Political Angst In America

Name:
Location: Pantego, Texas, United States

Friday, November 30, 2007

I saw a comedian named Chris Rock say, at a Barack Hussein Obama event, that President Bush ignored black people drowning in New Orleans. I don't know how dishonest Rock is, but surely he is up on events enough to know that a larger percentage of white people died in New Orleans than blacks. Surely he knows that the military, who work for George Bush, pulled 50,000 people out of peril. I wonder how many more he thinks would have been saved if President Bush had gone to pull out people personally. Actually Bush would probably have done better than Sean Penn did. My guess is that Rock knows the truth, but thinks his audience is ignorant, which is probably a good guess since they get their info from the MSM.

Greenhouse Gas global warming explains everything that happens. If it gets colder, it is due to GHG induced warming. Consider this blurb from the blog "Climate Audit:"

And despite the headline from ABC that “Global warming puts fish stocks at risk”, the follow up paragraph in that article and a contemporary Daily Telegraph article both reported unprecedented cooling:

Dr Helen McGregor and her research team from MARUM Research Centre Ocean Margins at the University of Bremen in Germany report in the journal Science that climate-induced changes in the ocean have never been more dramatic than in the past three or so decades. Sea surface temperatures in this part of the Atlantic Ocean declined by 1.2ºC during the 20th century, say the researchers.

The seeming conundrum was explained as follows:

“The stronger the greenhouse effect the stronger the cold water pump works - and the cooler the coastal waters off Morocco,” says McGregor.


The article goes on to explain that the increased CO2 level causes more food to grow for the fish, but the upwelling of the cold water may cause a current to great for the fish to swim. Note that this was pure speculation, but ABC accepted it as a risk to fish caused by global warming.

It is pretty much proven that everything that goes wrong, or that might conceivably go wrong, is due to Global Warming. And George Bush is responsible for global warming, since he could have stopped it by signing the Kyoto Treaty, so everything wrong or that could go wrong is Bush's fault. That is obvious to all Democrats, socialists, and Muslims, even if not to us ignorant folk.

It appears that the Democrat copperheads have found their Gen. McClellan in LTG Richardo Sanchez. Remember Sanchez? He is the General who failed in Iraq, and presided over Abu Ghraib. Democrats didn't like him back then, but now that he has come out against President Bush they want him as their spokesman. For people sho don't see the parallels between 1864 and now, consider what the Democratic convention in 1864 had to say then, and will no doubt say next year:

this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored . . .

Here is an article by Jack Wheeler (allegedly the guy who originated the "Reagan Doctrine" for dealing with the Soviet empire). This article articulates what I have long thought was President Bush's objective in Iraq. Apparently not many people saw the situation as I did, so it is good to see that someone with a lot of International Political experience does. I have been particularly interested in the Democrat's reaction to the war in Iraq. I can't figure out if they are just dumb, if they are so commited to multiculturalism that they are OK with a US defeat by Muslims, or if they are such political opportunists that they are willing to sacrifice US national interests to achieve electoral success. I suspect the latter. Here is the article:

The Al Qaeda-Iran axis has been beaten in Iraq

Dr. Jack Wheeler
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 26 November 2007

TTPers (To The Point News) have known for many moons now that the American military is winning a tremendous victory in Iraq. This week, Tony Blankley and Jack Kelly provide updates in Declaring Victory and Declaring Defeat. The media is finally and begrudgingly acknowledging the reality of victory. So far, however, the focus has been entirely on the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Yet this has been a two-front war, a war to terrorize and destabilize Iraq waged not just by AQI, but by Iran.

Now we learn that not only is terrorist violence vanishing in Sunni regions of AQI focus, but in Shia regions of Iranian focus. AP is reporting that Basra violence is down 90%. America's victory in Iraq means that both Al Qaeda and Iran have been defeated... simultaneously.

Now here's a question to consider: Was this George Bush’s goal all along?

He has always maintained that the War in Iraq was being conducted “to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here.” “Them” seems now to mean both varieties of Moslem terrorists: Sunni Al Qaeda-types and Shia Iranian-types. GW identified Iraq as the one place both of them could be taken down at the same time. Iraq as a two-fer! Yes, the man can be scary-smart. With painful obviousness, not all the time. But when he is, he can hit a geopolitical ten-strike.

Let’s not go there, though. Let’s focus instead on the consequences of defeat in Iraq for Iran. They are very grave. One of the gravest examples is the emerging Arab Shia anti-Iran Alliance. First the background check. According to Islamic mythology, the Sunni-Shia split occurred at the very inception, right after Mohammed’s death in 632. One faction, followers of Mohammed’s uncle and El Segundo, Abu Bakr, called themselves Ahl-as-Sunnah, people of the path or example of Mohammed.

Another faction followed Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali, married to his daughter Fatima (somehow, for all his many wives, Mohammed managed to have no sons and only one daughter), calling themselves Shi’at Ali, the party of Ali. When Ali was assassinated in 661, the Shia leadership fell upon Ali and Fatima’s son Hussein, the first male descendent of Mohammed. In the legendary Battle of Karbala in 680 between the Sunnis and Shias, the latter were disastrously defeated and Hussein killed. Thus the two holy cities for Shias, their Meccas, are Najaf where Ali is buried in a golden tomb, and Karbala, the battle site and where Hussein is buried in a golden-domed mausoleum. Both are in present-day Iraq. Arab Iraq. The Sunni-Shia factional split is an Arab phenomenon.

Yet we associate Shias with Persia, with Iran, with mad-dog Ayatollahs like Khomeini. That’s because 500 years ago, the founder of the Safayed Dynasty in Persia, Shah Ismail I (1487-1524) hijacked Shi’ism to be a state religion as a unifying force in his successful effort to glue Persia back together from pieces seized by it from the Sunni Ottoman Turks and Sunni Uzbek Khans. Ever since Ismail, Shi’ism has been a despised Persian heresy, with Sunni Arabs hating Shia Persians, and hating Shia Arabs who insisted on sticking with their version of Islam.

But the fact is there are a lot of Shia Arabs. 16 million in Iraq alone, over 60% of the population. 4 million right across the border, the Ahwazi Arabs of Iran. Millions more in Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries. Their religious leaders or Ayatollahs are seizing the opportunity Iran’s defeat in Iraq is giving them to form an Anti-Iran Alliance.

It doesn’t have that title, so to be more precise it’s an alliance against the radical terrorist interpretation of Shi’ism by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors who rule Iran today. For these Arab Ayatollahs assert that the Khomeinist version of Shi’ism is the total antithesis of the most basic Shia beliefs. Among the most basic is the traditional Shia belief that a theocracy is heresy, literally against the will of Allah. Shias believe in an Islamic Messiah, the Hidden Imam who will return someday — and only upon his return will there be an Islamic rule of humanity.

When Khomeini established a theocratic tyranny in the name of Shia Islam, it horrified many Shia leaders — among them Khomeini’s mentor and primary Islamic tutor, the Grand Ayatollah Taher al-Khaqani. When Khaqani went to see his former student to protest the utter heresy and immorality of Khomeini’s oppression, Khomeini ordered him thrown into prison where he had him murdered. Taher al-Khaqani was an Ahwazi Arab. It is his son, Qazem al-Khaqani, who is spearheading the Shia Arab Anti-Iran Alliance. Again, it’s not an attack on Persia/Iran or on Persians — but rather, an effort to rescue Shi’ism from its captors now ruling in Tehran.

What Qazem al-Khaqani emphasizes is the traditional Shia belief in the separation of religion and politics, of mosque and state. Thus, he argues, the current government in Iran is un-Islamic. Khaqani has launched a direct Shia assault on the Islamic legitimacy of the Mullacracy in Iran. He forcefully argues for democracy and a secular government as the best way to safeguard freedom of religion — and just as forcefully denounces Jihadism, suicide bombing or any other form of terrorism, and any imposition of “Sharia” religious law upon people. He did so, for example, in a speech at the British House of Commons in London.

His message is resonating with Shia Arabs not just in Iran and Iraq, but in the Gulf States and throughout the Arab world. With help from wealthy Shia in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait, there may soon be a Shia Arab satellite television station in London broadcasting into Iran. Khaqani's message and its resonance could be the Mullacracy's death knell — for what provides the gigantic megaphone is the emerging Shia democracy in Iraq. The Maliki government in Baghdad achieving stability and legitimacy terrifies Tehran — and it is doing so where it frightens Tehran the most: in the Arab world.

Arabs — moderate anti-radical Shia Arabs — are about to reclaim Shi’ism away from the mad-dog mullahs of Iran. The collapse of the regime’s Islamic rationale and legitimacy could be the precursor to the implosion of the regime itself.

Regime change from within is the best outcome for Iran. Shia Arabs may help precipitate it.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The English Teacher in Sudan was found guilty and sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation. Actually deportation doesn't sound too bad. The Muslim Brotherhood wanted death for the teacher. She may be lucky to live for 15 days in the Sudanese prison. Hopefully the British government will be able to the 15 day sentence suspended. I think all Westerners should leave Sudan and let the Muslims rot.

In Sudan they want to give an English school teacher 40 lashes because she let the students in her class name a teddy bear "Mohammed." (Mohammed is the second most common first name of boys in Sudan.) This is another faked up deal by the "Religion of Perpetual Outrage." I wouldn't go to a Muslim country under any circumstances, exception being if I was in the Marines and had an M14 with a flash suppressor, a Starlight scope and a grenade launcher.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Hillary and Democrats like to say that Bush should have given Hans Blix and the UN inspectors more time before going to war in Iraq, and they would have discovered that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. But, given that Saddam was deliberatly misleading the inspectors to make them think he had weapons hidden somewhere this is unlikely. There is no reason to believe that Blix and the inspectors would have ever been able to discover the truth, given Saddam's duplicity.

The Democrats running for President scare me. Obama used to be a Muslim. (I regard him as the "Manchurian Candidate.") And Hillary has Huma Abedid, a Muslim, as her chief of Staff. (Huma, born in the US but raised in Saudi Arabia, seems to be able to live far beyond her means. Is she subsidized by Saudi Arabia?) Muslims are popping up all over the place. At least Romney says he won't have a Muslim in his cabinet.

Here is a quote from a guy who knows something about totalitarian governments.


What is at risk is not the climate but freedom…I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."
-- Vaclav Klaus

There are many people who see Islam as an existential threat to the West. Most people do not because of the backward nature of Muslim nations. Others are fearful of the persistence of Islam, the propensity to violence, and willingness of the Muslims to kill themselves just to kill some infidels. Here is a perspective from Europe that is more pessimistic than most in America. The secario outlined in the first part of this article follows the plan that the Muslim Brotherhood devised for taking over the West, and which seems to be in play now. The US is approaching the level of Muslim population where they start demanding special priviliges. For those who do not view Islam as a threat consider what happened after the partition of India and Pakistan. In 1947 about 25% of the population in Pakistan was Hindu and 75% Muslim. Now the population is only 1% Hindu, the rest of the Hindu's have been killed or run out of the country. On the other hand in India only about 3 or 4% were Muslim, but now the percentage is 16%. And those Muslims regularly blow up Hindu's (and other Muslims). This article suggests that we all need to acquire an assault rifle and learn to shoot, because there is a good chance that a civil war is coming. The following sceario does not consider the possibility that a Muslim nation has a nuclear capability and the missiles to deliver them to Europe, something Iran will soon have.

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/11/danish-civil-war.html#readfurther

Reading this leads to the realization that the situation is almost out of control because we don't have the will to take action necessary to prevent an Islamic takeover. Time is on their side.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

I have written a lot about how the Nazi's were not right wingers, but were in fact far to the left. Democrat's and the MSM have followed the "great lie" theory to depict Republicans and conservatives as "fascists" and "Nazi's." (The "great lie" was employed by the Nazi's: the idea is that people will come to believe something no matter how outrageous it is if it is repeated often enough by the media.) Here is an article I copied from American Thinker by someone who has researched the Nazi's extensively. The article documents the extent the Nazi's were Marxists.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_nazis_were_maxists.html

Here is an interesting article about development of civilization including how climate affected it over the millions of years.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/integrated_patterns_of_civiliz.html

Political correctness has run amok. A high school kid in Kansas City, Mo. was suspended for 10 days for saying the word "noose." Kids in the band were talking about knots to tie up band equipment , and this kid said he could tie a noose. A black kid overheard and said he was offended. So, the school authorities suspende the first kid for making a racially insensitive remark. I wonder how we are supposed to know what words offend some members of society. As a society we are going to have to tell people to stop being so thin-skinned.

One of the unnoticed aspects of AGW has been the disconnect between what is actually in the IPCC reports and what advocates such as Al Gore and the MSM are saying. The IPCC reports are much less alarming than what Gore and other politicians are saying. (And, as time goes on and it becomes clear that the climate is not changing as predicted, the IPCC predictions are becoming less dramatic.) It is clear that Gore and other politicians have an agenda that is unrelated to "saving" the world. If AGW is not an immediate danger, then there are other more urgent concerns than AGW that should be addressed with available resources. This has been the argument of Lomberg, who has been vilified as a "denier" by AGW advocates even though he appears to agree with the IPCC reports as far as temperature increase is concerned. Here is a paper that discusses this in more detail:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/4096/

Here is the world's smallest political quiz.

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

According to this one I am a right-leaning libertarian. That is probably a good appraisal.

Here is one of those presidential candidate selection quizes.

http://www.gotoquiz.com/results/ultimate_2008_presidential_candidate_matcher

According to this quiz I match up almost perfectly with Romney. I match pretty well with all of the Republicans, but not at all with any Democrat. That is no suprise. Huckabee and Duncan Hunter are not included in this quiz.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

At Thanksgiving Dinner a friend told me that I was becoming a fanatic in my position on cataclysmic CO2 induced Global Warming. Obviously I don't agree with that judgement. I read all of the information I can find on the subject, and do some analysis on my own. It seems to me that some of the supporters of cataclysmic Global Warming are fanatics. They refuse to debate the issue, claiming that they have proof which is never produced, and conduct ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with them. People like Al Gore who made D's and F's in Science hardly seems to me to be a person worth dicussing the issue with. And, I have to wonder about the scientific credentials of Laurie David and Leonardo de Caprio.

Here is a rating of the public school systems in the various states based on performance of white students only. It is no surprise to me that Montana and North Dakota are at the top. Texas is sixth among states. (Seventh in the list because DOD is included and is sixth.):

http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2007/11/state-rankings-by-naep-improvement.html

It doesn't surprise me that Texas rates well. Texas has always had eexcellent schools even though that was not recognized by liberals from the East and West Coasts. When I was in school in Houston there was a lot of criticism of the schools in Houston. I remember a magazine article, I think it was in Life, that said Houston had the worst school system in the country. The reason was that the Houston system concentrated on "hard" subjects like Grammar, Math and science rather than teaching self esteem, and "getting along with others." After Sputnik in 1957 that attitude changed for a while.

This past weekend I attended my wife's 50 year re-union of her graduating class from Lamar high school in Houston. Back in 1957 that was the top public high school in the US. Rich people took their children out of private schools to attend Lamar. Walt Fondren, heir to the Humble Oil (now Exxon) fortune, went to school there, and was the quarterback on the football team that won the state championship. (Later he was an All-American at UT.) Robert Wilson, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 was there with Fondren. Lamar has a lot of famous graduates in Entertainment. Tommy Sands, Tommy Tune, and Carlin Glynn (star of the "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" on Broadway) were there with my wife. Later movie and TV stars Jacklyn Smith, Paula Prentiss, and Robert Foxworth attended Lamar. Lamar's national status declined after integration started. Now Lamar has about 1/3 black, 1/3 hispanic, and 1/3 white students, and still is exceptional.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

The IPCC had to get rid of the Medeival Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from the temperature history of earth in order to cause alarm about the temperature increase in the twentieth century. A lot of emails were passed among the scientists on the iPCC about how this was necessary. The so-called Mann hockey stick graph did the trick for them. It was based on tree ring dtata, and in some time periods, only on one tree. I was always skeptical about the tree ring data because precipitation can affect tree growth more than temperature. Here is another reconstruction of past temperatures that I got from the blog "Greenie Watch." The graph didn't show up when I copied it. The source is here:

http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025


A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies

By Loehle, C.

Historical data provide a baseline for judging how anomalous recent temperature changes are and for assessing the degree to which organisms are likely to be adversely affected by current or future warming. Climate histories are commonly reconstructed from a variety of sources, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment. Tree-ring data, being the most abundant for recent centuries, tend to dominate reconstructions. There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not properly capture long-term climate changes. In this study, eighteen 2000-year-long series were obtained that were not based on tree ring data. Data in each series were smoothed with a 30-year running mean. All data were then converted to anomalies by subtracting the mean of each series from that series. The overall mean series was then computed by simple averaging. The mean time series shows quite coherent structure. The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites.

Source

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

People are often confused by the term "Supply Side Economics." When I hear that I often think of the movie "Field of Dreams:" remember "build it and they will come."

When I was youg my granddad was a supply sider, though he probably never heard that term. I recall that he thought Roosevelt was nuts. People were hungry, and Roosevelt was destroying crops in the fields. The solution to the depression was to cut taxes to increase production and increase trade. Roosevelt did the opposite (as had Hoover).

The opposite to supply side is demand side. It seems to me that during the depression there was plenty of demand, but there wasn't enough product. The argument is made that people had no money, so they couldn't buy what was available. But, if there had been production, people would have had jobs, and so would have had money. During the depression the government should have cut taxes to encourage risk takers to establish businesses instead of putting people on the dole.

The Phillipine government has struck a deal with Muslims, giving them some land to govern. The Filipino's apparently think this will bring peace with the Muslim terrorists. There is no reason to believe this will work.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20071115/tap-malaysia-philippines-muslim-unrest-p-0193655.html

This is right out of the Muslim Brothehood playbook. The Muslims conduct terrorists attacks along with demands to establish Sharia Law in a piece of property. After that, they extend their terrorist activities to acquire control over more territory.

This is the plan the Muslims are following in Europe: they are having some success in Britain where they have established a measure of control in some places. In Sweden they are also having some success, and have managed to take over some area that Swedes do not enter, including the police. They want to follow the plan in the US. They are having some success in Michigan, and are trying to get concessions in Minnesota, where they have managed to elect a Muslim to Congress. So far they do not have sufficient numbers in the US to begin the terrorism phase. With our current crop of spineless and witless politicians, I expect they will soon have enough Muslims to start with terrorism. In Sweden Muslim boys are raping girls who do not wear head scarfs, and the authorites take no action. In fact one socialist woman in the Swedish government commented on this and said that the girls in Sweden were going to have to realize that they live in a multicultural society now. We need to oppose multiculturalism everywhere.

The Ft. Worth Star Telegram had an article recently that siad "Existing carbon dioxide enough to raise sea level." The article says that a sea level rise of 4.6 ft is a done deal; the CO2 already in the atmosphere will cause the rise, even if we shut off all industry, automobiles, etc. The article also had the ridiculous predictions of droughts, floods, species extinction, disease spread, more severe storms, etc. Most of those predictions have been denied, even by those who believe the global warming hypothesis. Here is a letter I wrote to the Star-Telegram:

The article Sunday by Arthur Max basically says the end is near; it’s too late to save mankind since the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is going to cause cataclysmic climate change. I’m surprised that you buried this story in the back pages. One would think it would be front page news. I hope you realize that the story is hype, and that is why you buried it, but I’m not certain.



One could reasonably be skeptical of the story, given that the source is the UN. The UN has just admitted that they lied about the extent of AIDS infection in the world in order to support AIDS research fund raising activities. And in the Max story there is a quote from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “The world’s scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice.” That is clearly untrue, so I think we can assume that the UN is again lying to gain support for their agenda.



Why don’t you do a story about what the UN’s agenda actually is? Some think the agenda is to damage the economy of the US. Others think it is to support establishment of a world government. Perhaps it is just to provide a means for rent-seekers to make profits. Or, maybe all of these.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Here is a more detailed paper about problems with the greenhouse gas global warming hypothesis. This paper contains a lot of data that Al Gore doesn't want you to see. Basically, there are no data that support the global warming hypothesis, and as the temperature has gone up weather has improved, more food is grown, and in general things have gotten better for humans. Here is the site for the paper:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

I have written before about the fact that the Global Circulation Models (GCMs) that form the basis for the catastrophic temperature increase predictions of Hansen, Gore and others do a poor job of estimating cloud action. This alone is sufficient reason to doubt the global warming hypothesis. Most people are not capable of it, but simple calculations show that atmospheric CO2 increases would produce a slight increase in temperature, but would not produce the IPCC predicted temperature increases. This slight temperature increase from the increase in atmospheric CO2 would logically produce more evaporation of water from the surface of earth. The assumption made by supporters of the Global Warming Hypothesis is that the increase in water vapor in the air would result in more high altitude cirrus clouds that act to reduce radiation to space. No one knew, but to many people this seemed like a reasonable assumption. Other scientists had doubts which were supported by the fact that the earth had seen large temperature swings in the past without human input. It had been noted that the earth got cold when sunspot activity was low. A recent explanation of this is that cosmic rays (which are actually electrically charged particles)cause formation of low altitude clouds which reflect sunlight. When there are a lot of sunspots, as there have been recently, then the cosmic rays are deflected away from earth, and fewer of the low altitude clouds that reflect sunlight are formed. The sun is now entering a low sunspot activity period, which results in more cosmic rays entering the earth's atmosphere. This is the reason that many astrophysicists are predicting that the earth is about to enter a cooling period. Now there has been some work done using satellites that indicates that warming of the earth does not produce more of the heat trapping high altitude cirrus clouds. This is significant since it shows a negative reinforcement of temperature increase rather than a positive feedback as assumed by the Global Warming hypothesis. (As I said before, many people reasoned that there was a negative feedback, otherwise temperature would have gone upward out of control in the past.)

The recent work on cloud formation as a function of temperature by Dr. John Christy and others is here:

Science News

Cirrus Disappearance: Warming Might Thin Heat-trapping Clouds
ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2007)

— The widely accepted (albeit unproven) theory that manmade global warming will accelerate itself by creating more heat-trapping clouds is challenged this month in new research from The University of Alabama in Huntsville.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Instead of creating more clouds, individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping cirrus clouds, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in UAHuntsville's Earth System Science Center.

That was not what he expected to find.

"All leading climate models forecast that as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in high altitude cirrus clouds, which would amplify any warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases," he said. "That amplification is a positive feedback. What we found in month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system was a strongly negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease. That allows more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space."

"While low clouds have a predominantly cooling effect due to their shading of sunlight, most cirrus clouds have a net warming effect on the Earth," Spencer said. With high altitude ice clouds their infrared heat trapping exceeds their solar shading effect.

In the tropics most cirrus-type clouds flow out of the upper reaches of thunderstorm clouds. As the Earth's surface warms - due to either manmade greenhouse gases or natural fluctuations in the climate system - more water evaporates from the surface. Since more evaporation leads to more precipitation, most climate researchers expected increased cirrus cloudiness to follow warming.

"To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce estimates of future warming by over 75 percent," Spencer said. "The big question that no one can answer right now is whether this enhanced cooling mechanism applies to global warming."

The only way to see how these new findings impact global warming forecasts is to include them in computerized climate models.

"The role of clouds in global warming is widely agreed to be pretty uncertain," Spencer said. "Right now, all climate models predict that clouds will amplify warming. I'm betting that if the climate models' 'clouds' were made to behave the way we see these clouds behave in nature, it would substantially reduce the amount of climate change the models predict for the coming decades."

The UAHuntsville research team used 30- to 60-day tropical temperature fluctuations - known as "intraseasonal oscillations" - as proxies for global warming.

"Fifteen years ago, when we first started monitoring global temperatures with satellites, we noticed these big temperature fluctuations in the tropics," Spencer said. "What amounts to a decade of global warming routinely occurs in just a few weeks in the tropical atmosphere. Then, as if by flipping a switch, the rapid warming is replaced by strong cooling. It now looks like the change in cirrus cloud coverage is the major reason for this switch from warming to cooling."

The team analyzed six years of data from four instruments aboard three NASA and NOAA satellites. The researchers tracked precipitation amounts, air and sea surface temperatures, high and low altitude cloud cover, reflected sunlight, and infrared energy escaping out to space.

When they tracked the daily evolution of a composite of fifteen of the strongest intraseasonal oscillations they found that although rainfall and air temperatures would be rising, the amount of infrared energy being trapped by the cloudy areas would start to decrease rapidly as the air warmed. This unexpected behavior was traced to the decrease in cirrus cloud cover.

The new results raise questions about some current theories regarding precipitation, clouds and the efficiency with which weather systems convert water vapor into rainfall. These are significant issues in the global warming debate.

"Global warming theory says warming will generally be accompanied by more rainfall," Spencer said. "Everyone just assumed that more rainfall means more high altitude clouds. That would be your first guess and, since we didn't have any data to suggest otherwise ..."

There are significant gaps in the scientific understanding of precipitation systems and their interactions with the climate, he said. "At least 80 percent of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds, and those are largely under the control of precipitation systems.

"Until we understand how precipitation systems change with warming, I don't believe we can know how much of our current warming is manmade. Without that knowledge, we can't predict future climate change with any degree of certainty."

Spencer and his colleagues expect these new findings to be controversial.

"I know some climate modelers will say that these results are interesting but that they probably don't apply to long-term global warming," he said. "But this represents a fundamental natural cooling process in the atmosphere. Let's see if climate models can get this part right before we rely on their long term projections."

The results of this research were published recently in the American Geophysical Union's "Geophysical Research Letters" on-line edition. The paper was co-authored by UAHuntsville's Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. W. Danny Braswell, and Dr. Justin Hnilo of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA.

A Japanese spacecraft is orbiting the moon and taking photos of the earth. Here is a site with an example:

http://www.news.com/2300-11397_3-6218456.html?tag=nefd.top

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

John Christy has written a piece about his involvement with the IPCC and global warming skepticism:


Skepticism and the IPCC

By John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama. This was published by the Beeb too!

The IPCC is a framework around which hundreds of scientists and other participants are organised to mine the panoply of climate change literature to produce a synthesis of the most important and relevant findings. These findings are published every few years to help policymakers keep tabs on where the participants chosen for the IPCC believe the Earth's climate has been, where it is going, and what might be done to adapt to and/or even adjust the predicted outcome. While most participants are scientists and bring the aura of objectivity, there are two things to note:

* this is a political process to some extent (anytime governments are involved it ends up that way)

* scientists are mere mortals casting their gaze on a system so complex we cannot precisely predict its future state even five days ahead

The political process begins with the selection of the Lead Authors because they are nominated by their own governments. Thus at the outset, the political apparatus of the member nations has a role in pre-selecting the main participants. But, it may go further. At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient. After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol." Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process.

And, while the 2001 report was being written, Dr Robert Watson, IPCC Chair at the time, testified to the US Senate in 2000 adamantly advocating on behalf of the Kyoto Protocol, which even the journal Nature now reports is a failure.

As I said above - and this may come as a surprise - scientists are mere mortals. The tendency to succumb to group-think and the herd-instinct (now formally called the "informational cascade") is perhaps as tempting among scientists as any group because we, by definition, must be the "ones who know" (from the Latin sciere , to know). You dare not be thought of as "one who does not know"; hence we may succumb to the pressure to be perceived as "one who knows". This leads, in my opinion, to an overstatement of confidence in the published findings and to a ready acceptance of the views of anointed authorities.

Scepticism, a hallmark of science, is frowned upon. (I suspect the IPCC bureaucracy cringes whenever I'm identified as an IPCC Lead Author.) The signature statement of the 2007 IPCC report may be paraphrased as this: "We are 90% confident that most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to humans." We are not told here that this assertion is based on computer model output, not direct observation. The simple fact is we don't have thermometers marked with "this much is human-caused" and "this much is natural".

So, I would have written this conclusion as "Our climate models are incapable of reproducing the last 50 years of surface temperatures without a push from how we think greenhouse gases influence the climate. Other processes may also account for much of this change."

To me, the elevation of climate models to the status of definitive tools for prediction has led to the temptation to be over-confident. Here is how this can work. Computer models are the basic tools which are used to estimate the future climate. Many scientists (ie the mere mortals) have been captivated by an IPCC image in which the actual global surface temperature curve for the 20th Century is overlaid on a band of model simulations of temperature for the same period. The observations seem to fit right in the middle of the model band, implying that models are formulated so capably and completely that they can reproduce the past very well. Without knowing much about climate models, any group will be persuaded by this image to believe models are quite precise.

However, there is a fundamental flaw with this thinking. You see, every modeller knew what the answer was ahead of time. (Those groans you just heard were the protestations of my colleagues in the modelling community - they know what's coming). In my view, on the other hand, this persuasive image is not a scientific experiment at all. The agreement displayed is just as likely to do with clever software engineering as to the first principles of science. The proper and objective experiment is to test model output against quantities not known ahead of time.

Our group is one of the few that builds a variety of climate datasets from scratch for tests just like this. Since we build the datasets here, we have an urge to be sceptical about arguments-from-authority in favour of the real, though imperfect, observations. In these model vs data comparisons, we find gross inconsistencies - hence I am sceptical of our ability to claim cause and effect about both past and future climate states. Mother Nature is incredibly complex, and to think we mortals are so clever and so perceptive that we can create computer code that accurately reproduces the millions of processes that determine climate is hubris (think of predicting the complexities of clouds).

Of all scientists, climate scientists should be the most humble. Our cousins in the one-to-five-day weather prediction business learned this long ago, partly because they were held accountable for their predictions every day. Answering the question about how much warming has occurred because of increases in greenhouse gases and what we may expect in the future still holds enormous uncertainty, in my view.

How could the situation be improved? At one time I stated that the IPCC-like process was the worst way to compile scientific knowledge, except for all the others. Improvements have been adopted through the years, most notably the publication of the comments and responses. Bravo. I would think a simple way to let the world know there are other opinions about various aspects emerging from the IPCC font would be to provide some quasi-official forum to allow those views to be expressed. These alternative-view authors should be afforded the same protocol as the IPCC authors, ie they themselves are their own final reviewers and thus would have final say on what is published. At that point, I suppose, the blogosphere would erupt and, amidst the fire and smoke, hopefully, enlightenment may appear.

I continue to participate in the IPCC (unless an IPCC functionary reads this missive and blackballs me) because I not only am able to contribute from my own research, but there are numerous opportunities to learn something new - to feed the curiosity that attends a scientist's soul. I can live with the disagreements concerning nuances and subjective assertions as they simply remind me that all scientists are people, and do not prevent me from speaking my mind anyway.

Don't misunderstand me. Atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase due to the undisputed benefits that carbon-based energy brings to humanity. This increase will have some climate impact through CO2's radiation properties. However, fundamental knowledge is meagre here, and our own research indicates that alarming changes in the key observations are not occurring.

The best advice regarding scientific knowledge, which certainly applies to climate, came to me from Mr Mallory, my high school physics teacher. He proposed that we should always begin our scientific pronouncements with this statement: "At our present level of ignorance, we think we know..." Good advice for the IPCC, and all of us.

It is going to be a challenge to find a transportation fuel to replace petroleum based fuels. In my opinion hydrogen fuel cells are not promising. Ethanol produced from corn is the sort of bad idea that can only come from government. The government subsidized program offers profit for a powerful vested interest, even though it is a net loser economically. Here is a good summary of alternative fuel candidates.

http://reason.com/news/show/123464.html

Monday, November 12, 2007

Here is an interesting article about the fallacies used by Al Gore and others who support the catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. I like the chart showing the inverse relationship between the number of pirates and average global temperature. According to the news the number of pirates seems to be going up, so maybe temperatures are going to go down.

Mind Games of the Big Green Scare Machine

By Marc Sheppard

Lord, what fools these mortals be - Shakespeare

With each passing day, Americans are increasingly behaving as though Al Gore's mantra "the debate [over man-made global warming] is over" were true. Warming folklore is deserving of incredulity as the extreme left's latest armament in its ongoing battle against capitalism and globalization. But instead it has found insinuation into virtually every corner of our culture.


Not by any occasion of scientific merit. Certainly not by outcome of an imaginary debate whose time never came, let alone ever concluded. But rather by the actions of ideologues who have successfully gagged the opposing voice in that very discussion while widely dispensing the resultantly accepted tenets of their own.


And while the gags used held no corporal form, but were instead woven from a variety of longstanding reason-skewing techniques (aka logical fallacies), their effect was scarcely diminished.


Consider these recent events.


Frustrated by the Bush Administration's submissively proposed market-friendly voluntary measures, Congress is now earnestly considering elsewhere disastrous mandatory Carbon emissions abatement legislation and consumption-penalizing tax policies.


House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-MI), who believes the U.S should reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 60-80% by 2050, is looking to levy a 50 cent per gallon additional gasoline tax on an already pump-price-shocked America. For good measure, he'll further threaten the struggling airline industry by including jet fuel. On top of that, he'll require all energy companies to pay $50 per ton for carbon released by burning coal, petroleum or natural gas. He'll also phase out mortgage tax deductions for homes over 3,000 sq ft and eliminate them altogether for homes exceeding 4,200 sq feet.


On the Senate side, Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) have introduced their own "pollution permit" bill, amusingly dubbed America's Climate Security Act [1], to "reduce global warming pollution." It proposes both carbon cap-and-trade and monetary transition assistance to current carbon slobs.


Never to be outdone, Democratic White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton -- no political dummy -- is promising she'd broker and sign a globally binding post Kyoto emissions treaty, a full 2 years before the current failed accord is set to expire.


And closer to people's homes, NBC dedicated last week to "green" programming which, amid its silly how to be a good little greenie tips, spotlighted both Democrats and Republicans vowing to save the planet from "global warming pollution." Automaker Ford wasn't alone in hysteria capitulation when it released a commercial wherein a little girl asks her dad to drop her off a block short of her destination to avoid the humiliation of being seen in a non-hybrid SUV.


It's becoming painfully apparent that the public is buying into this rubbish.


An October CNN/Research Corp. poll found 56% of respondents believing that "the phenomenon of global warming has been proven, and can be largely blamed on human endeavors, such as power plants and factories." And a Harris poll that same month revealed 71% believing that "increased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere will, if unchecked, lead to global warming and an increase in average temperatures."


Mind you, while science attests that the planet is, indeed, at an apex of a historically natural vacillation of cold and warm phases, there exists absolutely no proven influence on climate by man-made CO2 emissions.


And yet, the Big Green Scare Machine (TBGSM), its MSM cogs, and Gorebot drones have managed to convince enough people otherwise to successfully engrain this nonsense into the very conscience of society, primarily by silencing dissent with ploys of flawed reason.


Clearing the Corridor to Clouded Correlation


We've all seen them present evidence of an undeniable upward cycle, then label anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skeptics as "warming deniers" who rebuff the proof right before their eyes. This dishonest little dodge is an inverted Straw man argument [2] as it blatantly misrepresents a position, proves its own distortion, and then concludes that the real position has been affirmed.


The upshot of this fraud is a population that largely believes skeptics doubt the warming trend itself, not its anthropogenic influence, and that thereby lies about the"debate." Moreover, this implied association blurs that distinction, leaving many with the very false yet very real impression that they have witnessed convincing evidence of both.


Pretty neat trick -- turning a skeptic questioning the impact of manmade greenhouse gases into a boogieman denying the planet is warming to imply all cynics are obviously wrong about both.


However, as with stage magic, logical illusions require audience receptivity preparation. Here, instilling an assumed connection is paramount.


In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore sermonized before a graph he claimed depicted both unprecedented modern temperatures and startling correlations between temperature and CO2 fluctuations over eons of time. In truth, even were the representations honest -- they were based upon the so-called "hockeystick" graph produced by Dr. Michael Mann which has been proven inaccurate, particularly in its record heat claims -- viewers had no way of discerning the key issue of whether temperature increases followed or preceded rises in CO2.


Of course, had the CO2 increases trailed those of temperature -- as many believe to be the case (solar and/or volcanically warmed oceans emit more CO2) -- then the entire GHG theory crumbles. Indeed, without such temporal reference, Gore is employing a common correlation versus causation confusion trick called Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (with this, therefore because of this).


The absurdity of such illogic was cleverly lampooned by Bobby Henderson, who wrote in a May 2005 letter to the Kansas School Board:

"You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature."



Gore's flamboyant overtures notwithstanding -- correlation does not imply causation.


Of course, nor does it disqualify it. Take, for instance the obvious correlation between global temperatures and sunspot cycles which is entirely ignored by the "solar deniers." From the Maunder Minimum's parallel to the Little Ice in the 17th century (chart) to today's Modern Maximum's place in perfect harmony with our higher temperatures, one would expect this, not hypothetical GHG theories, to have been declared the "debate ender."


Instead, through the chicanery of inverted arguments and the deliberate confusing of cause and effect, TBGSM has imposed the illusory assertion that skeptics deny rising temperatures while science has proven that man controls the thermostat.


This false Fait Accompli lends solace to an equally counterfeit disregard of remaining doubt.


Loaded Questions and Quack Quandaries


So what are we (or you) going to do to save the planet from manmade global warming?


The problem is posed ad nauseum in varying forms to politicians, talk show guests and audiences, students and climate change summit attendees. And most eagerly respond, despite having been asked something equally prejudicial to the classic law school conundrum "so, when did you stop beating your wife?"


Compelling anyone to address AGW remedies is likewise dishonest, as it implies concurrence with the unproven premise that mankind stands as guilty as the accused wife-beater.


This devious ploy of flawed reasoning is known as a Complex Question, as it deceitfully rests on an arguable assumption; any available answer would appear to endorse that assumption.


The complex question is actually a subtle form of False Dilemma, which is an alarmist staple, created by coercing someone to choose between 2 options when others are readily available. For instance, we either act now to reduce global warming or face untold cataclysm later. How often have you heard that nonsense?


And no wonder.


Before they might accept outlandish solutions, it is imperative that the public at large be terrified by AGW's primary false dilemma of action versus planetary calamity.


And once again, logical fallacies prove to be the stuff that green dreams are made of.


Fear and Loathing in the Troposphere


Without hyping the purported consequences of global warming, misrepresenting its cause would be of no particular political or economic value.


Fear refined yields a powerful motivational fuel, and without it, the public would quickly grow inured to doomsday scares and trendy liberal reflexive remedies. That's why, as an adjunct to baseless catastrophic projections, Misleading Vividness is so vital. You've seen the pictures of snow-barren mountaintops, blazing forests, reputedly doomed to extinction Polar bears ostensibly stranded on floating ice sheets (in fact, the species has evolved to swim between sheets) and huge chunks of ice falling to the water in Greenland (a normal summertime occurrence).


Alarmists are well aware that by flashing these visually striking images as backdrop to vividly descriptive exaggerations and lies, anecdotal evidence can be used as the basis for remarkably hasty generalizations. Indeed, audiences of such spectacle are apt to engage emotionally and, consequently, willing to suspend whatever skepticism their better judgment implies.


More despicable still, manufactured images of even greater horrific impact are routinely interspersed to further agitate the easily impressionable. Remember Gore's dreadful depictions of New York flooding and ground zero disappearing under water?


But surely there are those possessed of highly cognitive and expertly trained minds destined to ultimately save us from our own frailties of logic, aren't there?


Yes there are, but no, they won't.


We've previously revealed many of the myriad scientists who dare challenge the "settled science" of AGW, bravely risking ridicule, defunding, demotion and accusations of both lack of care about future generations (another straw man argument ) and being an "oil shill" (circumstantial ad hominem).


A Circumstantial Ad Hominem attacks a position by asserting that the person taking it is doing so simply out of self interest. While there's generally little or no proof proffered, weak-minded observers often disqualify the accused nonetheless.


At the 2007 Oscars, Gore smugly told the audience -- and an estimated 1 billion television viewers:

"that resolving the threat posed by a warming climate is ‘not a political issue, it's a moral issue.'"
In other words, if you don't agree with him, you're immoral.


It's not hard to surmise where the drones acquire their penchant for broad ad hominem attacks on heretics. Nor why it's considerably easier for those same skeptics to remain mum.


Tricks of the Tirade


actually devoid, alarmists compensate with a seemingly bottomless armory of fallacious arguments. Behold but a few more of their sleights-of-thought.


Ad hominems are the falsely negative form of Genetic Fallacy, a logic flaw committed when an idea is evaluated on its source, rather than its merit. Conversely, similar mind trickery can be played to assert an idea which is falsely positive. We see this irrationality in Gorebots who lecture that if their hero says the planet has a fever and it's our fault and only he knows how to save it - it does and it is and he is.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (after this therefore because of this) is a similar tactic to Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, but here the implication is that if one event follows another, the first event therefore caused the second.
"Temperatures have been rising since the start of the industrial age. Therefore companies like Exxon Mobil are melting the polar ice caps"
Affirming the consequent is an asininity which asserts the "then" of a conditional (consequent) first, and concludes with the "if" (antecedent).
"If GHG were making the Earth warmer then we'd have less snow. Therefore, if we have less snow then GHG are making the Earth warmer."
Appeal to Consequences of a Belief is to suggest a belief to be true simply because if people didn't accept it there'd be negative consequences.
"We must treat Anthropogenic Global Warming as real because if people refuse to embrace it there'll be no hope for our children"
Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument to ignorance) is a fallacy of assuming something is true simply because it has yet to be proven false.
"Global warming is certainly caused by greenhouse gases because nobody has demonstrated conclusively that it is not"
And the incessant "scientific consensus" claim is a combination of Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Popularity and, of course, Appeal to Bravo Sierra.
Further favorites include appeals to fear, to novelty (newness of an idea is somehow evidence of its truth), and of course, to popularity (an idea must be true simply because it is widely held). There's also The Relativist Fallacy, in which the arguer claims that while something might be true for others, he or she is exempt. Any ideas on this one (hint - think Limo Libs)?

The Debate is NOT Over When the Fat Man Sings


Given the cache of weapons TBGSM wields to shut-down debate, its obvious they've no misconceptions of prevailing should one accidentally break out. Indeed, Gore, himself, has recently refused to debate every AGW challenger tossing the gauntlet (Avery, Lord Monckton, Singer, Ball, etc).


But last week, Gore appeared on the Today Show and was asked about a WSJ op-ed penned by IPCC member and co-Nobel Prize winner John Christy which challenged Gore's dire analysis of global warming's impact and origins. The ensuing response was astounding. After calling Christy an "outlier" who's "way outside the scientific consensus" (Ad Hominem Tu Quoque), he chided journalism's provision of equal-time to opposing viewpoints on the subject:

"Part of the challenge the news media has had in covering this story is the old habit of taking the on the one hand, on the other hand approach. There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat... you don't search out for someone who still believes the Earth is flat and give them equal time"
Okay, so he didn't actually invent the internet, but he did manage to concoct his own logical fallacy -- The Flat Earther Argument -- X disagrees with Y. Y proclaims debate over. X therefore adheres to 600 year-old geological misconceptions and is to be shunned.


Now, the same alarmists who'll follow this charlatan debate-aphobe anywhere speak of an impending "tipping point," at which the Earth's destiny will be calcified. And, while they're dead wrong about the nemesis we face, their concerns are sound.


The Big Green Scare Machine has met no burden of proof whatsoever. To the contrary, they refuse and evade every opportunity to take on their dissenters in any open, objective and analytical forum.


And yet, by way of their fraudulent tactics, they're undeniably winning the clash for public opinion. Should this trend continue, rather than prepare for the consequences of naturally shifting climate patterns, we'll risk untold wealth, progress, resources, and yes -- capitalism itself, in a popular but fool's quest to tame an immutable force of nature.


The imperative to arrest this proliferating cognitive plague through unremitting rebuttal and steadfast refusal to assimilate with its foolish collective mindset or be diverted by its puerile mind games cannot be overstated.


Nearly 20,000 scientists have signed a petition disputing AGW and denouncing Kyoto. This must be loudly shouted at those sluggishly slipping into the green stupor to reinvigorate debate and assure that reasoned voices are heard over the irrational drone of this ultimately political machine.


Footnotes:
[1] Friends of the Earth abhor this bill. Rather than directing auction proceeds to wind, solar and other untenable "renewable" energy companies, it would subsidize the coal industry's efforts to develop carbon capture and storage mechanisms. Considering that base load electric requirements will likely be met by coal-fired plants indefinitely, this green objection to helping "clean them up" certainly speaks volumes to their actual motives.


[2] In her February 9th column, Ellen Goodman combined misleading vividness, blatant ad hominem and stunning ignorance when she wrote that "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers." Ms. Goodman might be pleased to learn that most links used to clarify logical fallacies used by AGW alarmists herein launch The Nizkor Holocaust Educational Resource Project where they are described alongside other Techniques of Holocaust
Denial

I saw John McCain's Mother on TV today trashing Mitt Romney. I don't agree with her about Mitt, but it's great that at 95 years old she's still feisty.

Here is a letter I sent the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram today.

In a letter printed in the Star Telegram on 11 November Mr. Preston Faggart complains that people tell him they don’t like Hillary Clinton, but can’t cite any reason why. I don’t like her, and have a lot of reasons based on what she says and has done. Here are some reasons in no particular order:



- She is opposed to free trade



- She was a disciple of Saul Alinsky, and in her career has followed the advice in his book “Rules for Radicals,” particularly to destroy opponents with personal attacks (such as, Paula Jones is trailer trash)



- She once worked for the Communist Party, which was not illegal, and which she had every right to do, and for which I have every right to not support her.



- She believes in central planning of the economy, and is opposed to free market capitalism



- She bears false witness against those who are inconvenient for her, such as women her husband had affairs with and the head of the travel office in the White House (who’s job she wanted to give to a friend)



- She is a collectivist. She states that she would like to confiscate the profits of oil companies. She says she needs more money for the programs she favors, and she plans to take it from us



- She is opposed to freedom of speech as indicated by a desire to re-institute the misnamed “fairness doctrine” to put people like Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk show hosts off of the radio



- She has hired private investigators to intimidate women her husband was associated with, and to record phone conversations of her opponents. One investigator was named Pellicano; as I recall he was in trouble for illegally recording phone conversations. I saw one of the private investigators interviewed on TV. He denied that they intimidated anyone, but admitted that they did visit people on behalf of Mrs. Clinton. Personally I think such a visit could reasonably be interpreted as intimidation.



I can see that socialists, communists, and so-called liberals would like Mrs. Clinton, and that those of us who are free market capitalists would not. At this point she appears to be a fascist; that is a socialist who gains control of the economy by co-opting owners of large business enterprises rather than having the state assume ownership. (Democrats often call Republicans fascists; apparently not realizing that fascists are socialists; Mussolini and Hitler were socialists.)

Friday, November 09, 2007

The IPCC is a flawed institution of th corrupt UN. Their work on AGW involves a lot of bias and obfuscation. Here is a paper describing the problems with the IPCC process, which is certainly not scientific. I like the prt where the IPCC sends a letter to a reviewer telling him to quit requesting the scientific papers that support the work he is reviewing, and to quit challenging the conclusions, or he will be dropped as a reviewer. The IPCC is obviously a fascist organization.One problem I have is reconstructing past temperature from pine tree rings. I raise pine trees, and can show you many places where two adjacent trees that are the same age vary in diameter from 8 inches to 16 inches. How could someone take one of those trees a few hundred years from now, and based on the width of the rings determine what the temperature is now? The dishonesty of the IPCC is revealed when it acknowledged that they shifted from tree ring guesses to actual temperature measurements, even though current tree ring data do not correspond to current temperatures.

http://homepages.tesco.net/~kate-and-david/2007/Holland(2007).pdf

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

The November 12 issue of Fortune Magazine has a article on shale oil (pp. 104-116)that is found in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. It is estimated that there are about 2 billion barrels of oil that can be extracted from the shale in this region. Shell Oil has an in-situ process that is projected to produce oil from shale at a cost of about $30 per barrel. Estimates are that about one million barrels of oil can be produced from an acre of land. Shell is estimating that they could be producing up to 5 million barrels of oil per day within a few years, and could continue for a few hundred years. (The US uses about 21 million barrels per day, of which about 12 or 13 million are imported. So this would not provide energy independence, but would help a lot. North Slope Alaskan and off-shore drilling could yield another 5 million barrels per day which would pretty much provide energy independence, but this is opposed by Democrats.) The bad news about shale oil is that extraction of it takes a lot of water. (That is what limits the amount of oil that can potentially be produced to 5 million barrels per day.) The other bad news is that most of the barren waste land containing the shale oil belongs to the Federal Government; thus exploitation requires support from Democrats. That support may not be forthcoming, given environmentalists' knee-jerk opposition to progress and Democrats' double-talk about the need for energy independence.

Monday, November 05, 2007

The Democrats have been the party of the rich for a long time. The rich basically are afraid of the "lower classes" and are willing to bribe them to prevent an uprising. There is nothing unusual about this; the same thing happened in the Roman Empire. The Democrats have embraced what I term European type socialism. They desire to freeze everyone in their current economic status. Regulation and other policies will maintain the position of the current rich, and will prevent anyone else from becoming rich. This means that innovation will be choked off, and economic progress will slow. But, the rich will stay on top, and the lower classes will be mollified with government handouts. During the last Presidential election Mrs Kerry made a revealing speech which can be paraphrased, "Vote for us peasants, and we will take care of you." Here is an article from Ace of Spades that has a similar view to mine:

Vote Democrat, The Party of the Rich

—Ace

It's long been this way, but the Financial Times has finally realized it. At least they've allowed a wonk from a Heritage Foundation to pen an editorial revealing The Awful Truth.

A legislative proposal that was once on the fast track is suddenly dead. The Senate will not consider a plan to extract billions in extra taxes from megamillionaire hedge fund managers.

The decision by Senate majority leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, surprised many Washington insiders, who saw the plan as appealing to the spirit of class warfare that infuses the Democratic party. Liberal disappointment in Mr Reid was palpable at media outlets such as USA Today, where an editorial chastised: "The Democrats, who control Congress and claim to represent the middle and lower classes, ought to be embarrassed."

Far from embarrassing, this episode may reflect a dawning Democratic awareness of whom they really represent. For the demographic reality is that, in America, the Democratic party is the new "party of the rich". More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households. Using Internal Revenue Service data, the Heritage Foundation identified two categories of taxpayers - single filers with incomes of more than $100,000 and married filers with incomes of more than $200,000 - and combined them to discern where the wealthiest Americans live and who represents them.

Democrats now control the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats. This new political demography holds true in the House of Representatives, where the leadership of each party hails from different worlds. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, represents one of America's wealthiest regions. Her San Francisco district has more than 43,700 high-end households. Fewer than 7,000 households in the western Ohio district of House Republican leader John Boehner enjoy this level of affluence.

I find it amusing that Democrats talk about the Bush's being rich. The first George Bush had a new worth of $2 or 3 million when he first ran for President. The second Bush had a net worth of less than $10 million. This much money is nice but is not much when capared to Democrats like Jay Rockefeller. Nancy Pelosi. Diane Feinstein, and Ted Kennedy.

I am amazed how the politicians of the Western World have embraced the global warming scare. It appears that they are always a bit behind. Just as severe doubts about the global warming dogma are finally emerging, the politicians are ready to start all sorts of ill-advised programs to save civilization as we know it. Here is a summary article on the deceit from an English newspaper. (This is interesting since England is perhaps the most peecee country in the world.)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/04/eaclimate104.xml&page=1

Sunday, November 04, 2007

It is always interesting when the Democrats trot out some former general officer who says that the war in Iraq cannot be won. It reminds me of 1864 when the Democrats ran McClelland for President. McClelland loudly proclaimed that the Civil War could not be won, so he proposed a negotiated settlement to end the war. McClelland was correct that he could not win the war. Lee had proven that he could beat McClelland even when the North had a 5 or 6 to one manpower advantage, and an even bigger advantage in materiel. But, Grant could and did beat Lee in less than a 6 months after the election of 1864. I don't know what this proves, except that maybe we shouldn't pay much attention to what armchair strategists like Pelosi and Reid and the failed generals who agree with them have to say.

I've written before about the Muslim Brotherhood's plan from the 1970's for taking over Western Europe and the USA. The plan is obviously being worked with a lot of success in Great Britain. There is some success in the US in Detroit and Minneapolis, and with a publically funded Muslim school in Brooklyn. American worship of "multiculturalism" and of "diversity" play into their hands. Muslims are a great threat to our way of life, and I am convinced that we need to stop immigration of Mulims into the US. We also need to rcognize that Islam is more of a political system than a religion, and that political system is incompatible with the US Constitution. Thus Islam should not fall under our "freedom of religion" law and tradition. It is impossible for anyone who is a devout Muslim to be loyal American. That may not be a peecee position, but is nontheless true.

Here is an interview of Dr. Patrick Sookhdeop on the subject of Islam's efforts to take over the Europe and the West. This is a serious threat that is being ignored by our politicians of both parties. (I understand President Bush's public stand, but wish he would do more behind the scenes to stop Muslim intrusion into America.)

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/11/development-of-parallel-society.html#readfurther

By reading the newspapers and blogs I'm learning a lot that I didn't know about what to do and not do in public men's rooms. First, reading about Stings in Minneapolis I learned not to have a "wide stance." Now from a Florida sting I learned that I need to oil my zipper so that it is not loud.

Speaking of the Florida sting, a candidate for mayor was arrested, apparently for having a loud zipper. The report didn't identify his party affiliation, so he must be a Democrat. Actually, if he is a Democrat, it won't hurt his chances according to Saul Alinsky's rule #4. That says you should use peoples own rules and standards against them. This means that sex scandals harm Republicans but not Democrats, since Democrats have no standards regarding sex. For example Republican Mark Foley was shamed out of office because he sent inappropriate emails to pages. Gary Studds, a Democrat, had sex with underage pages in Washington DC, but remained in office, and was lionized by Democrats. Barney Frank lived with a gay prostitute, but no one cared. A very drunk Ted Kennedy has been observed having sex on a table in a bar, but who cares. He's a Kennedy. Everyone knows those guys are alcoholics and sex addicts, so what. Republicans Livingson and Gingrich had to leave office because they had relatively discreet affairs. They were judged to be hypocrites for pushing charges Bill Clinton had an affair with an intern in his office, a clear case of sexual harrassment that is illegal. So, there is a double standard simply because Democrats have no standards.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

A recent study by Harvard, hardly a bastion of consevatism, finds that the MSM is biased against Republicans. More articles are written about Democrats and the tone is usually positive. Fewer articles are about Republicans and the tone is usually negative. Here is the link to an article about the study with the statistics:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=278808786575124#

Many writers are simply one track. In the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram editorial writers like Joe Galloway and the late Molly Ivins have a simple theme; Democrats are good, Republicans are bad. There is really no reason to waste your time reading the articles. It reminds me of a Calvin Coolidge story. (President Coolidge was a man of few words.) Once, as he left church, a reporter asked him what the day's sermon was about. Coolidge said, "Sin." The reporter asked what was the preacher's message? Coolidge said, "He was against it." That pretty well summarizes most church services.

Here is a statistic from an article by John Lott.

Others, like the American Bar Association, claim racial biases in how the death penalty is applied. In fact, while African-Americans have committed 53 percent of all murders since 1980 in which the killer's race is known, they have accounted for only 38 percent of the executions.

A few years ago the Ft. Worth Star Telegram printed photos of all people executed in Texas the previous year. It was obvious that a lot more of those executed were white. For some reason liberals concentrate on the number of blacks executed compared to the percentage of the population that is black. Black men are more than 8 times more likely to commit murder than white men. So, given that about one-eights of the population is black, it would be expected that about the same number of blacks as whites would be executed.

By the way, there were no women executed that year. Women are over half of the population, but are rarely executed. Do liberals wonder why that is? The answer, of course, is that very few women commit murder.

Friday, November 02, 2007

A lot of young people have never heard of the Russian scientist Lysenko. He was one of the great frauds of all time who put science into politics, much as is now being done with global warming. Here is an article about Lysenko from American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/global_warming_as_pathological.html

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Here is an article I got fron Dissectleft. It describes some of the technically illegal activities of Hillary. (If the government pursues this, I would expect some underrlings to be convicted. The Clinton's inspire such loyalty in their employees that the employees are willing to go to jail forf them.)

http://www.poe.com/?page_id=32

According to this article the Islamic terrorists favor Hillary Clinton rather than Obama. Maybe this is because they liked Bill so much.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmYwYTFhZDU1MjllMjUwODg3MDYxMTgzNDk2OTNjODM=&w=MA==

Democrats want to bring back the mis-named "Fairness Doctrine" to get rid of talk radio. They perceive, correctly, that talk radio does not support them to the extent that the MSM does. Here is a study that says that talk radio is more fair than the MSM. The MSM definitely supports the Democrat's agenda, and reports negatively on Republicans. Anyone who is even remotely objective knows that NPR is heavily biased in favor of liberals and Democrats. Here is a study on fairness in the media.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2007/10/30/study-media-elites-campaign-news-more-biased-talk-radio

There are some good jokes out now about Democrats. Jokesters say they expected Dennis Kucinich to say "Beam me up, Scotty" at the end of the last Democrat debate.

And Jay Leno says Democrats in Congress, who promised to get Congress back on a full work schedule, have found that they can do nothing as well in four days as five, so they have stopped working on Friday. (Actually the members of both parties need more time for their all-important activity of raising money for their re-election campaign.)