As the “life and death” 11 day summit on global warming marches on in Copenhagen, scientists are joining together in a single ominous voice to damn all of advanced society for the conveniences we so callously employ without thought of the fatal damage we are inflicting upon our fragile planet.

“I don’t have high hopes,” said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “But I hope that the participants could get to a good plan on how to minimize green house gas emissions.  “We need to change our mind frame – our values,” said Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.  He went on to say “In this problem, I think we are seeing the worst of ourselves in the mirror.”

The problem being discussed by these learned men, whose very livelihood depends on governmental funding for manmade global warming research, is that we fat cat Americans and other technologically advanced societies are too concerned about our creature comforts to care about the impact they are having on our environment and our society as a whole.  Ahhhh….Ted Kaczynski would be proud.

My first thought as I watched these men of science approach the lectern to continue their relentless onslaught against all things modern was “How do they walk with balls that big?”.

You see, here is my idea.  If they are so worried about all the damage being done to the ozone by the unbridled use of modern conveniences why would insist on flying scientists from all around the globe, and truck massive loads of support equipment to Copenhagen?  The last manmade global warming summit was held as part of the G8 conference this past July in Italy.  Once again, for that summit, planeloads of beard-stroking deep thinkers were flown in to express their overwhelming disapproval of the use of carbon emitting equipment, like the plane they flew in on.   From there all the necessary support equipment was crated up and trucked to Copenhagen where the same pointy heads flew into town to do it all over again.

They are calling this meeting a summit, I disagree.  Why not call it what it really is; an international sales meeting.

The scientists focusing in the area of manmade global warming create no product to generate a financial return other than their research.  Is it any wonder that their research would conclude that more funding for further study is necessary?  Is it any wonder that some of these high level research facilities would intentionally doctor the tests results to keep the cash flowing? 

With the recent economic hardships most businesses are now facing many have chosen to limit travel expense and use the incredible advances in technology to hold their important meetings.  If manmade global warming is truly threatening to end life as we know it on planet earth, wouldn’t it be incumbent upon these saviors of mankind to hold their meeting via nonpolluting computer links rather than flying all the attendees and support personnel to Copenhagen for an 11 day getaway?

The scientific comments being freely distributed by these so called researchers does not jive with the actions of the commenter’s.   Rather than telling the world what we should be doing they should be showing the world how it’s done.

But perhaps shaming the United States and other wealthy nations into donating the large sums of money necessary to continue this charade is in fact exactly how it’s done.  Manmade global warming has become an industry unto itself.  The goal of this “sales meeting” is to expand that business.  No amount of truth or contrary data will be sufficient to force these funding fanatics to relinquish their death-grip on the world’s wallet.

I may not be a recognized expert in manmade global warming, but it doesn’t take a science degree to identify the source of all the hot air currently being emitted in Copenhagen.

I can hear Doc Severinsen and the boys in the band striking up that familiar theme song now.

Hurricane Rick is stalking off the coast of Mexico and climatologists are dusting off their hurricane preparedness pamphlets for what will likely turn out to be yet another dud. To be sure old Rick is kicking up some serious surf right now as a category 5 hurricane, the strongest storm to hit the Pacific in ten years. But it is also predicted to be a nothing more than a soaking rain storm by the time it reaches the Baja Peninsula area later this week.

As I read the news reports about Hurricane Rick it gave me pause. It seems as this year’s hurricane season draws to a close we have once again missed the destructive doom forecast by the global warming crowd. If the near obliteration of mankind that was so ominously predicted 5 years ago is going to take place in the 10 years it was envisioned, it had better get its devastating butt in gear.

The only real change that has transpired in this countdown to doomsday is a subtle but important name change. What started out as manmade global warming and later simply became global warming is now referred to in the more politically correct phraseology of climate change.

The problem with the whole manmade global warming aka climate change theory took shape as institutes of higher learning began to battle each other for the most portentous forecast of catastrophic destruction in an attempt to garner a greater share of the government grant pie. There was no money to be made in an honest appraisal or in investigating other possibilities for what will continue to be proven as temporary anomalies. Corporations were quickly incorporated and savvy politicians like Al Gore invested huge amounts of face time as well as sizable amounts of their own personal wealth to exploit what would become the greatest hoax since Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire of Rome.

Any scientist who dared to challenge the less than scientific science that was predicting these worrisome results were ostracized from the brotherhood and branded as a tool of big business. The same fate awaited any politician or even private citizen who questioned the veracity of the results. It was of course to the benefit of the big business being set up to capitalize on the global warming scare to make sure that no reasonable facts were ever introduced that would muddy the swirling tempest they were creating. And with the news media soundly in their side, that is exactly what they did.

The reason the urgency for proposed immediate action was so intense was so that legislation could be passed and huge sums of money could be set aside before the lack of death and destruction became an issue. Make no mistake about it; had the billions that were proposed been spent 5 years ago, the lack of devastating hurricanes again this year would have been credited to that spending. Not unlike Nancy Pelosi claiming the near trillion dollar non-stimulating stimulus spending has had an enormously positive impact on an economy that is in much worse shape than the climate.

Climate data for the last 10 years shows conclusively that global warming is not global. Extended data from a longer time period shows that climate change is in fact normal and for the most part cyclical.

As congress begins to wrap up its legislation on the non-crisis in healthcare and take up the non-crisis of global warming with Obama’s cap and tax legislation I wonder just how bad the economy has to get before folks start getting a little more rebellious about their representatives focus.

As for me, I’ll be donning the heavy winter parka I have had to wear since the beginning of October because of near freezing temperatures as I go to stand in the bread line.

That seems to be the premise on which most of the scientific reports are based. With volumes of data from points all over the globe, the manmade global warming factions are picking and choosing which tomes of information are important and which are not. Naturally anything that shows even the slightest rise in temperature is deemed as invaluable and any data that shows otherwise is excluded.

A perfect example of this came out of Argentina this past week. It seems that the glaciers in Argentina are actually growing in size. This obviously has the global warming bloc scrambling for answers, as it does not fit their neat little global impact model. The response from scientists at the Center for Scientific Study in Chile is that “not all glaciers respond equally to climate change”.

Now I don’t mean to sound stupid (probably too late for that), but if a glacier is made of ice (which it is) then these scientists are saying that not all ice is affected by rising temperatures. So if that’s the case, perhaps the problem is not with global warming but with wimpy ice. If we actually have ice that isn’t affected by globally warming temperatures why don’t we just put that temperature resistant ice on the supposedly melting polar ice caps and just use the wimpy, melting kind of ice for our beer coolers? It makes sense to me, but I’m not a highly subsidized scientific researcher.

The United Nations released their gloom and doom report of the number of people that will die because of raising temperatures. The report said these learned men of science feel the best solution for this oncoming heat wave holocaust is increased funding, to the tune of a hundred billion dollars. Surprise!

Bloomberg and Reuters carried a story out of the UK that stated “Climate Change May Kill Thousands in UK by 2017”. This is based on a study showing the impact of the theoretic increase in heat waves. What they didn’t include in their piece was a report carried by the BBC which said even more lives would be saved by an increase in temperature due to a decrease in cold weather related deaths. The BBC has always been a strong supporter of the global warming team so their editorial decision to carry this report was surprisingly admirable.

A similar pro and con debate is beginning in the US Congress with Midwestern politicians citing the damage that would be done to farmers in America’s rural Farm Belt communities by the cap and trade regulations proposed by the President and Representatives from both coasts.

In what appears to be a growing rift within the Democrat Party regarding the presidents cap and trade policy, Democrat Representative Collin Peterson of Minnesota said “It looks to us they made a deal on the two coasts with the big guys and didn’t think about us…the farms, the Midwest.” He went on to explain that Midwestern farmers depend heavily on the energy produced by cheap coal burning power plants. Cap and trade would dramatically increase their costs and impede their ability to remain solvent. If the ethanol fiasco taught us anything it is that any impact on the food grown in the Midwest will have dramatic and certainly deadly consequences around the world.

On Tuesday, the White House released a report based on the work of government scientists that said climate change will cause more frequent and intense heat waves. Rep. Peterson responded by saying “We’ve just had the biggest floods and coldest winters we’ve ever had. They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing…”

Willie Soon an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has compiled data showing the earth is warming but that the affects of man-made greenhouse gasses is negligible. Rather the variation in climate is due to variable solar output. He has proof that the documentable changes in energy put out by the sun, the source of all the earth’s heat, corresponds exactly to the historical changes in climate.

The UN has attempted to suppress Dr. Soon’s report and Greenpeace has placed him on their ominous “deniers” list.

Then Dr. Anastasios Tsonis, a scientist and mathematician at the University of Wisconsin published his findings that the earth is actually cooling and has been since 2001 and will continue to do so for the next 10 to 20 years. He says climate is heavily affected by a few well known oscillating systems, El Nino in the Pacific for one, and that from time to time four major oscillating systems synchronize. He has data showing the impact of this from 1943, the 1970’s and currently.

So what are we to take from all this?

Well first, not all ice melts over 32 degrees. Second, everything is relative. And third, if the UN can snag another hundred billion from man-made global warming you can bet your ass they are going find some.

An interesting story has popped up about the money saving and planet saving miracle that is solar power. How often we have heard the friends of mother earth claim that we can save gazillions of dollars and the planets fragile ecosystem if we just harness the sun’s rays.

This past February President Barack Obama and his side kick VP Joe “Foot-in-mouth” Biden took the time to have their pictures taken while strolling through an array of solar panels atop the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The president used the opportunity to extol the virtues of solar power and congratulate the museum for their foresight and promotion of this renewable and “green” source of electric power. He also praised the insight of Denver citizens for their renewable energy efforts in the 2004 passage of Amendment 37 which mandates that Colorado utilities must procure a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

In their feature story on the event the Denver Post dutifully noted that “The sun generates enough energy on the museum rooftop to power about 30 homes.” Notice they didn’t say how much power and for how long. Still, pretty impressive stuff, huh? But the whole story goes a little deeper and surprisingly was not covered by the story in the Post.

What was left unmentioned in the newspaper story was that the solar array on the museum is not actually owned by the museum. The price of this sun sucking solar symphony was a whopping $720,000. The museum considered buying it on their own but discovered it had about a 110 year payback in energy savings. As the solar panels have an anticipated life expectancy of about 20 to 25 years, I guess there were at least a few folks on the museum board that could see the inherent flaw in the math.

The solar panels actually belong to the Hybrid Energy Group LLC. A company formed to supply such solar arrays. How does Hybrid Energy make their money to be able to afford these very expensive solar panels? First it sells the electricity it collects to the museum and receives tax incentives from the state and federal government. But Hybrid Energy also receives rebates from the local power provider Xcel Energy via their Solar Rewards Program. This program is a result of the aforementioned Amendment 37.

Do these rebates in some way constitute a savings realized by the major power provider due to the solar energy? No. The rebates are made possible by the local customers of Xcel Energy who are hit with a special surcharge every month on the electric bill. Every Denver resident has a line item on their bill titled the Renewable Energy Standard Adjustment. This is where the money comes from to pay Hybrid Energy.

And what of the all the valuable energy saved by using the solar panel array? Well actually, the solar power accounts for less than 5% of the electricity consumed by the museum. The rest comes from the same place as all the other folks in Denver, Excel Power.

So the Denver Museum of Nature and Science gets enough electricity from the sun to run a vending machine, Hybrid Energy LLC is profitable operating a three quarter of a million dollar solar array thanks to state and federal tax dollars coupled with a nice chunk of change from Excel Energy rebates, Excel Energy becomes compliant with Amendment 37 passed by misinformed voters and the citizens of Denver get to pay for the rebates with the rest of the costs picked up by state and federal taxpayers. In the meantime a $720,000 solar array ticks off the days of its 20 year life span generating enough electricity to pay for itself in 2118.

And now the federal government wants to run GM because it was mismanaged?

If this is the future of energy we will be back burning renewable torches in no time.

Any guy over the age of about 30 with a prostate knows exactly what’s coming next. Hold your breath, grab the backside of the examination table and hope that it’s over quickly. It’s never over quick enough and at least I have never even gotten a dinner out of the deal.

It’s one of those things you just endure. I get the same feeling of dreaded anticipation every time I read another story about the immanent destruction of the planet due to manmade global warming. And boy, the news wires are jammed to hilt with one story after another of how we are all going to hell in a handbasket due to melting ice flows and rising sea levels.

With each new report more dire then the previous one and every conceivable attempt made to tie global warming to some natural disaster it has become apparent that thar’s gold in them thar carbon footprints.

Penn State University just published a report that the entire continent of Antarctica is warming at the same rate as the rest of the planet, disagreeing with all previous reports that showed otherwise. This report was dutifully covered by the journal Nature in its January 21st issue.

The key to this study is that it was funded by the National Science Foundation, a foundation that just received over $3 billion in new funding in the presidents non-stimulus spending package.

The study which was set up to prove exactly what it proved is not based on any new information or scientific data. The study simply used the existing data, which in some cases is only for the last 25 years, and redid the math so that the calculations showed warming rather than cooling. It than made assumptions on the data collected and extrapolated it out to say that it covered 50 years, which is actually twice as long as some of the data covered.

Headlines claimed that sea levels are rising faster than ever, reporting on a story from the National Center for Space Studies in France. My first thought is why does France have a National Center for Space Studies and why the hell are they studying sea levels. But regardless of my skepticism, the study claims that sea levels are rising twice as fast as was originally thought. It is only later that it is explained that the study is comparing data from only the last 15 years and comparing it to data from the 50 years prior. Once again it ignores the rules of long term data collection and also uses two completely different measuring systems and then extrapolates the data to come out this way.

The Carnegie Institute of Science, which also operates on government grants and focused corporate contributions, reported that carbon emissions have been growing by 3.5% since 2000 versus the 0.9% reported in the 1990’s. The study places the blame for this 400% increase squarely in the use of coal. It goes on to claim that because of these increased emissions no part of the world has experienced any reduction in temperature since the year 2000. The report once again uses extrapolated data to come up with a mathematical formula that proves this point. The only problem with the conclusion of the math is that it does not coincide with the actual temperature readings of thermometers.

All of these studies have one thing in common. They were all funded by either government grants or by industries that stand to benefit greatly by the results. It’s like the recent conversion of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens who is now investing heavily in alternative energy. He claims that his research shows oil will be back over $150 per barrel from its current $35 per barrel within two years. He uses that as a reason to invest in alternative energy. My question is, if he truly believes that, why wouldn’t he invest in oil again and make a freaking killing? The answer is simple. There is more money to be made by the sham that is global warming than by the reality and uncertainty of commodity prices and option trading.

Ireland’s Environmental Minister recently put a ban on the television broadcast of the British government’s advertisements claiming global warming calling them “insidious propaganda”.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said that “Environmentalism and global warming alarmism is challenging our very freedom” he went on to say that he didn’t see any statistical data that proved any of the claims of global warming, in fact the data showed otherwise. “I’m very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.”

The global warming industry has a firm grip on the media and allows no room for dissention. Any report or data that even remotely disproves some if the mathematical profiles created to support the warming claims are banished and held in complete contempt without any chance for rebuttal.

The scientific community knows how to get its bread buttered and they will be damned if they let a few facts put them on a diet.

That’s why at the 175th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in Chicago recently many of the topics were directly related to global warming and the research dollars involved.

Bud Ward from Yale University and Pallab Ghosh of the BBC discussed the increased need for scientific expertise in the growing newsroom coverage of global warming in a variety of areas including political coverage, economic coverage and even entertainment angles.

Stephen Schneider, a climatologist from Stanford University, urged scientists to be less equivocal in conversations with reporters to avoid any appearance that there is not a complete scientific consensus on the issue of global warming, regardless of the report data.

After Jeremy Jackson from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography discussed how eating tuna is immoral, Mark Serezze from the University of Colorado discussed the accelerating degree to which the polar ice caps are melting. Obviously Mr. Serezze spoke before the recent report showing that the data showing the acceleration has been proven false due to a recently discovered drifting in the satellite aiming used to collect the data, although I doubt it would have changed his dire warnings of global destruction and the need for additional funding for research.

A seminar was given on how global warming is causing us to become fat by forcing us to eat more soft food. This increases not only body fat but also amino acid production causing oddly shaped skulls. It was only later that it was revealed the study was done on Burmese pythons.

But probably the best science was saved for the ever expanding lore of Charles Darwin who was celebrating his 200th birthday.

Darwin’s research was unbelievably expanded as a means of justification for scientists that touted Darwinism in their studies on diet, agriculture, feminism, morality and Natural Security where evolutionary biology was used as a means of increased national security.

But my favorite scientific report came from Daniel Blumstein of UCLA who talked about how we as a nation can improve our national security through the study of marmots. “You can’t stay in your burrow all the time” he said.

When it comes to this absurd display of cash for results science and the fact that the cash is coming out of my pocket, my burrow sounds like the place I want to be. And if I come out and see my shadow it means another 10 years of global warming.

I have the data to back that up.

It doesn’t take long nowadays to figure out that we have collectively lost our freaking minds. The ever increasing craze to measure the carbon emissions on everything from cricket farts to Google internet searches has reached a new level of insanity.

It’s not so much that we as adults have chosen with our own free will to go completely bonkers that bothers me. It’s that we have now elected to turn our preschool children into little carbon counting nit wits as well.

The new president’s two girls, along with the vast majority of other Washington DC school children, enjoyed that juvenile version of Nirvana known as a snow day thanks to a historically cold winter. At the same time Al “The Sky Is Falling But First It’s Going To Burn Up” Gore was making his well rehearsed pitch to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the need to introduce a treaty to lower carbon emissions at the United Nations global conference in Copenhagen next December.

When it comes to the very stupid idea of cap and trade in carbon emissions, like the one being instigated by the new president, Al Gore is not a stupid man. Actually he is somewhat of a visionary. Not that he has a vision to save the planet, but in that he knows if he and his carbon cronies are able to convince enough people of the need to set up a carbon trade monopoly game, he can be the banker.

It’s actually the thing that dreams are made of. Create a bogus new unit of currency by developing a chic new fad, give it monetary value and then control that currency. If successful this hanging chad could be king the world, as long as the world IQ never surpasses that of a Ficus plant.

It became obvious to me that this carbon counting cult conspiracy is gaining ground when I read that Chicago will soon be home to one of the nation’s first eco-friendly daycare centers. The Little Green House is slated to open in the West Loop area this coming April. This center is part of the national Children’s Academies of America Corporation who is looking to plant these eco-babbling baby barracks all over the country.

The center’s claim to fame is in the use of non-toxic paints, PVC free toys, Energy Star appliances and an organic meal plan. They will be enrolling kids from 6 weeks to 5 years old and will be directing their activities in such a way as to mind meld the little ankle biters into a state of eco-consciousness.

First off I can’t imagine any new daycare that would use toxic paint. Second, I can’t see any daycare outside of China that would stock up on PVC material toys. Third, Energy Star appliances are basically everywhere. And finally I have seen little kids eat mud pies which are also organic. So it is not in what they are doing that makes them particularly eco-friendly, it is how they are advertising it that makes them unique.

The sad part for me is when I read the director say “It’s going to be very creative in how we tie the eco-friendly curriculum into the arts and crafts themes. We’ll do indoor gardens and go to the park and explore the parkland, not go to the swings.”

Low those many years ago in the dark ages when I was a little Big Frick we had our own eco-consciousness and energy conservation. I was constantly told to turn off the light when I left a room, close the door because we weren’t heating the whole neighborhood, don’t leave the water running, close the refrigerator door, pick up my garbage and turn off that damn TV. We made art projects out of dried leaves and sticks and planted just about every seed we came in contact with. We didn’t need to explore parklands, we explored everything, and we learned about nature and the great outdoors through scouting, before it became a homophobic taboo to be a boy scout.

Back then the backwards folks that were in charge of our well being understood that we were kids. And sometimes kids like to just swing in the swings or lie in the grass and do absolutely nothing constructive to save the planet.

It seems to me that kids today don’t have a chance. It’s gone from “Just Say No To Drugs” to “Just Say No To Everything”.

Maybe we all need to just take a minute to remember what it is to be a kid. There will be plenty of time for them to save the planet.

For the time being let’s just leave that to Superman and Wonder Woman.