More on Global Warming

A fascinating piece recently appeared in the UK Daily Mail:

“Forget global warming — it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years”

The Met Office itself, Discover magazine, Think Progress (and again), Mother Jones, and Newser have responded and criticized the piece.  (I’m not assuming they’re the best criticisms liberals have to offer, but they’re the ones my Internet search turned up.)  I’m no scientist, but I’m trying to sift through and understand what’s going on.  

Lights Out

Did you know that Congress has already banned incandescent light bulbs in the future?  Neither do most Americans.  The law was passed in 2007; the phase-out begins with the 100-watt bulb in 2012.  (You can also read more about it at a Web site created for the movement to repeal the ban.)

Practically speaking, like most overweening big-government schemes, this will have unintended consequences.  In this case, we already know what some of them will be: 

1 — Scientists find that the main alternative, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), should be used sparingly and not left on for very long, because they are poisonous and may give you cancer: 

Multiculturalism

I have fond childhood memories of John Cleese in Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Disney’s non-cartoon The Jungle Book.  So I was interested to learn (via Five Feet of Fury) that Cleese (“a generous donor to the Liberal Democrats who . . . has appeared in several party political broadcasts”) seems to have joined what may be an emerging consensus that multiculturalism, the West’s great experiment, has failed: