Dogs and Bones

I recommend this post highly. Its subject matter is extremely important in almost every area that impacts our lives today, but since it seems to lie outside the issues that are most loudly trumpeted as urgent, critical issues, the fact that the “half-educated” it refers to (or less, actually) are mostly creating the problems that face us mostly disappears in the noise.

The author of the linked post applies the problem of people who think they know more than they do to the influence such people have exerted to bring about the current economic woes we face, but that only touches the very tip-top 1/4 inch of the iceberg, leaving the rest (including that which is submerged*) to bedevil us.

Always remember the importance of a well-informed (as opposed to ignorant or misinformed or DISinformed) electorate in a representative republic, especially one with far too many democratic elements.

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”


Continue reading “Dogs and Bones”

Nood Gews!

Today, while the weatherman seems to have once again missed the forecast high by nine degrees (about average, it seems) the forecast high is just about backasswards to the recorded high, in the direction of having been forecast too high this time, instead of the other way around.

No, it’s not a sign of an impending ice age. It’s just weather.

More “Global Warming”

Yeh, yeh, I know the fallacy of arguing weather conditions to counter blather from The Cult of Anthropogenic Global Climate Scare-ism, but since the cult regularly fakes “data” and turns a blind eye to the elephants in the room (we don’t even know what the solar constant is anymore, not that we ever really did, and only Ian Pilmer, once a well-respected geologist who is now vilified by the CAGCS for raising inconvenient facts, seems to be seriously addressing the role of volcanism in climate), I feel in no mood to play fair with The Cult of Anthropogenic Global Climate Scare-ism. So there.


So, on the first week and a bit of “Spring” here in America’s Third World County, we’ve had freezing temps overnight, every night, and temps only today began climbing into the plus 50 degrees Fahrenheit range.

Gotta be that Global Warming, eh, since these temps are unusually cool for early Spring around here.

*feh*


Do note that some CAGCS cultist loonies are actually asserting anthropogenic causes for increased volcanic activity. Roll that one around for a while, would you? Your CO2 “contamination” of the atmosphere is, according to these “maroons” (to use Bugs Bunny’s label), causing volcanic eruptions!

Oh, they have long, convoluted, irrational “explanations” for their assertions, but it all boils down to an assertion of mankind’s power over geologic formations to such a degree as to make the mythic Greek gods envious.

*headdesk*

I dread to ask what more these cultists can do to discredit their religion.

The Real Source of Anthropogenic “Global Warming”

Liars’ pants on fire. From the UK Times Online, this

” …the scientific basis for global warming projections is now under scrutiny as never before. The principal source of these projections is produced by a small group of scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), affiliated to the University of East Anglia.

“Last week an apparent hacker obtained access to their computers and published in the blogosphere part of their internal e-mail traffic. And the CRU has conceded that the at least some of the published e-mails are genuine.

“Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.”

This has been an “open secret” for years. No news here, folks. Move along. Of course, the usual suspects are circling the wagons (and setting fire to their pants). It should be interesting watching this all shake out. Not in the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, of course. That organ of lies, half lies and distorted facts will back up the CRU all the way, I’m sure.

h.t., Instapundit


And, Update: This in from one of the Great Minds of the 21st Century:

*heh*

Isn’t it telling when Homer Simpson has better insight into the issue than our own congresscritters and Mass MEdia Podpeople?

“Look on my works ye mighty… “

For those of y’all who may have missed this, see January 11th’s Day by Day cartoon.

And for those of y’all whose pubschool experience didn’t include efforts at cultural literacy, read below the fold after viewing the cartoon.


Trackposted to Nuke’s, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Political Byline, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Wingless, and Wingless (BBC Parody, Hilarious!), thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Continue reading ““Look on my works ye mighty… “”

Here’s Some Spit in the Global Warmists’ Eyes

Anyone remember the Maunder Minimum? (If so, you’re a bit older than I am, and I know dirt I call “young fella” *heh*)

“Sunspots May Vanish by 2015”

From the first link above,

The Maunder minimum is the name given to a period of extreme solar inactivity that occurred between 1645 and 1710. Of particular interest is that this period of inactivity corresponds closely to one of the coldest periods of the so-called “Little Ice Age” in Europe, a time of long, cold winters that caused severe hardships in the pre-industrial revolution world. This has led scientists to extensively study the possible influences of solar activity on terrestrial climate, as well as examine other stars for evidence of activity cycle behavior similar to the Sun’s.

If, as the paper noted at the second link suggests, we are entering another period of relatively major solar inactivity, all the resources being wasted on The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming’s assault upon civilization (assault upon reason, even) will be hard cheese indeed to our progeny.

After all, the nut of

Examinations of the solar activity cycle and the unusually cold weather of the Maunder minimum period have spurred significant controversy among astronomers, atmospheric scientists, and climatologists. The period from about 1300-1715 is known as the “Little Ice Age” in Europe, a period characterized by unusually long and cold winters. This period coincides closely with the time during which the Sun is known to have had time of inactivity, with some of the worst weather occurring squarely during the Maunder minimum.

…is that it led to widespread famine, disease and widespread depopulation. Oh, wait. Those are all goals embraced by the looniest of The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming and their co-religionists in the “Bow Down and Worship Gaia” crowd of even loonier eco-freaks who view mankind as a disease.


Trackposted to Faultline USA, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, DragonLady’s World, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Democrat=Socialist, , Right Voices, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

A Primer on Global Warming

[N.B., now that the dire predictions of global warmists are proving to be less than accurate, the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming now uses “climate change” in place of their long-trumpeted “global warming” but it’s all just sleight of hand.]

Freeman Dyson is smarter than you or I. Heck, he’s probably smarter than you and I put together. So, when he speaks on the subject of global warming/climate change, even in something so brief as a review of a couple of books, he’s worth listening to, at the very least. For example, writing about A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies, by William Nordhaus:

For the benefit of those who are mathematically illiterate or uninterested in numerical details, Nordhaus has put a nonmathematical chapter at the beginning with the title “Summary for the Concerned Citizen.” This first chapter contains an admirably clear summary of his results and their practical consequences, digested so as to be read by busy politicians and ordinary people who may vote the politicians into office. He believes that the most important concern of any policy that aims to address climate change should be how to set the most efficient “carbon price,” which he defines as “the market price or penalty that would be paid by those who use fossil fuels and thereby generate CO2 emissions.” He writes:

Whether someone is serious about tackling the global-warming problem can be readily gauged by listening to what he or she says about the carbon price. Suppose you hear a public figure who speaks eloquently of the perils of global warming and proposes that the nation should move urgently to slow climate change. Suppose that person proposes regulating the fuel efficiency of cars, or requiring high-efficiency lightbulbs, or subsidizing ethanol, or providing research support for solar power—but nowhere does the proposal raise the price of carbon. You should conclude that the proposal is not really serious and does not recognize the central economic message about how to slow climate change. To a first approximation, raising the price of carbon is a necessary and sufficient step for tackling global warming. The rest is at best rhetoric and may actually be harmful in inducing economic inefficiencies.

If this chapter were widely read, the public understanding of global warming and possible responses to it would be greatly improved.

Indeed. Of course, the several assumptions (apparent assumptions; I have not yet got my hands on a copy) of the Nordhaus comment above are large assumptions indeed, but the public’s understanding of the costs of dealing with carbon dioxide–whether such a thing needs to be done or not–would indeed be a great step forward in opening the dialog on “climate change” to other than True Believers in AGW (more rationally known as Reality-Based Fantasists, IMO).

But it is the assumption Dyson makes that is truly frightening. He’s a really, really smart man, but it looks like he misses the critical factor in his approach to the material above. To repeat:

For the benefit of those who are mathematically illiterate or uninterested in numerical details, Nordhaus has put a nonmathematical chapter at the beginning with the title “Summary for the Concerned Citizen.” This first chapter contains an admirably clear summary of his results and their practical consequences, digested so as to be read by busy politicians and ordinary people who may vote the politicians into office.

The “busy politicians” and the “ordinary people who vote them into office” are both likely to be not only mathematically illiterate but functionally illiterate as well. Heck, neither of those facts matter, because neither class would read it anyway, even if they could read or understand the book–or even Dyson’s review of it. And there lies the crux of the problem: politicians only listen to their flappers (review your Swift for the reference) and “ordinary people” are brain-sludged (not brainwashed) by the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind and self-lobotomized to the point that they’d never even pick the book up.

Or any other book that might challenge them beyond the level of People Magazine or Sports Illustrated.

The second book reviewed in the Dyson article is, Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, Ernesto Zedillo, ed. Although it, too, suffers from the same “It’s not People Magazine or Sports Illustrated” lack of appeal to ordinary citizens, it nevertheless sounds rather interesting to me. *heh* (Yeh, you’ve picked up on the fact that I don’t read People Magazine or Sports Illustrated, right?) For example, as Dyson notes,

Zedillo in his introduction summarizes the arguments of each contributor in turn. He maintains the neutrality appropriate to a conference chairman, and gives equal space to Lindzen and to Rahmstorf. He betrays his own opinion only in a single sentence with a short parenthesis: “Climate change may not be the world’s most pressing problem (as I am convinced it is not), but it could still prove to be the most complex challenge the world has ever faced.”

Later in the article, Dyson gets to the meat of the review,

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Should we be environmentally responsible? Yes, of course we should, for any number of reasons. But the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming, in attempting, with great success, to shut down all dialog, all debate on its dogma is performing a serious disservice to everyone. Heck, the pagan religion they practice is not even well-qualified as religions go: “redemtion” in the Church of AGW means essentially killing off most of mankind. In that, AGWers are hardly better than Islamics.


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THE Cure for “Global Warming” Supposedly Caused by Human CO2 Emissions

It’s simple, really. If it is really the problem believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming insist it is, and IF they are sincere in their alarm, then they can easily reduce CO2 greenhouse emissions by one simple step: stop exhaling.

That ought to cut off a lot of hot air.

This solution to a vexing world problem has been brought to you by the world class research group (me, myself and I) of third world county central.

Donations to support our think tank gratefully accepted.


Trackposted to Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.