Political Angst In America

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Location: Pantego, Texas, United States

Monday, July 30, 2007

Back on July 17 I wrote a blog about a letter Michael Eckhart of ACORE wrote to Marlo Lewis of CEI seeming to threaten to destroy Mr. Lewis' reputation if he doesn't stop denying that Global Warming is a severe threat to humanity. I'm amazed that Mr. Eckhart wrote a comment to my blog. Mr. Eckhart appears to be a true believer in James Hanson's view of Global Warming; I don't know whether or not Mr. Eckhart has a scientific background. I'll write a response explaining why I have had doubts about James Hanson's predictions for about 30 years now after I complete the proposal to NAVAIR that I'm working on. At this date one good reason is that the predictions of 30 years ago have not come true. (By the way, it is not that I don't believe that man has affected climate, it's just that I don't believe the CO2 run-away temperature hypothesis for a variety of reasons.)

Here are a couple of excerpts from the blog “blue crab boulevard” about the wonders of socialized medicine. As with most things in modern life, mindless bureaucracy is the problem. Some bureaucracy is necessary, of course, but it doesn’t have to be the mindless bureaucracy that so often characterizes government operations.

Continuing with all the "fabulous" news coming out about the British National Health Service, the Telegraph has a story detailing a crisis in a lack of hospital beds. Patients are being left in agony waiting to get treatment after sustaining serious injuries. How about waiting three weeks for badly broken bones to be repaired? Needless to say, the National Health Service is springing into action to address the problem: They want to censure the man who revealed the crisis.

A woman of 108 has been told by health chiefs that she must wait 18 months to get a new hearing aid.


Olive Beal, one of the oldest women in Britain, is confined to a wheelchair and losing her sight.

Being able to communicate and listen to music is her only contact with the outside world, says her family.

Mrs Beal, who has six grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, has used an old-fashioned analogue hearing aid for the last five years.

But she struggles to hear with it and needs a modern digital hearing aid which cuts out background noise.

After being told of the wait, Mrs Beal, who lives in a care home in Deal, Kent, said: "I could be dead by then."

Her granddaughter Maria Scott, 52, said: "I'd have thought they would take her age into account as she probably has not got 18 months to wait. Olive has worked hard from the age of 16 to her late 60s and paid taxes.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Senator Schumer contiues to try to criminalize policy differences with the Bush Administration. Senator Schumer doesn't seem to need for there to have actually been any crime; he is happy with constructing perjury traps. I wonder if we are now witnessing the degeneration of our system of government; there seem to be a lot of parallels to what happened in Rome just before dicators took over. If policy differences lead to office holders being sent to jail, it won't be long before assassinations start. When that happens we will know the end is near. Democrats claim that President Bush is assuming dicatorial powers; actually Bush seems very weak to me. President Lincoln would have put the latter day "copperheads" who give aid and comfort to the enemy like Reid and Schumer in jail by now.

Now Senator Schumer and the Democrats say they will not approve any more of President Bush's appointments to the Supreme Court. With that precedent, why should the Republicans not filibuster any future Democratic President's nominations to the Court? That would leave the conservatives with a permanent 5-3 edge in the Court. The only reason there are four liberals on the Court is because President Reagan appointed some who were not what they appeared to be to appease the Democrats. That was a mistake President Bush was not going to make. My guess is that, if President Bush gets another opportunity, he will appoint a black woman. That will make it difficult for the Democrats. They will still obstruct and demonize the appointee, but it will cost them votes in the next election.

Here is a site that shows how much money various groups are giving to the people running for President. Be sure to note the amount of money given, not just the length of the bar. For example Lawyers give millions to their favorite, John Edwards. But Oil and Gas companies give only about one-tenth as much to their favorite.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?Ind=H01

Friday, July 27, 2007

One new law the nation needs is one that stops Senators from running for President until some period after they leave office. Maybe two years. Such a law would cause about 50 Senators to resign in 2010. Getting rid of all of those "would be" Presidents would be good for congress.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Today there is a lot of stuff on the news about a basketball referee that may have been influencing the outcome of games. It is not surprising that such a thing could happen. I dont watch professional basketball because it has always appeared to me that the referee's influence the game. It seems that very often if one team begins to pull ahead, it suddenly gets penalties that even things up. That keeps the TV audience from changing channels. This is easy for the referee's to do if they want to since there is always some infraction of the rules at any tie. Football has the same situation. There is offensive holding on almost evry play, but it is rarely called. Baseball is the hardest game for the umpires to influence. I've played in some games where the umpires seemed partial, but they rarely made outrageous calls. Mostly they were loose in calling balls and strikes. When that happens the batters can adjust, and may still be able to hit the ball. The umpire may be able to make an outrageous call at a critical time in the game, but that opportunity is rarely there. In football and basketball a foul can be called at almost any time, and nothing may show up on the replay. In football the referee usually gives the number of the offending player, but often the replay shows that person is not the one who committed the foul. The instant replay has no doubt made it more difficult for officials to influence games, but I think it can still happen. I'm not a gambler, but if I were I don't think I would bet on baketball or football games.

Here is an article about climate science that support my belief that the GCM's do include all significant phenomena. There is a high likelihood that there are significant phenomena of which we are unaware.


When Physics Trumps Hysteria in Global Warming

by Michael R. Fox, Ph.D.

July 18, 2007

Studiously hidden from public view are some extraordinary findings in physics which are providing new understanding of our planetary history, as well as providing a much more plausible scientific understanding of global warming. Regrettably, the current hysteria about global warming is based much more on fear, political agendas, and computer models that don’t agree with each other or the climate, rather than hard-nosed evidence and science.

The climate forces which have led to the estimated 0.6C degree temperature increase over the past 100 years or more (according to the International Panel on Climate Change) have been assumed to be man-made CO2 emissions from advanced nations including the U.S. We know this can’t be true for several reasons.

The first is that water vapor provides 95 percent of the total of the greenhouse gases, not CO2. The total of the CO2 represents less than 3 percent of the total. The second is that of the total atmospheric CO2 inventory, the manmade fraction is less than 3 percent of the CO2 total and therefore far less than 1 percent of the total greenhouse gas inventories. Third, studies of the recent climate variations are finding, for example, (See article by J. Oestermans, Science, p. 375, April 29, 2005) that glaciers have been receding since 1750 or so, well before any significant man-made CO2 emissions occurred.

The mid 1700s were at the very depths of the Little Ice Age, which we have learned was the coldest climate over the last 5000 years. Obviously, other warming forces were at work before humans had anything to do with it.
It seems more logical that natural forces are still at work with warming and cooling our climate. For example, Fred Singer and Dennis Avery pointed out in their book Unstoppable Global Warming that over the past 1,000,000 years in climate observations, there have been about 600 periods of warming, and we can surmise from these cycles that among them are about 599 periods of cooling.

Now we have learned much more based upon observations of cosmic radiation, their sources, and the Sun’s magnetic fields, combined and new discoveries in the laboratory. A new and more comprehensive understanding of our planetary environment has emerged. This gives us a scientifically defensible explanation of both global warming and cooling.
As the Oesterman study of the 250 years of receding glaciers shows, warming preceded the CO2 increases of the 20th century. That is, man-made CO2 was not significantly involved in this 200 year warming period on the earth. Nor does man-made CO2 explain those 600 periods of warming over the past 1,000,000 years.

We have known that cosmic radiation is a source of very powerful radiation, more powerful than any in those huge manmade accelerators. We also know that the more energetic cosmic rays can reach the surface of the Earth passing completely through the atmosphere. Those of lesser energy can collide with molecules in the air causing an avalanche of nuclear and particle fragments as they pass through the atmosphere. The energy is dispersed in showers of these particles while still in the atmosphere.

These collisions are truly nuclear in nature, highly energetic, and take place in our atmosphere every second. These are the nuclear processes by which the atmosphere acts as a protective shield to inhabitants on the earth. These are well known to airline safety experts, as well as to those astronauts who spend weeks and months outside of our protective atmosphere.

The streams of cosmic radiation originate from deep space sources both within our galaxy, the Milky Way, as well as from galaxies more distant.
Most of the cosmic rays are charged particles (mostly protons) but less prevalent heavier particles are often measured too, and can be of enormous energy. Being charged particles they can be deflected and modulated by the many magnetic fields found in space. In the proximity of our Sun and the solar system incoming particles “feel” the magnetic field of the Sun and are deflected.

The extent of the deflection depends upon the strength of the magnetic field of the Sun. The solar magnetic field has been known, studied, and measured for only a few decades. As with other stars, the Sun is able to deflect many, but not all, of these particles of cosmic radiation away from our solar system and our planet according to well-known rules of physics and magnetism.

Thanks to some recent excellent experimental work in physics by those such as Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, we now know that cosmic rays and some of the debris from nuclear collisions with atoms in the atmosphere are directly involved with the initiating mechanisms of cloud formation.

Basically, the more cosmic rays, the more clouds are formed and the cooler the temperature. Since many of the cosmic rays can be deflected by the Sun’s magnet field, the cosmic ray intensity varies inversely with the strength of that field. The stronger the solar magnetic field, the fewer cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, fewer clouds are formed, and the climate becomes warmer.

Today the Sun’s magnetic field is more than twice as strong as it was at the turn of the last century. During the mid 1700s during the Little Ice Age there was a 70 year period when there were no sunspots (called the Maunder Minimum), and the solar magnetic field was very weak.
The cosmic rays were not deflected as much by a weakened solar magnetic field, more clouds were formed, thus a cooler climate at that time. These findings provide a simple plausible explanation, defensible with sound physics, and don’t involve a major role for CO2 at all.

Some of the materials formed in the atmosphere by the cosmic ray collisions are radioactive as well, and are one of many natural sources of radioactivity. These are deposited in the Earth’s surface, and are used to construct a very accurate history of the geology and climate millions of years ago. It can be measured with surprising accuracy.

In this instance some important collision products formed in the upper atmosphere, are carbon-14 (C-14) and berrylium-10 (Be-10). Being radioactive they decay into non-radioactive products. These have accurately known periods of decay and scientists can measure these materials in both ice cores and geologic cores samples.

The amounts measured are directly related to many important natural features. Variations in both C-14 and Be-10 can be used to deduce the historical record of variations in the solar magnetic field. By similar techniques the scientists are able to determine variations in the cosmic radiation rates directly, going back hundreds of millions of years. Since the rate of influx of cosmic rays over time has not been constant, our climate has not been constant either.

What lies ahead are some exciting times in climate physics and our understanding of the environment. Unexplained findings in geological and climate histories are now being explained by these new lines of inquiry. It appears that the Sun’s magnetic field has had a stronger effect on our climate than just the variations in solar irradiance could explain.
Political leaders, environmental advocates, and even Oscar-winning documentarians who claim that “the debate of climate science is over”, have been shown once again to be very wrong.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The latest from Irag is that the leader of al Queada in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was a fictitious character played by an actor. The reason for the deception was to make it appear that the al Queada leader was an Iraqi rather than a foreigner. This may be why the US mistakenly thought they killed al-Bagdadi a couple of times earlier this year, something that was impossible since he didn't exist. No doubt the al-Queada guys got a big chuckle out of the US thinking they may have killed al-Baghdadi. I wonder if we actually killed any of the impersonators, or if the actor asked for a raise when he discovered the US would be trying to kill him.

One of the most important operations during a war is the spreading of dis-information, specifically propaganda. The US and Western News operations claim to want to report only the facts, so they try to discredit anything positive put out by the US government of the Military. At the same time they report as fact the most outrageous propaganda of the enemy. AP reports "massacres" allegedly carried out by marines in Haditha even though the source was clearly part of the enemy. But, the MSM and Congressman Murtha bought into the story because it made the US look bad. More recently it has been found that AP sources are either imposters or liars. AP publishes the stories without adequate fact checking. The owner of the NYT admits he is opposed to the US, and will not aid the US Military. During WWII the press helped the US; now, they aid the enemy. My question is, why do they do this? Is it just related to internal politics, as the Democrats see the issue. Or, is it just hatred of President Bush? In either case, the MSM is actively aiding the enemy to the detriment of the US Military by publishing the enemy propaganda while trying to discredit the US effort.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Here is an excerpt from an opinion piece by John McCaslin today. The believers in global warming seem to be getting desperate.


Get a load of the somewhat threatening letter sent by the head of a national energy council to Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in response to an article the latter penned in the American Spectator about the various "global warming" bills introduced in Congress and their potential economic impact.

"Marlo, you are so full of crap," writes Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE). "You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it.

"Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on."

Inside the Beltway reached Mr. Eckhart at his home yesterday, and he confirmed he did in fact write the letter.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Here is another citicism of the recent Royal Society paper on solar influence on global temperatures. Prof. Brignell doesn't think much of the recent work. There is some satellite temperature graphs included which for some reason didn't copy. The graphs clearly show no warming in the Southern Hemisphere in the last 30 years, and very little in the Northern Hemisphere. This criticism cames from the blog "Greenie Watch."

More on the recent solar influence on climate

Prof. Brignell has taken up the cudgels in looking at the recent Royal Society paper by Lockwood & Froehlich that claimed to debunk the Durkin "Swindle" film.

Prof. Brignell specializes in mathematical analyses of physical data and finds a number of infelicities in the paper. I excerpt below the most pointed part of his comments, which, I am pleased to say, largely echo my own comments. See the full article for some interesting links:

When, as is the norm nowadays, zealots take over great institutions, they rob them not only of their integrity but also their dignity. It tells you something about the state of the world when the might of the once great Royal Society rears up in defence against a mere television documentary. John Ray’s Comment on the salvo prompted a closer examination of the ammunition.

Under pressure of time, your bending author has only managed a superficial read through of the paper in question, but a few observations seem to leap out.

The phrase “pre-industrial” in the first sentence does rather tend to give the game away in identifying the villains of the piece, or perhaps it should be read as “a message from our sponsors”.

When you have refereed a few thousand scientific papers in your lifetime, you develop antennae that alert you to the occurrence of the conjuror’s misdirection. One telltale sign is two pages of references, as here. Unless it is a review paper, most of them are almost certainly irrelevant and they simply serve to discourage too deep an examination into the nature of the argument. No one has the time or inclination to search out forty odd papers and examine them to see whether they are germane to the thesis being advanced. In this case the question is whether the sole driver of climate, the Sun, is responsible for a putative sharp increase in global temperature.

A prominent oddity is figure 2, an elaborate colour diagram that seems to be intended to establish that the running mean process exhibits a zero. What a combination of complexity and naivety!

For heaven’s sake! It is over forty years since the publication of Hamming’s classic instruction manual Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers. Even the more modest contribution by your bending author, Laboratory On-line Computing, is over thirty years old and shows that, by use of the z-transform, the exact frequency and phase characteristics drop out in about five lines of simple algebra. Although omitted for simplicity in our treatment of smoothing, the phase shows a reversal at each zero of amplitude. That is all the pretty coloured pictures of figure three of this paper illustrate. The whole point of having standard methods of linear signal processing is that we know exactly the properties of the individual techniques and do not need to keep repeating the analyses. As soon as you start creating ad hoc variations based on intuition, you create a situation of uncertainty and a great deal of labour for any potential critic (the Coppock method is a case in point). Anyway, what they seem to have done is scan the parameter of their process in order to eliminate periodicities in the range of 9-12 years. They could have done this by using a standard low pass filter or Fourier Transform methods, and in either case would come up against the uncertainty principle, as they must do here, but in a less clear way.

So let us take their findings at face value. They say that solar studies fail to predict a claimed sharp rise in global temperature. Well that is precisely what others of a more sceptical disposition have been saying, most recently for example David Archibald. The authors of this paper claim to be dealing with recent times, so they have the advantage of satellite data, which are more credible than the earthbound sort. Indeed the satellite data suggest that there has been no significant global warming since the strong El Niño year of 1998.
From Archibald:

But the paper in question chooses to ignore the satellite data and to show as its final figure the usual ground station data with a strong upward slope for recent years. For an explanation of that see How not to measure temperature. Number Watch has been frequently pilloried for item 6 in its ten facts about global warming, yet now that surface stations are actually being systematically investigated it is clear that there is a great deal of dubiety in those records.

So what does it all boil down to? They have gone round the houses with a great deal of razzamatazz to tell us something that appears to be generally agreed, that solar activity is in decline. They then contrast this with the dubious totem graph of surface temperatures and end up with the complete non sequitur that the CO2 sceptics must be wrong, which was the point seized upon with great relish and hysteria by the establishment media, led of course by the BBC. Fortunately, there is still the odd isolated cool head among the overheated mass.

Thus the Royal Society, which has throughout its glorious history received and published a significant proportion of the great discoveries of world science, finds itself hosting a cheap, opportunistic gibe at an honest attempt to popularise a return to traditional scepticism in science.

The case of the glaring plateaux

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.Mark Twain

Here are two diagrams that have occurred in Number Watch in recent times.

Now it seems to your simple minded author that they both exhibit a rather outstanding characteristic, namely a plateau in the the data. In both cases the users of the data have behaved as though they were not there.
The first is the evidence (read to the bottom) on which the drug Vioxx was banned. Despite the fact that it is a logical impossibility for this to be anything other than a freak of statistics, the therapy was taken away from thousands of suffering people and millions of dollars were wasted.
The second is the claimed temperature of the surface of the earth. The users correlate this with the only measure of CO2 in the atmosphere that they permit; yet despite the fact that the latter follows a monotonic rising curve they do not attempt to account for the self-evident hiccup.
It all goes to illustrate Maier's Law.

Funny old world

Thus the Royal Society, which has throughout its glorious history received and published a significant proportion of the great discoveries of world science, finds itself hosting a cheap, opportunistic gibe at an honest attempt to popularise a return to traditional scepticism in science.

Here is an article about "voodoo" models such as climate models that are being used to stifle political debate.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/printable/3598/

Keith Ellison , the Muslim Congressman from Minneapolis, recently likened President Bush to Hitler. He didn't seem to like Hitler, though the Muslim World was sympathetic to Hitler. THey liked his program to kill all of the Jews.

Other LIberals are saying President Bush is worse than Hitler, because Hitler at least meant well, while Bush is just evil. Does that mean that liked Hitlers plan to kill all of the Jews? That extermination program is not what I would call "meaning well."

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Here is an article from Real Clear Politics about the war on terror. This pretty much describes the way I see the situation. I expect that the Muslims will attack us more vigorously after we pull out of Iraq. But a better strategy for them would be to use more peaceful means, such as continuing to infiltrate, and taking advantage of those who favor diversity and multiculuralism in our society to get more and more concessions. That would be their best strategy, but I think that they have a lot of hotheads who want to kill us rather than just subjugate us. The guy who wrote the following is probably a Republican, so Democrats will discount it. I still think that there will eventually be a major war with Islam, assuming the Bush strategy fails.

The War About the War

By Herbert Meyer

The 9-11 attacks did more than start a war; they started a war about the war. No sooner had the World Trade towers collapsed and the Pentagon burst into flames than two perceptions of the threat began competing for the public's support:

Perception One: We're at War

For the third time in history Islam - or, more precisely, its most radical element - has launched a war whose objective is the destruction of Western civilization. Our survival is at stake, and despite its imperfections we believe that Western civilization is worth defending to the death. Moreover, in the modern world - where a small number of people can so easily kill a large number of people - we cannot just play defense; sooner or later that strategy would bring another 9-11. This conflict really is a clash of civilizations whose root cause is Islam's incompatibility with the modern world. So we must fight with everything we've got against the terrorist groups and against those governments on whose support they rely. If the Cold War was "World War III," this is World War IV. We must win it, at whatever cost.

Perception Two: We're Reaping What We've Sowed

There are quite a few people in the world who just don't like the United States and some of our allies because of how we live and, more precisely, because of the policies we pursue in the Mideast and elsewhere in the world. Alas, a small percentage of these people express their opposition through acts of violence. While we sometimes share their opinion of our values and our policies, we cannot condone their methods. Our objective must be to bring the level of political violence down to an acceptable level. The only way to accomplish this will be to simultaneously adjust our values and our policies while protecting ourselves from these intermittent acts of violence; in doing so we must be careful never to allow the need for security to override our civil liberties.

There is no middle ground between these two perceptions. Of course, you can change a word here and there, or modify a phrase, but the result will be the same. Either we're at war, or we've entered a period of history in which the level of violence has risen to an unacceptable level. If we're at war, we're in a military conflict that will end with either our victory or our defeat. If we're in an era of unacceptable violence stemming from our values and our policies, we are faced with a difficult but manageable political problem.

Splitting the Difference

Since the 9-11 attacks, President Bush has been trying to split the difference. It's obvious that he, personally, subscribes to Perception One. Just read his formal speeches about the conflict, such as those he's given to Congress and at venues such as West Point. They are superb and often brilliant analyses of what he calls the War on Terror. Yet he hasn't done things that a president who truly believes that we're at war should have done. For instance, in the aftermath of 9-11 he didn't ask Congress for a declaration of war, didn't bring back the draft, and didn't put the US economy on a wartime footing. A president at war would have taken out Iran's government after overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan -- and then sent 500,000 troops into Iraq, rather than just enough troops to remove Saddam Hussein but not enough to stabilize that country. And a president at war would have long since disposed of Syria's murderous regime and helped the Israelis wipe out Hezbollah.

Study history, and you quickly learn that oftentimes events and the responses they generate look different a hundred years after they happen than they look at the time. It may be that history will judge that President Bush performed heroically, doing the very best that anyone could do given the two incompatible perceptions about the conflict that have divided public opinion and raised the level of partisanship in Washington to such a poisonous level. Or, it may be that history will judge the President to have been a failure because he responded to 9-11 as a politician rather than as a leader.

Either way, it is the ongoing war about the war that accounts for where we are today, nearly six years after the 9-11 attacks: We haven't lost, but we aren't winning; fewer of us have been killed by terrorists than we had feared would be killed, but we aren't safe.

While experts disagree about how "the war" is going, there isn't much disagreement over how the war about the war is going: those who subscribe to Perception Two are pulling ahead.

Here in the US, virtually every poll shows that a majority of Americans want us "out of Iraq" sooner rather than later, and regardless of what's actually happening on the ground in that country. Support for taking on Iran - that is, for separating the Mullahs from the nukes through either a military strike or by helping Iranians to overthrow them from within - is too low even to measure. There isn't one candidate for president in either party who's campaigning on a theme of "let's fight harder and win this thing whatever it takes." Indeed, the most hawkish position is merely to stay the course a while longer to give the current "surge" in Iraq a fair chance. Moreover, just chat with friends and neighbors - at barbeques, at the barbershop, over a cup of coffee - and you'll be hard-pressed to find a solid minority, let alone a majority, in favor of fighting-to-win.

However it's phrased, just about everyone is looking for a way out short of victory.

Overseas, public opinion is moving in the same direction. For example, in Great Britain Tony Blair has stepped aside for Gordon Brown, who in the midst of the recent terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow has ordered his government to ban the phrase "war on terror" and to avoid publicly linking the recent, mercifully failed attacks in London and Glasgow to any aspect of Islam. The current leaders of Germany and France are less anti-American than their predecessors, but no more willing to help us fight. Down under in Australia John Howard - blessed be his name - is holding firm, but for a combination of reasons may be approaching the end of his long tenure; none of his likely replacements are nearly so robust. And the Israelis - who are facing the triple-threat of Hamas, Hezbollah, and before too long a nuclear-armed Iran - are going through one of their periodic bouts of political paralysis.

A Second Attack

It's possible that something horrific will happen in the immediate future to shift public support here in the US, and throughout the West, from the second perception to the first. When asked by a young reporter what he thought would have the greatest impact on his government's fate, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan responded cheerfully: "Events, dear boy, events." One more 9-11-type attack - biological, chemical, or nuclear - that takes out Houston, Berlin, Vancouver or Paris, and the leader of that country will be overwhelmed by the furious public's demands to "turn the creeps who did this, and the countries that helped them, into molten glass and don't let's worry about collateral damage." (This will sound even better in French or German.) Should the next big attack come here in the US, some among us will blame the President but most won't. The public mood will be not merely ferocious, but ugly; you won't want to walk down the street wearing an "I gave to the ACLU" pin in your lapel.

Absent such an event in the near future, it's likely that over the next few years the war will settle into a phase that proponents of Perception Two will approve. Simply put, we will shift from offense to defense. The Department of Homeland Security will become our government's lead agency, and the Pentagon's role will be diminished. (Nothing will change at the State Department - but then, nothing ever does.) Most people in the US, and elsewhere in the West, will be relieved that "the war" is finally over.

To preserve the peace we will have to be more than willing to make the occasional accommodation to Moslems. If they ask us to put more pressure on the Israelis - well, we can easily do that. If Moslem checkout clerks at our supermarkets don't want to touch pork - by all means let's have separate checkout counters for customers who've bought those products. And now that we think about it, "Happy Winter" will be as good a greeting, if not a better one, than "Merry Christmas." Won't it?

Of course, there will be the occasional terrorist attack. Some, like the recent ones in London and Glasgow, will fail. Others will succeed, but guided by the mainstream media we will view them with the same detachment as we would view a meteor shower that brought flaming rocks crashing randomly into the Earth. Most will land harmlessly in fields, some will land on houses and kill those few residents unlucky enough to be home at the time. Once in a while, one will crash into a crowded shopping mall or, sadly, into a school packed with children. These things happen - alas - and while it's riveting to watch the latest disaster unfold on television there really isn't much one can do about it. Life goes on.
In the long run, history always sorts things out.

If it turns out that Perception Two of the threat is valid, then over time we will become accustomed to the level of casualties caused by the terrorists. After all, more than 40,000 Americans are killed each year in traffic accidents and we don't make a big political issue out of that, do we? Our attitude toward death-by-terrorist-attack will be the same as our attitude toward deaths on the highway: a tragedy for the victim and members of the family, but nothing really to fuss over. And if Perception Two is valid, it's even possible that the terrorist threat eventually will ease. Can you even remember the last time anyone got bombed by the IRA?

But if those of us who subscribe to Perception One are correct, then it's only a matter of time before something ghastly happens that will swing public opinion throughout the West our way - and hard. Whether this will happen in two years, or five, or in 15 years, is impossible to predict. All we can know for certain is that if Western civilization really is under attack from Islam, or from elements within Islam, then they will not give up or be appeased. At some point they're going to go for the knockout punch.

Fighting, Finally, to Win

The pessimists among us will argue that by this time we'll be too far gone to save; that years of merely playing defense and of making concessions to the sensitivities of our enemy will have eroded our military power, and sapped our will, to the point where de facto surrender will be the only option.

We optimists see things differently: For better or worse, it's part of the American character to wait until the last possible moment - even to wait a bit beyond the last possible moment - before kicking into high gear and getting the job done. It's in our genes; just think of how many times you've ground enamel off your teeth watching your own kid waste an entire weekend, only to start writing a book report at 10:30 Sunday night that, when you find it on the breakfast table Monday morning is by some miracle a minor masterpiece.

However horrific it may be, the knockout punch won't knock us out. Instead, it will shift us from playing defense back to offense - and this time we won't hold back. The president will ask Congress for a declaration of war and he, or she, will get it. We'll bring back the draft, send our troops into battle without one hand tied behind their backs by lawyers, and we won't waste time and energy pussyfooting with the United Nations. And if we've closed GITMO by this time - we'll reopen it and even double its size because we're going to pack it. All of this will take longer to organize, and cost more, than if we'd done it right in the aftermath of 9-11. That's unfortunate, but that's the way we Americans tend to do things. And when we do finally start fighting for real -- we'll win.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council.

The Royal Society published a paper last week that says the sun used to drive the climate on Earth, but now carbon dioxide is the driver. The BBC proclaimed that this was the final nail into arguments of global warming deniers. But, is that really what recent trends indicate? Not everyone agrees with the Royal Society and the BBC. Here are the comments of a real scientist about the recent report.

The truth is, we can't ignore the sun
By David Whitehouse
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/07/2007

According to the headlines last week, the sun is not to blame for recent global warming: mankind and fossil fuels are. So Al Gore is correct when he said, "the scientific data is in. There is no more debate."

Of that the evangelical BBC had no doubt. There was an air of triumphalism in its coverage of the report by the Royal Society.
It was perhaps a reaction to the BBC Trust's recent criticism of the Corporation's bias when reporting climate change: but sadly, it only proved the point made by the Trust.

The BBC was enthusiastically one-sided, sloppy and confused on its website, using concepts such as the sun's power, output and magnetic field incorrectly and interchangeably, as well as not including any criticism of the research.

But there is a deeper and more worrying issue. Last week's research is a simple piece of science and fundamentally flawed. Nobody looked beyond the hype; if they had, they would have reached a different conclusion.
The report argues that while the sun had a significant effect on climate during most of the 20th century, its influence is currently dwarfed by human effects. It says that all known solar influences since about 1990 are downward and because global temperature has increased since then, the sun is not responsible.

No. The research could prove the contrary. Using the global temperature data endorsed by the Inter-national Panel on Climate Change, one can reach a completely different conclusion.

Recently the United States' National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2006 was statistically indistinguishable from previous years.

Looking at annual global temperatures, it is apparent that the last decade shows no warming trend and recent successive annual global temperatures are well within each year's measurement errors. Statistically the world's temperature is flat.

The world certainly warmed between 1975 and 1998, but in the past 10 years it has not been increasing at the rate it did. No scientist could honestly look at global temperatures over the past decade and see a rising curve.

It is undisputed that the sun of the later part of the 20th century was behaving differently from that of the beginning. Its sunspot cycle is stronger and shorter and, technically speaking, its magnetic field leakage is weaker and its cosmic ray shielding effect stronger.

So we see that when the sun's activity was rising, the world warmed. When it peaked in activity in the late 1980s, within a few years global warming stalled. A coincidence, certainly: a connection, possibly.

My own view on the theory that greenhouse gases are driving climate change is that it is a good working hypothesis - but, because I have studied the sun, I am not completely convinced.

The sun is by far the single most powerful driving force on our climate, and the fact is we do not understand how it affects us as much as some think we do.

So look on the BBC and Al Gore with scepticism. A scientist's first allegiance should not be to computer models or political spin but to the data: that shows the science is not settled.

Dr David Whitehouse is an astronomer, former BBC science correspondent, and the author of The Sun: A Biography (John Wiley & Sons)

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Here is a recent paper by Roy Spencer about how climate works. (Spencer is a global warming "denier," one Al Gore and Robert Kennedy would like to charge with treason.)

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm

Another papers I read recently shows that precipitation has not changed over the recent past in contrast to what the Global Circulation Models predict. This calls into question that warming is actually occurring.

Take a look at this interview of Hirsi Ali by a Canadian named Avi Lewis.

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/13/video-cartoonishly-anti-american-canadian-interviews-ayaan-hirsi-ali/

She makes this guy look like a clown, which, since he is part of the MSM in a far left country, he probably is. Lewis does not have a clue about what society is like in America even though he lives close by. He must get his information from Democrat talking points, and apparently doesn't realize that the Democrats know they are not true. He is another liberal who, like Rosie O'Donnell, thinks fundamental Christians are a bigger threat than Muslims. A point of interest that should be noticed is that in Holland Hirsi Ali was a member of the "right wing" Liberal Party. In Europe people who favor individual rights above the interests of society as a whole are Liberals: in the US those people are "consevatives."

Friday, July 13, 2007

Today's newspaper says that seven more people were gored in the "running of the bulls" in Pamplona, Spain. I think that makes a total of 20 injured so far. That running of the bulls is a curious tradition to me; it seems more dangerous for the humans than for the bulls. But, this year PETA is protesting the run by running around nude there in Pamplona. PETA's tactics are also curious: they protest by having pretty girls run around nude, which no doubt gets people to look. The ones I saw on TV had their protest messages painted on their bodies. As usual, the messages were written in English. That is another curiosity to me. Protesters always write their message in English. Is that because the English speaking people are the only ones who don't just ignore the Protesters?

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Robert Kennedy made a speech in Al Gore's Live Earth extravaganza in which he said that people who disagree with him on Global Warming are traitors. He seemed to advocate prosecuting those people. Kennedy appeared to be unhinged. The last time I saw him he was going wild about vaccinations of children being irresponsible, and people should be sent to jail. That turned out to be bogus. More junk science. I don't know much about him, but he appears to need medication. He appears to be another case of getting into Congress because of his name. It is sad that we have gotten to the point where people named Kennedy, Gore, Bush or Clinton can get elected to office without much in the way of other qualifications.

The Asian male being investigated for abducting a 12-year old girl in Tacoma, Washington is an illegal alien who is a registered sex offender> He may or may not be guilty of abducting the girl, but why hasn't he been deported. It doesn't make since to me that an illegal alien who is convicted of sex crime be turned loose here. Why does he have constitutional rights like he was a citizen? Tacoma must be a sanctuary city.

There is a fundamental issue that the Democrats and Republicans seem to be on opposite sides of. The Democrats seem to think that the Constitution of the US applies to all people in the world, not just to Americans. They even think that terrorists in other countries have constitutional rights. They want to give habeas corpus rights to people captured in a war. How could we have won World War II if we had to provide a lawyer for all captured enemy soldiers. Those who believe that everyone in the world has constitutional rights. On C-Span I once saw a Hispanic Congressman make a speech to Congress in which he stated that every person in the world had a constitutional right to emigrate to the United States. Maybe that is why so many ignore our immigration laws.

THere is a new report out that says the sun drove the climate of Earth until about 25 years ago; since then carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is doing the driving. The reasoning appears to be that solar intensity started falling several years ago. Those who believe in the global warming dogma say this proves their position. I still haave some questions for them that I have not seen anyone answer. First, why has the average temperature of Earth not gone up since 1998? (Could it be because the sun's intensity is falling?) Second, why has the average temperature of the Southern Hemisphere declined over the last 30 years?

Most people are probably unaware of the bachground to the Libby-Plame affair. It started with a French scheme to turn the EU against the US. Joe Wilson is the real villian in this affair in my opinion. The following article explains a lot of the story. I knew most of this, but had not put it all together into a single story.

Joseph Wilson IV: The French Connection

By James Lewis

There are an amazing number of French fingerprints all over the Plame—Wilson affair. While it is not easy to penetrate the dark fog of lies, there is a highly consistent pattern pointing to French government involvement with a Watergate—style assault on the American Presidency, fronted by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man, Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court. Rocco Martino might sound like a small—time mafia hood from the Sopranos. Actually, he works at times for Italian military intelligence. The truth about the French connection came out when Martino confessed in court that the French had given him the forged document to peddle to various intelligence agencies. The Italians and French have had a furious war of words ever since then about who was responsible for the forgery.
The FBI just leaked a claim that Rocco did it just for the money. That is very doubtful. The French naturally deny any responsibility, but the forged document was dropped on the public at exactly the time that Dominique de Villepin, then Foreign Minister, was in New York trying to make Colin Powell believe that France was prepared to help overthrow Saddam. The French forgery was a stink bomb, designed to be exposed in public as soon as Colin Powell publicly accepted it.

At the very same time the Niger forgery showed up, France's Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, was sand bagging Secretary Powell at the UN by pretending to support American efforts against Saddam — even as he got ready to pull out the rug in a surprise press conference. Reporter Kenneth Timmerman told Brit Hume for FoxNews that:

"Our administration thought that the French were with us, that French had dispatched their top general to Centcom, Chirac had promised the president (to support the United States against Saddam). Villepin the foreign minister had promised Powell. They said they were with us, and they weren't. ..."

"So then de Villepin goes outside at noontime. ... Powell is actually watching Fox News... as de Villepin goes on TV ... And that's when he announces to the world that France will never ever support the use of force against Saddam Hussein. ... Powell's jaw dropped to the floor...."

It was a carefully planned ambush. Timmerman summed it up by saying that "Chirac lied to the president of the United States, and then he ordered his Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to do the same thing with Colin Powell."

And then, they pulled the plug.

De Villepin's ambush triggered a giant anti—American firestorm in Europe and around the world. Germans, French, Brits and Swedes were foaming at the mouth for months and months. France was therefore extremely successful in discrediting American policy against Saddam.

But that was not enough, because Saddam was quickly knocked over by the US—led coalition forces. Somehow the media fires had to be kept alive. The "Bush lied us into war" slogan had to be kept going in the minds of the public.

Enter our hero, Joseph C. Wilson, from stage left. The French forgery about Niger led straight to Wilson's bogus trip to Africa. Wilson supposedly went there to find out the truth for the CIA. But every government involved already knew the truth about the bogus document, because it showed incorrect names of Niger officials. A single telephone call to Niger would have established that fact.

The reason why Wilson had to travel to Niger in person to "investigate," while drinking mint tea with his uranium mining friends, was to establish his bona fides — to make him an instant "expert witness" on Saddam's dealings with Niger. Did French intelligence urge Wilson to make his trip and enlist his wife Valerie to propose him? Without that trip, Joseph C. Wilson had no special claim to any expertise about Saddam's weapons. It was Valerie Plame who was the CIA WMD expert, but it was Wilson who became the front man.

Notice that the modus operandi for the Wilson trip was much the same as for the Niger forgery: a classic con game. Find a sucker, tell him what he wants to hear, and use that credulous embrance by the mark to destroy your enemy. In the first case the sucker was Colin Powell. In the second case it was the New York Times Op—Ed page. In both cases the enemy to be shafted was George W. Bush and the administration. This is how disinformation is supposed to work.

Joseph Wilson had intimate French connections for many years before his mint tea—sipping journey to Niger. In fact, he met his first wife at the French Embassy in Washington. His second wife, Jacqueline, to whom he was still married when he took up with Valerie Plame, was a former French diplomat. There is even a report that she was a 'cultural attach駠in Francophone Africa, a post often used as cover for intelligence operatives, though this remains quite a murky point, as tradecraft suggests it should.

Today Wilson claims to be a business agent for "African mining companies." But Niger's mines are owned by a French consortium, which operates cheek—by—jowl with the Quai d'Orsay. Niger itself is a semi—colony of France. No uranium sales go on there without the full knowledge and consent of the French government. Valerie Plame was quoted in a CIA memo as saying that "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts)..." Lots of French contacts, indeed.

Wilson exploded into public view, and spent two years barnstorming around the country, giving outraged speeches to publicize the idea that he had found the smoking gun to prove Bush had lied. Moveon.org and their friends were happy to believe him.

Wilson was interviewed on PBS and NPR, and wrote a book, now thoroughly discredited, to push his anti—Bush agenda. In the process he told so many lies that he lost track of them himself. But that made no difference. The media and the Left leaped on the story like manna from heaven; or, possibly, like fine champagne from France.

Well, hypothetically just suppose for a moment that Wilson's strings are being pulled by the French. What motivates the French government? They have been very clear about that.

Jacques Chirac and his close ally Dominique de Villepin have long proclaimed France to be the strategic enemy of American power. Paris openly yearns to lead the European Union to superpower status, in order to undermine American "hegemony," and above all for the eternal grandeur of la belle France. De Villepin has written books vilifying the United States; he is an open French imperialist, who conceives of himself as a world—historic figure in the mold of his personal heroes Napoleon and Niccolo Machiavelli.

France's short—term aim for the Niger forgery was to block US actions against Saddam Hussein, or at least to discredit America in the run—up to the Iraq war. The long—term strategic purpose was to drive a wedge between the US and Europe, so that the European Union — guided by France — could be persuaded to revolt against fifty years of US leadership of the West.

This strategy succeeded, but not completely. The American action in Iraq provoked massive public fury in Europe, whipped up by the government—owned media and the Left. It caused a rift in public opinion that continues today. Had Tony Blair not gone along with President Bush against Saddam, the EU might now be going on its separate way, aiming for world domination, just as de Villepin has fervently advocated. If the EU Constitution had been approved, as the media confidently predicted it would be, Jacques Chirac might now be running to be the first president of Europe.

For decades France has conducted major industrial espionage in the United States. Having Wilson as a source on Clinton's National Security Council would be an obvious boon for that purpose. Had John Kerry won the 2004 election, Wilson might now be back in the White House, perhaps helping his good friends abroad. He was therefore a very good prospect for French intelligence to cultivate, especially given the lax security standards of the Clinton years. And if Wilson and Plame do succeed in bringing down George W. Bush, Chirac and de Villepin would be overjoyed.

French hatred of American power is the reason why France pressured Turkey (anxious to enter the EU) to block the US IV Infantry Division from crossing Iraq's northern border to help knock over Saddam Hussein. Had the IV ID hit Saddam from the North while Tommy Franks attacked from the South, the current Iraqi insurrection might have been crushed even before it got started, the Baathist hardcore unable to flee north to the Sunni Triangle and entrench itself among the small percentage of Iraqis who benefited from Saddam's rule. The original plan envisioned just such a pincer movement. We therefore owe many of our 2,000 soldiers' deaths to deliberate and malicious French sabotage, with thanks to Dominique de Villepin and Jacques Chirac.

There is every reason to believe that France desperately wants this White House to be weakened or overthrown. They would be happy with Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat as president, because the Euro—socialist, non—interventionist base of that party is compatible with French policies and strategies. European emphasis on the United Nations as the forum for handling international conflicts plays to France's strongest asset in world affairs, its veto—wielding Security Council seat, and its large number of Francophone former colonies, each with a vote in the General Assembly. A strong America wielding its mighty military force is de Villepin's worst nightmare.

What about France and Wilson? While we do not know all the facts, there is no question that Joseph Wilson has acted precisely as we might expect from an agent provocateur. He worked fervently to undermine the Bush White House with plainly false accusations, putting the Niger forgery to very good use. Joe Wilson calls himself a business agent for unnamed "African mining companies." We can reasonably guess that he made those contacts during his several postings in Francophone West Africa, possibly when he was Ambassador to Gabon, another former French colony, at the culmination of his State Department career.

Wilson claims credit for persuading Bill Clinton to make a heavily hyped trip to French Africa, tossing millions of US aid dollars to the local dictatorships, including, possibly, some of Wilson's friends. So Wilson apparently works as a consultant for French—owned mining companies in Africa, which would allow him to be openly paid by those companies. None of this makes for a smoking gun, but it is certainly, at minimum, an interesting coincidence that a man with such extensive and intimate French connections should be conducting a ferocious nationwide crusade against the President of the United States, who also happens to be hated by the French government.

Was Wilson acting on his own in planting the Times Op—Ed? Were Valerie Plame and her friends at CIA pulling strings? Or was it other Democrats? There is plenty of evidence for CIA backing of Wilson and Plame, as many have previously noted. There may be nothing more to it than a failed CIA WMD intelligence group covering itself with a manufactured diversionary scandal.

But for someone with Wilson's ego, simple flattery by the "sophisticated" French might be a powerful tool of manipulation. He has all the appearance of a wounded narcissist, someone who needs the attention of the world to make up for his inner deficiencies. When the Soviet KGB ran agents all over the Western world they rarely bothered to pay them. They were "idealists" whose vanity could be easily manipulated.

Is all that tangled enough for you? Keep in mind that the whole affair may be a classic disinformation campaign, run by the pros who make their living doing just that. Just as Watergate showed how Mark Felt learned how to make damaging leaks from J. Edgar Hoover, the modus operandi of the Plame—Wilson affair reflects professional intelligence methods.
For now, there are only questions, not answers. Maybe someone with the power to subpoena and compel testimony under oath ought to be investigating. Whoever is guiding Joseph C. Wilson IV seems to specialize in dangerous intrigue. We have not seen the end of them yet.

James Lewis is a frequent contributor

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Pope has declared that Christian denominations other than the Catholics are not "true" churches. I don't expect Baptists to burn him in effigy or start a bombing campaign. Some preachers will probably make some comment about the Pope's statement Sunday, but not much else. That is a lot different from the response of Muslims earlier this year.

Here is an example of the threat the nation faces from Islam. Political Correctness and Multiculturalism compel us to aid those who want to destroy us. The Muslims insist on turning public schools into madrassas and the ACLU is not interested. The ACLU is opposed to any evidence of Christianity or Judaism in Public Schools, but apparently thinks we are obligated to give special consideration to Muslims. I suppose we should expect that the Ninth Court of Appeals in California supports Islam, but detests Christianity.


Jihad In Schools?

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Monday, July 09, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Political Correctness: Seems the ACLU couldn't care less that a San Diego public school has set aside 15 minutes of classroom instruction time for Muslim students to pray, while non-Muslims twiddle their thumbs.

Related Topics: Religion Education

Right now it has no plans to legally challenge the budding madrassa as endorsement of a religion by government. Apparently the establishment clause only applies to the practice of Judeo-Christian rituals in public places.

The special accommodations for Carver Elementary's nearly 100 Somali Muslims don't stop with organized prayer. The school cafeteria has banned pork and other foods that conflict with the Islamic diet.

And the K-8 school has even added Arabic — the language of the Quran — to its curriculum, while segregating classes for girls, a la the Taliban.
In effect, Carver administrators have carved out a school within a school expressly for Muslims, elevating them above Christian and Jewish students. They've had 15 minutes of instruction time taken away from them, so Muslims can roll out their pray mats.

It amounts to a special privilege afforded a specific religion, which plainly does not have our best interests at heart. That same privilege is not extended to other faiths that are part of our traditional culture — and do not wish us ill or pray for the demise of our system of government.
Tough, say Muslim-rights groups. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is defending the Carver program, insists public schools must cater to the growing number of Muslim students. "Our country is transforming demographically, religiously," said the spokesman for CAIR's San Diego chapter. "Our country has to now accommodate things that are not traditionally accounted for before."

But when does accommodation become promotion? In California's brave new schools, Johnny has been forced to recite the Quran along with Ahmed.

Seventh-graders at a San Francisco-area school were required, even after 9/11, to "become Muslims" for two full weeks as part of California's world history curriculum. This included reciting the Muslim profession of faith — "Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger" — and chanting "Praise be to Allah" in response to teacher prompts.

Parents naturally were outraged that teachers would be shoving Islamic beliefs down their children's throats. And some of them sued the school district, only to lose in federal court. They appealed, but the ultra-liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals out of San Francisco ruled that such Islamic catechism is constitutional.

There's a stealth jihad under way in our schools, and school officials, wittingly or not, are aiding it. The ACLU, which operates from a double standard, refuses to step in. That leaves it up to parents to stand up and insist that the purpose of our tax-supported public schools is to educate our children in English as Americans.

If Muslims want to spend class time bowing and praying to Allah and learning in Arabic, they have the right and the freedom to attend private Islamic schools.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Al Gore is confusing the AGW situation again. Now he points out that Venus has a very dense atmosphere that is 96% carbon dioxide (300,000 times the concentration on Earth), and the surface temperature is 570 F, ergo carbon dioxide is what makes the surface of Venus hot. Actually that is not the reason the surface of Venus is so hot. It could be pointed out that the atmosphere of Mars is also 95% carbon dioxide, though the pressure is only about 0.1 psi. Still that is 10 or 15 times the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. On Mars all of that carbon dioxide provides a "greenhouse effect" that adds about 4 or 5 F to the average surface temperature.

The heat transfer in the Venus atmosphere is complex. There are some phenomena regarding solar heat transfer here on Earth that everyone is aware of, but people may not have thought about it. Consider the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.

(alpha)(Area)(Solar Flux)=(emittance)(Area)(Stefan-Boltzmann Constant)(Tsurface^4 - Tspace^4)

For a flat plate both areas are the same if we assume the back of the plate is insulated, so areas cancel out.

Tspace is near 0 R so the term can be dropped. If the sun is shining directly on the plate, the solar flux is 443 BTU/sq. ft.-hr. Stefan-Boltzman constant = 0.173 X10^-8 BTU/sq. ft.- hr.-R^4. Then solve for Tsurface, and

Tsurface=[(alpha/emittance)(443)/0.173X 10^-8]^0.25 (in degrees R: subtract 460 to convert to degrees F)

For a material like the siver-backed teflon used on the space shuttle radiators (alpha/emittance)=0.1 approximately. Solving for Tsurface

Tsurface=400 R = -60 F (Thus the radiators will reject heat at 80 F, even when pointed directly at the sun.)

Now consider bare metal with (alpha/emittance) = 3, facing the sun at noon.

Tsurface=936 R = 476F

For a piece of metal lying on some insulation on the ground there is also convection to the air, so the metal won't get as hot as this calculation. But, if you put your hand on such a piece of metal, you will burn your hand. I've done it. Another more common example is to touch the top of a white car and a black car. The white car has alpha/e of about 0.25 and the black car has alpha/e of about 1.0. But you will be able to feel that the black car top is much hotter, though it won't burn your hand if you don't press hard.

The situation on Venus is more complicated than this, but it is also more complicated than just having a lot of carbon dioxide in the Venus atmosphere. Once again Gore is dealing in hype.

One of the disagreements between scientists regarding AGW on Earth is the amount of the greenhouse gas effect that is provided carbon dioxide rather than the much higher concentration of water vapor. (Everyone agrees that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared energy at around 2.7, 4.3, and 15 microns.) The total greenhouse gas effect adds about 60 F to the Earth's surface temperature. The AGW supporters seem to think that carbon dioxide is responsible for about 12 to 15 F of the greenhouse gas effect. Others think the effect is much less at 2 or 3 F. Also, adding more carbon dioxide is logarithmic rather than linear. But, how much temperature increase one thinks is currently added by carbon dioxide obviously affects how much would be expected as the carbon dioxide concentration increases. I think it is pretty certain that the lower estimate is closer to reality.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Attendance at the Live Earth global warming concert in Johannesburg was much less than expected. The promoter explained that unusually cold weather kept the people away. That makes sense.

Here is a piece by the guy who did "The Great Global Warming Swindle."

Hostages to a hoax

So you think I'm defying the scientific facts on climate change? Well, think again, says film-producer Martin Durkin I could not have upset the soft-left, soft-green middle classes more if I had crept in their kitchens and snuck genetically modified tomatoes in their paninis. Why did I make the film The Great Global Warming Swindle? The head of science programs at Britain's Channel 4, Hamish Mykura (who has a PhD in environmental science), asked me to. He suspected the global warming alarm was not based on solid science. So did his predecessor, Sara Ramsden, who was also eager to make a film in this area. I was an experienced science documentary producer used to handling complex subjects.So what was our conclusion, after months of research that involved talking to hundreds of scientists and wading through mountains of science papers? It's all codswallop. The notion of man-made global warming started life as a wild, eccentric theory and, despite throwing billions of dollars at it, scientists have failed to stand it up. Man-made global warming is unmitigated nonsense. This is not the first time scientists have talked rubbish. Absurd theories come and go in science all the time. A few years ago an ostensible consensus of scientists said one-third of the British population were about to pop their clogs because they had eaten dodgy hamburgers (the mad cow disease scare). Many scientists build whole careers talking out of their hats. But usually it goes unnoticed. There is no real harm done. But global warming theory is different. It cannot be ignored. It is intruding into our lives to an extraordinary extent, shaping domestic and international policy in profound ways. I urge readers to look at the evidence themselves. (We have assembled many relevant papers on a dedicated website, www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com.) The global warmers try to discourage a close examination of the data. They say the time for debate is over, that there's a consensus of scientists who say it's definitely true. But this is rubbish. Check out www.oism.org and find an extraordinary petition carrying the names of 17,000 scientists who disagree. The basic facts are as follows. There is nothing unusual about the present climate. The Earth has been far, far warmer than today and far, far colder. Our present interglacial (the mild bit between ice ages) is not nearly as warm as previous interglacials. Nor are we in a particularly warm part of the interglacial. The recent warming, such as it is, represents a mild, welcome recovery from an exceptionally cold period in Earth's recent climate history, known to climatologists as the Little Ice Age. How mild is the recent warming? During the past 150 years global temperature has increased by a little more than 0.5C. But most of this rise occurred before 1940, when carbon dioxide emissions were relatively insignificant. After 1940, during the post-war economic boom, when human emissions of CO2 took off, the temperature fell, causing (you may remember) in the mid-1970s a consensus among scientists that we were about to enter another ice age. As Lowell Ponte warned in 1976: "This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000." Cripes. After that temperatures rose again (though not as steeply or as much as before) and peaked in 1998. Since then they have declined slightly. Why do we suppose that CO2 is responsible for any of this? CO2 occupies a tiny proportion of the gases in the atmosphere. It is only a secondary greenhouse gas - water vapour is the main one - and greenhouse gases themselves form only one small part of the Earth's climate system. CO2 has demonstrably never driven climate in the past. (Examine the ice core data at www.CO2science.org.) If greenhouse gases were causing the temperature to rise, according to classic greenhouse theory, the rate of warming should be higher in the Earth's troposphere (at least 10km up) than at the surface. But the opposite is true. All our satellite and balloon data tells us that the rate of warming was higher at the surface. In other words, observational data tells us, beyond any reasonable doubt, that greenhouse gas did not cause the recent warming. But the present alarm is not based on observational data. It is based on models. These models attempt to forecast what will happen in the future, based on a set of assumptions. If your assumptions are wrong, so is your forecast. If you assume that CO2 is driving the Earth's climate and that CO2 will increase, then you will, as sure as eggs is eggs, produce a forecast that the temperature will rise. But this falls well short of sound science. So why are certain scientists so passionately attached to this theory? Scientists are not above the prejudices of their age. Global warming is a political theory. It's rarely stated, but we all know it. People on the Left tend to believe it. People on the Right tend not to. The media and academe (as those of us on the inside know very well) are, in the main, soft left and soft green. We like things that are natural, we think the market is cruel, and we recycle not because it's logical but because it feels right. In these circles global warming has become part of social etiquette. It is as unacceptable to question it as it is to say that you admire George W. Bush or think organic food is a con. This is the real strength of global warming theory. It taps into the middle-class aesthetic revulsion of consumer, industrial society. The whole global warming alarm, I believe, raises serious issues about the way science functions in the real world, about the political bias of scientists, about censorship and intimidation within the scientific community, about the routine practice of scientists drawing false or inflated conclusions from ambiguous or uncertain data, about the manifest failure of the peer review process, about the extraordinary unwillingness of scientists who have invested time and reputation in a particular theory to consider evidence that directly contradicts it and about the elevation of speculation (models) to the level of solid data. Who should you believe? There is nothing for it but to be grown up about it and look at the evidence yourself. Here's some to get you going: the two graphs on this page, published in Geophysical Research Letters Volume 32, 2005 by a leading astrophysicist from Harvard University. The one below compares temperature change in the Arctic during the 20th century with levels of CO2. The one on the top compares the same temperature record to variations in solar activity as recorded, independently, by scientists from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The question posed by the astrophysicist is a simple one. What is driving the Earth's climate? Is it CO2 or is it the sun?

The two figures didn't copy. Needless to say, the figures show strong correlation between solar intensity and temperature, but much less correlation with CO2 level.

Politicians in Europe and the US do not want to identify Islamists as a threat to our way of life. They like to point out that not all terrorists are Muslims; the IRA, animal rights activists, and Timothy McVeigh are not Muslims. But, none of those groups want to impose a religion on the rest of us as the Islamists do. And if one looks around the world, Islamists are involved in conflict with their neighbors everywhere. And in all cases, they are the agressor. In Thialand they are attacking Buddhists, beheading schoolgirls. In India they are in conflict with Hindu's. In Africa they are committing genocide on blacks, many of whom are also Muslims. In the Middle East they are in conflict with Israel. Muslim immigrants are causing trouble in Europe, in Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britian. People in those countries, and particularly the politicians, are living in denial. They are allowing Muslims to use democratic principals to undermine democracy. The Muslims are unwilling to assimilate into the cultures of the countries to which they emigrate. The liberals in the West are so committed Multiculuralism that they will not force immigrants to assimilate, and do not recognize the peril the Islamists represent. The politicians in Europe and the US think that we will find a way to appease the Muslims. But, they cannot be appeased because their religion does not permit it. They demand that we give up liberal democracy and submit to shar'ia law or they will continue to attack us. It is their choice that they cannot co-exist with us; we have to destroy them or they will destroy us. Our leaders need to convey to all Muslims in the strongest possible terms that we are not going to submit, and that their behavior is unacceptable to us. For example, we will not tolerate their pronouncing death sentences on our citizen's who criticize them.

There are many people and companies who see anthopogenic global warming as any opportunity to make money or achieve some other goal (such as promoting socialism or damaging the US economy) and don't know or care if if it is real or a threat to life on earth. Contrary to what the IPCC usually claims, large corporations are not funding "dissenters." Rather they are rent seekers who plan to take advantage of the politics of AGW. Here is an article that identifies some of the rent seekers; this includes the Democrats. These folks need to strike soon, because the average temperature of earth has not been cooperating by continuing to increase the past few years, and if that trend continues the AGW dogma will lose crdibility.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288195,00.html

Reviews of the Michael Moore movie "Sicko" are mostly positive, though many do concede that the movie is propaganda rather than a true documentary. The movie idealizes socialized medicine in places like Cuba and France and demeans health care in the US, so one is left to wonder why folks are not leaving the US for Cuba and France? And why are folks willing to take the hazardous step of leaving the paradise of Cuba for the mean old US? The English socialized medicine system is failing, and is under attack. Over 40% of the Doctors are from third world countries. There are long waiting lines for routine treatment, like maybe six months to a year or more. Life expectancy is falling. The argument for socialized medicine seems to be that everyone has equally bad treatment, unless you are super rich.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Islamists view the West as decadent, cowardly, and weak. I doubt that is how they view the United States Military, but it is a good description of Congress. The Democrats and a growing number of Republicans want to declare defeat in Iraq. At the moment, the surge has al-Qeada on the run, so Democrats need to force a pull out soon, before the US wins. They would find it intolerable for Bush to leave office on the wings of victory.

It has been reported that John Edwards pays $400 to get his hair cut. (He apparently thinks his hair is one of his best features becasue he talks about it a lot; in 2004 he said he and Kerry had better hair than Bush and Cheney.) Now it runs out that he has paid $1250 for a haircut. I am beginning to think that Edwards is right about there being two Americas; there is definitely a difference between his America and mine. (Edwards is a lawyer, so he doesn't actually pay for the haircuts himself; his campaign contributors pay.)

The Seattle school district has their own ideas about what makes a person a recist or bigot. They say racists:

- have a future time orientation (I interpret this as planning ahead)

- emphasize the individual as opposed to a more collective ideology

- define one form of English as standard.

I guess that by their definition I am a racist.

John Conyers, the Democrat Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, intends to investigate the Presidential pardon power. Why would he do that? The pardon power is granted the President by the Constitution. Is Conyers contemplating a Constitutional Amendment? That would be a total waste of time.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

An illustration of Hillary Clinton's fascism is evident from her work on a Health Care plan for America back in the early 90's. For those who didn't pay much attention to what she wanted to do, consider this. She wanted to have the government determine how many doctors the country produced, and to determine the number of doctors entering into each specialty. (She specifically wanted more General Practitioners.) She clearly stated that the government needed to control medicine even to the extent of having the government dictate people's career choice. This type of governmental control is clearly fascism.

Hillary Clinton has said she wants all Americans to attend college, and wants the state to pay for it. I wonder if she is aware that it takes an IQ of at least 106 to have success in College (and an IQ of 115 to 120 to have success in Medicine, Law, Science, or Engineering). She may not believe in IQ (most liberals say they don't, except when they brag about their own lofty IQ), but IQ has proven to be a reliable indicator of academic performance. This means that less than half of the population (average IQ of 100) is capable of college level work. Consider that only about half of black Americans graduate from high school. It takes an IQ of about 87 to do high school level academic work. Since the average IQ of black Americans is about 85, then half of them graduating from high school is about what we should expect. Consider Jews who, as a group have an average IQ of 115, so we should expect that most of them graduate from college, and they do. And a disproportionate number of them are awarded the Noble Prize. Back to Hillary's proposal: how does she plan on getting everyone to graduate from college? Reducing the difficulty of the curricula would seem to be the only way. But what would this accomplish since college degrees would then be meaningless? The world is not really like "the Wizard of Oz," just giving them a diploma will not make them capable of success in the real world. (According to some work, it takes an IQ of about 106 to work at any level in the modern business world.)

Predictably, the new Prime Minister of Great Britain has decreed that his government not refer to Muslim terrorists as Muslims. He also has outlawed the term 'war on terror.' He doesn't want to offend the 'religion of perpetual outrage.' I think we can expect him to pull out of Iraq very soon. It appears that the Muslims have already undermined Great Britain. Even the consevative party is into 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism.' The British seem incapable of recognizing the threat until they are in dire peril, as they were in 1938, and as they are now.

It is a sad 4th of July when we recognize that America is about to vote fascists into office who are also committed to 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism.' It is ironic that the liberals, in the spirit of multiculturalism, are ready to surrender to people who are the antitheists of multiculturalism. The Muslims are well on the way to undermining the United States. Liberals in Minnesota are willing to use public money to build special prayer facilities for Muslim students, something they would never do for ny Christian religion. And in Brooklyn they are building a public Muslim school, again something that would not be done for Catholics. The US is not far behind Great Britain.

Monday, July 02, 2007

The US Army says they have found a Hezbolla leader attacking us in Iraq, and that he was sent and was aided by Iran. And Javier Solana from the UN has determined that Iran was supporting Hamas in the takeover of Gaza. I'm glad these Sherlock's are figuring out what everyone has know for years. Iran declared war on the US in 1979 when they took over our embassy in Tehran. We have ignored themat our peril, just as we ignored al Queda when they declared war on us in 1996.

One of the really ignorant things liberals and much of the government do is blame Islamic violence on policies of the West. Actually Islamists do not believe in separation of religion and state, so they don't acknowledge national boundaries. And they believe that they have an obligation to either kill or subjugate all people who are not Muslims. It is a waste of time, and is even hazardous for us to try to figure out what we have done to cause the Muslims to attack us. The 'religion of peace' is perpetually outraged just by our existance. As President Bush has said, we offend them by just being who we are. We need to stop worrying about offending Muslims, and make it clear to them that we are not going to let them dominate us. We also need to make it clear to the Muslims in America (and the rest of the West) that we will not accept sharia law, and they need to either accept our laws or return to whence they came. We also need to recognize that mainstream Muslims want to kill us, and that those who do not are part of what they would call the marginal 'extremists.'

An example of the problem is illustrated by the recent terrorist attacks in Great Britain. The Press there can't bring themselves to identify the terrorists as Muslims, even though they have names like Abdullah and Mohammed. They refer to them as 'Asians.' So are people to assume that perhaps the terrorists are Hindus or Buddists. They don't want to further offend the 'religion of perpetual outrage.' We have to get over that. Islamists want to kill us, and our actions don't really affect that. We need to make it clear to them that they can't influemce our actions with their outrage. If the Queen of England wants to knight someone they don't like, well tough luck. If we want to insult Mohammed, well too bad. And we need to also make it clear that while we believe in freedom of speech (at least in America if not in Europe) we take seriously chants of 'death to America,' and will take decisive action if such are accompanied by terrorist attacks.