The global warming con artists are still at it, trying to maintain their bread & butter “research” grants on the taxpayer’s dime.

From WesleyPruden via Jewish World Review:

“Climate research,” the New York Times confidently assures us, “stands at a crossroads.” This means that a lot of research scientists are standing at the crossroads, holding out paper bags like trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, standing in line for taxpayer largesse to fill ‘em up.

These specialists in shakedown “science,” who speak only in hyperbole, are calling the weather of 2011 the worst in history, or at least in memory, or maybe a decade, and say they could have found useful links between disasters and global-warming “science” by now if only they could shake down tightwad taxpayers for a few more millions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made a little list of a dozen weather disasters of the year now swiftly passing into history — wildfires in Texas, floods on the Mississippi and tornadoes in Tornado Alley. Unfortunately for global-warming “scientists” ever on the scout for handouts, there were no bad hurricanes to report this year. Nevertheless, the speakers of hyperbole are making the best of the scant material at hand.

“I’ve been a meteorologist for 30 years and have never seen a year that comes close to matching 2011 for the number of astounding, extreme weather events,” the easily astounded Jeffrey Masters of the Weather Underground web site tells the newspaper, which is always alert for opportunities to beat this favorite drum. “Looking back in the historical record, which goes back to the late 1800s, I can’t find anything that compares, either.”

Maybe he should look a little harder. The disasters, calamities and other inconveniences blamed on changing weather include not only floods and fires in the United States but similar disasters in Australia, the Philippines and Southeast Asia, where calamity is part of something called “life.” Anyone spooked by “unprecedented flooding” in the Mississippi River Valley in the United States should check the precedents of the great floods of 1927 and 1937, when much of Arkansas, Misssissippi and Louisiana lay underwater for weeks, and mud even longer. The hyperbolic claims that man has never been so badly abused by the weather, and that man himself has asked for it with his wild and wicked ways abusing nature, are given the lie by the fact that the weather has been wild and wicked in many millennia before this one, when there were not nearly so many of us stalking the planet for opportunities to make mischief.

Pruden tells it soooooo well.

In these tough economic times when Congress is having deadlocked debates about taxation and government spending, the rip-offs “scientists” of the global warming cabal should be among the first casualties of the elimination of wasteful largesse.

After all, we have enough oily, soulless crooks sending us spam from Nigeria to support, so why pay people of the same ilk to run con jobs on the American taxpayer?

My home is a few inches over 51′ long and a few inches short of 15′ in the beam, and while it cost more than twice, pre-owned, than your average house in the suburbs, it can move considerably faster, in the immediate neighborhood of 33 knots in calm seas (not my doing, thank a pair of Volvo Penta diesels that produce 715 MHP apiece for that).

She resides at a dock in Marina Del Rey, just down the coast from Venice, California, and is the ultimate love of my life.

Having said that, you’ll understand why, yesterday afternoon, I spent considerable time lashing her down in response to a marine forecast that called for a windy time along the California coast.

A couple of neighbors and I teamed up to secure one anothers’ boats (mine is the largest of the three by more than ten feet).

I doubled up on the fenders, then we took every ounce we could of slack out of the lines until the fenders were practically crushed against the dock.

When the wind really freshened, to the tune of something like 43 knots, I was aboard, relaxing on the overhung fantail, sipping a large Mt. Gay Eclipse Barbados dark rum, puffing on a Montecristo and enjoying the whipping wind.

It was coming from the northeast and really slamming in, palm trees being defronded and all kinds of goodies whipping through the air. The “gale” was reminiscent of the Santa Ana winds that like to pummel through from time to time, except those are generally nice and warm, whereas these originated, purportedly, in the arctic regions and things became downright cold as the hours went by. I wondered for awhile there if an Eskimo, a walrus or maybe even a polar bear might not come soaring down and land on the flying bridge.

Riding it out was great, even as tightly secured as she was, my home moved quite a bit as waves arrived beneath the hull and the winds tried their absolute best to dislodge her.

At about 2000 hours, I decided, as the wind was doing its utmost to blow me overboard, to go below and continue my rumming therein. I put on some Marshall Tucker followed by Charlie Daniels, nice and loud (no disturbing the neighbors, not with the wind rumpusing the way it was outside. It went really well, in fact, with The Devil Went Down To Georgia), and finally, somewhere around 2300, hit the rack and got a good night’s sleep despite the external hammering. Rum has a way of helping such things along.

When I awoke this morning to the percussion of pounding temples and a mouth of cotton, I started a pot of coffee and went topside to have a gander at my environs. This was at about 0715. I usually arrive home from my morning run long before that, but what the hay, sometimes it’s good to throw inconvenient habits to the winds (no pun intended) and live dangerously.

The clean-up people hadn’t yet started in, and you should’ve seen things. “Things” were strewn everywhere, a few pieces of gear adrift from other vessels at the marina (quite a few weekend sailors had neglected to thoroughly police their weather decks in advance of the coming of The Wind), large palm fronds, paper cups, various and sundry litter items, anonymous branches, even a rubber boot and what appeared to be a Nike sneaker.

Then there were legions of leaves in what looked like a miniature northeastern autumn morning. If there were any dead leaves in any trees along the southern California coast yesterday evening, they are no longer.

Anyway, just thought I’d share that.

I pretty much needed a break from politics, since watching the country I’ve spilled blood (my own and others’) for being disassembled by a corrupt left wing president and an equally anti-patriotic, anti-Constitutional, anti-America Congressional majority can be more than a little depressing and writing about it even moreso.

Now, where the hell did I leave the rum…?