Long, Hot Summer

Bill sends along a link to the following video of a recent CNN broadcast. CNN is very supportive of the Obama presidency, so if their people are talking like this the president is in serious trouble. More importantly, if what Jack Cafferty says is true the nation is in serious trouble:

We could be in for a long hot summer and it won't have anything to do with global warming.

Plenty of Greenhouse Gas but No Warming

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. He has a column in Forbes in which he makes an interesting claim and poses a tough question to global warming "alarmists":

Global greenhouse gas emissions have risen even faster during the past decade than predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other international agencies. According to alarmist groups, this proves global warming is much worse than previously feared. The increase in emissions “should shock even the most jaded negotiators” at international climate talks currently taking place in Bonn, Germany, the UK Guardian reports. But there’s only one problem with this storyline; global temperatures have not increased at all during the past decade.

The evidence is powerful, straightforward, and damning. NASA satellite instruments precisely measuring global temperatures show absolutely no warming during the past the past 10 years. This is the case for the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, including the United States. This is the case for the Arctic, where the signs of human-caused global warming are supposed to be first and most powerfully felt. This is the case for global sea surface temperatures, which alarmists claim should be sucking up much of the predicted human-induced warming. This is the case for the planet as a whole.

If atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary driver of global temperatures, then where is all the global warming? We’re talking 10 years of higher-than-expected increases in greenhouse gases, yet 10 years of absolutely no warming.

Taylor does not object to what he calls global warming theory, but he does think the alarmists have gone too far with their extrapolations and concerns. His brief column offers some helpful data on this issue.

Is Syria Next?

There are indications that the Obama administration has had enough of the massacres in Syria and is about to do something to stop it. At least that's what a report from debkafile suggests:

Debkafile's military and intelligence sources report that Monday, June 13, the US deployed the USS Bataan amphibian air carrier strike vessel opposite Syria's Mediterranean coast with 2,000 marines, 6 war planes, 15 attack helicopters, including new V-22 Ospreys, and 27 choppers for landing forces aboard. Also this week, US naval units went operational in the Aegean, Adriatic and Black Seas as part of the joint US-Ukrainian Sea Breeze 2011 exercise.

The USS Monterrey cruiser armed with Aegis surface missile interceptors has additionally been stationed in the Black Sea. Western sources additonally report a build-up of ship-borne anti-missile missile strength in the Mediterranean basin.

This huge concentration of naval missile interceptor units looks like preparations by Washington for the contingency of Iran, Syria and Hizballah letting loose with surface missiles against US and Israeli targets in the event of US military intervention to stop the anti-opposition slaughter underway in Syria.

Moscow, Tehran and Damascus, in particular, are taking this exceptional spate of American military movements in and around the Mediterranean as realistically portending American intervention in Syria.

That Obama would initiate yet a fourth major conflict in the Middle East is hard to believe, especially since the Libyan imbroglio seems to have sputtered to an inconclusive and embarrassing stalemate, and since Congress is now demanding that he secure their approval for continued military action in Libya as called for by the War Powers Act, and since any action against Syria will almost certainly elicit some sort of retaliation by Iran.

On the other hand, it costs a lot of money to move those naval assets around so there must be some reason for doing it.

Parenthetically, it seems peculiar that such portentous military preparations are apparently happening below the media radar. At least I haven't seen anything in the American press about them, but to be fair, the media have had a lot on their plate lately what with the Casey Anthony trial, Anthony Weiner's lewd text messages, Sarah Palin's emails, and other matters of equal importance for our nation's future. I'm sure they'll catch up soon.