Surprise, Surprise: There Was Climate Change In Ancient Bagdad

Quick, someone tell Al Gore, Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, the United Nations and all the other irrational climate alarmists that it is now officially recognized that climate change was taking place in ancient Bagdad.  Who would ever have dreamed that long before we began burning large amounts of those evil "fossil fuels" and polluting the atmosphere with nasty "carbon"dioxide that there was climate change going on? 

I think maybe all those who fear climate change should go back and take a Geology 101 class.  Or better yet, maybe our educators might think about teaching the truth for a change.   That is the kind of change I believe in.
Peter

Hailstorms, Wacky Weather Chilled Ancient Baghdad

By Stephanie Pappas | LiveScience.com – 16 hrs ago

Diaries and writings from ninth-century Baghdad provide a glimpse of the weird weather from the era, findings that could help researchers reconstruct past climate.

The surviving documents were written by historians and scholars during the Islamic Golden Age between A.D. 816 and A.D. 1009. They provide a new human record of climate, joining old ship's logs and World War II air force reports as one of the few sources for detailed information on historical weather.

"Climate information recovered from these ancient sources mainly refers to extreme events which impacted wider society, such as droughts and floods," study researcher Fernando Domínguez-Castro of the University of Extremadura in Spain said in a statement. "However, they also document conditions which were rarely experienced in ancient Baghdad such as hailstorms, the freezing of rivers or even cases of snow."  (Some things never change; they only report the exceptional and the sensational.  The Weather Channel would be proud.  Peter)

Many of the writings from the Islamic Golden Age have been lost in wars and upheaval. But some works survive, including those of Sunni scholar al-Tabari (A.D. 913), Kurdish historian Ibn al-Athir (A.D. 1233) and Egyptian scholar al-Suyuti (A.D. 1505). [Top 10 Battles for Control of Iraq]

Domínguez-Castro and his colleagues collected and analyzed these documents and found that they revealed a pattern of increasing frequency of cold-weather events in the early 10th century. July A.D. 920 was unusually cold, perhaps because of a volcanic eruption, Domínguez-Castro said. It snowed in Baghdad in 908, 944 and 1007. The only snow in living memory in the city was in 2008.

The findings suggest that Iraq's climate was more prone to unusually chilly events than it is today.

"Ancient Arabic documentary sources are a very useful tool for finding eye-witness descriptions which support the theories made by climate models," said Domínguez-Castro. "The ability to reconstruct past climates provides us with useful historical context for understanding our own climate."

Family Feud At General Electric

As has been pointed out here (do a search on General Electric) many times, General Electric Corporation (GE), which owns NBC, MSNBC, "Newsweek Magazine", The Weather Channel and the Discovery Channel, is accused of broadcasting misinformation about global warming for their own monetary benefit.

In other words, this large corporation which manufactures and sells things such as wind turbines, solar panels, fluorescent light bulbs, "clean coal technology", and nuclear power plants, and has a huge stake in the "cap and trade" carbon hustle---- this same corporation operates and maintains its own propaganda machine. They have been pouring out a consistent stream of inaccurate "news" about the catastrophes awaiting us all if we do not immediately act to prevent global warming and climate change. Interestingly, the things they propose to save us, all come back to buying GE products or having the government grant them subsidies, tax credits, or outright grants, loans, and now "economic stimulus" money.

This has been reported on here and elsewhere in the non-mainstream media, but now it seems even NBC affiliates are beginning to smell the rot and stink of GE activity. Hopefully this will all be brought out into the fresh air for the public to see.
Peter

NBC Affiliate Meteorologist Rips MSNBC for Apocalyptic Global Warming Special

Michigan affiliate's chief meteorologist slams disingenuousness of MSNBC's 'Future Earth' special; GE's financial stake in cap-and-trade passage.
By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute
4/27/2009 4:19:36 PM

NBC Universal and its networks have been criticized for the global warming alarmism it parades on a regular basis. However, now the criticism is coming from its own affiliates.

Prior to its April 26 airing on MSNBC, shows on NBC had been promoting the first part of the climate special “Future Earth” – an MSNBC program that used computer animation to show the possibilities of a polar icecap melting. That prompted Bill Steffen, a meteorologist for NBC’s Grand Rapids, Mich. affiliate, to call out MSNBC for that special.

Steffen challenged several premises of “Future Earth: Journey to the End of the World,” on his WoodTV.com blog. Steffen debunked the entire series premise that is posted on the MSNBC Web site: “Find out why Earth’s climate machine — the North Pole — is melting alarmingly fast. Learn about our planet’s future, and how you can stop its decline.”

“First, the North Pole is not ‘Earth’s Climate Machine,’” Steffen wrote. “There is far more heat and area in the Tropics than at the North Pole. Second, YOU can’t stop its decline (assuming it’s declining)! Nature is big - you personally are insignificant compared to nature. Don’t you wish you had the power to control icecaps! If you don’t mind some profanity, check out George Carlin’s take on ‘Saving the Planet.’ Third, MSNBC does not know ‘our planet’s future.’”

Steffen rebutted claims of the MSNBC special saying that ice in the Antarctic has actually been expanding and that polar ice melting alone would not cause sea level to rise as depicted in the “Future Earth.”

“Keep in mind that if the Polar icecap (without Greenland) melted…it would hardly cause sea level to rise, because the icecap is currently displacing water in the Arctic Ocean,” Steffen wrote.

Steffen also pointed out, as many others have, the financial stake NBC Universal’s parent company General Electric (NYSE:GE) has invested in cap-and-trade becoming law.

“One last point, MSNBC is owned by General Electric,” Steffen wrote. “GE is already making money off the issue with their Carbon Credit Master Card (link from ‘Treehugger,’ no less). Here’s CNN’s story on the new credit card.”

Steffen even showed how much GE has spent lobbying for environmental causes, originally reported by the Washington Examiner on March 3.

“Interesting note: In the fourth quarter of 2008 as GE/NBC stock fell 30 percent, GE spent $4.26 million on lobbying — that’s $46,304 each day, including weekends, Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Steffen wrote. “In 2008, the company spent a grand total of $18.66 million on lobbying. Reviewing their lobbying filings, GE’s specific lobbying issues included the ‘Climate Stewardship Act,’ ‘Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act,’ ‘Global Warming Reduction Act,’ ‘Federal Government Greenhouse Gas Registry Act,’ ‘Low Carbon Economy Act,’ and ‘Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.’ Do you think this ‘big business’ is just concerned about the environment?”

Global Warming And Climate Change: Uncalled-For Fear And Hysteria

Here is a good summary about the state of affairs regarding global warming and climate change. You can conduct a search for more commentary by John Coleman and The Weather Channel on this blog. Mr. Coleman explains the situation clearly and in understandable terms. Pass it on.
Peter

CNSNews.com
A False Frenzy on Global Warming
Friday, July 11, 2008By Paul M. Weyrich
When I was the political reporter and weekend anchor at WISN TV, the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee, John Coleman was our weatherman. He was s strong conservative and was known for his sense of humor. One time it had rained for 30 days straight. Coleman said if it rained on the 31st day he would produce the weather forecast standing on his head. It rained. He did it.

Another time the camera opened on a wide shot of a blindfolded John Coleman throwing darts at a dartboard labeled “Hot,” “Cold,” “Snow,” “Rain,” “Sunny,” “Cloudy,” “Fog,” “Drizzle” and so on. He had had a string of days when his forecasts were erroneous. John said “Well, this probably is as good as my forecasts these days.” Coleman went on to be the weatherman on “Good Morning America” for seven years. He began the weather channel with his life savings. He subsequently has forecast the weather in New York and Chicago. Today he says his retirement job is weatherman for KUSI in San Diego.

In a remarkable speech before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, Coleman was very serious about global warming as the consummate fraud. He began by saying that we should give credit where credit is due. There is, he said, an intrinsic connection between Al Gore’s campaign for global warming and $4 per gallon gasoline. “It comes down to….the claim that carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks of our power plants is destroying the climate of planet earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.”

He then recited Gore’s dire warnings. “The future of our civilization lies in the balance. That’s the battle cry of the high priest of global warming, Al Gore and his agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming.” He said Gore, with a preacher’s zeal, sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.

“Here,” said Coleman, “is my rebuttal. There is no significant man-made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future.” Coleman went on to say that the climate of earth is changing. It always has changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.” Coleman explained that through history the earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “interglacial periods.” He said for the past 10,000 years the earth has been in an interglacial period. That might be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the earth warms up. The glaciers melt and life flourishes.

“Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age…Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented out of control warming.” As with Senator James M. (Jim) Inhofe (R-OK), Coleman makes the case that indeed we may be in a period of global cooling. He said the data is so overwhelming that even the UN had to acknowledge it. So now the best thing proponents of global warming can do is to suggest that global warming is taking a ten-year break on account of the absence of sun spots.

“If this weren’t so serious it would be laughable” Coleman quipped. He went on to discuss the science behind global warming. He has dug through thousands of pages of material and examined complicated math and looked at complex theories. “The bottom line is this. The entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue, Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.” At that point he tells Gore and the UN’s intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, “Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated and may I add your scare tactics are deplorable. The earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.” From there Coleman presents the scientific data to prove his case. It is a remarkable speech.

www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html Thank God Coleman is in a position to tell the truth. He says younger weathermen are afraid to speak out lest they lose their jobs. Young scientists are similarly afraid of losing research grants. He blames the media for wanting a crisis and thus reporting pro-global warming stories. But when 31,000 scientists refuted global warming a month ago the media hardly mentioned it. He said that compares to 2,000 pro-global warming scientists on the UN climate change panel who claim that the issue is settled. Coleman said when he and others made a presentation at a New York conference of climate change skeptics the audience was limited to 600 people. Every seat was taken. After his remarks were posted on the Internet, he received hundreds of e-mails and calls supporting his position.

“No, I am not alone. And the debate is not over. “If Al Gore and his warming scare dictate the future policy of our governments the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession. Drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into the abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy. “My mission,” Coleman concluded, “in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this global warming silliness and let us all get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.” Godspeed John Coleman.

How The Battle Against Global Warming Affects The Price Of Gasoline....

Here is the latest opinion piece from John Coleman, "the founder of The Weather Channel", and a long-time television weather forecaster. If you do a search of this blog for John Coleman you will find other articles by and about him. He does a good job of summarizing in simplified terms the case against man-caused global warming.
Peter

source

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman
You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.

With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.
Here is my rebuttal.
There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.

Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.

Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?

The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.

The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.

All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.
Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.

Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.

The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.

Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.
So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.

So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.
To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure. Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that’s enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming. It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard. After all the media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it’s pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.

So who is going to go against all of that power? Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.

I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.

In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.
I am very serious about this issue. I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.

The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.

So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy. We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.

So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.

I love this civilization. I want to do my part to protect it.
If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.

My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.

Sue Al Gore and Global Warming Fearmongers For Fraud

This is the best idea I've heard for a long time, from John Coleman, meteorologist and founder of The Weather Channel. Search for more comments from Mr. Coleman here.
Peter

Weather Channel Founder: Sue Al Gore for Fraud
Friday , March 14, 2008
The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global-warming debate once and for all.
John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.
"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.

"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."
• Click here to watch video of Coleman on "Fox and Friends."

Coleman says his side of the global-warming debate is being buried in mainstream media circles.
"As you look at the atmosphere over the last 25 years, there's been perhaps a degree of warming, perhaps probably a whole lot less than that, and the last year has been so cold that that's been erased," he said.

"I think if we continue the cooling trend a couple of more years, the general public will at last begin to realize that they've been scammed on this global-warming thing."
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.

Coleman spoke to FOXNews.com after his appearance last week at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York, where he called global warming a scam and lambasted the cable network he helped create.
"You want to tune to the Weather Channel and have them tell you how to live your life?" Coleman said. "Come on."

He laments the network's decision to focus on traffic and lifestyle reports over the weather.
"It's very clear that they don't realize that weather is the most significant impact in every human being's daily life, and good, solid, up-to-the-minute weather information and meaningful forecasts presented in such a way that people find them understandable and enjoyable can have a significant impact," he said.

"The more you cloud that up with other baloney, the weaker the product," he said.
Coleman has long been a skeptic of global warming, and carbon dioxide is the linchpin to his argument.
"Does carbon dioxide cause a warming of the atmosphere? The proponents of global warming pin their whole piece on that," he said.
The compound carbon dioxide makes up only 38 out of every 100,000 particles in the atmosphere, he said.
"That's about twice as what there were in the atmosphere in the time we started burning fossil fuels, so it's gone up, but it's still a tiny compound," Coleman said. "So how can that tiny trace compound have such a significant effect on temperature?
"My position is it can't," he continued. "It doesn't, and the whole case for global warming is based on a fallacy."
• Click here for John Coleman's briefs on global warming.

THE WEATHER CHANNEL

THE WEATHER CHANNEL Launches

(Atlanta, Georgia) In a bold move long anticipated by industry insiders, The Weather Channel is launching a new channel devoted entirely to the coverage of natural disasters called "The Disaster Channel".

Our TWC sources tell us that the rapid increase in hurricane activity in 2005 caught TWC off guard, and there was not enough air time to cover everything that was happening. "The disasters were hitting fast and furious", explained producer Heather Hotmember. "We didn't have enough on-camera meteorologists to deploy to hurricane landfall locations, and even if we did, we would have had to preempt all commercials to cover all the events".

The new channel will cover all types of natural disasters: hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, earthquakes, snowstorms, hailstorms, windstorms, floods, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and any other natural events that are both popular and that cause human suffering. An hourly roundup called "Tragedy on the 8's" will give a summary of current disasters affecting the viewers local area. "We anticipate no shortage of material for the new channel", said Ms. Hotmember. "On slow disaster days, we will be showing documentaries of previous major disasters.

There are also a wide variety of weather-related mini-disasters that we will be covering, such as car pileups in bad weather and golfers being struck by lightning. Even on really slow disaster days in the United States, we can always count on other countries to provide their fair share of calamities". The new channel is expected to be launched on April 22 - Earth Day.

(stolen from:)

The Weather Channel Up For Sale......(An Escape Before The Myth Of Global Warming Explodes?)

According to the following article in the NY Times, The Weather Channel is up for sale. This is the cable TV and internet weather news channel infamous for its sensationalistic coverage of worldwide weather phenomena. I have posted other articles and commentaries about their activities in the past.

The Weather Channel makes it clear that it buys into the great myth and scare of man-caused global warming because it is "good business". This means they've been making lots and lots of money by perpetuating the "big lie". (A company worth $5 Billion) Now they want to cash in, and sell out, take their profits and run. They're doing this, in my opinion, because they can see the myth of man-caused global warming is crumbling, the house of cards is set to collapse.

One of the favored candidates to buy The Weather Channel and its assets is none other than General Electric, owner of NBC and MSNBC, and Newsweek Magazine. If General Electric can control The Weather Channel they will be in position to create their own weather, scare everyone to death about it by reporting on this over the internet, the nightly news and a weekly news magazine. Then of course, General Electric has the tools and equipment to save mankind from this climate "crisis". Surely I'm not the only person to see the many examples of conflict of interest here. What a collosal scandal this is going to be. Oh, gee, and I wonder if General Electric has any lobbyists in Washington, D.C. influencing our politcians?
Peter


source:

Chain Said to Seek Bids for Weather Channel
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Published: January 3, 2008
The Weather Channel, one of the last privately owned cable channels, is being put up for sale and could fetch more than $5 billion, according to people briefed on the auction. The channel and its rapidly growing Web site, weather.com, are already attracting interest from some of the biggest names in media, including NBC, a unit of General Electric; the News Corporation; and Comcast, these people said.

The sale of the Weather Channel, these people said, is part of a larger breakup of its parent, Landmark Communications, a privately held company controlled by the Batten family of Norfolk, Va., which also owns daily newspapers and other media properties. Landmark’s newspaper holdings include The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, The News & Record of Greensboro, N.C., and The Roanoke Times in Virginia, as well as 50 other community newspapers. The company, which does not release its earnings, generated $1.75 billion in revenue in 2006 and has 12,000 employees, according to Hoover’s.

JPMorgan Chase is advising Landmark on the sale of the Weather Channel, and Lehman Brothers is advising the company on the sale of its other media assets, people briefed on the process said.
A spokesman for Landmark could not be reached.
The sale of the Weather Channel, once written off as a dull network for weather buffs, could become especially heated as it is one of the few remaining basic cable channels available for sale. One potential suitor approached by Landmark described the Weather Channel as “beachfront property.”

Its audience has mushroomed as the channel has expanded its coverage of hurricanes and others storms around the world and created programming about climate change, taking an aggressive and sometimes controversial role in the global warming debate.

The channel is also a godsend for advertisers. Like live sports, it is largely immune from TiVos and other digital video recorders. The channel has 800 employees; 125 are meteorologists.
Perhaps more appealing for some big media companies may be the Weather Channel’s Web business, which was started in 1995. Weather.com ranks as the nation’s 18th-largest media site by traffic, with more than 32 million unique users in November, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That is bigger than CNN and Facebook.
Weather.com has partnerships with dozens of big media companies. In October, the site struck a deal to provide forecasts to MySpace, a unit of the News Corporation. The company also has deals with Yahoo and AOL.

Among the Weather Channel’s suitors, NBC is expected to compete aggressively, people involved in the auction said. NBC has a weather-related unit called NBC Weather Plus, a joint project of NBC News and NBC affiliates, but the venture has never taken off. NBC Weather Plus includes a cable channel, frequently available only on digital cable platforms and high on the dial, along with a Web site, weatherplus.com.

Fox, a unit of the News Corporation, has also expressed interest in the Weather Channel, which it could link with its Fox News cable channel and its hundreds of affiliates. Other big media companies like Comcast, which is increasingly looking to add content, may participate in the auction as well. Time Warner and perhaps even Yahoo could also jump in.

Media companies have expressed interest in the Weather Channel before. In an interview last June, Debora J. Wilson, the Weather Channel’s chief executive, said: “Every media conglomeration has approached Landmark, and there’s never been a yes. We actually think that we’re stronger being independent.” Ms. Wilson added that she was glad to avoid the “distractions” that would come with being part of a larger company. “We like focusing on what we do.”

The breakup and sale of Landmark Communications would spell the end of a small but storied fixture in the media landscape. The company was formed at the turn of the 20th century when Samuel L. Slover acquired The Newport News Times-Herald in Virginia. Mr. Slover’s nephew, Frank Batten, the former chairman, took over the company in 1954. Over the years, Mr. Batten bought and sold newspapers and television affiliates in the South and Midwest.

It is unclear how big the appetite will be for the company’s remaining newspaper assets, though community newspapers have fared much better than large dailies in recent years.
Of course, Mr. Batten’s best investment was the creation of the Weather Channel in 1982.
In his memoir, “The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon,” Mr. Batten wrote: “Our first year was full of crises and a full-fledged near-death experience,” but eventually “narrowcasting — the long-delayed potential of cable television — has become a reality.”

The Founder of The Weather Channel Says: Global Warming 'Greatest Scam in History'

This may be one of the most important, honest, and clear commentaries about global warming and climate change you will ever read. This is what I and others have been saying for a long time. Share it with as many others as possible.
Peter



Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’
Intro by Joe D’Aleo, Icecap, CCM
I was privileged to work with John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel in the year before it became a reality and then for the first of the 6 years I was fortunate to be the Director of Meteorology. No one worked harder than John to make The Weather Channel a reality and to make sure the staffing, the information and technology was the very best possible at that time. John currently works with KUSI in San Diego. He posts regularly. I am very pleased to present his latest insightful post.

By John Coleman

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minute documentary segment. (John Stossel, as reported here.)

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

source: http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/

Heidi Cullen, The Weather Channel and More Political Hype On Global Warming

Weather forecasting has become big business and Heidi Cullen and The Weather Channel are cashing in. This PhD. scientist turned television celebrity tries to make us believe that global warming is not a political issue. She wants us to believe she is purely a humble, honest scientist. Maybe she was, once upon a time, but no longer. How naive does she think people are?

When we watch the nightly weather news, or especially when watching The Weather Channel we could almost think we're watching the latest Hollywood thriller doomsday movie. Of course that is how they want it. It pulls in viewers, which means money in the bank to them. If you want the truth about global warming and climate change, don't watch The Weather Channel. It is sensationalist nonsense, and they even admit it.
Peter


from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/science/earth/31conv.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=login&emc=th&adxnnlx=1185908841-PnTr56P8IK2rG2Uk2vo1eQ


A Conversation With Heidi Cullen
Into the Limelight, and the Politics of Global Warming

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: July 31, 2007
In June 2002, Heidi Cullen, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., received a telephone call from an executive at the Weather Channel. Would she audition for a program on climate and global warming that producers at the Atlanta-based cable television network were contemplating?

Dr. Cullen, a climatologist with a doctorate from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, was dubious. A specialist in droughts, she had no broadcast experience. Moreover, she rarely watched television. She had never even seen the Weather Channel.
“My interests were in trying to find new ways to make climate forecasts practical for engineers and farmers,” Ms. Cullen, 37, said on a recent visit to New York. She had, she said, just gotten a grant from the National Science Foundation, “and I didn’t want to leave what I was doing.”
But the lure of a national audience won out. After a successful tryout, Dr. Cullen packed her clothes, furniture and dog and moved to Atlanta. Today, she is the only climatologist with a Ph.D. in the country who has her own weekly show, “Forecast Earth,” a half-hour-long video-magazine focused on climate and the environment.

Q: What were you studying when you got that call from the Weather Channel?
A: I was trying to understand the large-scale mechanisms that had caused a drought in Afghanistan from 1999 to 2001. I was also working with engineers in Brazil and Paraguay to apply climate forecasts to optimize water resource management at Itaipu Binacional, the largest operational hydropower facility in the world.
I hesitated when I got that call. Television was a world I couldn’t imagine. No one I knew had ever done anything like that.

Q: How did the Weather Channel executives know of you?
A: I think they’d been asking around. They were hunting for a Ph.D. scientist who could explain the science behind climate news. As it happened, my doctoral thesis has a lot of relevance to current affairs. Part of it involved looking at how to use climate information to manage water resources in the Middle East. It’s often said that the next war in the Middle East will be fought over water.
For my thesis, I studied droughts and the collapse of the first Mesopotamian empire — the Akkadian civilization. I was able to show that a megadrought at roughly 2200 B.C. played a role in its demise. I found the proof by examining the sediment cores of ancient mud. When one looked at the mud from the period around the Akkadian collapse, one found a huge spike in the mineral dolomite. That substance is an indicator of drought.

Q: What’s the point of knowing this?
A: Because until recently, historians, anthropologists and archaeologists were reluctant to say that civilizations could collapse because of nature. The prevailing theories were that civilizations collapsed because of political, military or medical reasons — plagues. Climate was often factored out.
And yet, indifference to the power of nature is civilization’s Achilles’ heel. I think the events around Hurricane Katrina reminded us that Mother Nature is something we haven’t yet conquered.

Q: Did you have to take lessons in broadcasting techniques?
A: Not at first. I’ve since done some voice training and have become obsessed with the craft of television. It’s important, for instance, to be very still when you’re on camera. My coach says that if you move around wildly, it erodes people’s faith in you. It’s been said to me that 9 times out of 10, the visual trumps what you say on television. I was floored. I had grown up among the cops and firemen of New York’s Staten Island, a world where your word is everything. So when I heard that, it was like, ‘Oh my God, why did I consciously choose to get into this?’

Q: O.K., why did you?
A: Because they were giving a chance to cover things people need to know more about: global warming, El Niño, energy policy.

Q: It has to be hard to put together a weekly magazine show on one subject. Where do you find your stories?
A: I’ve become a media junkie. I read far more widely now than when I was a researcher. Also, I watch a lot of TV, which means all the news programs, “Frontline,” even ESPN, which I watch to learn how to write punchy leads. I also listen to NPR, check out Greenwire and troll the scientific journals like Science, Nature and Geophysical Research Letters.
My problem is that I think everything climate-related is interesting. In my four years on the job, I’ve learned that just because I think something is interesting doesn’t mean it’ll make for good television. It’s often a challenge to make climate issues visual. When I first began, all we had was a little stock video of droughts in the Sahara with dead animal carcasses, and glaciers falling into the sea. We ran them over and over again. My father, who’s a retired New York City policeman, kept phoning me: “Heidi, are those same glaciers falling again?”

Q: Your coverage of global warming has been controversial. Are you surprised?
A: In a way, yes. To me, global warming isn’t a political issue, it’s a scientific one. But a lot of people out there think you’re being an advocate when you talk climate science.
Last December, I wrote a blog about how reticent some broadcast meteorologists are about reporting on climate change. Meteorologists — they are the forecasters — have training in atmospheric science. Many are certified by the American Meteorological Society. I suggested there’s a disconnect when they use their A.M.S. seal for on-camera credibility and refuse to give viewers accurate information on climate. The society has a very clear statement saying that global warming is largely due to the burning of fossil fuels.
The next thing I knew, I was being denounced on the Web sites of Senator James Inhofe, Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh. The Weather Channel’s own Web site got about 4,000 e-mails in one day, mostly angry. Some went, ‘Listen here, weather girl, just give me my five-day forecast and shut up.’

Q: Rush Limbaugh accused you of Stalinism. Did you suggest that meteorologists who doubt global warming should be fired?
A: I didn’t exactly say that. I was talking about the American Meteorological Society’s seal of approval. I was saying the A.M.S. should test applicants on climate change as part of their certification process. They test on other aspects of weather science.
A lot of viewers want to know about climate change. They are experiencing events they perceive as unusual and they want to know if there’s a connection to global warming. Certainly when Katrina hit, they wanted to know if it was global warming or not. Most Americans get their daily dose of science through their televised weather report. Given that fact, I think it’s the responsibility of broadcast meteorologists to provide viewers with scientific answers.

Q: What do your ex-colleagues from academia think of your new career?
A: Oh, they’re so funny. Some of them claim that they haven’t seen me on television because they don’t own one. But when I was being denounced by Matt Drudge, they were all, ‘Hey, saw you on Drudge!’
Actually, a lot of my friends are relieved that there’s at least one scientist out there doing this.

The Weather Channel Backs Global Warming Because It's Good For Business

I used to watch The Weather Channel regularly, especially in times of potentially destructive weather. But over the last couple of years I've noticed a change in their broadcasting style and content. Now they are overly sensationalistic. It seems the more damaging some kind of weather is, the more they like it, the more they hype it. They revel in it. I suspected it had to do with all the hoopla surrounding global warming and climate change. Now after reading the following article, I know I was right and now I know why. Any opinions?
Peter

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/business/media/04weather.html?th&emc=th

Everybody Talks About the Weather; All of a Sudden, It’s Controversial

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Heidi Cullen, the Weather Channel’s resident climate expert.

By MARIA ASPAN
Published: June 4, 2007
ATLANTA — For 25 years, they have been talking about the weather nonstop.
Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
The Weather Channel’s president, Debora J. Wilson, says it is “good business” to discuss climate change.
At The Weather Channel, which has its headquarters here, that talk once amounted to a reliable humdrum of forecasts and storm coverage in the United States and abroad. In addition to broadcasting weather reports, the channel has thrived by selling its utilitarian but appealing content to newspapers, radio stations and Web sites, and by developing specialty programs around everyone’s favorite elevator-ride conversation topic.

The weather is not controversial, but people are very engaged with it,” Debora J. Wilson, the president of the network, said in a recent interview in her office.
The daily weather forecast is rarely controversial, but the broader topic of climate change has generated no end of debate.
As the network has seen its primary subject turn into a hot-button issue, it has had to grapple with how it wants to address it — and has decided not to tread gingerly.
The issue started influencing the network’s coverage in a new way after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005, and has been shaping its programming decisions.
“If The Weather Channel isn’t talking about climate change and global warming, who is?” said Kaye Zusmann, the vice president for program strategy and development for the network. “It’s our mandate.”

The network, which had been gearing up for the opening of hurricane season on Friday, sees the engagement with the issues surrounding climate change as important for content and for business.
“We have a point of view, and we think it’s really important to articulate why it’s happening. Secondarily, it’s good business,” said Ms. Wilson, the network president. “Many consumers want to know, ‘What should I do?’ ”
The lightning rod for controversy, so to speak, is Heidi Cullen, the network’s resident climate expert.
In December, she raised the ire of Fox News and others by writing on her weather.com blog that the American Meteorological Society should not give its “seal of approval” to any meteorologist who “can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change.” (There are now more than 1,700 comments on that one post.)
Dr. Cullen, a tiny woman who speaks with conviction, said she believed that people were “finally seeing climate connected to weather,” but that a lot of information still needs to be disseminated. “If you turn on the local forecast, you wouldn’t necessarily know that global warming exists,” she said.

Far from being intimidated by the political backlash, Dr. Cullen and executives at the channel say they have embraced the issue of global warming. Dr. Cullen is host of the weekly show “Forecast Earth,” formerly named “The Climate Code” where she has entertained such guests as former Vice President Al Gore. She also appears on the channel’s other programming with segments on hybrid taxicabs in New York City and the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft.
The network’s other programs have also directly engaged the elephant in the room — or, in this case, the polar bear on the melting ice cap: a recent anniversary roundup of “The 100 Biggest Weather Moments” listed global warming as No. 1. And the network is training its meteorologists so that they can discuss long-term trends as well as five-day forecasts.
“Weather information on an on-demand basis is the foundation of what we do, and a deeper experience on an emotional level brings us to life.” Ms. Wilson said.

Besides sections devoted to travel, golf and pets (yes, pets), the weather.com Web site also has interactive features like blogs and user-submitted videos — as well as consumer-information sections that give users tips on how to prepare for a severe storm, or how to reduce a carbon footprint.
Recent developments, from the strong scientific consensus about global warming to President Bush’s proposal last week to set goals for cutting global emissions, seem to have made the network’s embrace of the topic less risky and more closely tied to its service-journalism mission.
“I think the debate for most Americans has moved away from, ‘Is global warming happening?’ to ‘What do I do?’ ” Ms. Zusmann said. “The viewers want what they always want; they want good television.”

And rather than jeopardizing its relationships with potential advertisers, which include car and airline companies, the network’s focus on global warming might make it more attractive, said Jason Maltby, president and co-executive director for national broadcast at MindShare North America, an advertising agency owned by WPP.
“There might be some categories that shy away from global warming, but I don’t think that would have an overall large impact,” Mr. Maltby said.
The Weather Channel is owned by Landmark Communications, a privately held company controlled by the Batten family of Norfolk, Va., which also owns daily newspapers and other media properties. Ms. Wilson said that she is often asked whether, in the frenzy of media mergers, her network might be sold to a larger corporation.

“Every media conglomeration has approached Landmark, and there’s never been a yes,” she said, adding that after working through the “hard early years,” Landmark has no plans to lose the channel.
“We actually think that we’re stronger being independent,” she said, adding that she is glad to avoid the “distractions” that would come with being part of a larger company. “We like focusing on what we do.”
In one of its most significant investments, The Weather Channel celebrated its silver anniversary by breaking ground on a new $50 million high-definition video studio, which will adjoin its current building. All programming will eventually be available in high-definition when the studio is fully operational, by October 2008.

The Weather Channel continues to cut deals with advertisers and media companies, like the online portals Yahoo and AOL. Toyota sponsors a section of the weather.com Web site that gives tips on fishing conditions at various lakes, and WCBS, a local New York television affiliate, supplies The Weather Channel with local videos. Under a partnership with BusinessWeek, The Weather Channel’s “First Outlook” program offers a look at how the weather affects business.
The main weather.com Web site, established in 1995, regularly lands on Nielsen’s list of top 10 to 15 sites, attracting 39 million unique monthly visitors in April, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Of the channel’s 800 employees, over 200 work on the Web site; by contrast, the channel has only about 125 dedicated meteorologists.

Ms. Wilson acknowledged that ratings for The Weather Channel were down in 2006 from 2005 — she attributed the decline to the comedown after coverage of Hurricane Katrina — but said that revenues are “growing fairly robustly.”
As other television channels and their advertisers struggle to retain viewers in the age of DVRs, The Weather Channel has largely remained immune. Last year, the channel entered into a partnership with Starcom, an agency that is part of the Publicis Groupe, guaranteeing minute-to-minute ratings; at this year’s television upfronts, the network extended that guarantee to qualified other advertisers and agencies.
Viewers, Ms. Wilson said, need to keep watching. “It’s perishable information,” she said, “It’s really TiVo-proof.”