They searched for a suitable spot for four years, mainly in southwestern China, which was still largely unspoiled and has a mild year-round climate.
Situated in a lush--for Texas, anyway--valley, with 19 acres of waterfront and a warm year-round climate, the resort sat on the former site of the Sunshine Nudist Camp (in the '70s), the Steiner Ranch Rodeo Camp (later in the '70s) and the Bermuda Inn Reducing Resort (up until the creation of Lake Austin).
Its year-round sunny climate makes it ideally suited to a half-term or Christmas break.
On Monday, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres opened the annual end-of-year international climate negotiations.
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That represents less than half the growth rate in the first six months of the year - so the climate remains tough.
Colonial towns, beach resorts and a year-round mild climate have contributed to a growing tourist industry, and the economy has benefited from offshore banking.
Scafetta believes that a natural 60-year climate cycle associated with astronomical cycles may also explain calendars adopted in traditional Chinese, Tamil and Tibetan civilizations, since all major ancient civilizations knew about 20-year and 60-year Jupiter and Saturn cycles.
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And many agronomists hold that relying on year-to-year yield changes for modelling exaggerates the damage due to longer climate shifts.
However, such an agreement proved impossible in the hyper-political climate of an election year, and the government-wide cuts opposed by both sides now are set to take effect.
The Nobel Committee actually expects us to believe that, out of all human organizations working for peace and the improvement of the human condition, Al Gore's paltry four-year media circus of climate change advocacy is the most significant achievement we have to show for ourselves?
Will either of these measures--on energy or climate--actually become law this year?
Ms Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat and 15-year veteran of the UN climate process, takes over from the current UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer early next month.
Several experts have said that 2007 is a litmus-test year for energy and climate change legislation, meaning that real overhaul would come after the 2008 elections in the event that Democrats win both the White House and Congress.
Last year, private e-mails of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia, in England, were mysteriously leaked, and their exchanges appeared to suggest a willingness to falsify data in order to buttress the idea that global warming is real.
Bush also attempted to move the ball forward on a key issue--climate change--that he essentially avoided until last year's speech.
Setting a limit on companies' emissions beyond which they must buy offsets is not thought to be on the cards, but hopes are growing that China will commit to some kind of non-binding target, possibly at the Copenhagen climate-change summit at the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard praised the inclusion of a requirement that 20 percent of all spending designated for the seven-year budget (2014-2020) would have to have a beneficial effect on the climate.
The only notable success of the Copenhagen climate-change conference last year was a commitment to pursue them.
For others, it is about time that the biggest game of the year was staged in a climate that cold-weather teams are accustomed to.
At the very least, they can use the ruling to rally the faithful and shame climate-change sceptics in next year's elections.
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After all, 150, 000 people already die from climate-change related effects every year.
Lisbon, Portugal, which is located in the path of the Gulf Stream, averages the most daily hours of sunlight year-round thanks to its dry air and stable climate (much like southern California in the U.S.).
It calculated that five million deaths occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies, and that toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue.
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Proper reconstructions of natural 20-year and 60-year cycles, along with other independent studies, indicate that the IPCC has seriously overestimated human climate contributions.
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"But it's prudent to manage climate risk, " said the 20-year old sophomore at Wheaton College, a Christian school in Illinois.
Chief Executive magazine found that Wisconsin's business climate in 2011 showed the greatest one-year improvement of any state in the history of the magazine's ratings.
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Natural climate variability, from seasonal to multi-year scale, has produced significant effects in the Latin American countries, which suggests that climatic change projections constitute an important element for national and regional planning.
The roadside bomb killed thousands in Afghanistan last year, stifled the economy and created a climate of fear - yet its capacity to wreak destruction and havoc only seems to be increasing.
But he said they were consistent with the models developed to estimate climate change from the gases over a 125-year period.
Selective pressures had shaped them to withstand the cruelest climate Europe could dish out during their 200, 000-year tenure as the continent's top hominid.
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