The Water-Repelling Pundit With The Glossy Shine

I get excited whenever I see a new column by Alan Caruba, probably because I tend to mistake his byline for a headline, and always think it's going to be something about the islands of the Caribbean, or perhaps the "queen of waxes."  Alas, neither subject ever comes up, and by the end of the piece I'm instead reminded that Alan's career has largely been devoted to providing positive PR spin for various pesticides, because I find myself feeling much as I did that one time, during California's Ride of the Valkyries-like helicopter assault on the Mediterranean Fruit Fly infestation, when I walked home late and got doused with malathion.

The global warming hoax is now killing people

By Friday, February 10th, an estimated 500 Europeans had died from the freezing weather gripping the continent. This is the price they and British citizens are paying for embracing the global warming hoax, spending billions for wind power when they should have been building coal-fired and other sources of energy to heat their homes and businesses.

Well, neither of the articles Alan links to blame the deaths on wind power, although they do mention, "The increasing toll of hypothermia over the past five years coincides with a surge in energy costs, especially gas prices which have gone up by 40 per cent."  This seems counter-intuitive, since gas and coal, unlike wind, are plentiful and inexhaustible resources which should only become less expensive as their use becomes more widespread.  But, as we shall see, victims of seasonable but extreme European weather froze to death directly as a result of windmills, just like Frankenstein's monster, except he burned to death.  (Spoiler alert: according to eyewitness Una O'Connor, he actually didn't)

I and others have been warning for years that the Earth has been cooling since 1998

Somebody should take it off the window ledge.  If we leave it out there much longer a raccoon might get it.

and that the planet is on the cusp of a new ice age because the average length of an interglacial period of warmth between such ages is now coming to an end after the passage of some 11,500 years.

According to Wikipedia, which seems like an apt source of rebuttal to Alan's boilerplate from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, "The Earth has been in an interglacial period known as the Holocene for more than 11,000 years. It was conventional wisdom that 'the typical interglacial period lasts about 12,000 years,' but this has been called into question recently. For example, an article in Nature argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years. Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now, even in absence of human-made global warming (see Milankovitch cycles)."

For those with an incomplete grasp of the geophysical sciences, "Milankovitch cycles" refers to the brand endorsed by Lance Armstrong.

All aspects of global warming legislation and spending programs must be utterly reversed if we are not going to see huge losses of life and the disruption of entire economies.

Alan is like a trauma surgeon in an ER, except that instead of giving the patient oxygen and starting an IV of Ringer's Lactate and D5W while yelling "Stat!", he blows cigarette smoke in her face and gives her a shot of DDT.

The Ottawa Citizen published an Agence France Presse article on Friday reporting that "Thick ice closed vast swaths of the Danube on Thursday, crippling shipping on Europe's busiest waterway, as the death toll from bitter cold across the continent rose...as it has every day for nearly two weeks." The report noted that "Navigation was impossible or restricted in Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria, as ice covered the river or formed dangerous floes in shipping lanes."

No shipping means no delivery of coal and oil and no shipping of food and other necessities.

Yes, extreme weather, such as snow, ice, and sand storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, torrential rains and floods, can all play havoc with the orderly distribution of goods.  Sadly, the predictions by climate scientists that anthropogenic global climate change will result in extreme weather becoming increasingly common were clearly off base, because it's happening a lot quicker than they expected.  I'm going to go disable my catalytic converter just to display my contempt for their imprecise computer modeling skills.

 Europe is freezing over as the United States has been experiencing an unusually mild winter thus far.

Cold winter in Europe = global warming theorists are wrong!  Warm winter in U.S. = global warming theorists are wrong!

That, too, is likely to yield to the increased cooling of the planet and then, maybe, Americans will realize the threat to their lives that the closing of coal-fired plants, instigated by the Environmental Protection Agency, really means.

If only the Neanderthals had been less hamstrung by government red tape, they could have developed a bronze-smelting industry that would have jump-started global deglaciation, and today, people in Elko, Nevada would enjoy beachfront property and cool ocean breezes, while Florida would be a sandbar, but only at high tide.

England, now gripped by foolish green notions of renewable energy, has covered itself with wind turbines, despoiling its countryside and coasts while proving unreliable and incapable of meeting its energy needs.

"Renewable energy sources provided for 6.7 per cent of the electricity generated in the United Kingdom in 2009, rising to 9.6% in the second quarter of 2011."  So I don't think anyone expects them to replace other forms of energy generation.  In fact, Britain "plans to open four new [nuclear] plants in the UK by 2017."

And as everybody knows, while this is an eyesore:

 This is a delight to the senses:

Especially if you're a Jayne Mansfield fan.

In Europe, other news organizations reported that "Many of the dead were homeless people, who literally froze to death as the temperatures dropped to minus 50 degrees in some parts of the continent. Their bodies were found in the streets buried under snow, in rivers, and in doorways.

I suppose developing programs that give people an alternative to sleeping on the sidewalk might be one solution, but since Alan hates not only windmills, but also homeless shelters, subsidized housing, unemployment insurance, and all forms of welfare, the only way to keep our thoroughfares from becoming cluttered with frozen corpses, like the Siege of Leningrad, is a massive industrial mobilization to Pollute Our Way to the Perfect Temperature.

Writing in a Turkish newspaper, the Hurriyet Daily News, Sophie Quintin Adali, an analyst for a project of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, said, "As if the debt crisis weren't bad enough news, the climate freeze sweeping across Europe is wreaking havoc by severely disrupting travel, business and people's lives. Local authorities, indeed whole countries, are caught poorly prepared." Turkey is experiencing record snowfall and low temperatures.

It's the fault of those lying bastards at the EPA that Turkey doesn't have enough snowplows.

"The lack of readiness should come as no surprise because for decades the sensationalist message of global warming has dominated the public area," said Ms. Adali.

Emphasis in original.  Just in case it wasn't obvious from the name, "The Atlas Economic Research Foundation is a nonprofit organization connecting a global network of more than 400 free-market organizations in over 80 countries to the ideas and resources needed to advance the cause of liberty."  So while they clearly have an axe to grind, it's not political -- they just need to chop down a forest.

We have not built a single new nuclear plant in America since 1978.

And in the wake of the tsunami-induced meltdown in Japan, this is the perfect time to approve additional nuclear power plants, especially here in California, because ever since first seeing The Road Warrior at an impressionable age, it's been my dream to one day outrun mutants in an irradiated wasteland.

EPA rules are forcing the closure of coal-fired plants throughout the nation.

Well, that's part of it: "Two factors have made it easier for utilities to shut old coal plants in recent years. Power demand has been weakening in recent years because of the slow economy and energy efficiency programs. And natural gas prices, which have fallen to decade-low levels in recent weeks, have allowed utilities to switch from coal to natural gas without impacting customer bills. Meanwhile, demand from China and elsewhere has driven up the price of coal."

 The national grid for the distribution of electricity is in need of upgrades.

This is absolutely true, and something Al Gore frequently harps upon (so Alan, if you and the former Vice President are ever trapped in a glacier together, you'll have something to chat about until you're eventually thawed out and eaten by Siberians with a side of Mammoth).  Of course, the grid just distributes the electricity.  It doesn't care whether it came from a coal or natural gas-fired plant, a hydro-electric or geo-thermal source, solar radiation, or human beings who are trapped in a computer generated world and harvested by malevolent machines for their body heat.

The nation's policies are controlled by the most environmentally insane administration in its history, wasting billions on so-called green energy. Its new budget raises taxes and proposes a trillion-dollar deficit without any significant effort to cut the spending that has left this and future generations in debt while the price of gas soars to new heights.

By Alan's standards, I'd say Nixon's was the most "environmentally insane administration," since the EPA didn't even exist until he came along.  Still, the fact that natural gas and oil are finite resources, but Alan loathes the very notion of "renewable energy" makes me think his column is really addressing a larger issue.  Why is he so determined to stop policies that might prevent, or at least mitigate, catastrophic global climate change?  Well, he's 75 years old next October, and I think he looked in the mirror one day, accepted the inevitable fact of his own mortality, and decided that if he had to go, he was taking the Earth down with him!

America and the rest of the world have been horribly deceived by the United Nations Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel that continues to drive the global warming hoax. The lying scientists who got on the global warming gravy train, the politicians that embraced it, and the media that misled millions are all culpable, all responsible.

This is the part of the scientists' scam I've never quite understood.  How much money really is there to be made in forecasting a decrease in Arctic sea ice, or testifying on behalf of regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions?  If I had a Ph.D and wanted to ride the scientific gravy train to riches and bitches, I'd investigate impotence and get my name on the patent for a new erectile dysfunction drug Big Pharma could roll out right after Viagra goes generic, because there's a lot more money to be made from boners than polar bears.

They should be driven from office, defunded, and chased through the streets like villagers in pursuit of Frankenstein.

So the villagers who chased Frankenstein with torches and pitchforks were also being chased?  Presumably by other villagers who were outraged that the first villagers' torches -- while smoky -- weren't producing enough chlorofluorocarbons to keep the Danube from freezing.

It's like a Benny Hill sketch written by Americans for Prosperity.

People are freezing to death in their homes and in the streets. What will it take to drive a stake into the heart of the global warming monster?

Perhaps the people with homes could invite the homeless people inside, then they could all huddle and share body warmth.  But if that's a little too egalitarian, Alan, then I have, if not exactly good news, then at least a ray of hope to offer.  The same Ottawa Citizen  article you link to ends this way:

While many in Europe were fed up with the bitter cold, residents in the Netherlands were disappointed with a slight warming in that country that resulted in a legendary iceskating race along canals being cancelled.

The race has not been run since 1997.

So apparently there's one man who can turn back the new Ice Age:  Hans Brinker.