Where's the Global Warming??? Hmm...

Unusually Slow Melt at Glacier National Park
(Does Algore know about this?)
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Hikers in Flipflops Encounter Deep Snow on Glacier's Trails
By Michael Jamison, The Billings-Gazette, Missoulian, July 14, 2008
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/07/14/news/state/39-flipflops.txt

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK - The Fourth of July had long come and gone, summer sun was pushing temperatures into the 90s, and Susan Clarke was cursing her footwear.

"I should have worn boots," the traveler from Massachusetts said. "I should have worn winter boots. But all I have are my tennies."

Clarke's tennies - white Adidas with pink laces - were soaked, as were her feet inside. And the laces were frozen just a bit, as were her feet inside.

Because this July, hiking the high country of Glacier National Park means treading the snow. "What I'm trying to figure out is, do I believe it's the eighth of July and not the eighth of June?"

So wondered park ranger Doug Follett, who for 50 years has worked these mountain trails.

Around him, people were slipping and sliding and sledding their way down the popular Hidden Lake Trail atop Logan Pass. Some wore sneakers, some hiking boots. A few wore ski boots, their skis strapped to their backs, and a few more wore flip-flops.

"We had no clue it would be like this," said Nancy Normand, who was visiting from Oregon. "I can't believe all this snow. It's pretty incredible for the middle of July."

Dawson Ingram came from Louisiana to fish for trout, but after slogging over snow for most of an hour he gazed down on the lake "all frozen over. Just ice everywhere. I guess it's not a normal July."

But that, Follet said, raises a very interesting question: What, exactly, is normal?

"I wouldn't call this year normal," the veteran ranger said, "but I wouldn't call it abnormal, either. We've had some snow up here in the past, as I recall."

The problem, in fact, isn't really snow at all, but lack of melt.

Slow melt

"It's been an exceptional melt year, not an exceptional snow year," said Jack Potter. "The total snowfall wasn't that impressive, but it just didn't melt out. It's really persisted."

For decades, Potter was in charge of Glacier Park's trail system, back in the days "when there was much more effort into shoveling out trails."

That history, he said, tracks back to the 1930s, and right on into the 1970s with shovels and even explosives in the backcountry.

But the more they shoveled, the more they dug into diminishing returns. All that work, Potter said, often didn't do much to speed trail openings, which were largely driven by Mother Nature's melt.

"Then with budget constraints," he said, "we backed off and backed off through the 1980s and '90s, and now it's a much more focused effort."

Focused on short plugs of snow that block much longer trails.

They might put some serious muscle behind brief sections of snow-choked trail leading to Sperry Chalet, or up to Ptarmigan Tunnel, or through the Ahern Drift, and certainly on the popular Highline Trail, but for the most part, Potter said, the many miles of Glacier's high trails must be allowed to melt out.

The shovels, he said, have been replaced by signs warning hikers to carry ice axes and wear crampons.

What work is done to lift winter's weight is based not on calendar dates, he said, but on conditions. Is a short stretch of snow blocking a longer trail? Can a few days' work buy a much longer hiking season? Is a popular destination snowbound?

Some argue trail crews should treat the backcountry like plow crews do Going-to-the-Sun Road, working overtime to carve a path through. Others argue the backcountry is no place for explosives and snowblowers.

And the reality is there's no real budget for backcountry snow removal, anyway. There used to be a backcountry cabin staffed with trail shovelers up near Gunsight Lake. They used to use two dozen cases of explosives a year to clear the Grinnell Glacier Trail. Those days, Potter said, are fiscal history.

Winter in July

A virtual tour of park trails, reviewed at Glacier's informational Web site, tells today's story. Up at Stoney Indian Campground, expect "winter conditions" right into early August. From there to the pass above are "hazardous conditions. Steep snow slopes. Ice axe and crampons recommended."

On the Grinnell Glacier Trail "very steep and hazardous snow fields exist along with undercutting snow bridges. Ice axe, crampons, and the ability to use them are critical."

At Otokami Lake, rangers warn the "campground (is) unrecognizable and covered by five feet of snow."

Triple Divide Pass has "numerous very treacherous snowbanks," and at Two Medicine Pass, the trail is so buried rangers warn a "map (is) recommended to get there."

Six feet of white persists at Sperry Chalet, and nearly that at Granite Park Chalet.

And back up on Logan Pass, where Susan Clarke's tennies finally have forced her retreat, the Highline Trail remains closed, despite early explosives work. Crews hope to open the route by mid-month, but additional blasting is on hold now that cars are motoring beneath.

The good news, Potter said, is "we're into the heat of the summer now, and it's melting really fast." Out in the open, where the snow's not consolidated by avalanches, it can melt a foot and a half a day, he said.

Which is good news for Ken and Danna Silver, of Spokane, who came ready to hike. They were on the Hidden Lake Trail, where the sign at the trailhead was at "ground level."

Of course, the "ground level" was snowpack four feet deep, which put trail signs at ankle height.

"It's fun, though," Danna said. "I should have brought my YakTrax, but it's fun anyway."

Which is exactly what ranger Follett's been saying all along. From his perch atop a bare rock at Logan Pass, he can see a string of hikers stretching out toward the alpine horizon, sneakers and ski boots and flip-flops making their way through this last of winter.

"Look at all those people, up there in the snow on that steep sidehill," Follett said. "It's just one more example of the kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience you can have in Glacier Park, just with a short hike. They're making some memories up there, that's what they're doing. They're living on Mother Nature's terms."

Which, of course, is exactly the point of a place like Glacier Park, even if the trail you'd hoped to hike is closed beneath snow in the middle of July.

"You have lots of options," would-be fisherman Ingram said. "If you can't hike one trail, hike on another. There's plenty of places to go."

Especially for him, because this Louisiana man remembered to bring his boots.

17-Year-old Boy Has Global Warming Delusion...

Global Warming Fearmongers Causing New psychotic Delusion
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Doomed to a Fatal Delusion over Climate Change
By Andrew Bolt, The Herald-Sun, Australia, July 9, 2008
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23991257-25717,00.html

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".

"A 17-year-old man 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."

(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)

"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."

But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What's scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this "climate change delusion", too.

Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: "If we do not begin reducing the nation's levels of carbon pollution, Australia's economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands."

And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd's guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: "Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . ."

Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd's next campaign slogan?

Of course, we can laugh at this -- and must -- but the price for such folly may soon be your job, or at least your cash.

Rudd and Garnaut want to scare you into backing their plan to force people who produce everything from petrol to coal-fired electricity, from steel to soft drinks, to pay for licenses to emit carbon dioxide -- the gas they think is heating the world to hell.

The cost of those licenses, totaling in the billions, will then be passed on to you through higher bills for petrol, power, food, housing, air travel and anything else that uses lots of gassy power. In some countries they're even planning to tax farting cows, so there's no end to the ways you can be stung.

Rudd hopes this pain will make you switch to expensive but less gassy alternatives, and -- hey presto -- the world's temperature will then fall, just like it's actually done since the day Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth.

But you'll have spotted already the big flaw in Rudd's mad plan -- one that confirms he and Garnaut really do have delusions.

The truth is Australia on its own emits less than 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide. Any savings we make will make no real difference, given that China (now the biggest emitter) and India (the fourth) are booming so fast that they alone will pump out 42 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases by 2030.

Indeed, so fast are the world's emissions growing -- by 3.1 per cent a year thanks mostly to these two giants -- that the 20 per cent cuts Rudd demands of Australians by 2020 would be swallowed up in just 28 days. That's how little our multi-billions of dollars in sacrifices will matter.

And that's why Rudd's claim that we'll be ruined if we don't cut Australia's gases is a lie. To be blunt.

Ask Rudd's guru. Garnaut on Friday admitted any cuts we make will be useless unless they inspire other countries to do the same -- especially China and India: "Only a global agreement has any prospect of reducing risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels."

So almost everything depends on China and India copying us. But the chances of that? A big, round zero.

A year ago China released its own global warming strategy -- its own Garnaut report -- which bluntly refused to cut its total emissions.

Said Ma Kai, head of China's powerful State Council: "China does not commit to any quantified emissions-reduction commitments . . . our efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of economic growth."

In fact, we had to get used to more gas from China, not less: "It is quite inevitable that during this (industrialization) stage, China's energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be quite high."

Last month, India likewise issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change, and also rejected Rudd-style cuts.

The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases.

"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."

The plan's only real promise was in fact a threat: "India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries."

Gee, thanks. That, of course, means India won't stop its per capita emissions (now at 1.02 tons) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now 20 tons). Given it has one billion people, that's a promise to gas the world like it's never been gassed before.

So is this our death warrant? Should this news have you seeing apocalyptic visions, too?

Well, no. What makes the Indian report so interesting is that unlike our Ross Garnaut, who just accepted the word of those scientists wailing we faced doom, the Indian experts went to the trouble to check what the climate was actually doing and why.

Their conclusion? They couldn't actually find anything bad in India that was caused by man-made warming: "No firm link between the documented (climate) changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."

In fact, they couldn't find much change in the climate at all.

Yes, India's surface temperature over a century had inched up by 0.4 degrees, but there had been no change in trends for large-scale droughts and floods, or rain: "The observed monsoon rainfall at the all-India level does not show any significant trend . . ."

It even dismissed the panic Al Gore helped to whip up about melting Himalayan glaciers: "While recession of some glaciers has occurred in some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent across the entire mountain chain. It is, accordingly, too early to establish long-term trends, or their causation, in respect of which there are several hypotheses."

Nor was that the only sign that India's Council on Climate Change had kept its cool while our Rudd and Garnaut lost theirs.

For example, the Indians rightly insisted nuclear power had to be part of any real plan to cut emissions. Rudd and Garnaut won't even discuss it.

The Indians also pointed out that no feasible technology to trap and bury the gasses of coal-fired power stations had yet been developed "and there are serious questions about the cost as well (as) permanence of the CO2 storage repositories".

Rudd and Garnaut, however, keep offering this dream to make us think our power stations can survive their emissions trading scheme, when state governments warn they may not.

In every case the Indians are pragmatic where Rudd and Garnaut are having delusions -- delusions about an apocalypse, about cutting gases without going nuclear, about saving power stations they'll instead drive broke.

And there's that delusion on which their whole plan is built -- that India and China will follow our sacrifice by cutting their throats, too.

So psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old tipped over the edge by global warming fearmongers?

Pray that their next patients will be two men whose own delusions threaten to drive our whole economy over the edge as well.

Join Andrew on blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt

SHAZZAM!!! It is NOT all melting up there??? Hmm...

Maybe Greenland Isn't Melting After All - Says NYT
By Noel Sheppard, News Busted, July 3, 2008
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/07/03/nyt-maybe-greenland-isnt-melting-after-all

For years, climate alarmists in the media have loved showing video footage of Greenland glaciers slipping into the ocean in order to evoke feelings of global warming gloom and doom in the citizenry.

On Friday, the journal Science is publishing a seventeen year study of Greenland's ice sheet that flatly contradicts all such hysterical reports and claims.

In fact, the paper concludes that such melting is a normal summertime event, and that when looked at over a longer period of time, there has been little change in the ice sheets in this region, and even possibly a slowing in glacial movement.

Imagine that.

Somewhat surprisingly, the New York Times' Andrew C. Revkin appears to be the first to report some of the findings (emphasis added):

[A] new Dutch study of 17 years of satellite measurements of ice movement in western Greenland concludes that the speedup of the ice is a transient summertime phenomenon, with the overall yearly movement of the grinding glaciers not changing, and actually dropping slightly in some places, when measured over longer time spans.

The work, the authors and other experts caution, does not mean that more widespread surface melting could not eventually destabilize vast areas of the world’s second-largest ice storehouse. But for the moment, the study, which is being published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, throws into question the notion that abrupt ice losses in Greenland are nigh.

“The positive-feedback mechanism between melt rate and ice velocity appears to be a seasonal process that may have only a limited effect on the response of the ice sheet to climate warming over the next decades,” said the paper.

If the findings in this study prove accurate, one of the cornerstones of the global warming myth will have been completely debunked.

As such, I'm sure this will be headline and front-page news all weekend long once this paper is officially published. And, I imagine climate alarmists like Nobel Laureate Al Gore and NASA's James Hansen will not only be asked to comment about these new revelations, but will also be available for interviews with curious media members in the days ahead.

As this will likely not be the case, readers should keep an eye on NewsBusters for more details as they come available.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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CHECK THIS OUT!!!

Excellent 20/20 article featuring Jon Stossel raising important questions about “man-caused global warming…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNIgzZm66bE

Independence Day... They Counted the Cost, How About YOU?

DUTY!  HONOR!  EQUALITY!  SERVICE!  FREEDOM!  JUSTICE!  LIBERTY!

These are words that ring through history from an event that we celebrate and refer to as Independence Day, The 4^th of July.  As a nation we have forgotten the terrible price that was paid for us to exist today as a free nation.  Let’s revisit a certain occasion today…

In Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, over 2 centuries ago.  On a document signed by 56 men was recorded:

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;”

- Approximately 30 specific items are then enumerated as grievances against their country England and their king George the 3^rd.

The last line reads thusly, “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Signing this document was an act of treason against England and the penalty was death by hanging!

Our war for independence lasted until 1783, 7 years.  What became of these men?

-Four of the delegates died of wounds or hardships during the war.

-Five of the delegates were captured and imprisoned.

-Several of the signers lost wives and children.

-Nine of them had their homes attacked and damaged.

-Francis Lewis, a delegate from New York, had his home plundered and destroyed and his wife died because of abuse by the British Soldiers.

-John Hart, a delegate from New Jersey, was driven from his home and was forced to live in nearby woods and caves.

-Thomas Lynch, a delegate from South Carolina, had his health broken from exposure and later drowned at sea with his new bride.

-Gov. Thomas Nelson of Virginia, after he had fled his home and the British had taken it as their headquarters, had his home targeted and destroyed by French and American heavy guns.  He died seven years later, impoverished, at the age of 50.

-2 became Presidents;  3 became Vice Presidents;  many became state Governors;  Several became State Senators.

Where did these people get these principles from?  What was their source?

Almost all of them were practicing Christians and their source was God’s Word, the Bible.

Some sage humor for you today...

Old Jack Russell

A wealthy old Gentleman decides to go on a hunting safari in Africa, taking his faithful dog, elderly Jack Russell named Killer, along for the company.

One day the old Jack Russell starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old Jack Russell thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep doo-doo now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old Jack Russell exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees.. "Whew!" says the leopard, "That was close! That old Jack Russell nearly had me!"

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So, off he goes, but the old Jack Russell sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard.

The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!

Now, the old Jack Russell sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?" but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old Jack Russell says...
"Where's that stink’in monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!

Moral of this story...

Don't mess with the old dogs... age and skill will always overcome youth and treachery! Blarney and brilliance only come with age and experience.