Category Archives: Blogosphere

History lesson for Al Gore

“The Great Hurricane of 1780, also known as Hurricane San Calixto, the Great Hurricane of the Antilles, and the 1780 Disaster is the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record.

“Over 20,000 people died when the storm passed through the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean between October 10 and October 16. Specifics on the hurricane’s track and strength are unknown since the official Atlantic hurricane database only goes back to 1851.”

This was long before carbon dioxide from fossil fuels began to accumulate in the atmosphere. Hurricane Katrina, et al, have been pikers by comparison.

A little history joke

“…in 1620, the Mayflower set sail for Virginia. As of this writing, she has still not reached her destination.”

Via Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.

Islamist Head Start

“An Islamist insurgent-run radio station in Somalia says it is awarding guns, bombs and books to three children in a Quran recital contest.”

In 2009 the prizes were guns, mines and grenades.

Via Simply Jews

Record low Arctic sea ice? Not

As usual, the Gorebot and the other warmingistas are claiming that Arctic ice is melting at a record pace. The coasts will soon be inundated by the rising oceans. They told you so. Except that it’s pure B.S.

“The lowest amount of ice was no where close to 2007 this year as one can see at this link http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png,” says anti-warmingista meteorologist Joe Bastardi of Weather Bell. “It is low, but over the coming decades it will come back….to demonstrate the balance I feel is simply being attained….”

Bastardi’s meteorologist colleague at WB, Joe D’Aleo (AKA Dr. Dewpoint) adds this:

“I want you to see that the changes are real but that they tie with natural factors. Man has an effect on the climate primarily locally through land use changes and urbanization and through our emissions of primarily aerosols but… natural factors still dominate as shown by the extremes of recent years.”

As always, however, the warmists also will blame AGW for this week’s unusually early cold snap in the Northern Plains, since they claim that all weather extremes prove their greenhouse/global warming/climate change theory. How convenient. The proof against that is its own logical absurdity.

Meanwhile, the Gorebot (who, fascistically, calls AGW skeptics like Bastardi, D’Aleo [and me] “racists”) will choose his own “reality” today, raising money via ten dollar donations to keep his Lear jet and his Tennessee mansion polluting the atmosphere he claims to be so concerned about—while others hand him the mockery he deserves.

Batman at the bema

“Back in the 1930′s, it made some sense for Bruce Wayne, scion of one of Gotham’s finest families, to be a WASP. But look around NYC and see whose names are on the hospital, university and theater buildings. Don’t get us wrong…Batman has to be named Bruce Wayne. But who’s to say he wasn’t named after his great-grandfather, Baruch Wien?”

Humor by Heeb.

Snakes a’ comin’

Tom Spinker photo of a Texas rattler, via Accuweather, which picked up Earth & Sky’s warning of a suburban invasion of “very hungry” snakes this month due to the drought.

We’ll be watching.

Fortunately, rattlers generally aren’t killers, unlike, say, Texas coral snakes, which are relatives of the King Cobra. But the rattler’s bite is painful and everybody reacts differently.

School killings old, old

Think American school shootings, stabbings, and general violence leading to death are a modern phenom? Think again.

Not counting Indian “warrior” raids on schools, first recorded in 1764, the first recorded one was in 1871, in La Grange County, Indiana. There were just six more in the Nineteenth Century.

Then things really picked up. The Bloody Twentieth Century recorded twenty-three before World War II. Fourteen more by 1960. Then a hundred and thirty-two before the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, CO, in April, 1999.

Followed by  a hundred and twenty-six more by Jan. 22 of this year. Whew.

So these things really aren’t new, except in the sense of clothing fashions, i.e. what’s old is new again.