There has been a disturbing increase in Global Warming Stress Syndrome (GWSS, pronounced gwiss) according to Dr. Ron N. Hyde, a clinical psychologist at the prestigious McKitrick Center for the Especially Disturbed.

“Since April, there is been a 32.817% increase in public cases of GWSS,” he explained. “The rate now is almost double what it was this time last year.” He added the trend was very worrying to his colleagues.

According to literature provided by the McKitrick Center, GWSS was at first a disease confined to academics, where it was thought to be controllable. But somehow it became public in the mid 1990s and struck those whose minds were weakest and easiest to influence, such as celebrities. Since GWSS is communicable, the next to be infected were those in the media in contact with celebrities.

“Entertainment news reporters have become increasingly integrated into ordinary news organizations, which made it easier to disseminate much-needed celebrity gossip and tittle-tattle. But it also meant that ordinary reporters soon became infected,” explained the brochure.

Mayor Gavin Newsom (pictured) announced that San Francisco’s mandatory carbon-footprint reduction program will begin as scheduled on the first of March.

“There never was a problem as serious as global warming and we must take action now,” said mayoral spokesman William Simonson. “San Franciscans are among the most enlightened people of the world and they are eager to do their part,” he continued.

Phase One of the program requires all citizens to cease jogging and other aerobic activities. “Each time a San Franciscan exhales, they add to the already over-burdened carbon dioxide load of the atmosphere.” Simonson explained that “jogging increases the amount of CO2 in people’s breath to unacceptable levels.” All jogging paths will be converted to green space which will also help absorb CO2. Conversion is expected to last at least three years.

The more controversial part of the program is Phase Two, which is expected to remain voluntary. “Each citizen must decide whether Phase Two”—which the mayor has dubbed Going Home—”is right for them.” A public square highlighting a monument on which will be engraved a listing of the volunteers will be opened downtown by late summer. All work on the square has been donated by Gore Enterprises.

Sunday morning broke bright and clear. There was not a cloud in the sky, barely a breeze, and only 15 little degrees shivering in my porch thermometer. Please, Al, turn up the heat! I don't know who else to ask. After all, the former vice president has been honored all over the world for having the most profound insight into the weather.

Last week, for the first time in modern memory, there was snow in Baghdad. A few days ago, NASA reported on the remarkable observation that more than 60 percent of 48 contiguous states were covered with snow. From Seattle to Bangor they were measuring the snowfall in feet instead of inches. Schools in Middle Tennessee took snow days. Children cheered. Parents wept. Please, Al, turn up the heat.

Air Force Snow Depth Analysis January 22nd. See how the Northern Hemisphere snowpack is well above normal here.

There cannot be a better job than that of weatherman. You can be wrong 95 percent of the time, and the check still clears. A friend of mine was the contractor who built the weather station atop the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. For years, that was the spot from which weather forecasts were issued for Chicago and the Great Lakes. He told me why they were usually wrong. There were no windows! If they could have looked out a window, they would have known if it was rainy or sunny.

There were at least five deaths attributed to the cold in Albuquerque last Sunday. So much for global warming. Mr. Gore warns us that the penguins and polar bears are all going to die. I have a suggestion for him. Send them to Gulf Shores. There is plenty of water, no people on the beaches, lots of food and freezing temperatures. They will never miss their polar caps, and that suggestion could earn me a Noble Prize.

I marvel at people who cannot tell us what the weather will be in 30 hours, but can predict, with absolute certainty, exactly what it will be in 30 years. Imagine how far a sportscaster would get if he couldn't predict who would win this year's Super Bowl. But, he knew, absolutely, that the Knoxville Knuckle Heads would beat the Little Rock Lame Brains in 2038. He would be promoted to weatherman.

I hate to break the news to the Nobel Peace Prize winner, but there is an outside possibility that there is a more powerful force in this universe than puny mankind. We are told to alter our lifestyles, because of the edict of this man. Any one of us could live very nicely on the money Mr. Gore spends on public utilities. There must be advantages to being the High Priest of Gaia. Mr. Gore, you own the thermostat. Turn up the heat! Source

There’s an article in the New York Times pushing a something called “the five stages of climate grief” done by a professor at the University of Montana. This got me to thinking about the regular disaster forecasting that we see published in the media about what will happen due to climate change.

We’ve seen this sort of angst broadcast before, and it occurred to me that through history, a lot of ”predictions of certainty” with roots in scientifically based forecasts have not come true. That being the case, here is the list I’ve compiled of famous quotes and consensus from “experts”.

Top Ten Science-based predictions that didn’t come true:

10. “The earth’s crust does not move”- 19th through early 20th century accepted geological science. See Plate Tectonics

9. “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project

8. “That virus is a pussycat.” — Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988

7. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

6. “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.

5. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

4. “Space travel is bunk.” — Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of the UK, 1957 (two weeks later Sputnik orbited the Earth).

3. “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

2. “Stomach ulcers are caused by stress” — accepted medical diagnosis, until Dr. Marshall proved that H. pylori caused gastric inflammation by deliberately infecting himself with the bacterium.

1. “Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F.” — Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University in Time Magazine’s June 24th, 1975 article Another Ice Age?

So the next time you hear about worldwide crop failure, rising sea levels, species extinction, or “climate grief” you might want to remember that just being an expert, or even having a consensus of experts, doesn’t necessarily mean that a claim is true. Source

Anthony Watts is a former television meteorologist who operates a weather technology and content business, as well as continues daily forecasting on radio, just for fun. He manages two web sites (here and here) where he is coordinating volunteer efforts to document station siting issues for the USHCN climate stations

It is estimated that at the Battle of the Somme in World War I, one million soldiers were killed or wounded. The men were subjected to continuous bombing and machine-gun fire, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, as well as endured poison gas attacks. On the most hideous day of the fight, the British lost over 50,000 troops. It has been called one of the bloodiest battles in all of history. It is not surprising, therefore, that a few of survivors reacted negatively, and experienced shell-shock, which is a complete mental breakdown. Incidentally, the term originated in that war.

Some of the distressing symptoms of men suffering from shell-shock are: shaking and tremors, sweating, nausea and vomiting, abdominal distress, urinary incontinence, palpitations, hyperventilation, dizziness, insomnia, nightmares, hyper-vigilance, heightened sense of threat, anxiety, irritability, depression, substance abuse, loss of adaptability, suicide and disruptive behavior, mistrust, confusion, and extreme feeling of losing control.

So it is with some anxiety that I read that Ted Scambos and his fellow glaciologists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, were, he said, “shell-shocked” that the rate of loss of glaciers on Greenland might be occurring at a rate faster than some glaciologists have predicted.

This is worrying for at least two reasons. The first is that since it is well known that Boulder is one of the nation’s top spots for hand-wringing, the last thing the therapists who live there need is an increase in psychiatric cases. They will not be able to cope with the patient load and we might have to bus emergency relief shrinks in.

The second, and more important reason, is that, if Scambos’s statement is true, and not just an exaggeration said to a reporter over-eager to emphasize the possible dark side of the future, then we can officially count Scambos and his colleagues as the first casualties positively attributable to anthropogenic global warming! Even worse, this new form of shell-shock might be infectious, and could spread not just to other glaciologists, but to other climate scientists as well. There is already good evidence this is the case, judging by what you see printed daily in the headlines, so don’t be too quick to dismiss or scoff at the idea.

So get the word out, my friends, raise awareness of this new and debilitating form of illness, before it becomes epedemic in proportion, and before you find that you too have succumbed to this dread malady. Source