Valentine bouquets 'are bad for the planet'
2/10/2007
The Valentine's Day bouquet has become the latest bête noire among environmental campaigners.
Latest Government figures show that the flowers that make up the average bunch have flown 33,800 miles to reach Britain. (How could that be? The earth is only 25,000 miles around...)
Environmentalists warned that "flower miles" could have serious implications on climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes.
Andrew Sims, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation, said: "Air freighting flowers half way round the world contributes to global warming...You can argue the planes would be flying anyway but the amount of greenhouse gases pumped out depends on the weight of the cargo."
...The figures also revealed that imports of roses from Ethiopia have grown from zero to 130 tons a year since 2003.
Kenya is the second biggest exporter of flowers after the Netherlands, followed by Colombia and Spain.
In total, Britain imports more than £315 million of flowers, with the typical Briton spending £39 a year on them.
"That's very little when you think what we spend on CDs, coffee and even lipstick," said a spokesman for the Flowers and Plants Association.
He said the boom in Third World flowers would help poorer countries to build schools and boost the economy.
(Who cares about those people in the Third World? We must reduce our carbon footprint at any cost, at least according to Al Gore…)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/10/nbouquet10.xml
Winter storm cools Valentine's ardor
Wed Feb 14,
CHICAGO - Winter iced romance across the northeastern United States on Wednesday as a Valentine's Day storm disrupted the annual hearts and flowers festival from the Midwest to the Atlantic shore.
"I'm afraid I'll go out of business. I have $38,000 worth of flowers, but I've only sold $7,000 worth," said Karen Pell of Flowerama, a florist shop in snowy Indianapolis...
...For some, dining by candle light was a cold necessity, not a romantic option. Power companies said 100,000 customers were left without electricity from Virginia to New Jersey, and outages were reported in Ohio.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2007-02-14T175411Z_01_N13159180_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-WEATHER.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
SAVE IT FOR A WARMER DAY
2/14/2007 Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area cancelling screening of Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' because of a snowstorm...
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Read the UN's report on the 10 most polluted places on Earth. None in the US, a couple in China, 3 or 4 in Russia.
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HEARING ON 'WARMING OF PLANET' CANCELLED BECAUSE OF ICE STORM...
Feb 13 2007
The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?”
http://drudgereport.com/flash8.htm
We may be living in cold, historic times
The Roanoke Times
February 14, 2007
...Through Monday, Roanoke's average temperature for February was 29.2 degrees. If the month had ended Monday, this would be the coldest February on record at Roanoke...
...We're nearly halfway through the month on a pace to challenge the record for coldest February. And the upcoming weather pattern might give that record a chance of coming to fruition...
...So we will be nearly two-thirds through the month by early next week with temperatures quite likely still averaging below 30 for the month. The Arctic pattern is likely to relax next week, but even average cold would keep us within striking distance of a record cold month...
...But as of yet, this extreme cold snap has had little snow to show for it outside of last week's quick thump. The repeated Arctic air masses have crushed storm systems trying to move through them...
http://www.roanoke.com/weather/wb/wb/xp-104449
Study: Glacier melting can be variable
Feb 13
BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 13 -- A U.S. study suggests two of Greenland's largest glaciers are melting at variable rates and not at an increasing trend.
The study, led by Ian Howat, a researcher with the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, shows the glaciers shrank dramatically and dumped twice as much ice into the sea during a period of less than a year between 2004 and 2005.
But then, fewer than two years later, they returned to near their previous rates of discharge.
Howat says such variability during such a short time underlines the problem in assuming glacial melting and sea level rise will necessarily occur at a steady upward trajectory.
"Our main point is that the behavior of these glaciers can change a lot from year to year, so we can’t assume to know the future behavior from short records of recent changes," he said…
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/13/upiUPI-20070213-100336-9529R.html
A Skeptic's Take on Global Warming
Human Events ^ | 02/14/2007
Timothy Ball is no wishy-washy skeptic of global warming. The Canadian climatologist, who has a Ph.D. in climatology from the University of London and taught at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years, says that the widely propagated “fact” that humans are contributing to global warming is the “greatest deception in the history of science.”
Ball has made no friends among global warming alarmists by saying that global warming is caused by the sun, that global warming will be good for us and that the Kyoto Protocol “is a political solution to a nonexistent problem without scientific justification."
Needless to say, Ball strongly disagrees with the findings of the latest report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which on Feb. 2 concluded that it is “very likely” that global warming is the result of human activity.
The mainstream media would have us believe that the science of global warming is now settled by the latest IPCC report. Is it true?
Timothy Ball: No. It’s absolutely false. As soon as people start saying something’s settled, it’s usually that they don’t want to talk about it anymore. They don’t want anybody to dig any deeper. It’s very, very far from settled. In fact, that’s the real problem. We haven’t been able to get all of the facts on the table. The IPCC is a purely political setup.
(Excerpt) Read more at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19409
‘Blame cosmic rays not CO2 for warming up the planet’
The impact of cosmic rays on the climate could be greater than scientists suspect after experiments showed they may have a pivotal role in cloud formation.
Researchers have managed to replicate the effect of cosmic rays on the aerosols in the atmosphere that help to create clouds. Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist in Denmark, said the experiments suggested that man’s influence on global warming might be rather less than was supposed by the bulk of scientific opinion.
Cosmic rays — radiation, or particles of energy, from stars, which bombard the Earth — can create electrically charged ions in the atmosphere that act as a magnet for water vapour, causing clouds to form.
Dr Svensmark suggests that the Sun, at a historically high level of activity, is deflecting many of the cosmic rays away from Earth and thus reducing the cloud cover.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1368920.ece
Global Hot Air Part I
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute
February 13, 2007
…Back in the 1970s, the environmental hysteria was about the dangers of a new ice age. This hysteria was spread by many of the same individuals and groups who are promoting today's hysteria about global warming…
It is not just the sky that is falling. Government money is falling on those who seek grants to study global warming and produce "solutions" for it. But that money is not as likely to fall on those skeptics in the scientific community who refuse to join the stampede.
There are all kinds of scientists, from chemists to nuclear physicists to people who study insects, volcanoes, and endocrine glands -- none of whom is an expert on weather or climate, but all of whom can be listed as scientists, to impress people who don't scrutinize the list any further. That ploy has already been used.
Then there are genuine scientific experts on weather and climate. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a report on global warming back in 2001 with a very distinguished list of such experts listed. The problem is that not one of those very distinguished scientists actually wrote the report -- or even saw it before it was published.
One of those very distinguished climate scientists -- Richard S. Lindzen of MIT -- publicly repudiated the conclusions of that report, even though his name had been among those used as window dressing on the report. But the media may not have told you that...
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/02/13/global_hot_air
Global Hot Air: Part II
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute
February 14, 2007 Read the article at:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/02/14/global_hot_air_part_ii
New York Town May Have Hit Snow Record
Feb 12 (note: two days ago)
REDFIELD, N.Y. -- The snow just won't stop. Intense lake-effect snow squalls that buried communities along eastern Lake Ontario for nine straight days diminished Sunday _ then started up again early Monday.
Unofficially, the squalls have dumped 12 feet, 2 inches of snow at Redfield. If accurate, that would break the state record of 10 feet, 7 inches of snow that fell in nearby Montague over seven days ending Jan. 1, 2002, said Steve McLaughlin, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Buffalo.
Midwest Storm Hits Northeast As Blizzard
Feb 14
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Sleet stung the faces of pedestrians and snow and ice coated windshields and streets Wednesday as the Valentine's Day blizzard shut down schools and air travel and turned highways into skating rinks.
Hundreds of thousands of people had lost electrical service in the cold weather. At least 11 deaths were blamed on the huge storm system.
Thousands of schools were closed in states from Maine to Kentucky, some in the Midwest for a second day, and in Washington the federal government decided to open offices two hours late...
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/14/D8N9JF7O1.html
City to Open Arabic Public School in Brooklyn
(While we are a melting pot of cultures that use to mean that everyone eventually assimilated and became Americans. How much assimilation do you think will happen with Arabic schools… we’ve surrendered as a nation…)
2/14/2007
The Department of Education says that it will open a public school next fall dedicated to Arabic language and culture.
The Khalil Gibran International Academy is one of 40 new schools that will their debut in the city next September.
Education officials say that although half the classes at the school will be taught in Arabic, they want to enroll a diverse student body.
The school is set to open in Brooklyn
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=66778
Utah gunman, 18, was Muslim from Bosnia
The 18-year-old gunman who killed five people in a crowded Utah shopping mall was a Bosnian Muslim refugee who was prepared to kill many more, say investigators…
David & Karen Bennett <><
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
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