Global warming in the UK: coldest March in 50 years, Winter extending into Spring

From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Doug Ross)

Excerpt:

Today is officially the first day of spring – but it will bring little respite to freezing Britain as snow continues to fall, closing schools and causing chaos on the roads.

The country is on track to suffer its coldest March in more than 50 years as conservationists warned that the prolonged winter weather was damaging wildlife.

The unrelenting cold weather is showing no signs of slowing this week as snow continues to fall across the North.

Today is the vernal equinox, traditionally regarded as the end of winter and the day that spring arrives, but the news could come as a surprise to Britons affected by the snow and cold.

More light snow will settle throughout the day in the north-east of England and eastern Scotland, adding to large amounts of up to 10cm which hit the regions yesterday.

Higher ground will see up to another 5cm, while lower areas could see around 2cm – along with parts of Northern Ireland and Wales.

[...]The Central England Temperature – covering an area bounded by Lancashire, Bristol and London – shows temperatures have been 2.8C lower than normal for the month.

The last time March was so cold was in 1962, when the average temperature was 2.4C (36F) – or 4.1C below the norm.

Meanwhile, in the midwestern United States, we get snow storms in the Spring:

Winter’s late-season grip on the nation continued into the first full week of spring with a powerful snowstorm moving east, leaving major highways closed, flights canceled and heavy accumulation in the Midwest.

The largest snowfall totals of 10 inches or more fell across Kansas and over St. Louis, Mo., before the storm began churning up the Ohio River Valley toward the East Coast on Sunday.

In the mid-Missouri town of Columbia, TV station KOMU was briefly evacuated Sunday morning because of high winds and a heavy buildup of snow on the broadcast tower next to the building.

Two distinct patterns of heavy snow were following one another across the nation’s midsection, engulfing areas of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The storm was forecast to bring heavy snow to portions of the Midwest. About 6 to 10 inches were forecast from Missouri to Ohio on Sunday. Winter storm warnings were issued for much of central Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

[...]Forecasters Sunday said travel across the Mid-Atlantic will be disrupted with slush and snow accumulating along the I-95 corridor from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. With temperatures expected to hover around freezing Monday, it was difficult for officials to be certain how quickly snow would melt.

[...]In the west, Highway I-70 was shut down from Denver — where 100 flights were canceled — into Kansas Saturday as truckers pulled off treacherous roadways and hotels quickly filled up.

Forecasters were predicting a few inches in and around the nation’s capital and further to the north in New York City. Heavier accumulation was expected in areas in between, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Do you know what we need to stop this global warming? A nice carbon tax. And thankfully, Obama is working hard on that.

Filed under: News, Carbon Tax, Climate Change, Cold, Global Warming, Ice, Record, Snow, Snowstorm, Storm Warning, Winter

Democrat senator Barbara Boxer introduces carbon tax legislation

From CNS News.

Excerpt:

Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced a bill to levy a carbon tax. But, back on Nov. 15 of last year, Pres. Obama’s press secretary promised the administration would “never” do so.

According to Reuters, the new tax law “would set a $20 tax for each ton of carbon dioxide equivalent a polluter would emit beyond a set limit, which would rise 5.6 percent annually over a 10-year period.”

Last November, however, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that would never happen:

“We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one.  The point the President was making is that our focus right now is the same as the American people’s focus, which is on the need to extend economic growth, expand job creation.  And task number one is dealing with these deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy, as he talked about yesterday.”

“A carbon tax will skyrocket [the] price of everything,” a statement from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, warned today:

“It’s not just energy prices that would skyrocket from a carbon tax, the cost of nearly everything built in America would go up.”

The cost of everything is already going up because of inflation. This carbon tax is just going to make it worse, especially for the poor.

Filed under: News, Carbon Tax, Climate Change, Democrat Party, Energy, Environmentalism, Gas Prices, Global Warming, Inflation, Oil and Gas, Tax

Jay Richards: what should Christians think about global warming?

Here’s a lecture Jay Richards did for the Acton Institue.

And here is a related article from Boundless.

Excerpt:

The big environmental issue nowadays is global warming. Anyone who watches or reads the news even occasionally has been told that humans are causing global warming through all the fossil fuels we’re burning. They’ve also been told that this warming process eventually will prove catastrophic if we don’t reverse course as soon as possible.

As thinking Christians and good stewards, how should we respond?

The short answer is, we should respond thoughtfully. Thoughtless stewards are rarely good stewards.

Notice that my brief summary of the global warming controversy bundled together several distinct claims. To think clearly about this issue, we have to tease apart this bundle of claims and consider each one. For each claim, there is a corresponding question we need to answer. And it’s only after answering these questions that we can be in a position to determine what, if anything, we ought to do about global warming.

Here are the four central questions:

1. Is the earth warming?
2. If the earth is warming, is human activity (like carbon dioxide emissions) causing it?
3. If the earth is warming, and we’re causing it, is that bad overall?
4. If the earth is warming, we’re causing it, and that’s bad, would any of the proposed “solutions” (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol, legislative restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions) make any difference?

It’s important for us to think carefully about how best to achieve the goals set out by the Bible. And that means undertaking a close study of how the world works and how best to affect change for the good.

Filed under: Videos, Bible, Bible Study, Cap and Trade, Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Tax, Christian, Conservation, Earth, Economics, Emissions, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Green, Jay Richards, Jay Wesley Richards, Kyoto Protocol, Steward, Stewardship, Warming

Julia Gillard’s carbon tax leads to massive defeat in Queensland election

Australia 2010 federal election results (Red = Labor Party)

I was disappointed with Queensland because of the last federal election in 2010. They elected several Labor Party MPs. And now the federal Labor Party is pushing for a carbon tax and gay marriage, too.

Look what happened in 2010:

Turnout 94.41% (CV) — Informal 3.56%

Party		Votes	%	Swing	Seats	Change
	Australian Labor Party	1,020,665	42.91	+8.13	15	+9
	Liberal Party of Australia	818,438	34.40	–5.01	10	–7
	National Party of Australia	239,504	10.07	+0.32	3	–1
	Australian Greens	133,938	5.63	+0.57	0	0

The Liberal Party and the National Party are the two conservative parties – they form a conservative coalition, and they continued to lose seats, just like they did in 2007.

Given that, I was heartened by the results from this past weekend, when Queensland held state-level elections. (H/T Bill M.)

Excerpt:

[Opposition leader] Tony Abbott has sought to capitalise on the Queensland election saying Labor MPs right across the country will be worried about the “fundamental lesson” from yesterday’s landslide defeat.

Speaking on Sky News’s Australian Agenda the Opposition Leader said Labor needed to have a “good, long, hard look at itself” and said the party’s brand was “toxic” around Australia.

“This is a triumph for Campbell (Newman) and the LNP,” Mr Abbott said this morning of the Queensland result.

“I think Labor members of parliament right around Australia would be very worried about the fundamental lesson from this which is that a government which isn’t competent, which isn’t frugal and which isn’t truthful loses and loses big time.

“The basic message is that the Labor brand is toxic right around Australia.”

“Certainly there were two candidates for Queensland one of them Anna Bligh, who was for the carbon tax, and the other Campbell Newman who was against it,” Mr Abbott said.

Mr Newman’s Liberal National Party ended Labor’s 14-year reign in Queensland last night with a crushing win.

The latest forecasts have the LNP winning as many as 78 seats in the 89-seat parliament, with Labor expected to hold just seven seats of its former 51.

Mr Abbott said while the Queensland election had buoyed the Coalition’s hopes of winning the next federal election he conceded things could be different if Julia Gillard improves.

“If the federal Labor government is able to lift its game and be truthful, yes things could be different,” the Opposition Leader said.

“But I think federal Labor has clearly established its character.”

Mr Abbott stood by his comments last week that the Queensland election would be a referendum on the carbon tax and dishonest politicians.

Those results are now final – Labor went from 51 seats to 7 seats! This is as bad as what happened to the leftist Liberal Party in Canada in 2011.

Let’s hope that Julia Gillard, the head of the Australian Labor party, doesn’t learn anything from this and continues to push for left-wing fiscal and social policies. Tony Abbott is quite awesome in general, so they do have a good candidate running against her whenever the next election is held.

Filed under: News, 2007, 2010, 2012, Australia, Carbon Tax, Election, Gay Marriage, Julia Gillard, Left, Poll, Queensland, Results, Same-Sex Marriage, Tax, Tax Increase, Tony Abbott

Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich’s views on global warming

Rick Santorum does not accept global warming socialism

From WPXI News.

Excerpt:

About 500 people showed up Monday at a local diner in Steubenville, Ohio, to support former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum as he gave a policy speech.

Santorum said President Barack Obama is pushing a radical environmental agenda that unwisely limits energy production and turns its back on science.

Santorum told voters in Steubenville Monday that science is on the side of those who want to aggressively produce more oil and natural gas in America. He said the notion of global warming is not climate science, but “political science.”

Santorum said Obama and his allies want to frighten people about new oil-exploration technologies so they can get their dollars and turn them over to politicians to win elections “so they can control your lives.”

Here’s Santorum in his own words: “There is no such thing as global warming”

And more Santorum: Global warming is “junk science”

Santorum calls global warming a “hoax” and opposes cap and trade carbon taxes:

Do you think that Rick Santorum would build the Keystone XL pipeline and create the 20,000 jobs? YES HE WOULD.

Mitt Romney accepts global warming socialism

What about Mitt Romney’s view on global warming?

Excerpt:

On the environment, Romney seemed interested in carving out an agenda largely in line with the state’s most fervent activists on the left.

After he took office in 2003, some state employees and activists were nervous about how the new governor would approach the climate-change issue. Massachusetts had already reached an agreement with other Northeastern states and some Canadian provinces on a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Romney surprised them by taking a hands-on approach, personally helping craft a “Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan” that he unveiled in 2004.

He reorganized the state government to create the Office of Commonwealth Development — with the former president of the liberal Conservation Law Foundation, Douglas Foy, as its head — to better coordinate climate work and sustainable-growth activities among different agencies.

As he worked on the plan, according to people familiar with the process, he even overruled some objections by his chief of staff, who criticized the plan as potentially too left-leaning.

Romney backed incentives for buying efficient vehicles, tougher vehicle emissions rules and mandatory cuts in emissions linked to global warming.

The plan not only called for reducing the state’s overall greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 and cutting them another 10 percent by 2020, but it said that “to eliminate any dangerous threat to the climate . . . current science suggests this will require reductions as much as 75-85 percent below current levels.”

[...]Beyond the state climate plan, Romney repeatedly pushed to promote clean energy and cut the use of fossil fuels.

In March 2003 he pledged to buy up to $100 million worth of electricity from renewable sources. That month, he declared, “the global warming debate is now pretty much over.”

Here’s Mitt Romney in his own words:

Do you think that Mitt Romney would create the Keystone XL pipeline and create the 20,000 jobs? I say NO HE WOULD NOT.

Newt Gingrich accepts global warming socialism

What about Newt Gingrich’s view on global warming?

Excerpt:

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich, as a U.S. House representative from Georgia in 1989, was among the co-sponsors of a sweeping global warming bill that, among other things, called for an international agreement on population growth.

[...]The… Global Warming Prevention Act of 1989 (H.R. 1078) had144 co-sponsors, the majority of which were liberal Democrats such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), then-Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). There were only 25 Republican co-sponsors, which included Rep. Gingrich.

The legislation… set a national goal of reducing carbon dioxide levels by at least 20 percent by the year 2000 “through a mix of federal and state energy policies,” as well as “the establishment of an International Global Agreement on the Atmosphere by 1992.”

In addition, the legislation’s summary includes the section “Title XI: World Population Growth.” That section states: “World Population Growth — Declares it is the policy of the United States that family planning services should be made available to all persons requesting them. Authorizes appropriations for FY 1991 through 1995 for international population and family planning assistance. Prohibits the use of such funds for: (1) involuntary sterilization or abortion; or (2) the coercion of any person to accept family planning services.

[...]In 2008, Gingrich appeared alongside Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a television ad calling for action to address the apparent global warming problem.

Here’s Newt Gingrich in his own words:

Do you think that Newt Gingrich would create the Keystone XL pipeline and create the 20,000 jobs? I say NO HE WOULD NOT.

Which one of these three candidates is the real conservative?

Rick Santorum

• Fact check: Mitt Romney’s claim that Rick Santorum was a big spender
• Rick Santorum and Barbara Boxer debate partial birth abortion in 1999
• Rick Santorum: Catholic bishops should not have supported Obamacare
• Rick Santorum gets endorsements from James Dobson and John Stemberger
• Wall Street Journal: Rick Santorum is a supply-sider for the working man
• Rick Santorum would not stand idle while Iran develops nuclear weapons
• 150 evangelical leaders agree to endorse Rick Santorum after two-day conference
• Why Christians and social conservatives should vote for Rick Santorum
• Rick Santorum’s pro-family economic plan TRIPLES the child tax deduction
• Is Rick Santorum conservative or liberal? What are Rick Santorum’s political views?
• Rick Santorum helps liberal college students to understand the logic of marriage
• George Will: Rick Santorum connects with the working class
• Video and transcript of Rick Santorum’s inspiring Iowa victory speech
• Rick Santorum for President of the United States
• Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum: who has the pro-life record on abortion?
• Rick Santorum wins Fox News Republican primary debate (with video)
• Rick Santorum explains why socialism is hostile to the family

Mitt Romney

• Mitt Romney’s tax returns would make him lose the election to Obama
• Does Mitt Romney’s Romneycare health care plan fund abortion with taxpayer dollars?
• John Hawkins writes the most scathing anti-Romney column EVER
• Santorum and Gingrich expose Romney’s liberal record in Sunday’s NBC debate
• Mitt Romney raised taxes by $740 million while he was governor of Massachusetts
• Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum: who has the pro-life record on abortion?
• RINO Mitt Romney now open to European-style VAT tax
• Is Mitt Romney a flip-flopper? What are his flip-flops?
• RINO Mitt Romney deploys another RINO John Sununu to attack Newt Gingrich
• Mitt Romney supports the anti-Christian and anti-business ENDA law
• Mitt Romney gaffe: Romney fails miserably in interview with Bret Baier
• Jon Huntsman’s anti-Romney ads are awesome
• Mitt Romney’s political views on gay marriage, abortion and global warming
• Mitt Romney flip-flop videos: flat tax, abortion, health care, public sector unions, global warming
• Mitt Romney on global warming, climate change, environmental regulations
• Mitt Romney on abortion and stem cell research in his own words
• White House used Mitt Romney’s Romneycare as a blueprint for Obamacare
• Mitt Romney on the issues: Mitt Romney political views and positions in 2012

Filed under: News, Cap and Trade, Carbon Tax, Climate Change, Coal, Conservative, Drilling, Energy, Energy Policy, Gas, Gas Prices, Global Warming, Green Jobs, Jobs, Keystone XL, Manufacturing, Mitt Romney, Natural Gas, Newt Gingrich, Nuclear, Oil, Pipeline, Republican, Republican Party, Republican Primary, Rick Santorum, Socialism, Unemployment