Two of a Kind.....Sellout Trash

Race Baiting Poverty Pimp - To Visit Socialist Hell Hole

Al Sharpton the professional race baiting poverty pimp, is due to visit illegal alien infested socialist hellhole, North Carolina. It's hard to imagine, but the visit is due to a racial matter.

Brotha Alford, is going to throw his support, behind a brotha that wishes to be Sheriff, but doesn't even qualify to be a deputy sheriff. Well good luck brotha Alford, in your quest to be leader of the Black race.

I don't believe this poverty pimp cares a bit, about this broken down brotha becoming sheriff, but Alford has to keep his name and face in the news. As Al might say I'm The Professional Race Baiting Poverty Pimp- and don't you forget dat- peace out brotha!

I will give this great leader credit, how better to stay in the news, than to visit a world class city in North Carolina. This city has world class crime, world class gangs, world class illegal aliens, and world class socialist leaders. And you can believe dat - Peace Out Brotha!

Tancredo has Useless Mexicans Stomping Mad

.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo -- the recent presidential candidate -- today issued a statement responding to complaints by legislators from Mexico about immigrants self-deporting to Mexico. In the process he brainstormed an idea that, well, only Tancredo could come up with. Here's part of his statement:

Tancredo pointed out that in 2005, the Mexican government actually produced and distributed copies of a "Guia del Migrante Mexicano" (Guide for the Mexican Immigrant) which contained "practical advice" for Mexicans on how to safely sneak into the United States.
The guide contained tips on everything from crossing rivers and navigating the desert to ones "rights" as an illegal alien if apprehended. The booklet is widely available online. This increased the flow of illegal aliens into the United States - illegal aliens who will be returning to Mexico through Sonora as enforcement efforts in the U.S. intensify.
"Perhaps the Department of Homeland Security and Government Printing Office can return Mexico's 2005 favor and help local officials in Sonora cope with the influx of returning Mexicans," said Tancredo. "We can develop a 'Guide for the Returning Illegal Alien' packed with helpful information like how to get back to various points in Mexico from the U.S. border, and a reminder that illegally immigrating is, well, illegal - and has consequences." Tancredo said he is exploring the option of drafting legislation to authorize the production of the booklets.

Satan in the Twin Towers

Look closely at the smoke .....and you can see an image that some say is Lucifer

Bush, McCain,Clinton, Obama assist Illegal Aliens in Murdering Another Border Agent

Agent reported hit, killed by fleeing vehicle in dunesComments 36 Recommend 56
BY SARAH REYNOLDS, SUN STAFF WRITER
January 19, 2008 - 10:46AM
A U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed Saturday morning when he was struck by a vehicle as it fled law enforcement officers in the Imperial Sand Dunes. The agent, who was stationed in the Yuma sector, was hit at about 9:30 a.m. near Gray's Well Road south of Interstate 8, according to Border Patrol representatives. The agent was laying spike strips across the road in an attempt to stop a Hummer vehicle that was fleeing pursuit. Border Patrol officials believe the Hummer was driven by smugglers from Mexico. Paramedics attempted to revive the agent at the scene but could not save him. Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Jeremy Schappell, spokesman for the Yuma sector, said the driver escaped back to Mexico. "Right now our Mexican liaison unit has contact with the Mexican authorities ... try and track these individuals down," Schappell said. No apprehensions have been made at this time. Schappell said they did not know whether the vehicle was carrying drugs or human cargo. The Hummer and a Black Ford F-150 pickup truck were being pursued by law enforcement officers on I-8 when they turned into the dunes and fled toward Mexico, according to witnesses in the dunes. The incident occurred near a popular duning campground. "It was at the entrance to the Buttercup Recreation Area, where the duners usually park," Schappell said. He added that it is not unusual for smugglers to go through these recreational spots. "It actually happens quite frequently out here. What they try to do is, they hope to blend in with the usual dune traffic to increase their chances of going undetected," Schappell said. The agent's name has not been released at this time, pending notification of next of kin. This is the first time in more than four years the Yuma sector has lost an agent. Agent James Epling drowned in December 2003 in the Colorado River while in pursuit of four illegal immigrants. An El Centro sector agent assigned to the Indio station, Richard Goldstein, died in May 2007. He drowned in a canal near the city of Niland, east of the Salton Sea and about 60 miles southeast of Indio. "It's not easy. No law enforcement agency wants to lose one of their own. What we're focusing on now is making sure the agents at the scene are taken care of, mentally. Our primary focus is on the family, helping them cope and deal with their loss," Schappell said. According to La Cronica newspaper of Mexicali, in Los Algodones there was a heavy air and ground operation on the part of various Mexican government and police organizations in search of the responsible parties and their vehicles. The newspaper also reported that the government of Mexico strongly condemned the incident. Mexico's secretery of foreign affairs sent condolences from the federal government to the family of the agent, to his coworkers in the Yuma sector and to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Muchas Gracias!!!!

Important tax reminder: Don't forget to pay your taxes...... 39 million illegal aliens are depending on you!

Muslims Attempt to Stop Free Speech....and Lose

Score a Victory for Free Speech
Last week, our colleague Joseph Shahda posted an article that was very disturbing. A terrorist web site Ekllaas, hosted by the Tampa-based Internet Service Provider HiVelocity, had circulated a rumored petition campaign to its members, to be spread across other terrorist forums, to try and knock off a Coptic Christian anti-Islamic Arabic language chat room from Paltalk.
The leadership here at ACT! for America and American Congress for Truth, deeply concerned about this matter, decided to contact PalTalk to encourage them to dismiss this Islamist effort to stifle free speech.
Today, in response to our letter, Paltalk confirmed to us that they are not going to ever submit to any petition directed against constitutionally protected freedom of speech. Further, they asserted they will never bow to the pressure of the petition submitted by Muslim activists to shut down a Christian chat room that criticizes Islam. In fact, Paltalk emphatically told us that the Muslim activists spread the false rumor about Paltalk closing the Coptic Christian room if 1 million signatures were obtained for their petition. This amounted to classic Islamic ‘taqiyyah’ – deception used to advance the cause of Islam.
We are of course delighted to hear that Paltalk, the most prominent voice chat room service in the world, will not bow to Muslim activist pressure to shut down Christian rooms that these activists find “offensive.” We would like to thank Paltalk for their strong stand to protect Constitutional Free Speech Rights.
One side benefit of this exchange: Palktalk said they would love to have Brigitte Gabriel host a weekly program on its large network.
Islamist assaults on free speech have become a staple in their arsenal. As we reported last week, legislation has been introduced in the New York legislature to protect journalists, authors and publishers from intimidation lawsuits filed in foreign courts. Such efforts at intimidation have been dubbed “libel terrorism.” We will soon provide you an update on the status of this legislation and what you can do to help ensure its passage.

Fluorescent Light Bulbs.Green and Toxic

Posted Jan 10th 2008 1:33PM by Sandy Maple
Filed under: Making a Difference, Environmental

Making your world a little 'greener' doesn't always have to involve a major lifestyle change. Little changes can add up to a big difference if everybody makes them. Recycling household waste is a good place to start, but depending on where you live, that isn't always as easy as it should be.

Experts sat that one thing we can all do to conserve energy is switch out our old incandescent light bulbs for the more energy-efficient fluorescent ones. They may cost a bit more initially, but over time will save you money. That sounds so easy that you wonder why everyone isn't doing it.

Maybe it is the mercury inside those fluorescent bulbs that give some of us pause. If you were to break one, you've just created some hazardous waste right in the comfort of your own home. A broken fluorescent bulb will immediately release mercury into the air. And the initial discomfort of exposure to that mercury - dizziness and nausea - are the least of your concerns. Breathing in that stuff can cause lifelong damage to the central nervous system and should be avoided.

If you are convinced that fluorescent is the way to go, there are some ways to minimize your risk of exposure to mercury from a broken bulb. Toxicology experts say the first thing you should do if you break one is to leave the room immediately. Take the kids and the pets with you and don't come back for at least fifteen minutes. After the air has cleared, you can begin cleaning up the mess, but don't break out the vacuum cleaner. Instead, wear rubber gloves and sweep it into a plastic bag. Seal the bag and dispose of it as you would any other hazardous waste. In my area, we have a hazardous waste facility that is open daily as well as mobile collection sites around town. I would assume non-broken fluorescent bulbs should be treated as hazardous waste as well. I mean, you drop it in the trash, it is going to break at some point, right?

Having said all that, I have to say that I am not convinced the energy-efficiency is worth the risk. What about you? Have you switched to fluorescent?

Sodomite Muslim Pigs Attempt to Destroy Old Glory

Employer Charged with Harboring Useless Illegal Alien

http://www.star-telegram.com/448/story/400477.htmlBy JUAN A. LOZANOAssociated Press WriterHOUSTON -- The employer of a Mexican man accused of fatally shooting a police officer is facing charges that he helped the illegal immigrant return to the U.S. after the man was deported for a previous crime, officials said Wednesday.Robert Lane Camp, 47, the owner of a landscaping company, has been charged in a federal criminal complaint with encouraging Juan Leonardo Quintero-Perez, the accused killer of Houston police officer Rodney Johnson, to unlawfully enter the United States and with harboring him.Camp, who was arrested Wednesday, was set to be freed on a $50,000 unsecured bond after his first appearance in federal court Wednesday afternoon.His attorney, Jimmy Ardoin, declined to comment after the hearing.Each of the charges against Camp carries up to five years in prison and a fine up to $250,000. Prosecutors have 30 days to indict Camp."This prosecution demonstrates the consequences a U.S. citizen faces when he or she decides to harbor or assist an undocumented alien to enter the United States and to employ that alien unlawfully," U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle said in a statement. "The shooting of HPD Officer Johnson was a tragic incident that could have been avoided."Jury selection in Quintero-Perez's capital murder trial is set for March 31. He faces a possible death sentence if convicted.Quintero-Perez is accused of shooting Johnson four times in the head as the officer sat in his patrol car's front seat during a routine traffic stop in September 2006. Police said Johnson, 40, was shot after Quintero-Perez pulled a gun from his waistband as he sat handcuffed in the back of the patrol car.Johnson apparently missed the gun when he patted down Quintero-Perez, authorities said.When Quintero-Perez was pulled over by Johnson, he was driving a company truck owned by Camp, authorities said.According to the criminal complaint against Camp, Quintero-Perez was charged with the state felony offense of indecency with a child in 1998.Camp allegedly posted his $10,000 bond and hired a defense attorney for him.Quintero-Perez was deported in 1999 after being convicted. But later that year, he returned to the country illegally, with Camp buying him a plane ticket from Phoenix to Houston, according to the criminal complaint.In the complaint, authorities also allege that Quintero-Perez returned to work for Camp, who bought him a home that the illegal immigrant and his wife, Theresa Quintero, rented.Theresa Quintero, a U.S. citizen, told authorities that Camp falsely listed her and not her husband as an employee of his landscaping company in suburban Houston, according to the complaint.After the shooting, Camp told Houston police that Quintero-Perez was one of his employees, but when questioned later by immigration authorities he denied the illegal immigrant ever worked for him, according to the complaint."Officer Rodney Johnson's terrible murder illustrates that hiring and harboring of illegal aliens is not a victimless crime," said Robert Rutt, special agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Investigations in Houston

Homeland Insecurity........Bowing to Islam

Quantico mosque leader promoted Pentagon honors Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
In a special ceremony, the Pentagon recently promoted a Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain who catered to al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo and fought to establish the first mosque in Marine Corps history.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England personally promoted Navy chaplain Abuhena Mohammed Saifulislam from lieutenant to lieutenant commander. Saifulislam also received a Joint Service Commendation Medal at the Pentagon ceremony held on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Pentagon officials say the ceremony was unprecedented.
"It's unusual for a deputy secretary to personally promote an officer of that rank," said one official who wished to go unnamed. "No one has known of such a high-level dignitary doing that."
England also earlier this year personally dedicated a new Islamic center at Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va., on the advice of Saifulislam, a Bangladesh immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 1995.
The Muslim chaplain, who is stationed at Quantico, recited verses from the Quran in Arabic and English at the summer dedication ceremony, which included representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, several leaders of which have been convicted on terrorism-related charges.
Saifulislam, which is Arabic for "Sword of Islam," received his religious training at a radical Islamic school raided by federal agents after 9/11. The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, based in Leesburg, Va., is run by Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Sami al-Arian terror case. A federal affidavit used to obtain a warrant to search the school alleges Al-Alwani gave at least $50,000 in jihad money "to support suicide bombings."
Saifulislam insists he is moderate and condemns "terrorism," but critics say his Wahhabi background and associations should give the Pentagon pause.
"The Pentagon is giving him a permanent, taxpayer-supported platform from which to convert grunts to Islam," said terror expert Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington." "With the Quantico mosque, the Pentagon is facilitating the study of the holy text the enemy uses, heretically or not, as their manual of warfare."
Saifulislam's promotion along with the dedication of his new Quantico mosque – the first of its kind in the 230-year history of the Corps – comes on the heels of a Muslim spy scandal at Gitmo involving another Muslim chaplain.
Army Capt. James "Yousef" Yee, who ministered to al-Qaida detainees, was charged with mishandling classified information. Yee, a convert to Islam, quit the Army and the charges were dropped. But two of his Muslim military friends at Gitmo were convicted of espionage-related crimes.
Yee's predecessor at Gitmo was Saifulislam, who was first assigned to the terrorist prison camp after 9/11. While at the Cuban base, the Navy imam privately counseled al-Qaida prisoners in their native tongues of Urdu and Arabic. "I must give hope for them to cope," Saifulislam said at the time.
He set up the diet and prayer regimes for the detainees, recommending they be served halal meals – including traditional dates and lamb – prepared according to Islamic dietary law. Gitmo detainees can now choose from a menu of 113 Muslim-appropriate meals.
In addition, Saifulislam saw to it that detainees receive copies of the Quran and have access to prayer beads and skull caps. Saifulislam also set up a program to train guards to be more sensitive to the religious customs of their Muslim prisoners.
West Point bows to Mecca
Multiculturalism appears to trump concerns about Islamist infiltration of the military. Following the Marine's lead, the Army in October dedicated a new mosque at West Point.
The U.S. Military Academy's first worship hall for Muslims boasts green carpets, shoe racks and a pulpit facing Mecca. Officials agreed to set up the mosque, large enough for dozens of followers, after Muslim leaders complained that the office where Muslim cadets gathered for Friday prayers had become too crowded.
The Army has been recruiting international cadets from Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Muslim enrollment at the academy in New York has jumped to 32 from just two in 2001.
"We live in a world where everyone is looking at the United States saying, 'You're anti-Islam,'" explained West Point Chaplain Col. John Cook. "But here at West Point, that's not what we do."
The U.S. military now boasts more than 10,000 Muslim soldiers, many of them black converts. On the eve of the Army's push into Iraq, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a black Muslim convert, fragged commanding officers at a military camp in Kuwait. He killed two of them and wounded 15 others.
Akbar, recently convicted of murder and given the death sentence, said at the time he did it out of loyalty to the umma, or global community of Muslims.
"You guys are coming into our countries," he said, "and you're going to rape our women and kill our children."
Within months of Akbar's traitorous 2003 attacks, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued an internal report warning that Muslim soldiers pose a possible security threat, according to national security reporter Bill Gertz in his new book "Enemies."
It was also in 2003 that Yee was accused of spying for the enemy while serving as a Muslim chaplain at Gitmo. Yee graduated from West Point, site of the Army's new mosque.

Rest In Peace

If tears could build a stairway,

and memories a lane,

I'd climb up to heaven,

and bring you back again....

Kwanzaa: Holiday From The FBI

by Ann Coulter
Posted: 01/02/2008

Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? The same goes for the Iowa caucuses -- the early scheduling of which forced me to run an attack on a synthetic candidate, rather than a synthetic holiday, last week. I've seen so few mentions of Kwanzaa this year, I was going to declare my campaign a success, but I see that President Bush issued another absurd Kwanzaa message this year, referring to millions of African-Americans gathering to celebrate Kwanzaa.
I believe more African-Americans spent this season reflecting on the birth of Christ than some phony non-Christian holiday invented a few decades ago by an FBI stooge. Kwanzaa is a holiday for white liberals, not blacks.
It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.
In what was probably ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the '60s the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the organization, the better. Using that criterion, Karenga's United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American '60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.

Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the '60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution. Those were the precepts of Karenga's United Slaves. United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented "African" names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named "Jamal" currently sit on death row?)
Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the "framed" murder of two whites included: "the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department" and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. "was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt" -- an interesting standard of proof.)
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, "Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents."
Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot to death Black Panthers Al "Bunchy" Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins on the UCLA campus. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
(Sing to "Jingle Bells")
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.
When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the "best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism" -- which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment of homosexuals and forced labor -- Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity "determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding." There's an inclusive philosophy for you.
Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Worst Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- the exact same seven "principles" of Kwanzaa.
With his Kwanzaa greetings, President Bush is saluting the intellectual sibling of the Symbionese Liberation Army, killer of housewives and police. He is saluting the founder of United Slaves, who were such lunatics that they shot Panthers for not being sufficiently insane -- all with the FBI as their covert ally.
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," and the president of the United States issued a presidential proclamation honoring the synthetic, racist holiday. People might well stand up and take notice if that happened.
Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga's United Slaves -- the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI's tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.
Now the "holiday" concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation and public schools across the nation. In Oregon public schools this year, Kwanzaa -- but not Christmas -- appeared on the official calendar.
Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes "unity" and "faith." Faith in what? Liberals' unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?
A movement that started approximately 2,000 years before Kwanzaa leaps well beyond mere "unity" and "faith" to proclaim that we are all equal before God. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). It was practitioners of that faith who were at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements. But that's all been washed down the memory hole, along with the true origins of Kwanzaa.

NY Times: Global Warming Claims Bogus

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 4:38 PMBy: Newsmax Staff

Critics are calling it clear evidence that the climate of opinion on alleged global warming is shifting in favor of skeptics, especially since it comes from the New York Times, until now a fervent acolyte of climate change guru Al Gore and his doctrine of ongoing and disastrous climate change.
In his Times column for the first day of the new year, "In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm," columnist John Tierney took a close look at the global warming debate and found that the climate change scenario being peddled by Mr. Gore and his legion of followers is anything but the settled scientific fact they claim, with the sole doubters being the equivalent of those who believe the earth is flat. Tierney, critics say, has nailed the climate alarmists and exposed their propaganda!
Tierney begins his myth shattering column by telling his readers: "I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction. You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet."
Tierney cautions that he cannot be more specific. "I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather."
Noting that "there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard)."
Those interpreting the weather nowadays, Tierney explains "are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness -- burning fossil fuels."
Tierney recalls that last year British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, however, he writes that "even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, '2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.'
"When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored. A large part of Antarctica has been cooling recently, but most coverage of that continent has focused on one small part that has warmed."
He cites claims by Global warming theory promoters that 2005's Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be "a harbinger of the stormier world predicted by some climate modelers." To the contrary, he recalls "when the next two hurricane seasons were fairly calm — by some measures, last season in the Northern Hemisphere was the calmest in three decades — the availability entrepreneurs changed the subject. Droughts in California and Australia became the new harbingers of climate change (never mind that a warmer planet is projected to have more, not less, precipitation over all)."
Slow warming, he explains "doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,” a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California.
The "availability cascade," Tierney writes, "is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear. Once the images of Sept. 11 made terrorism seem a major threat, the press and the police lavished attention on potential new attacks and supposed plots. After Three Mile Island and 'The China Syndrome,' minor malfunctions at nuclear power plants suddenly became newsworthy."
Once such a cascade is under way, he adds "it becomes tough to sort out risks because experts become reluctant to dispute the popular wisdom, and are ignored if they do. Now that the melting Arctic has become the symbol of global warming, there’s not much interest in hearing other explanations of why the ice is melting — or why the globe’s other pole isn’t melting, too."
While Global warming has an impact on both polar regions, he explains, "they’re also strongly influenced by regional weather patterns and ocean currents." He cites two studies by NASA and university scientists last year that he reports "concluded that much of the recent melting of Arctic sea ice was related to a cyclical change in ocean currents and winds, but those studies got relatively little attention — and were certainly no match for the images of struggling polar bears so popular with availability entrepreneurs."
Tierney writes that Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, "recently noted the very different reception received last year by two conflicting papers on the link between hurricanes and global warming. He counted 79 news articles about a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and only 3 news articles about one in a far more prestigious journal, Nature.
"Guess which paper jibed with the theory — and image of Katrina — presented by Al Gore ’s 'Inconvenient Truth'?"
The answer: "the paper in the more obscure journal, which suggested that global warming is creating more hurricanes. The paper in Nature concluded that global warming has a minimal effect on hurricanes. It was published in December — by coincidence, the same week that Mr. Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize.
Tierney recalls that in his speech accepting the Peace Prize, Gore "didn’t dwell on the complexities of the hurricane debate." Nor, did he mention how calm the hurricane season had been in his roundup of the 2007 weather. Instead, Tierney notes, "he alluded somewhat mysteriously to 'stronger storms in the Atlantic and Pacific,' and focused on other kinds of disasters, like 'massive droughts' and 'massive flooding.'
“In the last few months," Mr. Gore said, 'it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.' But he was being too modest," Tierney says, adding, "Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier."