CNN Peeing Themselves Over Chance for Katrina Repeat

And of course they demand that the GOP change their convention - perhaps turn it into a Gustav Fundraiser.

And they also want that the GOP doesn't use this to political advantage. Only CNN is allowed to do that.
Did the CNN videographer get a special pass to have an open lane while all the escapees gave way? Looks to me like the lane was wide open.

Is The Star Calling John McCain "The Son of A Nazi"

Or is this just an honest typo?

No Newfoundlanders Were Harmed in the Making of this Motion Picture

I finally broke down and agreed to watch "The Shipping News" with my sigother, and I guess the most positive thing I can say in a review is that it wasn't the worst movie I have ever seen. It's about the son of an abusive Newfoundland father who's raised in lovely Poughkeepsie, NY and returns to the Rock with an unfamiliar aunt to find his roots.
The story-line comes from the 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
But here's what I really have to say.
No Newfies!
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Any Newfoundlander in his right mind would avoid such a girlie profession like he would an northerly gale. But not even a girlie actress was cast. (Note: Gordie Pinsent was in, but he hasn't really been a Newfie for 50 years.)
So the accents were lilty English (Judy Dench), Low Scottish (Pete Postlethwaite ), Slutty Upstate New York / English high caste (Kate Blanchett), West Texas (Scott Glenn) and worst of all, Leprechaun Irish (Julianne Moore).
I'd like to see it recast with Rick Mercer in Spacey's role, Mary Walsh as the old aunt and Shaun Majunder as the headless corpse that scares the bejeezus out of our hero.
Where was Danny Millions when you needed him - at least he could add a little real Newfenglish. Dere wasn't a B'y, Moy Son, or chucklehead in the 'ole flick, Boy Gad, moy Son. Lord Tunderin'.

This is NOT a Monty Python Skit

India Tells Pro & Anti Kyotoistas to Buzz Off

And South African Engineering Columnist Agrees

India has issued a report challenging global warming fears. This is dramatic. The Indian Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change said that India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth in order to cut gases.
Referring to claimed changes in climate attributed to human activity, the report declares: "No firm link between the documented charges described below and warming due to an anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."
The report goes on to state: "It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people . . . India is determined that its per capita greenhouse-gas emissions will at no point exceed those of developed countries."
The Australian Herald noted that this declaration "means India won't stop its per capita emissions (now at 1,02 t) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now at 20 t)."
This Indian report was music to my ears. I have constantly said that developing countries cannot afford to let their school children do homework at night by candle light rather than by electric light, in an effort to save on electricity production, on the basis of the flimsy evidence presented in favour of man-induced climate change.
So we must ask ourselves: what is the main source of these claims that the Indian report referred to? The answer is that the claims mainly originate from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, commonly referred to as the IPCC.
Note the term 'governmental' – this is important. In July 1986, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) established the IPCC as an organ of the UN.
The IPCC's key personnel, and lead authors, were appointed by governments. In addition, the IPCC regulations state that its most important documents, its Summaries for Policymakers (SPM) documents, have to be approved by UN member governments.
So when the SPMs are released to the public and the media, they are ‘government approved'.
From the start, the IPCC was more of a political entity rather than a scientific one. Frequently, the public is told of the thousands of scientists whose work forms part of the IPCC output. This is true. By far the majority of the scientists are good, competent folks. I know a few of them personally. But it is not their work that the public sees – the pubic is given the filtered version, which is published in the SPMs, and these SPMs are voted on, line by line, by representatives of the UN member governments.
The IPCC's second assessment report, of 1996, stated: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." In fact, the scientists never said this; they said that it was too early to tell. The third assessment report of the IPCC, in 2001, used the now infamous Hockey Stick graph, which purported to show that there had been a steep rise in global temperature during the twentieth century.
This graph was later shown to be wrong, and the IPCC's fourth report, of 2007, no longer uses it.
This should make people think a bit about government representatives voting on what version of the science they want the public to see. Many scientists, like me, have been irritated by all this, particularly when a result can be the retardation of the economic growth of the world's poor people. A number of the scientists involved in the IPCC work have quit very publicly, over the years, stating that what they actually determined scientifically and what was subsequently fed to the media differed greatly.
In parallel to all this, there has been a substantial, but rather silent, undercurrent of scientists who have been upset by this distortion of the truth.
A recent result of the existence of this agitated scientific bloc has been the establishment of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. This group was activated in early 2007, and was formalised at a climate workshop in Vienna in April 2007.
It is interesting to note that the president of the Czech Republic, Dr Vaclav Klaus, stated at the UN climate conference on September 24, 2007, that it would help the debate on climate change if the current monopoly and one-sidedness of the scientific debate over climate change by the IPCC were eliminated.
The NIPCC is a collection of eminent independent scientists directed by Dr S Fred Singer, the first director of the US Weather Satellite Service. He subsequently retired as chief scientist of the US Department of Transport. The founding core of scientists of the NIPCC came from a dozen countries, and all are totally independent. They state that their primary concern is the dissemination of scientific truth.
In accurately formulated scientific documents, the NIPCC rejects many of the claims of the IPCC, particularly the notion that man-induced climate change is upon us, and is causing great harm.
Keep your eyes open for good sense from the NIPCC.

Has the IPCC exaggerated adverse impact of Global Warming on human societies?

Source
Yes, Certainly!
Let me explain: While reviewing the IPCC WGII (Working Group II) Chapter “Assessment of observed changes and responses in natural and managed systems” (Chpt.1, WGII IPCC, 2007) as an external reviewer, I felt time and time again that there were areas where the chapter authors highlighted adverse impact of GW (Global Warming) on human societies, while downplaying possible beneficial impacts.

The IPCC authors referred to several publications which projected adverse impacts while ignoring many excellent studies which have questioned these projections. Throughout the text of this important chapter of WGII, there were many instances where adverse impact was highlighted or exaggerated, while possible beneficial impacts were totally ignored.

Further, IPCC authors while assessing observed changes in natural systems chose to highlight only those changes which support the GW hypothesis while completely ignoring other observed changes which did not conform to the human-induced GW hypothesis and change. Such cherrypicking of observed climate change to bolster claims of human-caused GW and climate change is disingenuous and does not help understand the real cause of how andwhy the earth’s climate has changed in historical and geological times.

A detailed reading of the Chapter left me with an impression that the deleterious impact of GW on human societies was so imminent and overwhelming that unless something is done right away (to curb the warming), human societies world over are about to perish!

Lomborg Response to Climate Crime Against Stupidity

My Point Form Summary of This

• Oliver Tickell writes that a global warming causing a 4C temperature increase by the end of the century would be a "catastrophe" and the beginning of the "extinction" of the human race. This is simply silly.
  
  
• Tickell tells us how the 80m sea-level rise would wipe out all the world's coastal infrastructure and much of the world's farmland – "undoubtedly" causing billions to die. But to cause billions to die, it would require the surge to occur within a single human lifespan. (Ed. how about in a single day? He assumes humans are too dumb to move inland when the water rises.)
  
  
• benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs (the benefit is about 0.25% of global GDP)
  
  
• Global warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070, when the damages will begin to outweigh the benefits, reaching a total damage cost equivalent to about 3.5% of GDP by 2300.
  
  
• the IPCC expects the average person on earth to be 1,700% richer by the end of this century.
  
  
• Tickell finds that current climate efforts like Kyoto have been "miserable failures", which is true, but makes it seem rather odd that he thinks much-more-of-the-same will suddenly be great policy.

HT to Fred