Posts Tagged ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’

LinkSwarm for December 9, 2016

Friday, December 9th, 2016

The Dallas police and fireman pension fund has halted withdrawals of money to stop a pension run in order to keep the system (temporarily) solvent. Texas municipal pension debt is a big story with a lot of different ramifications and angles, and I need to do some research before I post, hopefully sometime next week.

In the meantime, enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Why they voted for Trump:

    Working-class Americans have been mocked, maligned, and forgotten long enough. They are fed up and they went to the voting booth last week and said so.

    This election’s “red state” vote had little to do with racism or any phobias. The message we heard last week was, rather, a clear and simple plea from the average blue-collar, small-town mother and father for Washington and other big-city elites to stop belittling, disparaging and vilifying them and their families. It was their way of telling the “know-it-alls”; the politicians and pundits, to stop flying over and driving past their gutted factories and dying towns and pretending they don’t exist and do not matter. They simply wanted the “smarter and more educated” city folks to know that they are tired of insults and that the condescension needs to stop. They voted for Trump because someone finally appeared to care and listen.

    They voted for Trump because he seemed to get it. Finally, someone seemed to understand that the average guy: the plumber, the carpenter, the truck driver, the farmer — the good and decent family man from Dewey, Oklahoma, and from Hillsdale, Michigan — is the one who is now suffering from more cultural disrespect than perhaps anyone else in all the country.

    They voted for Trump because they’re sick and tired of being laughed at. They voted for Trump because they have, frankly, “had it” with being labeled intolerable by those who claim to be tolerant. They voted for Trump because they think it’s deplorable that they are the ones being called “deplorables.”They voted for Trump because they can’t turn on the TV, listen to the radio or read the news without some highbrow elitist in the mainstream media calling them “low-information,” “uneducated white males” who are too dumb to know what’s best for them and too stupid to see that Washington knows best. They voted for Trump because all they want is to have a job, get some respect, pick up a paycheck, go to church, raise their kids and be left alone.

    This is why. This is the explanation.

    Hate had nothing to do with it.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Kurt Schlichter: “The liberals are truly going nuts, and it’s beautiful.”

    They recently resurrected Nancy Pelosi for another glorious term winnowing away the House Democrat caucus. Pretty soon it’s just going to be her and some guy representing Berkeley who they recruited while he was shouting “Workers of the world unite!” at bored coeds on Telegraph Avenue. You know, if you want to reach out to the kind of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, normal Americans who voted for the black guy then allegedly refused to vote for the woman because they are racist, you totally want an ancient, rich, snooty, San Francisco leftist and Botox after-picture like the Nanster.

    The only way you could further alienate these alienated voters is, I don’t know, making your DNC chairman some radical leftist, urban black Muslim who hates guns, loves Farrakhan and who parties with Middle Eastern scumbags who issue fatwas to kill those voters’ soldier sons and daughters. Now, that’s some real diversity, and the Dems should totally get right on it. But seriously, we could never dare to hope that the Democrats would be that stupid. Could we?

    And I had to laugh at this, even a little guiltily:

    Next up at bat is the hard-4 hedgehog that is anti-gun activist and alleged comedian Amy Schumer, another over-praised, over-hyped mediocrity who Tinseltown is trying to force down our throats like the fingers she clearly never forced down hers.

  • Speaking of liberals going nuts, this Washington Post piece about how Trump’s election stole one woman’s sexual desire is an exemplar of the “Middle Aged Feminist Talks About How She’s Very Upset With Politics While Narcissisticly Sharing The Tedious Minutia of Her Life” piece.
  • “Liberals have migrated beyond observable reality into fantasyland.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Liberals prove once again how sane and generous they are by suggesting to let Tennessee wildfire victims burn because they voted for Trump.
  • The collapse of the political left:

    The rejection was apparent in the 2010 and subsequent House elections; Republicans have now won House majorities in ten of the last 12 elections, leaving 2006 and 2008 as temporary aberrations. You didn’t hear Hillary Clinton campaign on the glories of Obamacare or the Iran nuclear deal, and her attack on “Trumped-up, trickle-down economics” didn’t strike any chords in the modest-income Midwest.

    Republican success has been even greater in governor and state legislature elections, to the point that Democrats hold governorships and legislative control only in California, Hawaii, Delaware and Rhode Island. After eight years of the Obama presidency, Democrats hold fewer elective offices than at any time since the 1920s.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Hey, maybe liberals should use persuasion rather than automatically label everyone who disagrees with them racist. (Hat tip: Will Shetterly.)
  • Clintonistas are still bitching about Bernie Sanders, saying his challenge to their beloved Queen fatally wounded her. You know, the way Trump having a dozen primary challengers kept him from becoming President.
  • Piers Morgan (I know) on how Donald Trump pwns the media. “Every time they throw their high-minded journalistic toys out of their strollers at one of his tweets, Trump wins.” (Hat Tip: Borepatch.)
  • Trump is blessed by having weak opponents: “How influential did the press expect to be? It ran against Trump in the election and lost. Why should anybody inclined to support the president-elect — roughly half the country, you may recall — pay attention now to a press that has said the usual rules don’t apply? Again, the more the opposition was cranked up, the less effective it became.”
  • Outgoing Vice President Joe Biden says he’s running for President in 2020. It’s not like he would have done worse than Hillary did this year…
  • ObamaCare in one graphic. One big, depressing graphic…
  • Reminder: That “97% of scientists agree than man is causing climate change” factoid is false.
  • Ties between Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist government and the Islamic State.
  • Are NGOs smuggling illegal aliens into Europe with the help of the EU?
  • With her poll ratings dropping, Angela Merkel suggests a burka ban. Such actions would be unnecessary if Merkel hadn’t brought the “refugee” crisis on in the first place.
  • Five Afghan “refugees” charged with raping a 15-year old boy in Sweden. Strangely enough, I don’t remember gay gang rapes of children in Sweden being in the news before the current wave of Islamic immigration…
  • Speaking of Afghan “refugees,” an EU official’s daughter was murdered by one.
  • What Trump’s Taiwan phone call means:

    When evaluating this unorthodox and, yes, risky move, one has to remember that it is China, not the United States, that has been rewriting the rules of engagement in the East and South China Sea. It is China that has been unilaterally asserting territorial claims against its neighbors, China asserting jurisdiction over international waters and air space, China failing to rein in the increasingly serious North Korean nuclear program. The power that is challenging the status quo in Asia is not the United States.

    (Hat tip: The Corner.)

  • Italy’s PM: Hey, give me near absolute power, because that’s never backfired on Italy before! Italy: Get stuffed!
  • In related news, actress Paola Saulino, who promised blow jobs for those who voted against the referendum, says she’s making good on her promise. What? You want pictures of Paola Saulino? Well, if you insist:

    And here are the dates for her “thank you” tour:

    I get the feeling the adoring crowds will make Black Friday look tame by comparison… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Now India is confiscating gold and jewelry from political enemies targets of corruption probes.
  • Canada wants to criminalize pronouns. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • If the New York Times wants to fight “fake news,” perhaps they should look in the mirror.
  • A guide to winning the media wars:

    We all know that independent websites taking Hillary to task on her very real and very deplorable track record of being a compulsive liar is what was truly decisive. The mainstream media knows this, which is why they haven’t actually been focusing on censoring provably fake news sites, but rather have been promoting an agenda to lump any non-establishment perspectives within the umbrella of “fake news” in order to destroy their competition and regain an upper hand in the national narrative. If those of us who value independent media want to thwart this nefarious plan, we need to fully understand what these cretins are up to.

  • 27-year male Clinton supporter hits 69 year old woman over the head with a chair. In his defense, he really does not look like the sharpest knife in the drawer:

    Or even the sharpest spoon…

  • More fake hate crimes.
  • The amnesty crowd is at it again.

    A DREAM Act 2.0 that addressed these problems — that prosecuted fraud, implemented enforcement, prevented downstream legal immigration, and focused much more narrowly on those who came very young — would possibly be something that even I, were I a congressman, might be able to vote for. But the lack of these elements is clear proof that the amnesty crowd isn’t interested in fixing the specific problem of a sympathetic but small group of people; rather, these young people are simply poster children who have been used for years to try to justify a general amnesty for all illegal aliens. And when the DREAM Act fails, as it will, Pedro Ramirez and his fellows will need to ask the pro-amnesty politicians and lobbying groups why they were sacrificed on the altar of “comprehensive immigration reform.”

  • Instapundit suggests downsizing imperial Washington:

    Donald Trump ran for president on the slogan “Make America Great Again!” And he’s also promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington. But maybe the way to do that is to make Washington a little less great. Because as Washington has prospered over the last several decades — to the point where people are making Hunger Games comparisons — the rest of the country hasn’t done as well.

    So perhaps it’s time for a role-reversal. I propose that over the next several years, we transfer a lot of federal employees out of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, to parts of the country that aren’t doing so well economically. This would provide a boost to places like Buffalo, New York, or Quincy, Illinois, or Fresno, California, while getting federal bureaucrats out of the D.C. bubble.

  • Delusional liberal in Time suggests that people not pay their taxes while Trump is president. So he wants to: A.) Starve the federal government of money, and B.) Put liberals in prison where they can’t vote. OK, but what’s the downside?
  • Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issues a stay of execution for an Alabama inmate. “Lawyers for Smith argue that although the jury rendered a verdict of life without parole, the trial court overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Smith to death.” Hmmm…
  • There’s a new cybersecurity commission report out. Guess what? It’s crap!
  • Black Workers’ Suit Accuses Job Agency of Favoring Hispanic Applicants.” Also: “He added that the staff of the MVP office in Cicero ‘was mainly Mexicans’ and that the employees were not welcoming toward African-American job seekers.” Also: “The vast majority of Hispanic job applicants served by MVP were in the United States illegally.” Note: The agency in question is not the Democratic Party, or the federal government… (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Speaking of racial discrimination lawsuits in hiring, CNN is being sued for just that. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Armor car robbery ringleader killed in Houston, accomplices arrested. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Recovering from a devastating spinal injury via power lifting. (Ht tip: Instapundit.)
  • Marxist vegan diner closes. “Ultimately, the restaurant’s popularity among social justice warriors proved unable to sustain its rickety business model.”
  • Naval Base Bombed, Shinto Worshipers Fear Backlash – New York Times – December 8 1941.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Noted without comment: The @EvilMopacATX twitter feed.
  • Something Something Something Climate Change

    Tuesday, December 1st, 2015

    This week in Paris there’s evidently a summit to address what “world leaders” feel is a pressing crisis, namely that the governments they lead somehow aren’t able to exercise more control over our lives and take more of our money.

    As Mark Steyn noted, the focus on “the problem on climate change” is a matter of mental displacement for Western elites who are unable to deal with the real problem of radical Islam.

    So here’s a Global Warming news roundup:

  • Judith Curry, climate heretic:

    This debate will be conducted on the basis that there is a known, mechanistic relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how world average temperatures will rise.

    Unfortunately, as Curry has shown, there isn’t. Any such projection is meaningless, unless it accounts for natural variability and gives a value for ‘climate sensitivity’ —i.e., how much hotter the world will get if the level of CO2 doubles. Until 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a ‘best estimate’ of 3°C. But in its latest, 2013 report, the IPCC abandoned this, because the uncertainties are so great. Its ‘likely’ range is now vast — 1.5°C to 4.5°C.

    This isn’t all. According to Curry, the claims being made by policymakers suggest they are still making new policy from the old, now discarded assumptions. Recent research suggests the climate sensitivity is significantly less than 3˚C. ‘There’s growing evidence that climate sensitivity is at the lower end of the spectrum, yet this has been totally ignored in the policy debate,’ Curry told me. ‘Even if the sensitivity is 2.5˚C, not 3˚C, that makes a substantial difference as to how fast we might get to a world that’s 2˚C warmer. A sensitivity of 2.5˚C makes it much less likely we will see 2˚C warming during the 21st century. There are so many uncertainties, but the policy people say the target is fixed. And if you question this, you will be slagged off as a denier.’

  • Decarbonization will not change the temperature or climate picture for our planet. Decarbonization benefits one group: those whose livelihoods depend on your belief in their story.”
  • Speaking of Steyn, Michael Mann’s suit against him (and Steyn’s countersuit) continues to drag on with no end in sight.
  • One of the world’s largest sources of CO2: Barack Obama. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • The beepocalypse has been cancelled: U.S. honeybee hits 20-year high. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
  • LinkSwarm for September 22, 2015

    Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015

    My contract technical writing position ended, so I’ve been busy looking for a new job (if you know of one, drop me a line). As such, this LinkSwarm is a bit out of band. I’ve been busy.

  • Ted Cruz is sitting pretty. And that piece came before Scott Walker’s exit from the race…
  • Gun Owners of America endorses Cruz.
  • Scott Walker’s implosion. Namely Trump and burn rate.
  • All glory is fleeing. Especially when it comes to polls this time of the year.
  • Man pushing RICO lawsuit against global warming skeptics has raked in more than $5.6 million in taxpayer money for himself and his wife since 2001.
  • Free of the pension costs and union contracts that weighed down its previous owners, Hostess has nurtured retail sales of its products nearly back to their pre-liquidation level of more than $1.3 billion in 2012, with a fraction of the workers. The old Hostess—which included other brands—employed some 19,000 people. The Twinkies purveyor these days has just 1,100.”
  • While Europeans wring their hands over Muslim illegal aliens, Egypt floods Gaza smuggling tunnels.
  • “From the 1970s to the present day, organised pedophilia has been a recurring problem for the supposedly progressive movement.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • When do leftists object to a gay pride parade? When it marches through Muslim areas.
  • Moody’s downgrades France.
  • The fences are going up all over Europe, we shall not see them torn down again in our life-time.”
  • Documented case of Islamic State fighters trying to enter Europe as refugees.
  • More than 100 girls poisoned in Afghanistan for daring to go to school, but details seem scanty.
  • Robert Spencer has a new book out: The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS.
  • America’s Unbanked.
  • Larry Correia fisks that idiot Lorraine D. Wilke piece about how writers shouldn’t write fast, where Correia discusses greedy desire that his children wear shoes.
  • Heh: “Extension Cord On Stage Steals Spotlight From Jeb Bush During Campaign Rally.”
  • Congressman John Carter getting a primary challenger?
  • Brain, brain, what is brain?
  • LinkSwarm for November 28, 2014

    Friday, November 28th, 2014

    Here’s a small LinkSwarm to tide you over for Black Friday:

  • 62% of voters oppose Obama’s illegal alien amnesty.
  • Barack Obama: Troll in Chief.
  • “If you want to see the end point of Barack Obama’s shining path, visit Detroit.”

    The Democrats, if they had any remaining intellectual honesty, would hold their convention in Detroit. Democratic leadership, Democratic unions and the Democratic policies that empower them, Democrat-dominated school bureaucracies, Democrat-style law enforcement, Democratic levels of taxation and spending, the politics of protest and grievance in the classical Democratic mode — all of these have made Detroit what it is today: an unwholesome slop-pail of woe and degradation that does not seem to belong in North America, a craptastical crater groaning with misery, a city-shaped void in what once was the industrial soul of the nation. If you want to see the end point of Barack Obama’s shining path, visit Detroit.

  • “The group toward whom [Obama]’s shown the greatest contempt, however, is low-skilled American workers, particularly blacks.”
  • “At what point do we stop enabling the grievance industry to override our core constitutional protections?”
  • Did Obama prevent Missouri from deploying the National Guard to prevent Ferguson rioting?
  • Communist agitators stirring up a civil rights protest sounds like a bad ‘60s flashback, but that’s just what happened last week in Ferguson.”
  • Jim Webb’s career show’s how badly Democrats have been hollowed-up in the Obama era:

    Consider: There will be only five red-state Senate Democrats left in the next Congress if, as expected, Sen. Mary Landrieu is defeated in next month’s runoff. Even more striking, there will be only five House Democrats left representing districts that Mitt Romney carried in 2012. The once-influential Blue Dog Caucus of fiscally hawkish Democrats is all but extinct. Republicans now boast twice as many blue-state senators (10) and five times as many blue-district representatives (25) than their Democratic counterparts in red territory.

    While lots of ink has been spilled charting the GOP’s drift rightward, the Democratic Party’s move toward ideological homogeneity has been shorter and swifter.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit, who notes “The Democratic Party has become an aging, regional party with a diversity problem.”)

  • It’s not that the Vietnamese communist leadership is good, it’s just less bad than all the other communist leaderships.
  • Ann Althouse is right: They really did choose a superbly illustrative picture for this Chuck Hagel resignation piece.
  • Only 50% of climate scientists think climate change is human induced.
  • Who should be Secretary of Defense? “America needs Dick Cheney. Now more than ever.”
  • You could read this Penny Arcade as a parable about Islam. Or trusting Obama.
  • LinkSwarm for March 31, 2014

    Monday, March 31st, 2014

    Before the LinkSwarm itself, an observation: On the drive home from Houston to Austin this weekend, I saw a Prius with a “Repeal ObamaCare” sticker. Truly the tide has turned…

  • So today is the latest drop dead day to sign up for ObamaCare. Guess what website is down?
  • How AP frames questions: “Do you want your Reps to make ObamaCare work, or to let children die?”
  • Court case to determine whether Obama can rewrite laws at his whim or not.
  • “A core competency of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is issuing false assurances.”
  • ObamaCare wastes wastes $2 trillion over 10 years to fail to insure the uninsured.
  • How Obama’s pro-illegal alien policies released 68,000 criminals onto the street.
  • CNN decides that California’s third-ranking Democratic state Senator and gun control advocate being busted on federal arms trafficking charges just isn’t news.
  • Obama’s foreign policy: Neither Hawkish nor Dovish, but rather manifestly incompetent.
  • Top Ten Things Putin Said to Obama about Ukraine.
  • One reason for the liberal contempt on guns: They’re losing and they know it.
  • And when liberals want to have a “conversation” on gun control, what they really mean is “let us shame you into rolling over and giving up your rights.” Then they wonder why they keep losing. “After Newtown, many gun-control advocates tried to shame rather than persuade, as if the ‘correct’ position was obvious to everyone save retrograde idiots. On guns, that strategy has never worked.”
  • Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion of the Branch Davidian siege makes the ATF sound even more clueless and incompetent.
  • There are some majors and colleges that bring negative financial returns.
  • This just in: Jeffrey Toobin is a lying tool. (Related.)
  • Scott Walker is crushing Mary Burke in fundraising.
  • How the Washington Post and Robert Reich lie about the Koch Brothers.
  • But despite all the liberal talking points, Harry Reid is still less popular than the Koch brothers.
  • Global Warming alarmists push for greater dialog with skeptics. Ha, just kidding! They want them arrested.
  • How an editor at Ebony picks fights with black conservatives to help prop up the magazine’s ambulatory corpse.
  • Erick Erickson reviews Noah. I think the movie the movie may have strayed a little from its Biblical source, especially in the light-saber fight in the strip club after the car chase…
  • Proof that Kayne West is a vampire.
  • LinkSwarm for February 25, 2014

    Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

    Another roundup of tab-clearing news, much of which got pushed aside by Ukraine updates:

  • Obama Administration admits that ObamaCare will screw small businesses. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) Why are any Republicans futzing around with any fix but full repeal?
  • Bobby Jindal: “Obamacare is giving low-income Americans fewer reasons to work.”
  • How ObamaCare is turning into the Democrats’ own forever war.
  • Two more congressional Democrats retire.
  • And that doesn’t count liberal Democratic fossil John Dingell, who’s also retiring after a mere 58 years in office.
  • And speaking of Michigan Democratic congressman, here’s how Rep. Gary Peters is trying to kill a woman with cancer:

  • Democrats in denial over ObamaCare unpopularity. Well, those who haven’t retired yet…
  • How unions and Democratic cronies looted Detroit’s pension plans.
  • Former Democratic congressman and convicted statutory rapist Mel Reynolds arrested on child pornography charges in Zimbabwe. (You might remember that Bill Clinton pardoned him on the way out the door…)
  • Deeply incompetent New Orleans Democratic Mayor Ray “Chocolate City” Nagin convicted on 20 federal corruption counts.
  • NJ’s Democratic Rep. Rob Andrews: The Washington Generals of Legislators.
  • The top special interest donors contribute to Democrats.
  • This week in the Democratic Liberal Media Complex Revolving Door.
  • There are few people liberals hate more than conservative black men.
  • Ted Cruz is winning.
  • Food prices continue to soar, yet another sign that inflation figures are significantly understated.
  • Record numbers of college graduates are living with their parents. Thanks, Obama!
  • “*Somebody* at Cover Oregon will end up going to jail.”
  • “The combination of UAW micromanagement and adversarial culture, not wages per se, is what helped to do in GM.”
  • “The UAW couldn’t even win an election it had been handed on a silver platter by management.”
  • Venezuela continues to stumble along at a repressive simmer.
  • Too bad they’re out of toilet paper.
  • Catholic priest in Venezuela beaten unconscious by socialist state thugs.
  • Michael Totten points out that Che Guevara is a murderous communist scumbag. Bonus: “Cuba’s maximum wage is less than one percent of America’s minimum wage”
  • Battle is joined between EUroskeptic UKIP and the EUrophilic Liberal-Democrats.
  • John Kerry: There’s no room in the religion of global warming for cost-benefit analysis.
  • UK Leftists want punitive taxes even if they bring in no additional revenue.
  • Detroit home-owner with an AR pattern rifle 3, stupid thugs trying to break into her home 0.
  • Portugal decriminalized all drugs 11 years ago. Result? Addiction cut in half, and “Portugal’s drug usage rates are now among the lowest of EU member states.”
  • “Diversity demands that diversity of opinion not be tolerated anymore.”
  • “Anti-male misandry, like anti-female #misogyny, is unjust and dangerous.”
  • Paying attention to the victimhood identity politics crowd, or how to murder your writing career.
  • Sarah Hoyt further dissects Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America idiocy. She touches on many of the reasons I didn’t renew my membership, the main ones being that SFWA is no longer important enough to be worth fighting for, and was certainly not worth $90 a year in dues.
  • “Human Resources has been very reluctant to respond to my complaints about being invisibly strangled by a cyborg space wizard.”
  • One more Tweet:

  • Moonbat Zero Comes Out in Favor of Nuclear Power

    Monday, March 21st, 2011

    An interesting development, to say the least.

    I still think Monbiot is more loon than not, and Anthropogenic Global Warming more scam than threat (I think it possible that the earth has warmed slightly, but regard the case for this possible warming trend being man-made as far from proven). But at least some hardcore greens are beginning to realize that if you really want to reduce carbon emissions without wrecking the world economy, nuclear is the way to go.

    On a related note, for my latest Japan update (including news on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors) go here.

    Climategate Redux: A Look at the State of Play

    Monday, April 19th, 2010

    Between finishing my taxes and the House District 52 race, I’ve had precious little time to post updates on other issues, but despite my personal lacunae interesting developments in Climategate have been bubbling right along.

    This piece in the Telegraph does a good job of covering some of the further revelations. One of the more interesting points:

    “The first report centred directly on the IPCC itself. When several of the more alarmist claims in its most recent 2007 report were revealed to be wrong and without any scientific foundation, the official response, not least from the IPCC’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was to claim that everything in its report was ‘peer-reviewed’, having been confirmed by independent experts.

    “But a new study put this claim to the test. A team of 40 researchers from 12 countries, led by a Canadian analyst Donna Laframboise, checked out every one of the 18,531 scientific sources cited in the mammoth 2007 report. Astonishingly, they found that nearly a third of them – 5,587 – were not peer-reviewed at all, but came from newspaper articles, student theses, even propaganda leaflets and press releases put out by green activists and lobby groups.”

    And who would you get to provide an objective, disinterested analysis of IPCC claims? Why, obviously “chair of Falck Renewables, a firm that has wind farms across Europe, and chair of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, ‘a lobby group which argues that carbon capture could become a $1 trillion industry by 2050.'” Who else? That’s like asking G. Gordon Liddy to perform a dispassionate, objective analysis of Watergate.

    You would think that Climategate, the failure of the last “cap and trade” bill, the deep unpopularity of ObamaCare, and the continued poor jobs situation would conspire to prevent Democrats from pushing a huge, job-killing, tax-and-spend global warming bill. You would be wrong. Under the bipartisan fig-leaf of the ever more RINO-ish Lindsey Graham, Harry Reid and company are getting ready to unveil Cap-and-Trade Junior. And they plan to do it in secret, without all those messy public committee meetings. There doesn’t seem to be any limit to how low congressional Democrats are willing to drive their poll numbers in order to get the government’s fingers into as many economic pies as possible before the reckoning comes in November.

    The battle over cap-and-trade, and Climategate, is far from over. If you know anyone in South Carolina, they should be ringing Graham’s phone off the hook to oppose this. Speaking of which, here’s the contact information for Graham’s offices off his official website:

    Washington Office
    290 Russell Senate Office Building
    Washington, DC 20510
    Main: (202) 224-5972

    Upstate Regional Office
    130 South Main St.
    7th Floor
    Greenville, SC 29601
    Main: (864) 250-1417

    Midlands Regional Office
    508 Hampton Street
    Suite 202
    Columbia, SC 29201
    Main: (803) 933-0112

    Pee Dee Regional Office
    McMillan Federal Building
    401 West Evans Street, Suite 226B
    Florence, SC 29501
    Main: (843) 669-1505

    Lowcountry Regional Office
    530 Johnnie Dodds Boulevard, Suite 202
    Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464
    Main: (843) 849-3887

    Piedmont Regional Office
    140 East Main Street, Suite 110
    Rock Hill, SC 29730
    Main: (803) 366-2828

    Golden Corner Regional Office
    124 Exchange Street
    Pendleton, SC 29678
    Main: (864) 646-4090

    Here’s the email form: http://lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.EmailSenatorGraham.

    Oh no! Not an ad in The New York Times! We’re DOOOOMED!

    Saturday, March 6th, 2010

    Via Instapundit comes word that proponents of anthropogenic global warming are getting tired of all that annoying skepticism over tiny little things like “missing data,” “corrupted peer review processes” and “stuff just made up out of thin air.” And they’re not going to stand for it any more! They’re going to hit back at those skeptics hard, real hard! They’re going to (brace yourself for this) take out an ad in The New York Times!

    Oh no, not The New York Times! Not that! Just imagine the impact that will have on the 3% of the NYT readership that doesn’t already believe in global warming! It’s like trying to influence the NRA by threatening to take out an ad against them in the local vegetarian newsletter.

    But on reflection, a global warming ad isn’t designed to change minds the minds of skeptics any more than a papal encyclical on original sin is designed to sway the mind of Christopher Hitchins. It’s designed to reassure the global warming faithful that the high priests of AGW will fight to maintain the faith, and that unbelievers and heretics will be punished. For that, The New York Times is the perfect vehicle.

    They’re not trying to convince the other side. They’re preaching to the chorus.

    Former National Hurricane Center Director Neil Frank on Climategate

    Monday, January 4th, 2010

    Interesting piece on Climategate by former National Hurricane Center Director (and former KHOU meteorologist) Neil Frank.

    Some have asked why people like myself pay attention to critics of Anthropogenic Global Warming, rather than the “(insert random percentage between 75 and 99 here) of scientists that agree with it.” To which it is important to provide a few points of perspective:

    • We don’t know what percentage of the relevant scientific community actually supports the AGW consensus, and to what degree, because the pro-AGW crowd is the only one that’s been doing the counting.
    • Some scientists previously counted on as holding the AGW consensus have changed their mind, complaining that the process has become politicized and that their research has been distorted.
    • The number of scientists dissenting against the AGW consensus continues to grow. Here, for example, are some 700 scientists that disagree with the AGW consensus.
    • Many scientists have been questioning the AGW consensus almost from the beginning.
    • It’s a lot easier to forge consensus when questioning AGW, or producing results that refute it, can kill your career.
    • Ever since ClimateGate information started leaking out, it’s become more apparent that a significant percentage of that consensus was maintained via data manipulation, suppression of dissent, and outright fraud.
    • Even if a majority of climate scientists support AGW, that would not ipso facto prove the AGW case; science relies on empirical data, not popular votes.
    • That also raises the question: Who do you call a “climate scientist”? Meteorologist? Oceanographers? How about experts in Botany to talk about tree rings, one of the central issues of the Climategate scandal?
    • Finally, climate studies are in their relative infancy. To make far-reaching changes to economies and society, in essence giving up on economic growth in order to hand over vast tax and regulation powers to unelected bureaucratic elites, based on computer climate models that, in some cases, date back to 1981 (or earlier) is sheer folly.

    In light of that, Frank’s commentary points out that there are many more AGW-skeptics than the media wants to report on:

    But who are the skeptics? A few examples reveal that they are numerous and well-qualified. Several years ago two scientists at the University of Oregon became so concerned about the overemphasis on man-made global warming that they put a statement on their Web site and asked for people’s endorsement; 32,000 have signed the petition, including more than 9,000 Ph.Ds. More than 700 scientists have endorsed a 231-page Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute has recently sponsored three international meetings for skeptics. More than 800 scientists heard 80 presentations in March. They endorsed an 881-page document, created by 40 authors with outstanding academic credentials, that challenges the most recent publication by the IPCC. The IPCC panel’s report strongly concludes that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide.

    In short: many critics of Anthropogenic Global Warming aren’t just a few Internet cranks, they’re thousands of well-trained scientists with expertise in areas related to climate change, and whose only point of agreement is that there are too many questions about it to throw trillions of dollars at the problem without determining whether it’s real or not. Calling them all “deniers” is pure argumentum ad hominem.