Right Mind

Thomas Kuhn on Climategate

One of the best things I ever read in graduate school was Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Kuhn’s work speaks to the current Climategate scandal. Roger Pilon makes the connection:

Yet to listen to how the promoters have discounted their critics over the years, one would imagine that the science on the matter were settled.  In fact, one hears often enough that the science is settled to believe that many of them believe it — until a story like this breaks.  Then we see the scramble to shore up their belief system.  It’s an old story, documented years ago by Thomas Kuhn in his provocative volume, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Fortunately, we haven’t yet reached the stage of the Lysenko scandal, which set Soviet genetics back several decades.  But we delude ourselves if we believe that the politicization of science is not inherent in government entanglement as such.  Since that entanglement of government and science is not likely to end soon, the antidote is transparency.  Climategate may be just the spur we need to open the books on global warming, especially given the draconian remedies its promoters are prescribing.

The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Age

I previously posted a long extract from the UK Telegraph.

Here is a succinct summary all in one place. I appreciate the Telegraph for publishing these facts to the whole world.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world.

1. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That ), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws. They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based. Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence. But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide?
2. The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programs, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. What is tragically evident is the picture of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programs they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results. This comes up so often that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story.
3. The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

”The Abortion Distortion: Just How Pro-Choice is America, Really?

New York Magazine has an article titled The Abortion Distortion: Just How Pro-Choice is America, Really?

It’s written by an abortion supporter. But she readily acknowledges the statistics:

• There are more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion providers.
• More Americans label themselves pro-life today than pro-choice.
• Legislation is shifting towards valuing life.

From Jennifer Senior:

And if you want to hear honest talk about the realities of abortion, go speak with those abortion counselors and providers. Even the most radically pro-choice will tell you that the political discourse they hear about the subject, with its easy dichotomies and bumper-sticker boilerplate, has little correspondence to the messy, intricate stories of her patients. They hear about peace and guilt, relief and sin. And it is they who will acknowledge, whether we like it or not, that the rhetoric and imagery of the pro-life movement can touch on some basic emotional truths. Peg Johnston, who manages Access for Women in upstate New York, remembers the first time her patients unconsciously began to co-opt the language of the protesters outside. “And it wasn’t that these protesters were brainwashing them,” she says. “It’s that they were tapping into things we all have some discomfort about.”

HT: Alisa Harris

Obama losing favor with Michael Moore

The Huffington Post has An Open Letter To President Obama On Afghanistan from Michael Moore.

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).”

Read the rest here.

 HT: Gary E

Obama Nation: ‘Free Thinkers’

UK Telegraph: Climategate -- 'Scientific establishment hopelessly compromised'

This has got to be one of the very best articles I’ve read on the climate science scandal. The UK Telegraph has really done their research here (as usual).

Please take the time to read through this.

From the U.K. Telegraph:

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.

A week after my colleague James Delingpole , on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated. What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

…

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That ), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

BBC: Inquiry into stolen climate e-mails

Here’s an interesting dilemma. From the BBC:

Details of a university inquiry into e-mails stolen from scientists at one of the UK's leading climate research units are likely to be made public next week.

Announcement of a chair of the inquiry and terms of reference will probably be made on Monday, a source says.

The University of East Anglia's (UEA) press office did not confirm the date.

But a spokesperson said information about the investigation into the hack at UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) would be made public very soon.

Scientists will be scrutinising the choice of chair and the terms of reference.

One senior climate scientist told me that the chair would have to be a person accepted by both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics as a highly respected figure without strong connections to either group.

BBC News understands that senior individuals at UEA have acknowledged the potential damage to the university's reputation from the CRU affair and are anxious to clear the institution's name.

Good luck with that.

But there is a risk that some people will not accept the findings of any inquiry unless it is fully independent, as demanded by the former UK Chancellor Lord Lawson earlier in the week.

Good luck with that. There’s too much money invested in the global warming scam. And too many politicians have their reputations on the line.

Drivers who leave engines running to clear windshields face fines under 'idling offence' rules

From the U.K. Daily Mail:

Motorists who leave their cars running on frosty mornings to warm up the engine and clear the windscreen could face being fined under anti-pollution rules this winter.

Drivers are being told that leaving a car idling for more than a couple of minutes wastes fuel, and they could be served with on-the-spot fines of up to £40.

However motoring groups  have warned the rules should not be used to stop responsible motorists leaving engines ticking over while they remove ice and condensation from windows.

Many councils now enforce the 'stationary idling offence', which was quietly introduced by the Government in 2002.

It is particularly aimed at drivers of buses and taxis who sometimes leave engines running for half-an-hour or more while waiting for passengers, pumping out pollution unnecessarily.

One of the latest authorities considering imposing the rules is Sefton council in Merseyside.

It says running engines while a vehicle is not moving is an 'inefficient use of fuel' and results in the release of gases that have a 'negative effect on both climate change and public health'.

Fines will start at £20, doubling if they aren't paid within three weeks.

David Tattersall, executive member of its environmental committee, insisted officials wouldn't be fining motorists 'left, right and centre'.

'It is more about advising people to switch off their engines to reduce vehicle emissions and prevent air pollution,' he added.

,,,

While Bill Richey, chairman of North Sefton Hackney Drivers' Association, commented: 'I can see the point of encouraging people to switch off their engines at level crossings as you can be kept waiting 15 minutes at a time.

'But from a taxi driver's point of view it is just not possible for us to sit there with our engines off in the winter months.

'We need to keep the car running to generate heat otherwise we'd catch hypothermia.' 

You have to understand the environmentalists’ point of view: saving Mother Earth is more important than the lives of a few taxi drivers (or anyone else).

HT: David M.

7 stories Barack Obama doesn't want told

From The Politico:

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines that Politico says Obama needs to worry about. You’ll need to look them up over at the Politico website for the full discussion.

1. He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money
2. Too much Leonard Nimoy
3. That’s the Chicago Way
4. He’s a Pushover
5. He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe
6. President Pelosi
7. He’s in love with the man in the mirror

HT: Bill J.

Harvard ignored warnings about investments: Advisers told Summers, others not to put so much cash in market; losses hit $1.8b

Larry Summers is now the Director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration.

Perhaps that helps explain how the nation could run up a $1+ trillion debt this year?

From the Boston Globe:

It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing - or mismanaging - its basic operating funds.

Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash, according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with the endowment’s risky mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity. Meyer’s successor, Mohamed El-Erian, would later sound the same warnings to Summers, and to Harvard financial staff and board members.

“Mohamed was having a heart attack,’’ said one former financial executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering Harvard and Summers. He considered the cash investment a “doubling up’’ of the university’s investment risk.

But the warnings fell on deaf ears, under Summers’s regime and beyond. And when the market crashed in the fall of 2008, Harvard would pay dearly, as $1.8 billion in cash simply vanished. Indeed, it is still paying, in the form of tighter budgets, deferred expansion plans, and big interest payments on bonds issued to cover the losses.

HT: RA

Purloined e-mails don't change facts

Here’s part of an editorial by Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers.

Funny, I thought it was called “global warming” deniers.

Oh, that’s right. They changed it to “climate change” deniers right after it was shown that the climate is cooling.

The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week - portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories - does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

If I'm wrong, somebody ought to tell the polar ice caps they're free to stop melting.

That said, the e-mail episode is more than a major embarrassment for the scientists involved. Most Americans are convinced that climate change is real - a necessary prerequisite for the kinds of huge economic and behavioral adjustments we would have to make to begin seriously limiting carbon emissions. But consensus on the nature and scope of the problem will dissipate, and fast, if experts try to obscure the fact that there's much about the climate they still don't know.

Clearly, the leaked emails do not “prove” that global warming is a hoax.

But what it does demonstrate is that many of the global warming scientists are frauds. The data should be looked at quite carefully — oh, sorry, can’t do that. They threw the original data away and only kept the “corrected” data that demonstrates their prejudices.

Senate opens debate over health care: Democrats likely to have trouble keeping 60 votes

We’ll see if the public can reign in the Democrats.

From the Associated Press:

The 60 votes aren't there any more.

With the Senate set to begin debate today on health care overhaul, the all-hands-on-deck Democratic coalition that allowed the bill to advance is fracturing already. Yet majority Democrats will need 60 votes again to finish.

Some Democratic senators say they'll jump ship from the bill without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. Others say they'll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed overboard. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the heart and soul of the party.

There's no clear course for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to steer legislation through Congress to President Barack Obama. You can't make history unless you reach 60 votes, and don't count on Republicans helping him.

But Reid is determined to avoid being remembered as another Democrat who tried and failed to make health care access for the middle class a part of America's social safety net.

"Generation after generation has called on us to fix this broken system," he said at a recent Capitol Hill rally. "We're now closer than ever to getting it done."

I wonder if they ever considered fixing the system by removing all of the broken fixes they have already put in place?

Special Event: Schaeffer Cox will be in Emida Monday 11/30

Please be our guest on Monday evening Nov 30 2009 at the Emida Community center to listen to Schaeffer Cox from Fairbanks Alaska speak to us about the events and outcome of the Continental Congress recently held in Illinois. He will be letting us know what is happening all over the United States and his successful efforts in Alaska

Event starts at 6PM  afterward we will be adjourning to the Emida Cafe for more conversation and refreshments.

The Emida Cafe will be having a Dinner special just for this event so come to listen to Schaeffer then enjoy more good conversation over a great meal.

Look forward to seeing all our friends and neighbors on Monday.

To find the Emida Community Center

Coming North on Hwy 6 from Potlatch, take 1st right after power station then go 1 block and turn right to the quonset hut building.  Approx. 19 miles from Potlatch.

From the north on Hwy 6 go past Cafe take 1st left (Charlie Creek Rd) go 1 block turn right to the quonset hut building

===========

Schaeffer is a skilled leader and an exceptionally well-spoken advocate of smaller government, individual liberty, and a return to our Constitution.
Here are some of his core principles:

FREEDOM - Freedom is necessary in order to accomodate the expression of individual creativity and productivity.  That individual creativity and productivity is the backbone of a vibrant economy and society and must be protected.  Freedom is KEY!

EDUCATION - No one should be kept from the opportunity to work hard and get a first-rate education.  Central planning and orders from Washington are bad for education and hard on teachers.  Teachers should be accountable to parents, not politicians.  Local control is the only way to ensure the opportunity for quality education because local teachers and parents care the most.

ROLE OF GOVERNMENT - The government's role is infrastructure and arbitration, both of which are intended to protect an environment of stability and opportunity for the people.  It is then left up to the people to follow their dreams and in doing so build a strong and prosperous nation.  Infrastructure includes roads, police, fire stations, electricity, and a few other common necessities of life and business.  Arbitration assures stability through the enforcement of voluntary contracts, property rights, etc. In short, it is not the government's job to run your life and business.  It is their job to protect your right to do that yourself.

Second AMENDMENT - The armament of the people is necessary in order to preserve freedom, and you know I believe in freedom.  That is why I oppose any and all gun regulation.

FAMILY - Strong families make strong nations.  In order for a family to be close and strong they need to spend time together, have fun together.  One of the greatest barriers to this is our fiat or "inflationary" money system.  The Federal Reserve Bank prints money out of thin air any time Congress goes over budget, which is all the time.  The result is that the money you work hard for becomes  less special, losing its purchasing power and causing the price of everything to increase.  The cause and effect goes like this:  Federal Reserve goes print, print, print.  Prices of everything goes up, up, up.  That is hard on families.  How can a father spend time with his kids if he has to work every waking moment just to keep up with the Fed's printing habits.  It did not use to be this way and it does not have to be now.  The States carries a lot of weight on this issue and I will see to it that the State does everything it should to correct this problem.

Listen to the interviews during the Continental Congress

Scheaffer Cox  Interview

• Part 1: http://www.viddler.com/explore/RepublicMagazin/videos/7/ 
• Part 2: http://www.viddler.com/explore/RepublicMagazin/videos/8/
• Part 3: http://www.viddler.com/explore/RepublicMagazin/videos/9/

Via Paula B.

Tax rollback is too good to be true

I wonder how many of my readers will be affected by this.

From Times Call:

When the federal government was bailing out the banks, the auto industry and Wall Street, it also included a token item for most workers: a rollback in federal income tax withholding rates.

The intent was to put more money into the economy to forestall an even deeper economic collapse.

Many Americans are finding out now, however, that their stimulus comes with mighty large strings attached.

The government now estimates that 15.4 million taxpayers had their withholdings reduced by too much, meaning they will have to pay a higher tax bill come April 15. About 1.2 million could technically face a penalty, according to the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration.

The people most likely to be affected are those who have two jobs and couples in which both spouses work. Others include those who work but also collect Social Security benefits.

HT: Dave M.

Forget about Mike Huckabee for 2012

If the Seattle Times is right, Mike Huckabee can kiss his Presidential aspirations goodbye.

This could be Huckabee’s Chappaquiddick equivalent.

The man sought for questioning in the execution of four Lakewood police officers was granted clemency in 2000 by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and released on bail just six days ago on a child rape charge in Washington state.

Maurice Clemmons, the 37-year-old Tacoma man being sought for questioning in the killing this morning of four Lakewood police officers, has a long criminal record punctuated by violence, erratic behavior and concerns about his mental health.

Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protests of prosecutors.

"This is the day I've been dreading for a long time," Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas' Pulaski County said tonight when informed that Clemmons was being sought for questioning in connection with the killings.

HT: Dave M.

Poll: Limbaugh Is Most Influential Conservative

From the Associated Press:

By a wide margin, Americans consider Rush Limbaugh the nation's most influential conservative voice.

Those are the results of a poll conducted by "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair magazine and issued Sunday. The radio host was picked by 26 percent of those who responded, followed by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck at 11 percent. Actual politicians - former Vice President Dick Cheney and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin - were the choice of 10 percent each.

Which is why the liberals are pulling their hair out about Sarah Palin.

Dump AARP

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Lewiston Tribune:

Dump AARP

To seniors like me who are sick and tired of AARP supporting the government's plan to steal one-half trillion dollars from Medicare, do like a lot of us are doing. We are tearing up our AARP cards and joining the alternative, American Seniors Organization (americanseniors.org). If you don't have the Internet, call (800) 951-0017 and they will send you the information.

Gary Bond

Winchester

I was’t familiar with the American Seniors Organization. This is from their “about us” page:

We are driven by a uniquely American philosophy that starts with the understanding that government doesn't tax and regulate "things." It taxes and regulates "people." Individuals like you and me. That's why we treat every member as an individual, with a different story and different priorities, freely united as individuals to provide each other with better values in the services we want and need.

At American Seniors Association, we don't just take the government's side like some other associations. We are not some big liberal bureaucracy here to try to scare you into going along with Big Government all the time or telling you what to think.

And they have really blasted the AARP.

“It is outrageous that the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) endorsed House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s $1.2 trillion, 10-year Obamacare bill, which passed Saturday night and drastically cuts Medicare for seniors and provides weak verification so illegal aliens can sponge off taxpayers,” says Stuart Barton, president of the American Seniors Association (ASA) representing hundreds of thousands of members nationwide.

“The left-wing AARP sold out to Pelosi and the White House so it can sell insurance and reap profits under Obamacare. Obamacare-- replete with its heavy hand of government control and heathcare rationing-- is not an option and must be defeated in the U.S. Senate. The AARP continues to lose thousands and thousands of members because of its sympathy toward Obamacare, higher taxes and big government-- and that is why ASA is getting even more torn-up AARP cards in our mail and why our alternative group’s membership is rapidly growing every day,” Barton notes.

The ASA has major concerns over the Pelosi bill: 1) any government-run plan would limit patient-doctor choice, 2) there would be an employer mandate that kills jobs and lowers wages, 3) taxpayers could be forced to underwrite abortions even if the procedure goes against their beliefs and 4) untold millions of illegal aliens could be given costly healthcare benefits at the expense of citizens and legal residents because there are weak 50-state verification stipulations. Furthermore, House Resolution 3962 is estimated to cost over $1.2 trillion, and especially attacks baby boomers and seniors by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare over the next 10 years.

If you are looking for an alternative to the AARP, consider checking out the American Seniors Organization.

Ed Begley Jr. ClimateGate Global Warming Rant (Video)

Here is the video of global warming crusader Ed Begley Jr. ranting on FoxNews. He has no defense for the Climate-Gate emails that have stunned the scientific community, so after some awkward moments he just gets mad.

Watch the video and tell me what you think.  

HT: David D.

The Best Of

Via LCJ

How To Rig A Scientific Consensus

From the Wall Street Journal:

The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged. 

You are only credible if you publish in the pro-AGW journals. Anyone else is a quack.

Priceless.

Swiss vote to ban new minarets

From the Associated Press:

Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.

Claude Longchamp, leader of the widely respected gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection contracted by state-owned DRS television forecasts approval of the initiative by more than half the country’s 26 cantons, meaning it will become a constitutional amendment.

The nationalist Swiss People’s Party describes minarets, the distinctive spires used in most countries for calls to prayer, as symbols of rising Muslim political and religious power that could eventually turn Switzerland into an Islamic nation.

Muslims make up about 6 percent of Switzerland’s 7.5 million people. Many Swiss Muslims are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Fewer than 13 percent practice their religion, the government says, and Swiss mosques do not broadcast the call to prayer outside their buildings.

Climategate: five Aussie MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over carbon tax

From the U.K. Telegraph:

Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.

Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.

Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.

The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.

Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.

For the rapidly increasing number of us who believe that AGW is little more than a scheme by bullying eco-fascists to deprive us of our liberty, by big government to spread its controlling tentacles into every aspect our lives, and scheming industrialists such as Al Gore to enrich themselves through carbon trading, this principled act by Australia’s Carbon Five is fantastic news.

Where they lead, the rest of the world’s politicians will eventually be forced to follow: their appalled electorates will make sure of it.

HT: David D.

GOOOH

Get Out of Our House (GOOOH) is a non-partisan plan to replace 100% of Congress in 2010 elections.

Opening segment for the show "That's What I Like About the South" with Bea Harrison, filmed in Biloxi, MS and aired on WXXV-TV, the Fox affilate on 5/3 (and 5/10).  

HT: Craig B.

Unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming

From the U.K. Times Online:

THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.

That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that advises governments worldwide — published its first set of reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.

The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before. The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?

The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.

Clearly, the medieval warming period was not man-made. So it either has to be discounted, ignored, or removed from the history books (which is what some of the Climategate leaked emails wanted to do).

George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded doubters “climate deniers”, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to divert billions of dollars into green technology.

Isn’t that what is happening? That seems like a statement of fact.

This weekend it emerged that the [climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich] has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The original data has been “corrected”. That was supposed to compensate for differences in the way the data was taken. Curiously, though, it actually made the earth appear to get warmer.

Call me cynical, but “correcting” the data and then throwing away the raw data itself is suspicious science.  

If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.”

WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.

Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.

Lawson said: “Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion.”

The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is not warming.

This weekend many of Jones’s colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton, professor of earth system science at UEA, said: “We wouldn’t have anything like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together the historical temperature record and it is good work.”

The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will require even more convincing of that.

I’ll need a ton more convincing, starting with this: why is global warming occurring on Mars, Pluto, Titan, etc?

And why is our current global warming cycle man-made but the previous one was not. What was the cause of the medieval warming period and previous, post-ice age warming periods?

HT: Dr. A

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist

David D. emails me:

The Department of Defense truly seems to have lost its direction.

They have agreed to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a New York City courthouse and now want to try three Navy Seals for giving Ahmed Hashim Abed a bloody lip. 

Abed is the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004.

I’m glad I’ve retired from the military. It’s been emasculated and feminized over the last 45 years that it’s nearly unrecognizable.

From Fox News:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq - the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment - called a captain's mast - and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors - and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

…

Neal Puckett, an attorney representing McCabe, told Fox News the SEALs are being charged for allegedly giving the detainee a "punch in the gut."

Climategate Won't Go Away

Report it.

New Zealand Climate Agency Accused of Data Manipulation

The floodgates are open. From Lew Rockwell’s website:

Climate scientists in New Zealand today accused the foremost climate-research institution in New Zealand of data manipulation of the same type as the East Anglia Climatic Research Institute (CRU) is alleged to have done.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition today issued this paper saying that a graph published by the New Zealand National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) is not only wrong but is the result of painstaking and unjustified adjustment of raw temperature data covering the period from 1853 through 2008, Ian Wishart of The Briefing Room announced today.

At issue is a claim by NIWA that the average temperature over New Zealand declined from 1853 to 1909 and then began to rise, and has been rising ever since, at an average rate of +0.92 degree (Celsius) per century.

However, unlike the case with the CRU, NIWA's raw data remain readily available, at least to climate scientists. Richard Treadgold, of the Climate Conversation Group, and his colleagues requested and obtained the data used to produce the NIWA graph. Using these data, they produced a graph of their own. Their graph, shown here, displays no such decline from 1853 to 1909 and consequently no such steep increase from 1909 through 2008 as that shown on the NIWA graph. Instead, according to the CSC, the linear trend is a negligibly gentle +0.06 degree per century since 1853.

ObamaCare’s Cost Could Top $6 Trillion

From Cato-at Liberty:

Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years.  Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.

One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019).  Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”

Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance.  When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax.  When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending.  But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending.  That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan.  And it hides maybe 60 percent of the legislation’s total costs.  When I correct for that gimmick, it brings total costs to roughly $2.5 trillion (i.e., $1 trillion/0.4).

Grab your wallets.  

Global-warming alarmists caught with data down

The following commentary by Michael Costello ran in today's Lewiston Tribune. Costello is always well worth reading.

You can find a copy on his website: The Pajamahadin.

The title is quite clever.

So here’s Michael’s take on the biggest scientific scandal of the century.

And, as with all things: follow the money.

This hasn't been a good week for the global-warming alarmist industry. An as-yet-anonymous hero hacked into a computer at the University of East Anglia and released to the world data and e-mails from the heart of global-warming activism and revealed that the biggest names in the global-warming industry have conspired to manipulate data, conceal contradictory information and punish nonconformists. It has also been revealed that the computer models used to predict global warming were poorly encoded and buggy.

But most importantly this information showed that global-warming science is not being conducted by objective scientists whose primary goal is the elucidation of truth. Instead, the biggest names in the field are ideological hacks driven by political agendas. It brings into question whether anything they have produced in their careers can be trusted.

This is all terribly important, as the United States Congress has on its docket a couple of carbon emission-controlling bills that will cost trillions of dollars, throw millions of Americans out of work and dramatically erode the liberty of every American. The justification for this despotic legislation is the "scientific research" conducted by the very same men who have been exposed as quacks.

This story hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves. When similar information revealed that tobacco companies knew that their products caused cancer, it was front-page news. If embarrassing information were hacked from a health insurance company's servers, it would be the first item on the evening news.

So far, reaction has been muted. The NBC News Web site shows nothing. This is hardly surprising as NBC's parent company is General Electric. General Electric is the world's largest manufacturer of "green technology," such as wind turbines. What all green technologies have in common is that they rely upon public subsidies and those subsidies require global-warming hysteria. More corruption.

The New York Times, quite laughably, announced it would not publish the information because its journalistic standards do not permit the publication of illegally collected information. If there really is such a prohibition at The Times, then there is an exemption when illegally obtained information compromises national security.

No honest scientist believes his profession is incorruptible. Data editing and massaging are unfortunately common. Many granting agencies often distribute money in expectation of a particular result. This might involve a chemotherapeutic agent that a pharmaceutical firm wishes to market. The manufacturer of a nutritional supplement funding research eagerly awaits the results of research he anticipates will reveal a hoped for probiotic effect. Don't think the researcher isn't aware of his benefactor's wishes.

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration poured unprecedented amounts of cash into global-warming research. Then Vice President Al Gore made global warming his signature issue. Billions were disseminated with the stipulation that the money be used to advance his side of a hypothesis.

In academia, careers are made or ruined based upon the amount of extramural funding brought to campus. Individual researchers know tenure and promotion deliberations will turn largely on the amount of grant money won. Department chairmen seeking to become deans know the weightiest single section of their resumes will be the amount of extramural funding his department attracted while he was at the helm. The same goes for deans who aspire to become college presidents. And even those who have no aspirations for higher office know salaries are set based upon how good a rainmaker one is.

Nearly two decades worth of distortion in atmospheric science has yielded an academic atmosphere that rewarded zealotry over scientific rigor. The hierarchy in atmospheric science departments is tilted disproportionately toward those who have brought in the greatest amounts of money. As such, editorial boards at major journals are similarly stacked with those who grabbed Al Gore's cash. Granting agency committees are typically populated with representatives from academia who are chosen for their success in that field.

What this scandal has revealed is that there is no limit to the corruption that can be purchased when one has access to the inexhaustible United States Treasury.

Arguably the greatest scientist in human history was Ernest Rutherford. He not only won a Nobel Prize, but trained 13 future Nobel Prize winners. And he never took a cent of extramural funding. He believed no man can honestly serve two masters. He chose the truth. Global-warming alarmists chose otherwise.

Time to end tax exemptions?

The following letter to the editor appeared in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter has now created a Web site for us to provide suggestions for solving Idaho's budgetary mess (www.efficiency.idaho.gov). If you want to send Otter a message, click on the "contact us" button in the upper right.

And that website shows that nearly 75% of the Idaho budget goes towards education. And London and his buddies want to increase that spending by raising taxes. Brilliant.

Below is the message I sent:

Governor Otter, I would like to suggest a way to begin to break out of our budget dilemma.

Idaho is not meeting its basic mission of protecting and educating its children, maintaining public highways and emergency services and helping those who need help.

You and your political party officials continue to reject increased taxes, and in the last few years have significantly cut income and property taxes for corporations and affluent individuals. So, not surprisingly, the state's income is dwindling below a minimal level.

Given that rock (not enough money in the budget) and that hard place (a political commitment to not raise taxes), I suggest a middle road of ending the years of exemptions that have been created to both the sales tax and the income tax. Those exemptions can be ended and the tax rates unchanged and the result will be millions more dollars paid to Idaho, enough to begin to rebuild the schools, universities and roadways.

According to the state's tax overview (http://dfm.idaho.gov/cdfy2010/publications/gfrb/TaxStructure_Jan2009.pdf) there are dozens of exemptions to the sales tax. For example, sales tax is not collected on these products: ski lifts and snowgrooming equipment, glider kit vehicles and irrigation equipment.

We have an expression in the navy: his solution is like pissing in the wind. That doesn’t even begin to fix the problem.

That is unfair, and in today's budgetary mess, unsustainable.

Governor Otter, dump all these exemptions. That does not change the tax rate, and so is not a tax increase. But it results in a significant increase in the money collected through the sales and income tax. It's only fair.

Bill London, Moscow 

I have an idea: why doesn't the Idaho Legislature take everyone who suggests raising taxes and tax them at the highest marginal tax rate? If they want to pay more, feel free. But don’t vote for everyone else to pay more while you yourselves skate out.