
  
• Climate Skeptic says "Don't panic" and shows actual temperature increases don't match alarmist predictions.
  
• Best statistical talk on Global Warming - earth's climate history by Prof Bob Carter. " There is no empirical data for the greenhouse hypothesis being true."
  
• The Myth about Global Warming - CO2 is great!
  
• An important documentary that makes the skeptics case against man-made global warming is "The Great Global Warming Swindle" - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6.
  

Will PDO drive a cooler global climate?

Temp records show a recent dropoff in the past year, a downtrend that We've noted and Daily Tech and Anthony Watts and other Climate Skeptic blogs have as well. We are, this year at least, in Global Cooling. UPDATE: March sees an uptick with SH cooling and NH rebounding.



Two immediate questions are: Is this a blip for a season, i.e., just one anomalous cold winter and then back to 'global warming', or is it an indicator of a different trendline? And what is driving this change? It's too early to tell, but the answer may be "PDO". PDO stands for "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" and is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability. Wikipedia PDO entry mentions that "Shifts in the IPO change the location and strength of El Niño (ENSO) activity."

In Climate Audit blog, commenter Ron Cram mentions that PDO has recently 'flipped' into cool mode:

You write that the recent cooling is driven by ENSO turning to La Nina. I disagree. While this has played a role, it is really the PDO turning to its cool phase in combination with La Nina. When PDO is in its warm phase, El Nino can be quite warm - such as in 1998. When the PDO is in its cool phase, the La Nina can be quite cool. But the opposite is not true. La Nina will never be this cool when the PDO is in its warm phase. ....
It takes four or five years for the PDO to shift from one regime to another. The Bratcher and Giese paper was written in 2002 and based on their observations they predicted the PDO would change regimes in “about four years.” It did not actually seem to shift until late 2007.

So while monthly values may fluctuate, I do not expect you will see any exceptionally warm El Ninos for the next 30 years or so. The exceptionally strong and cool La Ninas, which we have not seen in recent decades, will dominate this cool PDO regime.

The PDO history matches well with North American temperature history and drives mnay North American effects like salmon runs, and is linked to El Nino/La Nina cycle. If Cram's comment is right, then PDO cool phase may may lead to a stable-to-cooler temperature trendline for some time (decadal oscillation). This chart shows how 30 years of 'cool mode' PDO matched a cool trend in US temperatures from 1940-1970, while 30 years of 'warm' PDO matched recent warming:



A look at solar activity is also portending cooler trends.

Climate models that IPCC (and Gore) uses to promote the Global Warming 'crisis' are
overly simplistic and ignore decadal climate factors - at their peril:

Such predictions represent a huge gamble with public and policymaker opinion. If more-or-less steady global warming does not occur as forecast by these models, not only will professional reputations be at risk, but the need to reduce threats to the wide spectrum of serious and legitimate environmental concerns (including the human release of greenhouse gases) will be questioned by some as having been oversold. For better or worse, a failure to accurately predict the changes in the global average surface temperature, global average tropospheric temperature, ocean average heat content change, or Arctic sea ice coverage would raise questions on the reliance of global climate models for accurate prediction on multi-decadal time scales.

The failure of models to account for this trends leads them to overstate mankind's influence and understate natural variability. As natural variability rears up and potentially takes us in a cooler direction for a while, it will discredit the models that Global Warming fearmongering is based on.


I leave it as a question, not a statement, of whether PDO cycle will drive cooler global climate, since only time will tell whether cool PDO/ENSO effects will persist. But climate model teams should take this as a wake-up call to fix their models before reality overruns their credibility and leaves them falsified by data. Gore's claim that the science is 'done' and debate over is un-scientific bunk. There is plenty more to learn about earth's climate before we can declare certainty on these matters. But don't be surprised if the cool trend continues.