The lengths that our politicians will go to protect us from ourselves is incredible. I saw this Chris Reed piece and heard about it on KFI's John and Ken Show. Apparently, the California Air Resources Board has decided that the state's Global Warming law AB32 allows them to require vehicle owners to keep their tires inflated.

I read the proposed rules and I think the concerns of the California New Car Dealers Association are spot-on:

CARB is proposing to require every repair dealer to check the inflation of every tire during repair to improve mpg for all vehicles which, in theory, is meritorious.

However (the) regs. CARB’s pushing through (released this week and subject to a 15 day comment period) ... provides that the only times that consumers may decline a check and inflate service—they can never decline the service if it’s offered for free—is when they are charged for services AND if they can PROVE (with DOCUMENTATION!) that they’ve had their tires checked and inflated in the last 30 days, or if they WILL do so within the next week. It is unclear, but possible, that CARB could take enforcement action against the consumer if they don’t follow through with their promise?!

Yesterday, I noticed a couple interesting Global Warming..... oops, I mean Global Climate Change stories and had some Friends of Dave send me a few more. I thought it might be valuable to collect a few of them into a single post.

There were quite a few stories like this one from CNN that discusses record cold winters and high snowfall in various locations.

Chris Giard's kids figured school was going to be closed. After all, a 40-year-old snowfall record was shattered over the weekend, as Burlington, Vermont, saw some 33.1 inches of snow -- the greatest in its history.

I guess this is a good example of why believers have stopped using the term "global warming" and instead use the term "global climate change." By using "climate change", they can point to any dramatic weather as evidence that their theory is correct, even if it wasn't predicted by any of their atmospheric models.

This reminds me of what I consider to be proof that God has a sense of humor. How many times have we read stories about global warming conferences and speeches being cancelled because of cold weather? Here is a list from an Examiner.com article about the "Gore effect" which apparently causes record cold temperatures when he appears: Read the rest of this post!

Uh-oh. Not a good day if you're a global warming believer. This Wall Street Journal piece, along with a lot of other stories discuss a hacking of the Climate Research Center at University of East Anglia. Apparently some of the stuff that the hackers released casts a shadow on the righteousness of the global warming cause.

The picture that emerges of prominent climate-change scientists from the more than 3,000 documents and emails accessed by hackers and put on the Internet this week is one of professional backbiting and questionable scientific practices. It could undermine the idea that the science of man-made global warming is entirely settled just weeks before a crucial climate-change summit.

Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England, were victims of a cyberattack by hackers sometime Thursday. A collection of emails dating back to the mid-1990s as well as scientific documents were splashed across the Internet. University officials confirmed the hacker attack, but couldn't immediately confirm the authenticity of all the documents posted on the Internet.

The publicly posted material includes years of correspondence among leading climate researchers, most of whom participate in the preparation of climate-change reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative summaries of global climate science that influence policy makers around the world.

Some people get really upset about the "outrageous" comments from people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, but I'd be willing to bet a $1 that there won't be similar outrage about the former Vice-President's contention that the battle against climate change is similar to the struggle against Nazi Germany.

Al Gore invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill today by encouraging political leaders to follow the example of Britain’s wartime leader and unite their nations to fight climate change.

The former US vice-president accused politicians around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming. He said lack of awareness among voters allowed governments to avoid taking difficult decisions.

Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment , sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II.” He added: “We have everything we need except political will but political will is a renewable resource.” Mr Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as the threat during World War 2.

As a "denier" of the concept of man made global warming, I thoroughly enjoyed this George Will column which included the following reminder of the good old days of global cooling.

In the 1970s, "a major cooling of the planet" was "widely considered inevitable" because it was "well-established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950" (New York Times, May 21, 1975).

Although some disputed that the "cooling trend" could result in "a return to another ice age" (the Times, Sept. 14, 1975), others anticipated "a full-blown 10,000-year ice age" involving "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation" (Science News, March 1, 1975; and Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976, respectively).

The "continued rapid cooling of the Earth" (Global Ecology, 1971) meant that "a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery" (International Wildlife, July 1975).

"The world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age" (Science Digest, February 1973). Because of "ominous signs" that "the Earth's climate seems to be cooling down," meteorologists were "almost unanimous" that "the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century," perhaps triggering catastrophic famines (Newsweek cover story, "The Cooling World," April 28, 1975).

Armadillos were fleeing south from Nebraska, heat-seeking snails were retreating from central European forests, the North Atlantic was "cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool," glaciers had "begun to advance" and "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974).

I couldn't help but see the similarity in these comments from the 70's with the global warming hysteria of the 2000's. George Will goes on to predict that the global warming hysteria will go the way of our good friend global cooling. He then points out that other than the global warming enthusiasts, the concern over global warming has declined.

Because of today's economy, another law – call it the Law of Clarifying Calamities – is being (redundantly) confirmed. On graphs tracking public opinion, two lines are moving in tandem and inversely: The sharply rising line charts public concern about the economy; the plunging line follows concern about the environment. A recent Pew Research Center poll asked which of 20 issues should be the government's top priorities. Climate change ranked 20th.

Does this mean global warming is on the way out and that the next coming financial depression is our new calamity du jour? What's next? A comet headed toward the Earth? Nanobots? You can bet there will be something. Read the rest of this post!