In the July 2009 issue of Popular Science, editor Mark Jannot writes things like:

It's clear that the Earth is warming, and that a primary contributing factor is the greenhouse gasses that our march of progress has spewed into the atmosphere. We certainly need to...mitigate the damage all that CO2 is likely to cause.

It's mind-boggling that an editor of a science magazine can make statements like that. Can he really not know that CO2 isn't a pullutant and is vital to life? Can he really be unware of all the scientists who show humans aren't causing warming and in fact Earth may be cooling? Talk about bad science or being a True Believer. -D

Welcome to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement's home page, featuring such FAQs as:

Does VHEMT favor abortion? (Answer: Only when someone is pregnant)

Does VHEMT support China's one-child policy? (Answer: The policy is less than voluntary, and even one child is too many.)

Are religions to blame for human over population? (Answer: Extinction is in accordance with God's plan for us. Jesus Christ lived His life as a lesson to us all, and begat naught.* Let us follow His example and concentrate on the spiritual journey to God, rather than on human endeavors such as producing more humans. We have been fruitful and multiplied, now it is time to mature and nurture.)

At least they took a stab (sorry) at an answer to the why-do-these-people-never-volunteer-to-go-first question. And bits like this that quote Luke 23:29, while completely out of context, are pretty thought-provoking.

*(um, not quite)

Some environmentalists never missed a chance to vilify President Bush, but look here:

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research analyzed data collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and concluded that levels of numerous gases linked with air pollution have fallen off since 2001.

Among the findings: Carbon monoxide decreased by 39 percent, ozone by 6 percent, and sulfur dioxide by 32 percent.

"Pick any category you want and pollution levels are generally lower than they were seven years ago," said Steven Hayward, the policy analyst who authored the report, titled "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators," for the conservative think tank.

"(Environmental groups) said air pollution was out of control, but this was always more about politics than it was fact," Hayward said.

Imagine that. Politics instead of science.

Jeff Holmsted, a high-ranking official at the EPA from 2001-2005 and now an attorney with the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, acknowledged that the decrease in air pollution over the last eight years owes much to efforts of past administrations. But he called the statistics a vindication of Bush's environmental policy, which he said did away with cumbersome regulations while still protecting the environment.

"I think among people who actually understand how the regulatory process works, they, in private, would acknowledge that we accomplished a lot," Holmsted said.

-D

Don't care much for Paul's by-line, but this bit of reporting is pretty disturbing if true:

Those of us who post to this blog and others in the global warming debunkification (okay, I made that word up) movement are used to being ignored — or (usually) politely being humored first, and then ignored — but this experience from last week I thought was worth noting in the blogosphere.

Last week the Heartland folks referred a reporter to me from a Midwestern weekly newspaper, who had some questions about a greenhouse gas inventory her county was compiling and where she could expect public policy to go next. I had no idea where her sentiments were on the issue, but I gave her straight feedback based upon examples I’d seen elsewhere. What she did with it after that was up to her, and I did not care much either way what she did, given my past experience with environmentalist journalists.

Turns out she sought to do a balanced article, but her editor would have none of it. I usually like to name names with things like this, but I assume the reporter wants to keep her job so I will refrain. This is what she emailed me:

Paul:
Thank you so much for your responses. I did a story, but my editor removed all references to debate about climate change, global warming or whatever they are calling it now. He didn’t tell me, which is unusual when removing such a huge chunk of  a story, but I just discovered it today after it didn’t appear in our print edition.

It is online, but is not as I wrote it. I’m so sorry. I will still try to get both sides of all issues out. That’s all I can do. Thank you, and again, I apologize.

I dropped a note to him to see if he'd divulge the name of the paper.  Any scientific issue ought to be up for reasonable debate, especially one that has such significant impacts on the planet. Any any press that isn't willing to provide both sides of an issue should already be suspect in my book.

MSNBC Headline:

Antarctic ice nearly size of N.Y. City breaks up

Icebergs calve off after ice bridge stabilizing shelf collapsed in early April

Sounds horrible, doesn't it?  I mean, New York City is HUUUUUGE. It's the center of the world! 

Imagine if they had said "three times the size of Yuma AZ" or something like that?  And here's some context:

Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent. Since all but 2.4% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 7,870 feet (2,160 meters) thick, it is also the highest continent. Antarctica is about 4.5 million square miles (14 million square kilometers) in area, which is about the size of the contiguous 48 U.S. states plus about half of Mexico.

So the fraction of that calved represents about .00000006% of Antarctica's 4,500,000 square miiles of ice that is over a mile thick on average.

As Paul notes, calving is a pretty normal process, something echoed by climatologists

Referencing a paper in the scientific journal Nature last month, New Zealand Climate Science Coalition member Dr Willem De Lange, of the Earth Sciences faculty at Waikato University, explains that, in the vicinity of the Wilkins Ice Shelf that has so concerned Greenpeace, “there was a rapid rise in air temperature 40-50 years ago [but] it has been fairly stable since then.  “There are many factors involved in the destabilization of an ice shelf,” said Dr De Lange. “Warmer ocean waters circulating underneath (moving water melts ice faster than warm air), tidal rises and falls, and wave action all contribute to the fracture and eventually breakup of the ice. Now that the ice shelf is breaking up, it will be possible to sample the underlying sediments and determine the history of the shelf. We do not know if the shelf has undergone cycles of expansion and contraction during the last 10,000 years or has been shrinking since the last glacial period. One thing we do know however is that the break up of this shelf is not solely a consequence of current, or even recent weather changes. It is the consequence of changes over long periods, perhaps 1,000-10,000 years in this case, although we can't tell for certain until the necessary data are collected.

Well, at least MSNBC didn't recycle their photos (this time).

CS Monitor links to this article on a "first of its kind" report on this survey about kids growing up green.

The report, a unique window into a broader national trend, includes an unprecedented survey of more than 140 students (nearly all of them ages 11 or 12) at Merrill Middle School in Des Moines, Iowa...

The whole thing is ridiculous.

140 subjects is no where near unprecedented or statistically significant or any indication of a "broader national trend." But that's not the point, as the article explains in contradictory graphs further down.

Their experience is almost certainly not representative of all youth in the country. By finding out how these children live and think, we don't learn what all youth think -- we learn how young people nationwide can become more engaged in protecting the environment and what government entities, schools and communities can do to make it possible.

Ah - so what the article is really saying is that green indoctrination really works.  I mean, check out those test questions:

Fully 53% of the students said that environmental issues have been a focus of the curriculum in at least one of their classes.

When asked why their school has been effective in advancing environmental issues, more than 48% of the students cited interest and participation of the youth at the school. More than 61% cited tangible applications of the school’s commitment – campus policies and practices, as well as curriculum and lesson plans that include these issues.

LOL - Well, yeh. To their credit, CS Monitor points out the obvious:

As you might expect, most high school students worldwide are familiar with the common environmental issues — air pollution, energy shortages, and extinction of plants and animals.

However — and this may come as a surprise — there’s little correlation between students feeling responsible for the environment and how proficient they are in environmental science. 

Teaching conservation to kids is awesome. A generation ago biology and chemistry teachers were teaching ecology in science classes. Heck, my grandparents taught conservation by their example. Only back then they called it "thrifty." Now the whole thing is social indoctrination with little substance. 

"Uber-green school successfully pushes a green agenda on impressionable young people." This is news? 

The real news is we have a great chance to educate our kids on the science of ecology and we're failing them miserably.

Last year DHS assessed the risks of specific radical environmental groups like ALF and ELF. Is the Obama administration now turning the big guns on conservatives en masse?

As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.

Radicals like these folks and their Luzianne tea? Ever had it iced and sweetened? Nuthin' better.

Cluck, cluck. Willing to waste perfectly fine sweet tea - no wonder they think these folk are dangerous.

Zach Frechette:

So thinks Oregon representative Wayne Krieger, who has proposed a law requiring cyclists to register their bikes at a cost of $54 every two years. In his words: “Bikes have used the roads in this state forever and have never contributed a penny. The only people that pay into the system are those people who buy motor vehicle licenses and registration fees.” The folks over at the Freakonomics blog seem to think the premise is valid, wondering if even a “tax-hating bicyclist” could argue with the logic of paying the proposed $0.07 a day to build new bike infrastructure. To them I say: how quaintly old-fashioned.

I subscribe to the idea that we should tax things we want less of, not more of.

No kidding. But then, this is Oregon after all...

UPDATE: Bike riders worse for the environment than car drivers because they live longer.

From John Berlau's Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health!, pp. 218-219:

The Environment Isn't a Conservative or Liberal Issue

This saying I agree with. But not for the reasons usually stated. I think both conservatives and liberals should reject the tenets of modern environmentalism.

The merging of liberalism with environmentalism is actually a rather new political phenomenon, not quite forty years old. Recall Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech dedicating the Hoover Dam in which he bragged about "altering" the geography of the region and called the area that existed before "catus-covered waste."

[Even] Karl Marx and the early communists and socialists were not against factories. In fact many saw them as liberating to farm drudgery...

Those liberals who really care about humanity...should be the first in line to advocate spraying DDT to combat malaria outbreaks in Africa...It might also help liberals win some of their arguments. It's hard to argue that you're for government-run health care and against Social Security private accounts because you care so much about people when you then turn around and say that people's needs should take second place to those of the snail darter.

Shea Gunther has launched Green Options. Go over and run up his new hit counter, will you?

Been a while since our last cow flatulence update. (via)

While I'm a skeptic about anthropogenic global warming gas, I have been steadily pointing out the suspicious silence by the MSM on the meat issue -- because according to all the official data, human meat consumption is said to be the number one cause of global warming. I now I see that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is laying the issue at Al Gore's feet -- and they accuse his movie of failing to address cause number one...Among other things the letter cites studies showing that switching to a vegan diet is more effective than switching to a Prius...I hope they hold Al Gore's feet to the fire on this one. Something about the way they're avoiding meat strikes me as downright devious. I suspect it's because they don't believe their own rhetoric. Or maybe it's because they think taking the country off meat will be too much of a hard sell. Whatever it is, I'd like nothing more than to get to the bottom of this nonsense.

I hope PETA makes Gore squeal like a stuck hog.

Time to start thinking sirloin offsets! More on cap"-and-charade" at Greenie Watch.