Shire Network News #131

Shire Network News #131 has been released. The feature interview is with French media analyst Philippe Karsenty, a long-term critic of France 2, the TV channel that broadcast the famous footage of Mohammed Al-Durah, the 10 year old Palestinian shot allegedly shot dead in his father’s arms by Israeli soldiers. Not only does Phillipe say it was a hoax, he now has a court ruling backing him up. But he needs help to get this message past an entrenched state controlled media. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

This is another Global Warming Update.  It seems that there has been quite a lot of news that has, again, gone unreported by much of the mainstream media.  So we here at SNN are providing the balance in an otherwise unbalanced news world.

An editorial in the Washington DC Examiner last Thursday noted a number of data points that are all trending in the same direction.

New data produced by more than 3,000 sophisticated ocean buoys scattered across the world’s oceans indicate average water temperatures have been decreasing since 2003, not increasing as would be the case in Gore’s globally warming world. NASA’s Josh Willis, who studies the output of the sophisticated buoys that take temperature readings from thousands of feet below the surface, says the significance of the new data is unclear.

Of course, it’s unclear.  Now, if the data had shown that the ocean was warming, the significance of the new data would have been immediately clear, and Al Gore would have held a press conference by now. 

The average land temperature of the globe dropped precipitously last year, according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. The temperature drop — more than enough to “wipe out most of the global warming of the past 100 years,” according to the online technology publication Daily Tech — was also recorded by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Somehow, this must all be Bush’s fault.  Or Karl Rove’s.  Either way, it seems rather, shall we say, convenient that this happened so close to an election year?  Things like this simply do not happen during a Republican administration.  And "wiping out" something sounds a bit too much like the Bush Doctrine of preemption. 

The severity of this global temperature drop was reflected in the fact the average U.S. temperature in January was lower than the average for the previous century, according to the U.S. Climactic Data Center. Also, the Canadian Ice Service reports the Arctic ice pack is 10 to 20 centimeters thicker in many places this year than it was in 2007.

Well so what?  All this means is that the ice floes those poor polar bears are floating on are 8 inches thicker.  Let’s just hope they float far, far away from Dick Cheney’s hunting party.

Professor Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences is advising people “to stock up on fur coats” because he expects an extended period of global cooling, an assessment that is echoed by Kenneth Tapping of the U.S. National Academy of Science’s National Research Council. Both scientists contend solar activity explains most of the temperature variation in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Solar activity affects Earth’s temperature?  Yeah, right.  And ocean currents affect fish migration.  Puhleeze.  (Besides, we can’t tax the Sun.  Yet.)

A peer-reviewed study published recently in the journal Nature suggests there will be no global warming until 2015, due to the effects of the Meridional Overturning Circulation, a giant oceanic conveyor belt that moves warmer water into the North Atlantic in a 70- to 80-year cycle, according to the London Telegraph.

Oh, for goodness sake, so they are going to bring up ocean currents!  Solar cycles, weather cycles, ocean cycles, yadda yadda yadda.  This is global warming we’re talking about!  What does history have to do with it?

>ahem<

In any event, if you’re waiting for these items to gain prominence in the news reporting of the day, hold not thy breath. 

Consider that.

Filed under: Global Warming • Podcasts • Shire Network News

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