Sunday, December 27, 2009

Stalinism and Taxpayer Robbery

James Lewis points out the similarities between Stalinism and the "Environmental Movement" in a piece in the American Thinker today entitled Stalinism is Back. A quote to set the stage:

Green Stalinism is what we are seeing today, but the color is purely decorative. It has nothing to do with real environmentalism; after all, Eco-Icon Rachel Carson got DDT outlawed on totally phony evidence, thereby saving hundreds of millions of tsetse flies in Africa at the cost of millions of African children. How is that for really evil racism? How many deadly flies would you trade for the life of a child? Maybe that's what environmentalism really comes down to, but in that case, how do you tell eco-freaks from Stalinists or Hitlerites? You shall know them by their deeds, and their deeds show no difference. The whole intention behind Fraudenhagen was to impoverish the West and to hold back the developing world from creating prosperity for its people. Even Stalin destroyed Soviet agriculture only inadvertently. These folks want to do it with malice aforethought.
Of course, the hallmark of the original Stalinism was that it was a rare case of the international conspiracy. So this makes perfect sense:

What makes Green Stalinism more than a mob fad, and more than Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, is that it shows every sign of international collusion in fraud, data manipulation, and hundreds of billions of dollars of carbon credit bribes and payoffs. The media have been mired hopelessly in this cesspit for a long, long time. To their eternal shame, so has the scientific establishment, including the great science journals -- like Nature, which was founded by Isaac Newton, and Science, established to rival Nature for publishing first-class science. Scientific American used to be a fine, credible journal, but now it is disgusting. National Geographic used to be wonderful, but it has become poisoned beyond retrieval. Need we say anything about the unspeakable BBC, the mafia-like New York Times, and the macaca-dropping Washington Post? This is all corruption -- the deepest betrayal of the role of independent media in a democratic land.
Mr. Lewis' call, therefore, for investigations and possible trials, sounds a little like revenge. Maybe, but I honestly feel that unless we have investigations, and prosecutions of at least the most egregious actors in this conspiracy, we won't be rid of it. But we must be rid of it. We can not let these people simply go underground for a few years, until we all forget, then come back on the scene with a new version. Unfortunately, these peoples reputations must be ruined for at least a generation in order to protect the rest of us from them. They must be seen to be punished in order to show the world that what they did truly was heinous. Otherwise, they will just come back later, as Paul Erhlich has continually done over the years.

For the Fraudocrats things can only go down from here, because tens of millions of technically savvy people around the world now have access to the HadCRU emails and computer files -- 162 Megabytes of them. They have only begun to work through the computer code. If the crooks responsible are prosecuted, as Lord Monckton has demanded, the evidence for fraud, theft of government property, and conspiracy to defraud hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Carbon Credits will be right in front of the public. The scientific community often boasts about its ability to detect and punish frauds; well, here is a real chance to prove it.
Paul Driessen also has something to say on the topic in an article at Townhall.com today entitled Taxpayer Robbery Gate. Driessen's venting of spleen is a little more focused on Senator Barbara Boxer's part in trying to divert attention away from the Climategate scandal. Here's a quote:

Senator Barbara Boxer is an exception. Not only does she ignore the obvious. She is doing her best to divert attention from the scandal, circle the alarmist wagons, cover up the fraud, obstruct justice – and ram through yet another legislative power grab.

“This isn’t Climategate,” the California Democrat insists. “It’s email theft gate.” The problem isn’t the fraud; it’s that a hacker or whistleblower revealed the fraud.

Wrong, Senator. It’s not theft gate. It’s Taxpayer Robbery Gate.

We, the taxpayers, We the people – paid for this “research.” We paid billions of dollars for it – and providing the data, computer codes and analytical methods is a condition of the employment and research grants for these scientists. The work belongs to us. We own it.
So, there's the place to start, if anyone has the political will to do something.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas!

It is Christmas Eve. Soon, we will be going over to the daughter's for a Christmas Eve get together, and then I will be going to the church for a midnight Christmas Eve service. Tomorrow, we will again go to the daughter's place early, where the grand kids will be opening gifts. Grandma likes to spoil them rotten.

All this activity is to celebrate the birth of the greatest gift God could give to mankind, Jesus. So it was with trepidation that I read Cal Thomas' piece, Jesus the Socialist, in today's Townhall.com. A quote:


Speaking Monday afternoon to a group of children from the Washington, D.C., Boys and Girls Club, the president delivered a mini sermon on "why we celebrate Christmas." He asked the children if they knew. One piped up and said "The birth of baby Jesus."...

The president spoke of what Jesus "symbolizes for people all around the world," which he said, "is the possibility of peace and people treating each other with respect." And then, in the best tradition of a community organizer, the president said Jesus is about "doing something for other people." Even the "three wise men" were invoked to support the president's idea of wealth redistribution: "...these guys ... have all this money, they've got all this wealth and power, and they took a long trip to a manger just to see a little baby."

And what conclusion should be drawn from that journey? The president told the children, "...it just shows you that because you're powerful or you're wealthy, that's not what's important. What's important is ... the kind of spirit you have."
All of that is true, as far as it goes. But, Jesus never said that having wealth, and pursuing power is wrong, rather it is the kind of spirit you have while pursuing those things that matters. Jesus also does not give a grant for government to take from the productive, and give to the nonproductive (after taking a cut for themselves of course) at gun point. Rather, giving, whether it be money, or food and clothing, or time and talents, needs to be given of each person's own free will. To be forced to give charity is not charity at all. Charity, done correctly, breeds gratitude on the part of the receiver, and a desire to become able to give back to the community themselves. But government "charity" only breeds a sense of entitlement from those who receive it, and resentment from those from whom it is taken.

In the end, then, Obama and the Leftists have it all wrong. They have managed to corrupt the idea of charity, as they corrupt everything they touch.

To my two readers though, have a Merry Christmas, and a Prosperous New Year!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The "Environmental Movement" exposed

Some mistake my disdain for the "environmental movement" for a belief that we can simply trash the place. Nothing can be further from the truth. God calls on man to be a good steward of the resources he has given us. But stewardship involves wise use of those resources, not keeping them in some sort of pristine lockbox, as if the earth was a museum. More pointedly God expects us to use these resources to help our fellow man. Most people do not know the thinking going on in the warped, nihilistic heart of the "environmental movement." But sometimes, an article reaches into the mainstream press that exposes that heart for all is horrors. Such an article is In Pursuit of Death by Joe Herring over at the American Thinker. A quote:

In a speech to the Catholic group Call to Action, Ruether tells us we need to return to the population levels of 1930. The earth harbored about two billion people then and boasts more than six and a half billion currently, leaving four and a half billion people left standing without a chair when the music stops. What remains unsaid is how to deal with what Scrooge called "the surplus population."

In the same July-August 2000 issue of the New Oxford Review, Penn elaborates on the stated goals of the movement:

For several decades Barbara Marx Hubbard has predicted "personal extinction" for people who will not get with the New Age program: "A Quantum Transformation is the time of selection.... The species known as self-centered humanity will become extinct. The species known as whole-centered humanity will evolve." At this time, "humans capable of cooperating to self-transcend will do so"; "elements" maintaining "the illusion of separation will become extinct...just as Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal humans became extinct." Hubbard warns that if the selection comes, it will be violent: "Either the good will prevail...or the violent selection of the self-centered will begin." For her, Satan is "part of the selection process...that will bring forth the self-elected from the self-rejected, so that...only those connected to the whole survive."

Note the use of the word "species" when referring to people of differing attitudes. Only in the repugnant world of the hard left would human beings who disagree be classified as entirely different species from one another. A brief visit to Ms. Hubbard's newly launched website will be sufficient to keep your hair curled for months.
Believe me when I tell you that achieving 2 billion people will not be the end. No, it will only be a...now how would they put it?...a good first step. Meanwhile, this vanguard, these self anointed elites do not plan on offing themselves. Rather, they expect the rest of us to do the dying. Well, I am not buying it.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

White House Blackmailing Senator to Vote for Socialized Medicine

Per Theo Sparks, Glenn Beck has reported that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has been threatened by the White House that if he doesn't toe the line on health care, then Offutt Air Force Base will be put on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list. Offutt is the home of the Strategic Command, formerly the Stategic Air Command.

Beck claims to have three independent sources, and he has generally been quite accurate, so I take this seriously. As Beck says, if true, this sort of thing borders on treason. It is certainly disgusting and despicable to use our military, and the security of the United States as pawns to get an agenda through that now 60% of Americans do not want.

Meanwhile, to understand what it is about socialized medicine that so offends the average American you must read Why America Hates Universal Health Care: The Real Reason. The post is very un-PC, calling fat people...fat(!!). It says that we should all just grow up and take responsibility for our own lives. Apparently hell has finally frozen over, because someone is actually telling the truth:

Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences.
Of course, there are all the other reasons to oppose this bill: That it will drive up costs, ration care, and represents a massive power grab by a government that is already too powerful. But at it core, this is the reason most Americans recoil: Those who have worked hard, payed taxes, and played by the rules all their lives will now have to pay for some idiot who hasn't. That's just un-American.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Congress Irrelevent?

Congress is making itself irrelevant if they don't watch out.

Congress is unlikely to pass Cap and Tax this year. Due, in part to Climategate, a binding agreement coming out of Hopenhagen appears also unlikely. In any case, the Senate would probably not ratify any such agreement. But still, the threat of massive regulation remains because of the Obama Doctrine: govern by decree. Henry P Wickham, Jr. has an article over at the American Thinker today that you must read about the EPA's finding that CO2 is a pollutant and must be regulated. Congress could still make itself relevant by putting a line in the EPA's appropriations bill to the effect that no funding could be used to regulate CO2 or carbon, but I doubt that will happen, considering that the House already passed Cap and Tax, and that all funding bills must originate in the House. The only way to reverse this is to get rid of those members of Congress who are not listening to the people in 2010.

If you want to know why all this is happening, please read On the brink by Victor Volsky at American Thinker today.

In fact, he had little choice. Obama came to power in no small measure thanks to an economic collapse. But it is this very recession that makes his window of opportunity extremely narrow, at most ‘til the beginning of the 2010 election campaign. Off-year elections nearly always deal a blow to the ruling party, most certainly during economic downturns. Come election time, Obama's honeymoon will be long since over and the electorate will be sure to take out its frustration and anger on his party, further undermining the president's clout. Just ask Bill Clinton after the 1994 electoral debacle of the Democrats.


Given the political landscape the left decided on a drastic approach: President Obama and his Congressional allies would take advantage of their temporary preponderance and go all in on their program to take control of three major sectors: health care, education and energy. Speed was of the essence; while the Republicans are in post-electoral disarray, attack, attack, attack, overwhelm the enemy's defenses, give him no time to regroup, and push through the coveted legislation. All the chips were placed on a blitzkrieg. Using a football analogy, the Democrats threw a Hail Mary pass into the enemy's end-zone, pinning all their hopes on one daring toss.
And the remedy?


The only hope of Obama and his allies is that the American people, unaccustomed as they are to prolonged activism, will soon get bored and go back to slumber. Will the enraged electorate have the stamina, the staying power to continue the fight to the bitter end, until the internal aggression is beaten back? If it does and the socialist conspiracy is decisively defeated, the radical left will be dealt a crushing blow from which it might take decades to recover. If not, America as we know it, in all likelihood will be finished.
Or, in simpler terms, the Democratic party has to go. Democratic Members of Congress must be replaced with people who are willing to follow the Constitution, and work to unburden government of the unconstitutional duties it has arrogated to itself.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton just announced that the Obama administration would be working hand in glove with the UN on the "Small Arms Treaty." John Bolton threw a monkey wrench into this treaty during the Bush administration, but with Obama now in office, the way seems clear for him to sign onto this abomination. Once again, the Senate is unlikely to ratify the treaty, but that won't prevent the administration from writing regulations in support of the treaty anyway, the Second Amendment be damned.

Election 2010!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

When Do Climate Criminals Go To Jail?

A great posting over at Watts Up With That! shows the dangers of looking too closely at recent global warming. The first graph does indeed show the "hockey stick" starting from around 1400 AD. But the next graph shows the time stretched out to 800 AD, and the MWP suddenly shows up. Clearly the MWP was greater than the present-and nothing happened! But wait, there's more. If we go back to 3000 BC, it becomes clear that the world was much warmer at around 1500 BC than even the MWP. What's going on? One of the things the IPCC has done is chose over what period of time to show you temperature data. It was part of the data manipulation that went on.

These records are taken from the NOAA Greenland Ice Core data, and have not been "corrected" or "adjusted." Any climate scientist would have been aware of this data all along. The earth has been much warmer, within historical times, than it is today, without human activity to drive the planetary warming. This makes climategate all the more criminal, as these scientists were aware of the information, but chose instead to push their phony hoax on the rest of us. And when I say criminal, I really mean that those who have pushed this hoax should be prosecuted and sent to jail, particularly the "scientists" who had to have known of the availability of this information, but ignored it.

I watched the new Stossel show the Fox Business Channel last night. Yes, I know it came on the night before, but I TIVOed it, so watched it last night. The show was about climate change. Stossel had some young people in the audience who claimed to be environment students of various stripes. What appalled me was that these students had apparently gotten the complete propaganda on the CO2 theory, but seemed unaware that there are other theories out there, or that there are other temperature records, such as ice cores from Greenland. Apparently the schools have turned away from teaching students how to think, and are just teaching them what to think.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Left Takes Down U. S. Economy

When I was assigned to by NAVFAC's "expert" on goofball wormening I said to my boss, "This is just an attempt to shackle our economic power and make Europe more competitive." At last, the cat is out of the bag, with an IBD Editorial published Monday entitled Greens' Real Target: U.S. Economy A quote:

What goes little commented on, however, is the reason for the vehemence of these calls for CO2 sacrifice on the part of the U.S.: a desire to take our economy down.

Having decisively lost the great debate between capitalism and socialism, the only way the global warming socialists can do this is by imposing restrictions on U.S. output in response to the ginned-up "emergency" of global warming.
It is childish, I know to say "I told you so." But sometimes, one needs that recognition.

Paul Valone on Self Defense

Paul Valone, the Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner, has an excellent article up today entitled Guns and the Law: The Use of Deadly Force, Part 1. The article involves an interview with Thomas Faulk, author of Firearms Laws of North Carolina. If you are a gun owner, and routinely carry a gun, you should go read the article, and obtain a copy of the book. It could save your life, or keep you out of prison.

Paul is also the President of the group Grass Roots North Carolina that agitated for, and eventually got the North Carolina "Shall Issue" law in place. One of my own efforts is manning the table for the GRNC at the Raleigh gun shows.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

As Evidence Crumbles, Warming Alarmists Double Down

David Limbaugh has a piece on the Goofball Wormening front and the Copenhagen meeting at Townhall.com today entitled Defenseless Enviro-thugs Go On the Offensive. You should stop over and read it. It doesn't have much technical detail, but then you can go to Watts Up With That! for technical detail. Rather, this report summarizes why this is all happening:

As British columnist Christopher Booker says: "What has become arguably the most influential set of evidence used to support the case that the world faces unprecedented global warming, developed, copied and promoted hundreds of times, has now been as definitively kicked into touch as was (Michael) Mann's 'hockey stick' before it. Yet it is on a blind acceptance of this kind of evidence that 16,500 politicians, officials, scientists and environmental activists will be gathering in Copenhagen to discuss measures which ... would ... utterly (transform) the world economy."

Perhaps the culpability of many rank-and-file leftists should be understood in light of their mind-numbed credulity over the alarmists' claims and the Draconian solutions they offer to avert their mythical Armageddon. These leftist sheep seem engaged in a chimerical search for significance apart from God, whose existence their worldview rejects but for whom their hearts cry out in a self-muted cacophony.

Meanwhile, the EPA has now found out that CO2 is a pollutant. Go over and check out Atlas Shrugs for the details. A quote:

"CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? - it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality." - Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT
What this means is that the Obama Administration is prepared to go forward with Cap and Tax whether the Congress gives him the legislation or not, or whether the Senate ratifies a treaty out of Copenhagen or not. The only way this can be stopped is if the Congress stops it. While there may not be the votes to pass Cap and Tax, there are also not the votes to stop EPA either.

"So, if it is not CO2 that is causing the climate to change, what is?", you might ask. Don Easterbrook, a retired Geology professor at Western Washington University has a theory that seems to correlate well over time, and explains the Medieval Warm Period, the Maunder Minimum, the warming of the last third of the 20th century, and the current cooling. Unfortunately, if Professor Easterbrook is correct, there really isn't anything we can do about it. Of course that means everyone can go about using fossil fuels as before. Indeed, there is no need to bring the industrial revolution to a halt and return mankind to primitive hunter-gatherers, living in grass huts. No need for a global governance. No need, in other words, for the leftists who have brought this silly idea to a head in Copenhagen.

One of the interesting things about our current standard of living is the built-in assumption that our time is worth more than things. Our society is a "disposable" society because "things" are worth less, and our time is worth considerably more. Cap and Tax would reverse that trend. Suddenly, the car you own now might be the last you buy, because to produce them is so expensive. All kinds of materials become recyclable because the energy to produce new is so expensive. You probably would go back to taking a bath maybe once a month (utility prices would skyrocket.) Clothes would be worn until they were really dirty, and then washed by hand. Because of the high cost of new clothes, someone in your family would have to figure out how to repair them until they could not be repair anymore. Does your wife know how to sew? Mine doesn't. Food would become a major part of your budget, because of the transportation costs to bring it to you, and your diet would necessarily get a lot simpler. Oranges might be a Christmas treat, rather than staples. Try to imaging the life of someone in your area living in 1875, but without the freedoms they enjoyed, and you pretty much have what your life, and that of your children will be like. If it were necessary, I wouldn't say a word, but it is not. The fact is that the world will warm, the world will cool, and we have nothing to do with it. All we can do is adapt when it happens.

Are you mad enough yet?

Monday, December 7, 2009

Day of Infamy

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Like 9/11, today is a day we should never forget.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Understanding the Decline

Marc Sheppard has an excellent article explaining in detail exactly what was at stake in the climategate emails at American Thinker entitled Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline. A quote to give you a flavor of the report:

Remember, all of the temperatures prior to 1850 were estimated by computer algorithms and no actual readings exist to prove or disprove those figures. So a relatively short window of opportunity exists to test the programs against observations. Had 20th century measured temperatures continued to align with those recreated as smoothly after 1960 as they did previously, then the programmers could declare their code and hence their millennial temperatures sound. But the divergence, if allowed to stand, instead revealed serious design flaws in the proxy reconstructions. Which suggests that just as the decline was dealt with through trickery, so was the MWP.


And it seems that each time the trick was used, its involvement would be more deeply concealed.
So, this report is pretty technically oriented, telling us exactly what was done to what data to make the data say what was presupposed to have actually happened. In this case, the CRU "scientists" were trying to hide the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), and the Little Ice Age (LIA). But the more pressing problem was the MWP, because if this period in history was allowed to stand, the recent warming would be seen to be within normal limits. And it's hard to stampede the world into giving alarmists trillions of dollars for something that happens normally after all. That's what all this goofball wormening, cap and tax business is all about: transferring trillions of hard earned dollars from their rightful owners to cheats and liars, and kleptocrats at Goldman Sachs and other similar firms, and greedy third world kleptocrats.

The Earth's Next Last Chance

George Will sums up the current status of the goofball wormening debate in The Earth's Next Last Chance at Townhall.com today. A quote:

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

So why threaten it? As cover for ObamaCare perhaps? Will doesn't say, but in any case sums things up nicely with:

Copenhagen is the culmination of the post-Kyoto maneuvering by people determined to fix the world's climate by breaking the world's -- especially America's -- population to the saddle of ever-more-minute supervision by governments. But Copenhagen also is prologue for the 2010 climate change summit in Mexico City, which will be planet Earth's last chance, until the next one.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Climategate Roundup Number 3

Chris W. Bell has an article in today's American Thinker entitled Save the Planet by Banning Ice Cream. The article talks about the environmental movement, as illustrated by goofball wormening's true believers. But in reality, Bell is trying to show where the logic (or lack thereof) of goofball wormening leads, if taken to its illogical conclusion. Taken to its conclusion, goofball wormening leads us back to being primitive hunter gatherers. Forget the industrial revolution, forget the agricultural revolution that took place 10,000 years ago. A quote:

For now, the environmental movement is asking us to give up a small amount of our creature comforts so that our environment can be saved from global warming. I submit that we must project this movement to its logical end. If it is good to use energy-saving light bulbs, is it not better not to use light bulbs at all? If it is good to drive a small car, then it must be better to not drive a car at all. If we seek to eliminate unnecessary energy usage, why should we stop at light bulbs? If saving the environment by not burning fuel is your goal, then it is better to eat raw food than it is to eat cooked food because you save the energy required to cook your food.


The discretionary use of energy for things like vacations, music, frozen foods, and air conditioning, must, by the modern environmentalist standards, be eliminated. Imagine how much energy it takes to support ice cream. We must feed and water the cattle that are raised for the cream. We must supply the energy to make and freeze the ice cream, we must use energy to make the containers to pack the ice cream, and we must use energy to transport the ice cream from the dairy to the store. We must use energy to keep the ice cream frozen in the market, we must use energy to drive to the market, and we also use energy to power our freezers where we store the ice cream. Just think of the energy we could save if we just got rid of ice cream.


How can we sit by and watch ice cream being made if we believe its production is contributing to the doom of mankind? Every scoop pushes the hand of our doomsday clock that much closer to midnight. This reasoning can, and eventually will, be used to demonize virtually all of modern society. How can we justify watching a television show when the burning of the fuel that powers the TV is destroying our environment? How can we justify using energy to create a computer when that energy use will destroy us? How can we justify powering our air-conditioner when we could survive without it, as billions before us did?
Ben and Jerry, call your office!

Meanwhile, Clarice Feldman reports in AT that AWG not stopped yet by Climategate. I agree with her. The facts don't matter to people who believe the narrative. Indeed, in this case, the facts are so complicated, that it is just far easier to keep believing the narrative, even if the narrative was supposedly based on the facts.

C. Edmund Wright reports in AT that Sarah Palin weighs in on climategate. Good for her. Reading through her statement, she hits just the right notes, again.

Anthony Watts has a great post here. Read through the entirety and enormity of what the "climate scientist" commented. This is at the heart of the problem. This is why I get so frustrated with people who say that climategate doesn't matter. The whole premise if goofball wormening, of alarming the public, of scaring the children, is that science tells us so. But now if the science doesn't tell us anything of the sort, shouldn't goofball wormening swept into the dustbin of history, along with Piltdown Man?

I'd love to keep working here, but once again, I have to run.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Climate Gate Roundup Number 2

Rosslyn Smith has an article in the American Thinker comparing Global Warming's New Clothes to the Emperor's New Clothes, penned by Hans Christian Andersen, ironically of Copenhagen. The metaphor is a perfect fit.

Clarice Feldman reports that Michael Mann is throwing CRU's Phil Jones Under the Bus.

Andrew Walden points out that there are other absurdities in the GHG movement, such as placement of Greenhouse Gas Observatories Downwind from Erupting Volcanoes.

In Assessing Pre-Blame for Climate Summit, Jonah Goldberg writes at Townhall.com that the wheels are coming off the car because of other nation's self interest, and speculates that any treaty coming out of Copenhagen will not be ratified by the US Senate. With due respect to Mr. Goldberg, lately, I have lost faith in the common sense of our so called "Representatives" in either House of Congress. If they can pass ObamaCare, I wouldn't put any destructive nightmare these guys.

David Harsanyi says that Sen. Boxer wants to change the subject in "We-don't-want-to-talk-about-it gate" at Townhall.com.

As usual, go read Watts Up With That and click on the video. The title says it all: "You wouldn't accept that from a grade 9 science fair."

Got to go to work. More tomorrow.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Climategate Roundup

I have decided today to just do a roundup of the news on "climategate" as more and more folks get into the act. Perhaps I will do this for a few days, and see where it goes. But for now, here's the latest:

First up is Ann Coulter writing in today's Townhall.com entitled Do Smoking Guns Cause Global Warming Too? Ms. Coulter applies her usual acid wit to the climategate scandal. It's a must read.

Next up is Jonah Goldberg, also in today's Townhall.com in a piece called Groupthink and the Global Warming Industry. Goldberg is more cautious on calling the growing scandal a fraud, but I am not. Common sense says CO2 was never the "cause" of either global warming or cooling, and there is research now that makes the case that the rising and falling of CO2 levels was actually caused by the change in temperature, and not the other way around.

Larry Elder has a great takedown of National Public Radio (NPR) on Townhall.com today in a piece entitled Climategate: NPR Sees a Silver Lining. I can't help getting a smirk whenever I hear someone say they get all their news from NPR. These people have never reasoned through to see the conflict of interests that a government funded news source represents.

Jillian Bandes reports on some Senate committee in-fighting in Democrats Censor Climate Skeptics in Congress.

Representative John Linder (R-GA) has a article in the American Thinker entitled simply Climate Challenges in which he makes the point that Obama should not be going to Copenhagen, should not sign away our sovereignty, over a completely unproven "theory" that man is causing catastrophic global warming. It is a well written article. Incidentally, I did not know that the Nile river froze in 829 A.D.

Secrecy News reports on a little known Congressional Research Service report that a number of countries are making their GHG laws more stringent at a time when the argument for goofball wormening is falling apart.

William Zeranski reminds us in American Thinker that when government is involved science is ultimately corrupted. A point that bears repeating, perhaps by having each new Congresscritter write it on the blackboard 100 times.

Anthony Watts site Watts Up With That? provides an excellent round up of climate news on a daily basis. You should bookmark this site, and check in regularly, but this post is especially interesting. Christopher Monckton is the Thatcher advisor who warned the world what was at stake in Copenhagen last month.

The Washington Times reports Researcher: NASA Hiding Climate Data. The Washington Times reports that Chris Horner plans to sue if NASA doesn't come clean by the end of the year.

ObamaCare will not be Good for Gunowners

Larry Pratt and the Gun Owners of America have a press release on the ObamaCare bill now being debated in the Senate here. As you read it, keep in mind that the outcomes he discusses are not necessarily those that will come about, but very well could if the bill passes, based on past experience with other laws at other times. What many people do not know is that laws are not just created by Congress, but also by Executive Branch regulators (such as the BATFE or any of the new bureaucracies created under the ObamaCare bill) or by courts. The courts make laws through the interpretation of existing law. The way that they have corrupted the law is fairly well understood. Less understood is the how regulators extend, and in some cases, completely stand the law on its head. That is what Pratt is discussing here. Everything he mentions is very possible with an administration hostile to gun rights, as this one is.

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Thomas Sowell, and others, in different ways have been saying all along that ObamaCare is a huge grab at the liberty of the American people. Larry Pratt makes explicit what they have all implied. Rather than pass a law saying "turn in your guns or go to jail," they will use the various provisions of ObamaCare to make certain classes of people "prohibited persons." At first, the classifications of people would sound reasonable, if one didn't know the circumstances. For instance, just because a veteran suffers PTSD doesn't make him dangerous, or likely to "go off." Thousands of men, returning home from all the previous wars have also suffered what is now termed PTSD. That we now have counselling for these men is a great boon for returning soldiers, but it should not mean the loss of Constitutionally guaranteed liberties absent the actual commission of a felony. But soon more classifications will be made "prohibited" on various specious grounds. But the problem at that point is that we will not be arguing the basic principles of the law but nibbling around the edges hoping to keep our individual ox from being gored. You do not want to go there!

So, while you are checking out the latest presser, why not fill out the form, and send an email to your Senators again. It couldn't hurt, and who knows, if enough of us make our wishes known, they might just get the message to stop the madness.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

So, "most people" believe in Goofball Wormening

So, Obama is going to Copenhagen because "most people" do not dispute the existence of goofball wormening. What, is this guy in the fourth grade?

My mother would have had a saying for that. She would have asked "So, if most of the kids were jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?"

By the way, most of the people do not want the government to involve itself in health care, but that is not stopping The One from pushing that horrible idea. When did he ever care what "most people" want?

A Trio on Goofball Wormening

I have been keeping what little track of the expanding scandal that is the Hadley Climate Research Unit's hacked e-mails as I can over the holidays and into this week. The American Thinker has had several good articles on that scandal over the last several days. First up is James Lewis, writing yesterday, in a piece entitled Obama and the CRUddites of Britain. Likening the CRU to the 18th century Luddites, who tried to destroy the most advanced technology at the time, he takes a whack at the CRUddites. But the juicy parts are where Lewis brings Algore, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, James Hansen, the BBC, the Guardian the Times, the Daily Mail and Obama himself under the lens, then backs off and lets the sun do the sizzling. The most remarkable has been Obama. Why would he decide to go to Copenhagen after the scandal broke, and he could see that the jig was up? According to Lewis, it is because he has ties to the folks in Chicago who stand to make billions of dollars from Cap 'n Tax. But this is sheer lunacy, and he has to know that he is committing political suicide, or does he? Go read the whole thing, though, for the fantastic number of ways Lewis uses to describe "fraudulent."

All that aside, Peter Landesman has an article explaining why the climate models are fundamentally flawed, and it has to do with the Mathematics of Global Warming. Anyone who has ever watched the television show "Numbers" no doubt has an exaggerated view of what can be done with mathematics. What isn't shown, or is glossed over, is the simplifying assumptions that have to be made to solve many of the problems in the time necessary to catch the miscreant du jour. It's all very entertaining television, and I like it because it puts mathematics in a starring role instead of the usual brute force types. But as you will see in Landesman's piece, there really are mathematical problems that are beyond our ability to solve, and forecasting global climate is one. When I first read about climate models predicting that our world would heat up, my first reaction was to ask what they had used to verify that the models worked? I asked how they explained previous warming when no one was about, much less driving SUVs? I was told that I was asking the wrong questions (and of course that the sciences was settled, and I should just sit down and shut up.) I never learned what were the "right" questions, so I continued to ask. Turns out, I was asking the right questions.

Then there is Bruce Walker's The Ghost of Lysenko to remind us all of what happens when ideology is used to determine evidence, rather than letting the evidence inform our ideology. Just go read the whole thing. It isn't that long.