The guy is a terrorist--go grab his ass

Those words were once spoken by noted climate scientist and vice president Al Gore.  He offered the blunt assessment to Bill Clinton and his advisors huddling over how to handle a foreign terrorist.  In doing so he admitted it was a violation of international law.  But the guy's a terrorist!   

Strange how after the biggest terrorist attack in American history we actually DID go grab a terrorist's ass, in Italy.   But the CIA officers who did it were all later convicted of crimes by outraged Italian prosecutors.  One of the officers, Sabrina de Souza,  has found herself in a position of being extradited back to Rome to perhaps face serving jail time.  She made the mistake of leaving the States. 

And the Obama administration seems OK with that.  

Without knowing all the intricate details of this case, on the surface it sure seems weird that we would trade 5 hardcore Taliban terrorist commanders for an Army deserter, then allow the Italians to roast a CIA officer who herself was also on the global battlefield defending the West against radical Islamists like this cretin.   But it's an outrage a day anymore.  

Weather or Not

Drudge is going crazy with the weather stories today, taking a cue from the mainstreamers, who are all talking about "Hercules".   By the way, who started naming winter storms and what's the criteria for getting a name anyway?

It's winter and it's cold outside today in Memphis.  No newsflash.  But the local news is highlighting an even colder "Arctic Blast" heading in over the weekend, which could be trouble.  Presuming this name thing works alphabetically as with hurricanes, what will they name this one?  How about "Imhotep".  Or would that be offensive to the Egyptians?  

Whatever the case it could be a doozy, not so much for snow but temperatures; Memphis is expected to remain in the teens on Monday according to the NWS..

We barely drop down into the teens during a normal winter, much less have a high in the teens.  The south isn't built for such temperatures; pipes and people tend to freeze.  So it's prudent for residents to take it seriously. 

Actually, it's been a cold year here overall-- 2013 was probably below average.   None of which signals an end to global warming, or climate change, or Tea Party induced planetary death, or whatever the official liberal name is now.   But it sure would be funny if Al Gore were coming to town next week for a global warming conference, assuming he wasn't on that expedition ship trapped in the summer Antarctic ice.

Arctic Ice Update

The latest on the Polar Bear Front:

About a million more square miles of ocean are covered in ice in 2013 than in 2012, a whopping 60 percent increase -- and a dramatic deviation from predictions of an "ice-free Arctic in 2013," the Daily Mail noted.

One must note that the current 2013 extent is still less than normal, but the point of this post requires a trip on the way-back machine to 2007 and the dire projections from climate scientists about the year 2013:

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.

"So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."

Emphasis added to emphasize the fact these scientists not only thought summers would be ice-free by 2013, but probably well BEFORE. Talk about going down in flames. Of course this hyperventilation was picked up and used by none other than Al "millions of degrees" Gore as proof that Bush was killing the planet and that we only had five years to act before doom. Yet here we are. Ready to believe yet?

Those Evil Little Inhalers

News is hitting the wires today about the coming forced change in asthma inhalers at the end of the year, and of course some are blaming Obama:

Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer.

But Obama is only a part of the problem. He didn't create the Montreal Protocol agreement in 1987, which banned CFCs, still used to power some inhalers. All CFCs were supposed to be phased out by now but they loosened the ban to allow for a more gradual reduction for inhalers, but according to the site Weekly Standard linked, sufferers will now need to get a prescription and pay more for their life-saving plastic pumps:

Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

Does anyone know exactly how these little pumps emit CFCs? What's the science? Are there little exhaust ports or does it just seep out? Or is it exhaled? Calling Al Gore...

Speaking of Gore, here's an oldy from the 90s talking about his use of the politics of fear to hector Bush 41:

In somber tones, Gore reminded his colleagues of previous fears about "the ozone hole over Antarctica," and insisted that our nation faces "not only a long-term, critical threat to the global environment, but also an immediate, acute emergency threat." He raved about "blind rabbits and blind salmon in the areas under the edge of the ozone hole in the Southern hemisphere," and claimed that there would be "an additional 300,000 deaths from skin cancer in the United States as a result of ozone depletion over the next few decades." He also linked ozone depletion to "extra cases of cataracts and blindness due to cataracts," and to "damage to the human immune system...."

Such an effective campaign. Arrrg, the ozone hole! Yet despite the ban scientists say the level of ozone in the Arctic was at an all-time low this past winter. The reason? Inhalers. No, actually, unusually cold air aloft:

"The Montreal Protocol actually works, and the amount of ozone-depleting gases is on the way down, but quite slowly," said Geir Braathen, a senior scientist with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which co-ordinates ozone data globally.

"In the meantime, we have some winters that get much colder than before and also the cold periods last longer, into the spring," he told BBC News. "So it's really a combination of the gases still there and low temperatures and then sunshine, and then you get ozone loss."

OK. CFCs are down 10 percent since Montreal (at some level in the atmosphere wherever they measure it) but they just recorded the lowest drop of ozone ever over the Arctic, explained by colder than normal temperatures aloft they can't really explain. Meanwhile the Antarctic ozone hole just keeps forming year after year. And here on the surface of the earth in temperate climes, where ozone levels have not threatened anyone lately, asthmatics are asked to do their patriotic duty by paying more for their evil little inhalers. It sure sounds like a racket, but we're always open to scientific rebuttals.

Irene in the Rearview

The storm is moving away, fortunately leaving less carnage than predicted, so now it's time for the eggs to be thrown. The major media shied away from tying Irene to global warming but that didn't stop the Daily Beast from posting a piece by environmentalist Bill McKibben on Thursday night doing just that; some of his broadsides are worth discussing:

As she roars up the Eastern Seaboard, everyone is doing what they should—boarding windows, preparing rescue plans, stocking up on batteries. But a lot of people are also wondering: what’s a “tropical” storm doing heading for the snow belt?

Swing and a miss in the first paragraph. He clearly used 'snow belt' to paint a picture of how rare "tropical" storms should be in this part of the country even though it never snows in New York in August and tropical storms are actually quite frequent in the Atlantic waters offshore.

Category 3 Storms have rarely hit Long Island since the 1800s; one was the great unnamed storm of 1938, which sent 15-foot storm waters surging through what are now multimillion-dollar seaside homes. Normally, says Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, it’s “difficult for a major Category 3 or stronger hurricane crossing north of North Carolina to maintain that intensity, because wind shear rapidly increases and ocean temperatures plunge below the 26°C (79°F) level that can support a hurricane.” The high-altitude wind shear may help knock the storm down a little this year, but the ocean temperatures won’t. They’re bizarrely high—only last year did we ever record hotter water.

And wow, a Cat 3 didn't hit this time, either, despite the ominously warm surface water just offshore. In reality the storm was a category 1 when it reached North Carolina and a strong tropical storm when it made landfall in New York City. His piece was written as if a Cat 3 storm was a certainty, proving the world-changing strength of global warming. Strike two.

Remember—this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in U.S. history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas. Just about the only trauma we haven’t had are hurricanes plowing into the U.S., but that’s just luck—last year was a big storm year, but they all veered out to sea. This year we’re already on letter I—which in a normal year we don’t get to until well into October. Every kind of natural system is amped up, holding more power—about ¾ of a watt extra energy per square meter of the Earth’s surface, thanks to the carbon we’ve poured into the atmosphere. This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.

That's sort of a pop fly single to left. Nobody can deny there has been an almost Biblical level of tornadoes, drought, floods and snow-storms in since October of 2010 but the question is whether they are directly related to higher global temperatures as opposed to say prophesy from The Revelation or the end of the Mayan calendar.

Nobody of science should doubt that world temps are higher now than in the late 1800s, the question is whether this trend was created solely by mankind or if mankind only chipped in a bit on a natural upswing coming off the Little Ice Age. The guilt-ridden enviro-lefties always assume humans are completely to blame then proceed to attack that strawman by suggesting the only correction to the problem is an autocratic world government willing to force enviro-conservatism on the rubes who don't know better. Like Tea Partiers. After all, it's a crisis.

But their gloom and doom predictions on hurricane strength don't always compute. Both the Environmental Defense Fund and Al Gore's websites STILL contain an as-yet proven theory that hurricanes will be stronger on a warmer planet despite that science not yet being 'settled'. McGibben points to the massive amount of rainfall with Irene, which is true, but check out Tropical Storm Jose, currently making it's way harmlessly north past Bermuda as of this writing. On startup it had a neat little circulation but appeared skeleton-like with cloud bands and very little rainfall. Storms like Jose were hard to find in the old days before satellites but now they contribute to the annual storm count, which later translates into a proof of global warming because there are more storms.

McKibben's warming theory about Irene's rainfall can also be challenged by the curious little tropical storm named Don that hit the Texas coast near Brownsville in July then defied prediction by fizzling out within 6 hours of landfall. If higher temperatures allow storms to contain more rainfall (warm air can hold more moisture) then does it also cause them to fall apart quicker when their circulations get disrupted by land masses, the rain being absorbed back into the atmosphere through evaporation? It's far from settled, as yet just another example of how scientists don't completely understand the feedback mechanisms.

At any rate, McKibben eventually gets into the meat of his piece--politics. He tears into the Obama administration for not being liberal enough in citing their tepid environmental report on a pipeline project designed to tap tar sands in Alberta and transport oil south into the US, quoting climate doyen James Hansen:

Those tar sands are the second-biggest pool of carbon on the continent; if we tap into them in a big way, says the federal government’s premier climate scientist James Hansen, it’s “essentially game over for the climate.”

In other words, it's game over if we switch some of our sources of oil from Saudi Arabia to Alberta regardless of whether we use the same amount of energy or not. Rather illuminating because it shows what the enviros really want: world governments stepping in and crushing free-market capitalism due to the emergency. And here we were told that getting off Arabian oil would quell the war machine.

In the end Irene will be a bona fide disaster, already costing billions in lost revenue and likely costing billions to clean up. But it certainly wasn't the historic 100 year storm of our lifetimes as characterized by Obama, Christie and Bloomberg. In retrospect it will be an interesting study in human behavior as politicians felt compelled to run around like headless chickens to make sure they weren't "Katrina-ed" by the press if the worst occurred, while the media ran around like headless chicken-littles trying to create stormageddon to boost excitement and ratings (although not everybody obeyed).

And forecasters, wary of how the media would treat them should they not forecast a worse case and one occurred in a major population area, basically introduced a worse case while knowing (as McKibben pointed out) that climatology doesn't favor one. So everyone has now gone into explain, blame, slash or pretend mode until the next one comes. And it could really be bad!

A NEW MEME 8/29/11

Here's Norah O'Donnell reporting live on president Obama's good response to Irene, including something that's been showing up on several lefty message boards--the notion that Bush did not declare a federal disaster area for Louisiana or Mississippi BEFORE the storm hit as Obama did with the east coast. She made a point to note how Obama's early declaration stood in start contrast.

Just one problem. Bush issued a pre-Katrina state of emergency declaration on Saturday before the storm hit:

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in d in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

So no, Bush didn't declare a federal disaster area before Katrina but he did declare a state of emergency, which was also declared at state level a day prior. For some reason that distinction wasn't worth noting to CBS.

Think Globally...

Act locally? Was Gore taking his warming theory a little too literally? And what does it say about America when the paper of record is now the National Enquirer?

This woman seems a bit melodramatic but seriously, "Mr. Stone" and abdominal massages? Sounds like code, in a foot tapping under the stall kind of way. Good thing the Portland paper had the guts to spike the story while the New York Times was embarrassing itself over the McCain affair story while the Dems were riding high. But I digress.

MORE 6/24/10

Gore is of course presumed innocent and hasn't been charged with anything to this point. We conservatives usually get mad when smears are run against our guys, so it's best to keep some perspective.

But part of the perspective is how this story is being handled, and was handled when it became known. Presuming the very same charge/evidence, had the subject been Cheney (or just about any known Republican) it's pretty likely the media would have reacted quite differently. After all, they knew about the Edwards affair and stood by mute as he ran for vice-president. So it's natural to assume they might be covering up here, too. It's akin to the glowing press yesterday about Obama's appointment of Petraeus as "brilliant" or a "masterstroke" when he was left with little choice.

Anyway, the commenters on JOM (linked above) are probably having a bit too much fun with this story, but they dredged up an oldie from the 2000 debates that probably cost Gore a few votes, claiming it as perhaps an insight into his personality..



I've always thought it was more an insight into his political handlers, who were probably telling him he needed to be more macho--and not necessarily his personality. But it was a creepy moment for sure. And again something, if done by a Cheney-type figure, could have spelled the end of a career.

Globe May be Warming, but not Memphis

Hot Air links this commencement speech by Big Al, then cryptically asks if he's right based on big news out of NOAA:

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature was the warmest on record for January-April at 56.0°F (13.3°C), which is 1.24°F (0.69°C) above the 20th century average.

Yet so far here in 2010 Memphis is a whopping 7.3 degrees below normal for the period January-April based on departures from normal:

• January = -2.8 F
• February = -7.5 F
• March = -0.9 F
• April = +3.9 F
  

May is above normal so far, but not so much it would get us in the red numbers. And Memphis isn't the only part of America way behind the rest of the world. Take a good look at that graphic and you'll find that a bulk of the warming occurred in Saharan Africa and across the prairies of Canada, which was mostly snow covered during that period (except in April).

Still, short term warming is warming, even if it's not climate, so expect the greens to make a big production of all this.

The Groundhog Re-Emerges

And sees six more weeks of man-made global warming, delivered via a New York Times article. But a few things were missing..

1. He didn't call skeptics were 'flat-earthers' or believers in a faked moon landing.
2. He didn't explain how, if weather is now climate why it wasn't climate years ago, when the earth was just as warm (say around 1998).
3. Why it matters that January 2010 was 'hot' when everyone knows that one month doesn't make a trend.

What he did say was to reiterate the importance of this entire movement--that global governance and restrictions are necessary to save the earth. You can read his analogies of how free market capitalism and Fox News/Rush Limbaugh are destroying the world on page three of the article, and how they must be reigned in. So what's a few little 'mistakes' in the science.

MORE 2/28/10

Ann Althouse provides another reason why she's a real blogger while I'm just throwing words at a screen. Her dissection of Algore's return from his secret location gets right to the heart of the Frankenstein by nailing the screaming message--how dare we not roll over and accept our socialism fate unlike the dangerous, divisive right wingers calling it socialism.

Her argument using a parallel to the Iraq war was also nice. The Brits like to blast Blair for 'sexing up' the evidence on WMDs to justify Iraq but so far I haven't heard that term used to describe the likely deliberate errors in the 2007 IPCC finding, designed to prepare the world for the coming global wealth redistribution CO2 mitigation plan.

She also said something else:

Oh? Just a coincidence? Al Gore has unwittingly tweaked my suspicion that the scientists are politicos.

There's evidence. Check out a recent interview with the creator of the hockey stick, Penn State's Michael Mann, where he uses an analogy of the angry health care town halls to make his point about the regeneration of the climate debate:

The debate over the reality of climate change was still alive and well. And now there is such a poisonous atmosphere being created by the climate skeptics — similar in many ways to that poisonous atmosphere we saw last summer in those healthcare town hall meetings — irrational sort of conspiracy-driven lunatics, frankly, entering into the fray — where the discourse has been so skewed to the point where those extreme voices are a substantial component in the debate.

Only a liberal would use that analogy. If you read the whole thing it's painfully obvious this guy is delusional if he really believes there's a "David vs Goliath" mentality now between AGW and skeptics, with climate scientists taking on David's role. Even the friendly interviewer took umbrage to that notion. Good grief, the public has been subjected to a near vacuum of stories on the skeptical side of the debate for years from a press that has largely been in Gore's back pocket--which Mann admits by saying they took it for granted the debate was already over to the point he had to warn scientists not to get complacent!

And now the climategate emails have suggested that hey, maybe the debate really isn't quite over yet; maybe some of those flat earth kooks aren't really all just vile pigs spewing oil-industry crap after all.

BTW, his interview style is similar to Gore's by trying to make himself an underdog to the carbon man while at the same time repeating the mantra that dissent is pure evil. He wasn't dumb enough to suggest, like Gore, that the only saving route is world governance (restricted free markets) but that kind of thinking fits in nicely with what many modern scientists most probably believe, being kids who grew up watching a steady diet of eco-protesters spraying No Nukes on bridge overpasses and warning of alar-filled apples and 3 mile islands, evil DDT and saving the whales from Exxon Valdez, all perpetuated by the likes of CBS News' 60 Minutes and others in the trusting leftist media that Mann now claims has betrayed him with this report.

Or in other words someone finally had the temerity to tell the other side of Mann's story by reporting the facts as known without a giant slant towards the AGW side, and for that he is incensed. He's lucky, they could have reported on the cash-c0w he's become for the university by bringing in all those grants--millions and millions, and counting.

Newsweek's Gore Fantasy

Seriously, does anyone actually subscribe to this magazine anymore or is it being kept afloat by doctor's offices? This little fantasy piece about Al Gore becoming president, and how the world might have gone, is just begging to be fisked. So here's my take:

An August 2001 Daily Intelligence Briefing warns, "Bin Ladin [sic] Determined to Strike in the U.S.," which prompts the president to authorize the strategic bombing of targets in the Khost province of Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border.

Frank Wall, White House counterterrorism adviser: "We had it on better-than-reasonable authority that Osama bin Laden, or at least his top guys, were hiding out under the protection of the Taliban who, if you remember, had just blown up the Bamiyan Buddhas that April, which was a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nasty guys. It didn't go over well. We were not greeted as liberators there, and here at home, the general consensus was that the president was trying to look manly. I still maintain it was the right thing to do. American interests haven't been attacked by Al Qaeda since the USS Cole in Yemen, but who can really judge if an endeavor is successful by something not happening?"

So bombing the Khost province in August would have killed Mohammed Atta and his 18 co-conspirators here in America who by most accounts were getting their marching orders via KSM in Pakistan? Had Gore succeeded where Clinton failed in killing bin Laden then why wouldn't Zawahiri have given the green light on 9/11 with everything already in place and ready to go? Besides, one could easily say a dead bin Laden becomes the great Islamic martyr, creating scores of wanna-be's and new terrorist recruits determined to take revenge on the great Satan.

June 2002: The president signs a bill giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, worth $1.35 trillion over 10 years. There are cries of foul from both left and right.

Why would the right cry foul? By the way, only Newsweek would use Andrew Sullivan as 'the right'.

the robust economy and no major foreign or domestic conflicts are enough to secure a second term for Gore-Lieberman in November 2004, beating out the McCain-Kemp ticket by 51 percent to 48 percent.

Peace in our time, all accomplished by bombing Khost province a month before 9/11. Wow.

March 3, 2005: At a Rose Garden ceremony, the president announces his health-care-reform package that includes a public option offering coverage to compete with private insurance. Polls indicate the American public is overwhelmingly in favor of such a program.

Hey, this is a hit-piece on Lieberman, isn't it?

Hurricane Katrina strikes Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama, with winds of up to 140 miles per hour. Although meteorologically one of the most significant storms in decades, the surge of water into New Orleans floods low-lying parts of the city to a depth of just three feet. Within hours, FEMA mobilizes supplies of food and water, and the Army Corps of Engineers shores up the levees and pumps out the flood waters within six days. Total mortality in New Orleans for the hurricane is just 17 people.

Newsweek doesn't say how Gore repaired the levees because in the real Katrina, the storm surge did not top the levees, it collapsed them. Wetland maintenance would have done little to affect the water level in Lake Pontchartrain, which leads directly into the Gulf--unless he's saying wetland maintenance would have lowered sea level. Hey--we're talking about Gore!

But he does have a point. With Gore in the White House neither Nagin nor Blanco would have any reason to drag their feet or blame GOP bogeymen and they would have been held fully accountable, so who knows how things may have turned out.

And apparently in this alternate reality Saddam Hussein, his maniacal sons, Hamas, Hiz'ballah, Iran, and North Korea somehow vanished into the ether as soon as Gore bombed the Khost province. Amazing.

As to global warming, of course Gore signs us onto the Kyoto protocol in 2001 but it doesn't predict whether the gridlocked Congress would have ratified it or what the global temperature would have done those eight years. Oh right--the global temperature would have been exactly the same as now.

Admittedly, the fantasy 2008 election was kind of funny with the Bush brothers against Hill-Billy. Also notice that Barack Obama ends up in the Supreme Court in this fantasy, which would have been a difficult sell in 2005 with his weak legal background and no anti-Iraq war speech in 2002. That's debatable of course, but is Newsweek trying to tell us something here by sticking Obama in a Spock-like environment with no political future?

Cap and Trade in the Balance

Too bad the Jackson tragedy will likely eclipse the House's vote on cap and trade Friday. Matter of fact, one must go to the UK Guardian to find much on the story at this hour. Surely in retrospect the Dem caucus is glad they stopped Al Gore from hopping a C02-spewing private jet to fly to DC and wax climatic in a last-minute push even if Hannity was preempted by the Jacko coverage. America is on the verge of taking the first giant leap into socialism, and only a few bloggers seem to care.

But will it pass? Word is the blue dogs are nervous due to the utility bill blowback but Powerline notes that it might just have enough to squeak through due to the farm compromise. Recall Obama vowed that low income folks would be immune from the skyrocketing utility rate increases kicking in during 2012 (well after they have to campaign for the 2010 midterm), so apparently they figure the stimulus will have stopped the Bush recession by then.

It's worth paying attention. Friday's House vote might be a nice little tell-tale as to how solid some of these former conservative districts really are for the Dems, not to mention how close the electorate is paying attention. But it would be irresponsible to leave this story without clarifying things. There is global warming--everyone pretty much agrees--but not everyone agrees on the exact cause. Nevertheless, the US Government is on the verge of proclaiming an ability to change the climate of earth on a large scale--just by taxing people. That's fairly audacious, isn't it? Certainly worth an ABC special, one might think.

PICTURES 6/26/09

Doesn't it make sense to first determine what Earth's global temperature might look like assuming there was no man-caused CO2 emissions at all? In other words, a baseline. There are many charts in cyberspace but let's use this one for context:



Clearly, even zealots like James Hansen cannot reliably claim that fossil fuels caused the global temperature dip prior to the 19th century. At some point the world was going to recover from that dip, which appeared to begin in the mid 1800s. So how much of what we saw in the 20th century was actually a natural recovery? Here's the United States temperature trend for the last 100 years. Keep in mind most of the above chart was from proxy sources (tree rings, ice cores, etc) while this chart comes from the most reliable climate measuring system in the world:



Why did temperatures level off in the middle part of the century? Why was the slope of temperature rise between 1910 and 1940 almost the same as it was between 1980 and 1998? These questions keep getting asked but few seem to be able to provide definitive answers.

Without fully understanding all these changes it seems rather dangerous to roll the dice with the world economy in the midst of the worst financial crisis since, well, the last spike in world temperatures, that is unless the change one seeks is strictly political. We know Obama wants change. We also know he's smart enough to understand that even he can't change the earth's natural climate system, nor raise and lower the sea.

UPDATE 6/26/09

From the administration:

"The bill contains provisions to protect consumers, keep costs low, help sensitive industries transition to a clean energy economy and promote domestic emission reduction efforts," the White House in a statement of support for the legislation.

Hmm. Sounds like something a used car salesman might say to sell a clunker. The administration seems intent on protecting consumers from evil capitalists who would sucker them on a variety of products, yet we seem to have no watchdog agency to protect citizens from the government selling us down the river in the name of global socialism.

SPEAKING OF WATCHING... 6/26/09

The New York Times has an editorial essentially threatening the 30 or so Dems on the fence if they don't vote yes:

American politicians, from both parties, insist that they want to combat global warming and reduce this country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Members of the House will soon have a chance to show they mean it. Voters should watch carefully to see what they do.

...

But we know the answer to that. By any measure — drought, famine, coastal devastation — the costs of inaction, of clinging to a broken energy policy, will dwarf the costs of acting now. It is this truth that the House must keep firmly in mind as it votes.

Some may read that as "we'll spare no expense to tar you into oblivion for ruining the planet if you don't toe the line". Of course, wouldn't a ticked-off New York Times harassing a blue dog Dem actually help that person against a Republican challenger come 2010?

EPILOGUE 6/26/09

Boehner's faux filibuster was like flashing Waxman and Pelosi the moon on the way off the end of the gang plank--the GOP still ended up in the water. It was about all he could do to make news as Jackson coverage permeated cable and broadcast on a Friday evening. Opponents can now make the point that Congress passed a bill they didn't read, on a subject they don't understand, based on a scientific theory that's incomplete.

Order Before Midnight!

Remember? The trick was later updated to 'order in the next ten minutes', as if the commercials were airing live. Obviously, enough people have fallen for the trick over the years to keep them going. Anyone who's watched the jewelry or merchandise channels will recognize it by the little countdown clocks that pressure people to call now before it's 'too late'.

Now it's being used to sell a "climate change" treaty that will assuredly remove money from American pockets and might even strip away some of our sovereignty to boot. In return we are promised a 'saved' earth, as if mere men can save earth from climate shifts. If it sounds too good to be true...

“Time is short, but we still have enough time,” the official, Yvo de Boer, who is the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a briefing.

Al Gore used it first in his Oscar winning sci-fi thriller saying something about 10 years left to act before the point of no return. NASA scientist James Hansen recently doubled down by saying we only have four years to act, even though his own GISS charts show a leveling off of warming since 1998. As if that wasn't enough, he even threw in a hyperbolic reference to America's coal trains as "death trains". Of course, that kind of scaremongering rhetoric won't be scorned by guys like Frank Rich anytime soon because as we know, Hansen is on the side of the angels.

Don't know about you, but every time I come across a high pressure salesmen it always leaves me smelling a rat--even if there isn't one.

Climate Fraud?

That's the hot topic over at Anthony Watt's place, discussing the charge of fraud leveled by UK mathematician Douglas Keenan against noted University of Albany climate scientist Professor Wei-Chyung Wang. Read more here.

To make a complex story as short as possible, the professor co-authored a paper years ago about the effect of cities on weather stations using a group of Chinese sites for reference. He claimed the sites were all stable--no big moves had occurred in their physical location over time--yet when pressed for the data by Mr. Keenan he refused. The university did its own investigation and stunningly found Mr. Wang innocent of any fraud but refused to give Mr. Keenan access to the data as is university policy. The university has been the beneficiary of about seven million in grants over the years thanks to the professor.

Mr. Keenan's charges are currently being reviewed by the New York Attorney General's office pending further action.

Why is this important? One, if true it would put at least a small crack in the veneer of invincibility touted by the likes of Al Gore (science is settled, flat earth etc) and two, it could possibly challenge the underlying premise that urbanization isn't at least partly responsible for some of the warming seen over the past 100 years. That's what professor Wang's paper was investigating.

Nevertheless, anti climate change zealots should proceed cautiously. Nothing has yet been proven and one potentially bogus paper doesn't equal wholesale refutation of the theory (although it would be a delicious snack). Additionally, the university's stalling doesn't automatically mean the data is bad. There could well be financial or political angles in play.

Keep in mind McIntyre and McKitrick's allegations about the broken "Hockey Stick" are still in dispute even if the IPCC removed from hockey stick iconography from its reports. But vigorous debate is supposed to be the nature of science regardless of what we are told about matters being pre-settled.

The most troubling aspect of the case centers around the alleged refusal to release underlying supporting data or methods, and of course the grant money angle. It's ironic that some scientists would resist full disclosure since only a few years ago NASA climate doyen James Hansen, lately an advocate for putting dirty fuels executives on trial and who called coal trains "death trains", accused Bush of trying to muzzle government scientists who were predicting a man-caused disaster.

Gore Nation

Al Gore's latest attempt to win friends and influence people occurred at the Netroots Nation conference:

“The defenders of the status quo are the ones who have dug us into this hole,” he said, commenting that Americans have been “so often fooled into finding a remedy for a problem" that has nothing to do with the problem at hand — pointing to the invasion of Iraq when America was attacked by terrorists in Afghanistan as an example.

Rational people could conclude Gore helped shovel that 'hole' as VP for eight years, which included the WARMEST YEAR in the past century, 1998, without changing the way we lived. Guess we had more than a decade back then, but a decade later we suddenly only have a decade left. Unless Obama is elected.

But change is indeed here with 4 buck a gallon gas, ironically close to the target goal in "Earth in the Balance". Gore's solution seems to be to punish the little man for driving his evil car instead of using our own resources because it punishes Gaia (that's where the climate thing really comes in handy). It's a castor oil approach to government except for those with enough get out of climate jail free offset cards to weather any disturbances on the way to energy Valhalla.

Strange, his always friendly audiences never seem curious about such punishment (are there any Gore hecklers?), often including the media (whenever they're not too busy hinting that Bush needlessly fearmongers over terror and takes away civil liberties--as we know, fearmongering over climate is patriotic and acceptable).

Pointing out the obvious, it wouldn't be a Netroots speech without the oft-repeated drivel about Iraq being a mistake because AQ was in Afghanistan, even used completely out of context as Gore did. It's like pablum. Disregard Gore's own State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring nations and his own 1992 speech--all now 'settled' and 'inconvenient', debate over.

But hey, the rhetoric works or he wouldn't use it. Some folks want to believe, like in aliens, unicorns and winning the lottery. It's better than believing in a world where religious extremists unafraid to die pursue hobbies like decapitation with steak knives, forcing airline passengers into unscheduled stops in buildings, or to exit such structures through the windows. To believe Bush and the Joooos are the culprits requires only a new president to fix things, backed by the occasional and justified Katyusha rocket attack from the keffiyah resistance, of course.

There's your change. Obama is running on it, and he's just Gore with a slicker delivery.

Hold on just a minute

So much for keeping a low-pro. One of the remaining vetters on Obama's VP selection team, Eric Holder, decided the best defense is a good offense:

In addition to closing Gitmo, Holder insisted the next president should:

* Declare without qualification a policy that the United States will not torture political detainees, engage in forced interrogations or submit people to degrading treatment in prison;

* End all programs, covert or otherwise, to transfer detainees to nations that practice torture;

* Stop domestic search and seizures without warrant and end wiretapping of citizens.

Holder is best known for his role in the Marc Rich pardon but he was also a high-ranking Justice Official during a time when terrorism was officially a back-burner issue. One of the ways they kept it from boiling over was the "rendition" program, thrown together by former CIA bin Laden unit official and now TV analyst Michael Scheuer back in the mid 90s.

But it was apparently an old idea. Richard Clarke, who recently wrote another book trashing Bush's ruination of the universe, had a previous book wherein he described an encounter between Bill Clinton and Captain Planet about how to handle terrorists:

The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."

Emphasis added, for effect. Not very polite, sir. But sometimes it's hard to think with a headache.

But OK, right or wrong, for some unknown reason snatching terrorists and sending them via CIA airlines to countries who were kinda fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing re torture was okey dokey back then. Of course, that was back during the halcyon days of bi-partisanship, when everyone thought Saddam might one day blow up the world.

Hurricane forecasts explained

An oldie (last year) but goody. Even more pertinent since this year's forecast has also been rather stinky.



Now you know.

MORE 11/10/07

I tend to fall into the "count-padding" crowd as to tropical storms this year but overall, this column is hard to disagree with. A lack of hurricanes this year and last does not itself negate Gore's Nobel.

Behold, the man of peace

Here's Al Gore via the Greatscat blog speaking about withdrawing from Iraq "as soon as possible". Not sure who he's talking to here, it seems almost like his child.



He's right, 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam, at least as far as we know. But he also told us (and he's usually correct in his predictions, according to Krugman) that leaving Saddam in power was not a good long term plan.

I wonder, what changed his thinking? Saddam was certainly not going to change his.