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ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic. That's why a man like Hong Kong's contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today." No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street's "too-greedy-to-fail" banks....

The alliance between politicians, their supporters with agendas and the news media is an unholy union, one that does not need elaborate conspiracies to consummate. Hysteria and alarmism in the news is a business-driven matrimony and, in spite of proclamations of safeguarding the public's right to know, it has little to do with knowing the truth. For us westerners our press was supposed to be one of the main institutions that separated us from the rest of the world, made us be smug about the superiority of our political system. It was supposed to be different from totalitarian regimes where...

Haven't seen so much media-generated hysteria since forever. But it's all bull. Smoke. All of it. Every. Single. Year. 30,000 Americans are killed by this exact same Flu. Type A. How many Americans have succumbed to this one? (that's a rhetorical question) I suspect, this is all an elaborate ruse. To cover up our "dear leader's" plummeting approval numbers. Someone, has been doing some polling. That's what I think.

A new document meant to help Missouri law enforcement agencies identify militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism for some of the warning signs mentioned. The Feb. 20 report called "The Modern Militia Movement" mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature. "It seems like they want to stifle political thought," said Roger Webb, president of the University of Missouri campus Libertarians. "There are...

By James M. Taylor Calls are mounting for President Barack Obama to fire James Hansen, the controversial figure in charge of climate studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Hansen has a record of allegedly doctoring temperature data to hype his argument that global warming is a crisis. The new calls for his resignation or termination come following his appearance in a video calling for civil disobedience at a protest at a power plant in Washington, DC(click to see video). “It is plainly improper for someone on the U.S. government payroll to advocate civil disobedience on behalf of...

Yet another example of the ‘research’ masquerading as science that is used to reinforce the man-made global warming fraud. One of the difficulties the green zealots have had is that Antarctica has been not warming but cooling, with the extent of its ice reaching record levels. A few weeks ago, a study led by Professor Eric Steig caused some excitement by claiming that actually West Antarctica was warming so much that it more than made up for the cooling in East Antarctica. Warning bells should have sounded when Steig said What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using...

Mann-made science does not support the hypothesis that global warming is man-made A good scientist, like a good journalist, checks his facts, if for no other reason than to spare himself embarrassment and to immunize himself from charges that he’s casual with the truth, lazy or just plain dishonest. Michael Mann has not checked his facts. Mann’s article has two main thrusts. First, he attempts to discredit me and others who have criticized his work. Then, he attempts to defend his reputation by claims that distinguished authorities, especially the National Academy of Sciences, have endorsed his hockey stick graph. His...

Global aging, combined with plummeting birth rates, is a catastrophically dangerous menace that only a few people seem to be waking up to. You may not be familiar with terms like “global aging� and “demographic winter,� but you will be soon. I've been giving public lectures on the problem of global aging for the past 7 years or so, and my audiences are always shocked and dumbfounded as I explain how the West's ever expanding population of old people (due, thank God, to the ever-improving capabilities of bio-medical science), while a good thing in itself, will soon become a prime...

WASHINGTON – More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, based on measurements of ice weight by NASA's GRACE satellite, said NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke. The water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays, he said, and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating. NASA scientists planned...

Any guesses where Al Gore points the blame for the June floods and tornadoes that ravaged Iowa?  Yep! As reported by the Des Moines Register, the world's most famous Chicken Little told attendees of a Saturday night Democrat fundraiser in that city that the devastating floods were due "to man-made emissions causing more water to evaporate from oceans, increasing average humidity worldwide."   He went on say that: "In 66 of your 99 counties, the flood damage was truly historic. No one has ever seen a flood like this." Wrong. Then he pulled one of his favorite lies from his quiver...

Bills Force Family Out Of Home, Into Tent Parents, 3-Year-Old Daughter Staying At Campsite POSTED: 10:25 pm CDT October 1, 2008 UPDATED: 10:42 pm CDT October 1, 2008KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A local family is having such a difficult time making ends meet that they can't find the money for housing. Kathy Mankey and Brian Fears said they've hit rock bottom. They've been living out of their car and are desperate to find a place to live. "We're trying -- day to day. It's all you can do," Fears told KMBC's Jere Gish. Mankey and Fears are engaged, but...

John McCain, who has thrown himself in to negotiations for a $700 billion legislative package to address the current economic turmoil, continued to sell the proposal to voters today with a distinct populist tone and stern warnings of what congressional inaction could mean for the U.S. economy. McCain has sought to communicate the risks of doing nothing as opposed to passing the unpopular bill that failed by a 205-228 vote in the U.S. House on Monday. The Senate will take up the package tonight and both McCain and rival Barack Obama are scheduled to return to Washington, D.C., to vote...

Much has been said and written in recent days about how “The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property.” The current financial situation is surely no different. What is striking is how brazen are the attempts we are seeing to attach pet schemes to the bailout’s coattails.  For example, Legal Newsline notes that California attorney general Jerry Brown and Al Gore told a group of investors waiting for the government to make them rich in the name of global warming — that, in the words...

How much in additional taxes are you willing to pay now in order to ensure that the Earth would not be 3 degrees warmer 100 years from now (assuming the science is even possible) - $100 or $1,000 or $10,000 or more? Should the government prevent us from selling some of our body parts to allow others to live or have better lives? Are we likely to get better health care in the future with more or less government involvement? Are the advances in information technology, such as the Internet, increasing or reducing the power of governments to monitor and...

Northern Ireland environment minister Sammy Wilson is taking heat for saying environmentalists' views on global warming amount to a "hysterical psuedo-religion," the BBC reports. "Resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change, rather than King Canute-style vainly trying to stop it," Wilson said. The article states Mr Wilson said he refused to "blindly accept" the need to make significant changes to the economy to stop climate change. "The tactic used by the "green gang" is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact,"...

UN Cuts AIDS Estimates, Will Global Warming Projections Follow? As NewsBusters readers are aware, one of the positions of those not buying into the manmade global warming hysteria is that the United Nations -- whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a large part of the alarmism -- is an organization that has seen more than its share of malfeasance and corruption. The recent scandal surrounding the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program is one example, with problems that eventually plagued UNICEF another. Now, it has been revealed that the U.N. has been exaggerating the AIDS epidemic for many years. As reported [1]...

A "minor planet" with the prosaic name 2006 SQ372 is just over two billion miles from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune. But this lump of ice and rock is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II). The discovery of this remarkable object was reported today in Chicago, at an international symposium titled "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Asteroids to Cosmology." A...

In an email exchange with the editors of On Line Opinion, I have explained why I will not be contributing any further pieces to the site because it has been “captured” by climate change denialists. At the request of Graham Young I am putting my arguments into this last piece for On Line Opinion. At least, it will be my last unless and until the journal returns to the objectives it was set up to pursue. ... There I also explain why I do not presume to engage in arguments about climate science because I do not have the expertise...

McCain and Obama came to Michigan this week touting two all-too-similar energy plans. By Henry Payne Detroit — The presidential fuel follies came careening into Michigan this week, advertising two knights battling over America’s energy future. Upon closer inspection, however, the fix appears to be in: Underneath the rhetorical weaponry, both knights are wearing the same green armor. Barack Obama arrived first at Michigan State to give a typically grandiose speech outlining his plan for a “complete transformation of our economy.” The Arrogant One has been trying to make up to Michigan since he presumed a year ago to tell...

This is absolutely amazing.  I was checking out this article in the Ithaca Journal called "Climate Change 101: Positive Feedback Cycles" based on a pointer from Tom Nelson.The Journal is right to focus on feedback.  As I have written on numerous occasions, the base effects of CO2 even in the IPCC projections is minimal.  Only by assuming unbelievably high positive feedback numbers does the IPCC and other climate modelers get catastrophic warming forecasts.  Such an assumption is hard to swallow - very few (like, zero) long-term stable natural processes (like climate) are dominated by high positive feedbacks (the IPCC...

As a free nation, a democratic nation, and a global superpower, America’s fate, today more than ever, is to midwife and manage the emergence of the first world generation. Not an easy task, as technology and globalization make every surviving cultural tradition anywhere suddenly replaced or confronted by every other on this shrinking planet, and our polity grapples with it all.  It would be surprising indeed if America were not also considered a troubled nation, inflicting and incurring heartbreaking trauma every day in this imperfect world.  But America’s fate is also a stroke of exceptional luck and opportunity.The message for Americans to send the modernizing, globalizing...

IT has been a tough year for the high priests of global warming in the US. First, NASA had to correct its earlier claim that the hottest year on record in the contiguous US had been 1998, which seemed to prove that global warming was on the march. It was actually 1934. Then it turned out the world's oceans have been growing steadily cooler, not hotter, since 2003. Meanwhile, the winter of 2007 was the coldest in the US in decades, after Al Gore warned us that we were about to see the end of winter as we know it....

Are global warming alarmists encouraging children to commit suicide because their carbon footprints supposedly are harming the planet?It certainly appears so in a children's game concocted by the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Science Department, available online. 'Pigs' Should Die YoungThe game is called Planet Slayer. Using it, children can calculate their carbon footprint--how much impact their carbon emissions allegedly have on global warming. The purpose for doing so, children were told in a version of the game that was online in early June, is so they can "find out what age you should die at so you don't use more...

There is a point at which one’s contempt for the environmentalists and their allies is irredeemable. There is no longer the usual excuse that’s there’s room for argument or discussion regarding global warming. Having been labeled “deniers” for years, the sense that the end of this hoax is in sight brings no desire to forgive and forget. Recently, Dr. Roy Spencer, an atmospheric scientist who formerly worked for NASA, testified before a Senate committee. Free now to speak without the impediments of bureaucratic oversight, Dr. Spencer told the committee, “I am pleased to deliver good news from the front lines...

Note to readers who may not understand my position regarding climate change and environmentalism: I support conservation and responsible ecology and action. I do not support alarmism, pseudo science, hypocrisy concerning special interest and excessive governmental intervention into matters which a free market will easily handle much better without imposing additional and unecessary taxes. Please read this post with that in mind. I haven't taken the time to put together a round up of the Enviro-nitwit Supreme and all the other fun, so now seems like a good time. I do want to note one thing though, and that...

“I read somewhere that the sun’s getting hotter every year,” said Tom genially. “It seems that pretty soon the earth’s going to fall into the sun — or wait a minute ... it’s just the opposite — the sun is getting colder every year.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby This is the time of year that we start to get warm again.For years I called it summer, but apparently it is more than that; it is now global warming. And it turns out we all are responsible for it, or so the story goes.In another sign that we have...

".....the End of the world is already near.....As  this same End of the world is drawing nigh , many unusual things will happen-----climatic changes, terrors from heaven, unseasonable tempests, wars, famines, pestilences and earthquakes."    The quotation is from a letter sent by a very famous and influential man to a European head of state. Its author is disclosed at the end of this essay. Climatology is a science. Climatism is an ideology. Climatologists are scientists. Climatists are social or political organizers who abuse climatology in the service of ideologues. Climatology was and still is an investigation of nature. Climatism is the...

Comments and reports about global warming are getting silly and even ridiculous.  Al Gore says we have ten years left. We’re told cooling is due to warming. More rain and flooding and less rain and drought are both due to warming. More hurricanes are predicted while fewer occur. Global temperatures declined as much in the first few months of 2008 as they increased in the previous 100 plus years due to warming. Recently we were told global warming is causing an increase in kidney stones in a travesty of geographic correlation assuming cause and effect. One blogger who began recording,...

WHEN it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six metres (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world. Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 metres (80 feet), with a six-metre rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive — by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of...

My colleague Andy Revkin is doing a great job of point-by-point analysis of Al Gore’s speech today calling for America to rely entirely on carbon-free electricity within 10 years. I’m glad to see Mr. Gore discussing carbon taxes (a topic he once avoided), but I’ve got a few questions about the rest of the speech:1) Can anyone explain why Mr. Gore keeps hurting his own cause with junk science? Andy gives him a deserved smackdown for saying there “seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory.” I can understand why Mr. Gore felt he needed this sort of...

Australian doctors have published in a medical journal the case of a 17-year old held for observation, suffering the first observed case of “climate change delusion phenomenon” (CCD). It seems that he suffered from fears that “due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead to days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies”. This particular product of modern education techniques “was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood…He also…had visions of apocalyptic events”. Where ever would he get such an idea?...

The organisers’ graphic prediction on how global warming will affect La Manga has caused sales of houses in the coastal area to drop by 50 percent. MADRID - A group of real estate developers and property owners in La Manga del Mar Menor - a spit of sandy, low-lying coastal land and Murcia's premier beach resort - are threatening to take Greenpeace to court over its graphic predictions of what global warming may do to the area, which they say have caused house prices to plummet. The lawsuit, which the plaintiffs plan to present unless Greenpeace agrees to an out...

If there were a Society of Global Warming Alarmists, Bill McKibben might get kicked out for being too much of a worry wart . . . You've probably seen those phone-message forms with boxes to be checked in ascending order of urgency ranging from "FYI—no need to return call" all the way up to "the future of Western civilization hangs in the balance." We might see that last category as light-hearted exaggeration, but it's no laughing matter to McKibben. In his jeremiad in today's LA Times literally entitled "Civilization's last chance," McKibben solemnly declares that "the world looks a little...

If you’re not too concerned about global warming, you’re probably a regular American. If you think, however, that it’s on par with World War II as a threat to the nation, you’re the managing editor of Time magazine.Al Gore’s “We” ad campaign drew a parallel between fighting global warming and storming the beaches of Normandy. Then Time took the iconic photo of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima and replaced the Stars and Stripes with a tree.“[W]e say there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II to combat global warming and climate...

PARIS (AP) -- Negotiators from the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases wrapped up another round of climate talks yesterday by clashing over how deeply to cut the heat-trapping gases they put into the atmosphere. The delegates from 16 nations scheduled more talks next month in trying to produce a new climate accord. Addressing the negotiators, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned that warming is threatening food supplies and risks sparking a dozen Darfur-like conflicts among displaced, starving people around the world. He said water shortages and rivalry over farmland and fishing resources already are "having a considerable impact on security,"...

A few things came to mind about the new Al Gore ad campaign, and his appearance with wife Tipper on CBS’s 60 Minutes last night. The first was the confused nature of the claimed target of this largest ad campaign ever, at least according to the Washington Post. Gore has repeatedly insisted (and 60 Minutes reiterated the claim) that the public are overwhelmingly with him, and that it is therefore the too-timid lawmakers who must be influenced; but the ad spokesman says it is aimed at influencing the public.  They are indeed walking a fine line here, because for their...

Welcome to the Common-Sense Environmentalism Issue Suite, a comprehensive resource for people who support a common-sense approach to protecting the environment. What is Common-Sense Environmentalism?Common-sense environmentalism recognizes that almost everyone today is an environmentalist. We all want a healthy, green environment for ourselves and our families. What distinguishes common-sense environmentalism from more extreme environmental activism is a commitment to fight real environmental problems rather than imagined ones and a realization that free markets are an ally rather than an enemy of environmental stewardship.Common-sense environmentalists recognize that environmental scares are frequently unsupported by sound science and are often launched to...

Rudyard Griffiths, co-director with Patrick Luciani of The Salon Speakers Series, sent me a copy of Czech President Vaclav Klaus' address delivered at Prague Castle this week. "Future dangers will not come from the same source," said the Czech head of state, speaking at the 60th anniversary of the communist takeover of the former Czechoslovakia. "The ideology will be different. Its essence will nevertheless be identical: an attractive, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice a...

Editor's Note: We have been publishing more material than ever on the subject of climate change, for a very simple reason: The debate is not over as to the cause, the eventual severity, nor the remedies for climate change. The debate never was over, and for the mainstream press to have ever acceded to the notion that debate was over, or to condone marginalizing anyone who continued to debate, is one of the most eggregious examples of media bias in history. One should think that given what is at stake - the reorganization of our entire political and economic systems...

ITHACA — Common Council voted Wednesday to support a federal carbon tax. Council passed a resolution urging state and federal officials to pursue a federal carbon tax rather than emissions trading to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The resolution passed 9-0, with Alderwoman Nancy Schuler, D-4th, abstaining. Schuler said some clauses of the resolution were “really just too emphatic because we really don't know.” “I certainly support the concept but I had trouble with the 25 ‘whereases' as a statement,” she said. Sylvester Johnson, who is a member of the Climate Change Action Group of Central New York and largely wrote...

On May 18, NewsBusters introduced you to Kristen Byrnes, the fabulous fifteen-year-old from Maine who had torn apart many of the myths purported by the Global Warmingist-in-Chief, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore, in his schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”Now, the Precocious Ponderer from Portland is taking on the scientist that Gore relied on for much of his misinformation, James Hansen of NASA.In her recent report entitled “Houston, We Have a Problem,” Byrnes identified a serious concern with this so-called scientist that many anthropogenic global warming skeptics have been addressing for years (emphasis added throughout): James Hansen seems to have a busy life for someone...

For weather watchers, the name Joe Sobel should be a familiar one, as he has been with AccuWeather for 35 years, and is a regular guest on radio stations as well as MSNBC. With that in mind, Dr. Sobel posted an article at the AccuWeather blog Wednesday highly critical of the naming of sub-tropical storms, most recently Andrea. In his view, this practice – which is only five years old – is exaggerating the number of storms per year thereby adding to global warming alarmism Sobel began (emphasis added throughout): Well ladies and gentlemen, we have our first named storm...

A key element of the second major report on climate change being released Friday in Belgium is a chart that maps out the effects of global warming , most of them bad, with every degree of temperature rise. There's one bright spot: A minimal heat rise means more food production in northern regions of the world. However, the number of species going extinct rises with the heat, as does the number of people who may starve, or face water shortages, or floods, according to the projections in the draft report obtained by The Associated Press Some scientists are calling this...

TORONTO - A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said. The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 497 miles south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake. Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems," said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University...

After more than a dozen hurricanes battered the Atlantic Ocean last year, scientists are wondering what - if anything - might be causing stronger and more frequent storms. Some have pointed to rising ocean temperatures, brought on by global warming. Others say the upswing is simply part of a natural cycle in which hurricanes get worse for a decade or two before dying down again. Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have put forward an intriguing theory that introduces a whole new dimension to the debate. Writing today (Oct. 10, 2006) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists...

Climate change, naturally induced by tiny shifts in Earth's rotational axis and orbit, periodically wipes out species of mammals, a study published on Thursday says. Palaeontologists have long puzzled over fossil records that, remarkably, suggest mammal species tend to last around two and a half million years before becoming extinct. Climate experts and biologists led by Jan van Dam at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, overlaid a picture of species emergence and extinction with changes that occur in Earth's orbit and axis. The Earth's orbit is not a perfect circle: it is slightly elliptical, and the ellipticality itself...

In new ads, ski company says global warming could dry up snow during the next century... The Aspen Skiing Co. hopes potential customers are ready for a snow job. On Wednesday, the company unveiled a new advertising campaign for the 2006-07 season that centers around the message that snow — and skiing — will disappear around 2100 if humans don’t take drastic action to slow global warming. Three full-page ads, which show a melting snowflake imposed over Highland Bowl, will run in SKI and Outside magazines in the next few months. One ad portrays a “certificate of death” for snow....

Sept. 21, 2006 — The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has cooled significantly since 2003. The new research suggests that global warming trends are not always steady in their effects on ocean temperatures. [SNIP]Lyman said the recent cooling is not unprecedented. "While global ocean temperatures have generally increased over the past 50 years, there have also been substantial decadal decreases," he said. "Other studies have shown that a similar rapid cooling took place from 1980 to 1983. But overall, the long-term trend is warming."[SNIP]Lyman said the cause of the recent cooling is not...

Where are the Hurricanes? I blame global warming...http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1155133659.shtml Scott Kirwin Aug 9, 2006 Nearly a year ago the country was being slammed by hurricanes. As Americans suffered some claimed that the ferocity of Katrina and Rita was due to global warming. A search of Dean's World shows that this site is one of the few that argued against that idea over the course of 2005. So here we are, a year later. Where are the hurricanes? Where is the fury of Mother Nature? Where are her righteous swirls of rain and wind that shall smite the evil non-Kyoto Protocol signing...