Welcome America to Globally Warmed Minnesota, December 2010, and to the Tunes of Dan Adler

Click on the following to become better acquainted with the melting of America’s glaciers and adjacent climes.   A picture of my house and my neighborhood could believable be in any one of the following outdoor settings north of South Carolina.   Sit back, take a peak at Minnesota beauty and listen to the lyrics and melody of the Minnesota Song, by Dan Adler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62RwHHFuf14

Thanks again go to friend and former teacher colleague, Mark Waldeland, for the notice.

‘Global Warming’ Buries Britain in Cold and Snow

 John Hinderaker wrote at PowerLine the following paragraphs illustrating a Chapter in the War between Leftwing hysteria and Reality……the battle between the feminized manner toward problem solving and the masculine.  In other words the classic battle between the Marxist Left and the classic democratic conservative:

He gave it the title:  “A Scientific Theory Is Judged by Its   Predictive Power”

“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” That is what global warming alarmists in Great Britain were telling us just ten years ago:

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. …

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was, as you probably remember, home to the famous “Climategate” emails of 2009. As it turned out, the alarmists’ farewell to snow in Great Britain was premature, as England is now experiencing another severe winter, with record low temperatures and near-blizzard conditions in some areas:

Forecasters warned that parts of Britain could see record low temperatures this week of -26C (-15F). Heathrow will experience lows of about -9C (16F) tonight and further snowfall is expected in the South East during the evening rush hour.

Motorists continued to struggle. The M25 was closed in both directions for about six hours while drivers on the M40 in Oxfordshire suffered severe delays.

Commuters were warned to expect treacherous conditions with thick ice and freezing fog today. Train passengers also face delays and cancellations, particularly in the North. Eurostar services between London and Paris have also been affected.

Snow and ice grounded the vast majority of flights in and out of Britain, with Heathrow the worst-affected airport.”

Comment:  If you remember a year ago, Climate Change played a dirty trick on the U.N. Global Warming Congress meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.   Remember?????..It was the meeting president Barack Hussein Obama had set off to in order to promise a huge carbon tax on American businesses and send these moneys off to finance the buffoonery of the dictatorships of the third world.

The president thought American businessmen were racists for objecting….remember?

Well, the Denmark climate decided to ‘cook up’  extreme  cold and heavy snowfall throughout each of the pricey hours and days these “expert” bureaucrats in charge of climate-change hysteria, drank and chewed the fat for more than two weeks.   Guess who paid for each drink, meal, room, chair and table for these bureaucrats to drink and chew?

What about this year’s U.N. global warming gathering at Cancun, Mexico, a drinking, chewind the fat and sewing circle event for the world’s active Marxists.   President Obama’s representative for our Marxist views on the matter was John Podesta.   Click below to find out what he felt was accomplished at this important event:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46487.html     

John Boehner “Moments”, Birthdays, Climate Change, and Geomorphology 118

Dear Prager Fan:  This is an article about Climate.

Forty five years ago yesterday, December 18, 1965, with competition coming from two other similar occasions, was the greatest moment of my adult life…..the birth of my firstborn, Christian Robert Earl Ray.  I have a “John Boehner moment” ,  every time I think about this and those  two other events.

I often have John Boehner moments.   Obama Democrats could really make fun of me.  But, then I am in good, very good company, because Dennis Prager has regular “John Boehner moments”, as well.

For the first time in my life I was certain I could be a killer……In one evening  in less than an hour, when this little creature came home into our bedroom,  my being was changed.  I became a Guard Dog. 

New lines had been drawn around that which would be guarded at all costs.  These lines were expanded when my daughter and later my second son were born……the other two greatest events…by far….of my awakened existence.

I never knew anything about a paternal instinct. It was never discussed in any class, not even  in Geology 118 at the University of Minnesota.   I guess about only half or fewer human males have such an instinct.  (About ten per cent of the human female apparantly doesn’t have a noticeable maternal instinct either.)

What does this have to do with climate?   It stirs memory.

I am looking out my window onto my beautifully gardened landscape.  Much of it is buried under four feet of snow or MORE.  For over a month snow flakes have been piling up and swirling around.  It has be cold….without relief…..Nothing has melted. 

Yesterday, I remembered looking out the window of  a waiting room at a hospital on the same day many years ago.

I remembered  December 18, 1965, as I remember few other dates…..and I well remember the weather.  Instead of four feet of snow and below zero temperatures by Fahrenheit scale, it was a moist, rather muggy day of  a little over 55 degrees.  The clouds were heavy and low, and breaking up.    Lawns were still green.  Foliage on many trees had not yet committed their ‘fall’.   We hadn’t been exposed to Al Gore and his friends at the United Nations yet.

Those who know the Minnesota outdoors would guess it was a warm and humid mid September day. 

Most Minnesotans don’t know the Minnesota outdoors anymore…..one reason they can be so easily suckered  by preachers like  Al Gore’s spreading his  political mythology , that the Earth is facing imminent disaster, that the disaster is caused by American mankind, and that the disaster agent is the ‘pollutant’,  carbon dioxide.

I learned in Miss Marie  Hart’s public school General Science class in 1948 that  no life as we know it can exist without carbon dioxide, no more a pollutant than oxygen. 

When I was in grade school most Minnesotans were farmers.  Other Minnesotans worked outdoors regularly, not yet replaced by a variety of machines.  Most Minnesotans had little ones.  These little Minnesotans walked to school even in Fahrenheit tempertures down from twenty below zero…..who after school when it warmed up by ten to twenty degrees, these little ones would play in the snow igloos they had built last week or yesterday.   I was one of them.

From 1939 to 1952 this little Minnesotan never had a school day cancelled due to weather.   I am 76 years old.

And I think America is going mad.

As an undergrad, I flunked Geology 118 (Geomorphology, a class taught by Herbert Wright)…..the only school class of failure of my life….I got Ds however, in ROTC in 1952.  I didn’t last long in that mix.  Despite my geomorphology grade my geology classes gave me the greatest understanding of this planet, Earth, than any other collections of discipline.

I wonder if president Barack Hussein Obama or climate guru, Al Gore’  know what geology study entails. 

Who, these days, does?   In our today when student know-nothings choose their own  classes and select their paths to their undergraduate degrees, how many would  you guess,  sign up for geology?   How many would be guys?   Just asking!

Years after my class failure, fate turned out the Professor Wright’s son, Greg, showed up as a junior highschool student in my beginning Russian class at the University of Minnesota Lab school.    Rumor reached the Wrights that Greg like the Russian class.   I  was invited to dinner.   At the table I mentioned my experience as a student of Professor Wright.  He asked if I like the class.  I mentioned I was a bit disappointed in my grade.   I reminded him that he had established the requirements for passing….. 25% term paper, 30% , for midterm exam and 45% for final.   I had received a C- on the term paper, a B- on the midterm, but failed the course.  

Professor Wright shifted in his chair at the table a bit.     “Well, what happened”, he asked. 

“I knew the chemistry items on the final were a bit over my head…..but I did expect the totals for the class would allow me to get credit for it.  You don’t remember, but I stopped by to see you about the grade.”

“And, what did I say?”   

“You looked at your statistics…… looked at me and said”,…… “Well, Glenn, there are degrees of failure, arent there?”.  I told him I remembered that answer was as good as any…..We laughed.  

I remember Geology 118:  Geomorphology as one of the toughest courses  ever.

P.S.  I deserved my ‘F’.

“Big Brother Democrats Broaden Their Spying Skills to Control More Citizens

Big Brother Is Watching You Recycle

Citing the British model, Cleveland, Ohio, is taking a giant step toward a similar scheme of compulsory recycling, says Wendy McElroy, a research fellow at the Independent Institute.  

• In 2011 some 25,000 households will be required to use recycling bins fitted with radio-frequency identification tags (RFIDs) — tiny computer chips that can remotely provide information such as the weight of the bin’s contents and that allow passing garbage trucks to verify their presence.
• If a household does not put its recycle bin out on the curb, an inspector could check its garbage for improperly discarded recyclables and fine the scofflaws $100.
• Moreover, if a bin is put out in a tardy manner or left out too long, the household could be fined.
• Cleveland plans to implement the system citywide within six years.

Extreme recycling programs are nothing new, even in American cities.  Neither are RFID bins new.  They were introduced on London streets in 2005 ostensibly to track the amount of trash households produced and to discourage “overproduction.”

Cash-starved local governments will be watching to see if an American city as big as Cleveland can use RFID bins to increase revenues.  The revenues would flow from three basic sources:

• A trash-collection fee that could be increased.
• The imposition of fines.
• The profit, if any, from selling recyclables.

The last source should not be dismissed.  Recycling programs are not generally cost-efficient, but much of the reason is that collections need to be cleaned and resorted at their destination, says McElroy.

If households can be forced to assume these labor-intensive tasks, then selling recyclables — especially such goods as aluminum cans — is more likely to be profitable.  (Perversely, the demand for volume recycling may hit the poor the hardest; in the wake of recession, it is becoming increasingly common for people to hoard their aluminum cans in order to turn them in for cash.)

Source: Wendy McElroy, “Big Brother Is Watching You Recycle,” Independent Institute, December 1, 2010.

For text:

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2930

The above article was made available by the National Center for Policy Analysis

Comment:  Throughout my ‘cognizant’ lifetime the so-called ‘better educated’ , the university gad abouts, those opining from the pulpits of the American press throughout the country, all of the television news events interviewers preferred Democrats because Democrats passed legislation.

Representatives in any government were generalized as ‘enlightened’ the more laws to which they attached their names, whether the laws were good or bad.

Most laws passed by any legislative body, national or more local are foolish, unneeded, unwise…..but this has never been a problem among Democrats and the tag-along Republicans, which has been the usual sequence in the past 60 years of my life.

The American people have seldom been told that the more laws enacted, the greater opporunity the State has to create criminals and control thought and action.   In other words as Dennis explains:

“The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”

This statement since the advent of the politics and religion of Marxism, best explains the fundamental difference between Liberal and conservative  throughout the world and not merely here in the good old US of A.

Democrats, their pomposity arising from their universities, unions, and favorite victimhoods,  desire to make criminal any citizen activity of which they disapprove.   They believe passionately that they are doing the country and its citizens a favor by managing their people through each day and night, for they know better.