Two things have been happening over the last decade that cannot be ignored by real scientists: The CO2 levels have been rising and the global temperatures have been falling. This puts the lie to the Global Warming Chicken Little Priests in the Church of Al Gore/IPCC (who use mysticism to trump science). And now even the Europeans are beginning to understand how shrill and wrong the Global Warming alarmists have been:

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

The first, on May 21, headed “Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts” , reported that the entire Alpine “winter sports industry” could soon “grind to a halt for lack of snow”. The second, on December 19, headed “The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation” , reported that this winter’s Alpine snowfalls “look set to beat all records by New Year’s Day”.

…

Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare.

…

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed.

…

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world.

The fact is ALL the predictions of the IPCC have failed to materialize for two decades now. Not one has come true, yet there are still fools running around claiming the sky is falling. I am going to go out on a really small limb here and predict that CO2 levels will actually flatten or drop here soon. If CO2 is a lagging indicator of Global temperature (which many scientist claim it is), then as the oceans cool they will be able to re-absorb a lot of the CO2 that was released during the warming and the CO2 levels will stop climbing or drop.

If this happens we can all have a good laugh on the IPCC, Al Gore and all their Chicken Little minions. They will stand as historic reminders of how not to panic and allow greedy flim-flam artists to grab our hard earned money to embark on Fools’ Errands.

Strata-Sphere 

In her Jerusalem Post column, Caroline Glick mentions a piece of news we haven’t seen reported elsewhere:

Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed.

On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari’a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas’s endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad.

Via:  LGF

Barack Obama wants to use the recession to remake the U.S. economy. "Painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people," Obama said.

His designated chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is more direct: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

So they will "transform our economy." Obama's nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them.

Obama and Emanuel want us to believe that their blueprint for reform will bring recovery from the recession. Yet we have recovered from past recessions without undertaking a radical social and economic transformation.

In fact, reform would impede recovery.

This is not the first time a president chose reform over recovery. Franklin Roosevelt did it with his New Deal, and the result was long years of depression and deprivation. Roosevelt's priorities were criticized not just by opponents of big government but by none other than John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose theories rationalized big government. Before FDR had been in office a year, Keynes wrote him an open letter, which was printed in The New York Times:

"You are engaged on a double task, Recovery and Reform; -- recovery from the slump and the passage of those business and social reforms which are long overdue. For the first, speed and quick results are essential. The second may be urgent, too; but haste will be injurious. ... [E]ven wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action. ... Now I am not clear, looking back over the last nine months, that the order of urgency between measures of Recovery and measures of Reform has been duly observed, or that the latter has not sometimes been mistaken for the former."

Note Keynes's concern. Government interventions, such as the cartelizing of industry through the National Recovery Administration, "will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action." In other words, investors will not take the risks necessary for recovery if their profits and freedom are subject to unpredictable government action. Economic historian Roberts Higgs calls this phenomenon "regime uncertainty."

John Stossel hits it out of the park again.  Read the rest at Town Hall

Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy our planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil. The Washington Post asserted on May 28, 2006 that there were only "a handful of skeptics" of manmade climate fears. Bill Blakemore on Aug. 30, 2006 said, "After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such (scientific) debate on global warming." U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said it was "criminally irresponsible" to ignore the urgency of global warming. U.N. special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland on May 10, 2007 declared the climate debate "over" and added "it's completely immoral, even, to question" the U.N.'s scientific "consensus." In July 23, 2007, CNN's Miles O'Brien said, "The scientific debate is over." Earlier he said that scientific skeptics of manmade catastrophic global warming "are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually."

The global warming scare has provided a field day for politicians and others who wish to control our lives. After all, only the imagination limits the kind of laws and restrictions that can be written in the name of saving the planet. Recently, more and more scientists are summoning up the courage to speak out and present evidence against the global warming rope-a-dope. Atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, "It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming."

Dr. Goldenberg has the company of at least 650 noted scientists documented in the recently released U.S. Senate Minority Report: "More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims: Scientists Continue to Debunk 'Consensus' in 2008." The scientists, not environmental activists, include Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in physics, who said, "I am a skeptic … Global warming has become a new religion." Dr.

Kiminori Itoh, an environmental physical chemist, said warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history … When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." "So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming," said Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications and former Greenpeace member. Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, said, "Many (scientists) are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined."

The fact of the matter is an increasing amount of climate research suggests a possibility of global cooling. Geologist Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University says, "Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely." Geologist Dr. David Gee, chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, currently at Uppsala University in Sweden asks, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?"

That's a vital question for Americans to ask. Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New Jersey as it once did, it's not inconceivable that Congress, caught in the grip of the global warming zealots, would keep all the laws on the books they wrote in the name of fighting global warming. Personally, I would not put it past them to write more.

Creators.com 

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Disaboom 

Consider yourself lucky. It could be much, much colder outside -- like ice age cold.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have used powerful computer climate models to show that, were it not for a rise in global temperatures that started thousands of years ago with the first clearing of European forests, we would be entering another ice age. Glaciers would be growing instead of melting. Your back would be even more sore from shoveling.

The findings were to be presented Wednesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco by Steve Vavrus, John Kutzbach, and Gwenaelle Philippon, all University of Wisconsin-Madison climate researchers.

"The world would be a much colder place right now,'' said Vavrus of the researchers' conclusion.

Vavrus and his colleagues used their computer models to compare a world unaffected by man's impact on the climate with a world in which humans have been pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for possibly thousands of years. They also factored in what science has already told us about the regular occurrence of ice ages over the last million years.

The researchers' work involved studying and plugging into their computers data from something that sounds vaguely offensive -- fossilized air. This, Vavrus explained, is ancient air that was trapped in ice hundreds of thousands of years ago. Unlocked from ice cores taken from places such as Antarctica, the fossilized air provides very accurate data on everything from carbon dioxide to methane levels at various times through history.

The work by the UW-Madison scientists builds on earlier research on fossilized air by climatologist William F. Ruddiman of the University of Virginia. Through his studies of ancient air, Ruddiman came up with a theory known as the "early anthropogenic hypothesis.''

Ruddiman's study of ice cores led him to conclude that man's impact on the climate actually dates to a much earlier time than the industrial age of 200 years ago, the period which has received most of the blame for climate change. He linked increases in atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide in the ice cores to a time about 5,000 years ago when humans commenced large-scale rice farming in Asia and extensive deforestation of European forests. Those practices, Ruddiman said, pumped significant amounts of greenhouse gases -- methane from rice paddies and carbon dioxide from the burning forests -- into the atmosphere and set us on the course toward where we are today.

The UW-Madison researchers used their computer models to compare a world impacted by this longer period of warming with a theoretical world in which the climate remained unaffected by human activities.

Yeah, and I've used powerful computer models to show that aliens can be defeated with hand-held mini-guns.  Pffffft.

Wisconsin State Journal

(CNSNews.com) – In 2007, only 17 percent of eighth graders tested at or above grade level in reading in Chicago Public Schools – the school system administered by Arne Duncan since 2001.

President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday tapped Duncan to become secretary of education in the upcoming administration.
 
Duncan, hailed by Obama as a reformer, said he would like to take the lessons he learned in Chicago with him when he moves to Washington. “I'm also eager to apply some of the lessons we have learned here in Chicago to help school districts all across our country," Duncan said after Obama formally named him to the job in Chicago.
 
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report for 2007, Chicago public schools have consistently performed below the national average during Duncan’s tenure.
 
The report measures students at the fourth and eighth grade levels in the subjects of reading, math, science, and writing, and ranks them at below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced levels.
 
Students in eighth grade are those most likely to have been in the Chicago system for a majority of Duncan’s tenure. CNSNews.com used the scores for these students to best determine the results of Duncan’s administration.
 
By 2007, only 17 percent of Chicago eighth graders were at or above grade level in reading. Thirteen percent scored at or above grade level in math. Twenty-three percent scored at or above grade level in writing.
 
By 2005, the only year Chicago participated in the NEAP assessment program, 16 percent of eighth grade students were at or above grade level in science.
 
Nationally, students did much better on average in reading, math, science, and writing.
 
In 2007, 29 percent of eighth grade students scored at or above grade-level in reading, 31 percent in math, and 31 percent in writing. In 2005, 27 percent of eighth grade students were at or above grade level in science.
 
Nationally, Chicago is the third largest school district with over 408,000 students. Its budget for 2007-2008 was $4.6 billion, according to information released by Chicago Public Schools. $862 million of that was supplied by the federal government.
 
Under Duncan, Chicago Public Schools spent $10,555 per pupil, with $9,488 going toward education-related expenses in 2007.
 
During Duncan’s tenure, the Chicago district did not significantly increase its scores in reading, rising only one point on average from 2002 to 2007 – from 249 of a possible 500 in 2002, to 250 in 2007. The national average in 2007 was 263. Seventy-five percent of Chicago students scored less than 273 on the reading assessment.
 
In math, Chicago Public Schools’ average score increased from 254 in 2003 to 260 in 2007. The national average for 2007 was 280. Seventy-five percent of Chicago students scored below 283 in the math assessment.
 
In writing, the average score for students in Chicago Public Schools increased from 136 out of 300 in 2002 to 146 in 2007. The national average in 2007 was 154. Approximately 50 percent of Chicago students scored below 148 in the writing assessment.
 
In science, the Chicago Public Schools average score was 124 out of 300; the national average was 147. Three-quarters of Chicago students scored below 146 on the science assessment.

Wonderful.

CNS 

By Paul Chesser on 12.12.08 @ 6:07AM

Someone please tell me it's about to end. That it's O-V-A-H in New England. That's it's D-U-N in Rio Linda. That it's fini in France and finito in Italy.

I've experienced a build-up of evidence that undermines climate change alarmism, and I'm at the tipping point. My head has formed a canopy of truth-trapping that can only contain so much before my circuits overheat, blood pressure elevates, and my faith in broad-based common sense melts away. So please: polish it off in Poznan -- wishful thinking, you might think, but signs point to the beginning of that end. Read on.

As global warming pathologists insist that increasing carbon dioxide drives planetary meltdown, scientists who actually watch the climate trends -- as well as all the forces that affect it – see something different. They observe unchanging (if not declining) temperatures over the last dozen years despite increased global CO2 emissions during the same time period. They see Antarctic ice swells despite a greater media emphasis on Arctic ice (PDF) loss. They see a current warming bias across temperature monitoring stations; a cooling pattern since 1997; and a valid theory that solar cycles affect climate change more than any other phenomena.

That's just a start to what I will finish momentarily, but the point is this: that the politicos who push for CO2 emission reductions, and grant-seeking activist researchers, should be put out to pastures where they can examine cow flatulence (and a more effective greenhouse gas -- methane) up close and personal. Meanwhile let the rest of us who enjoy our variable climate move on to more important issues like malnourished children, genocide, and modern-day slavery.

Really, you alarmists: you waste our time and resources de-beefing your baloney. You lie about hockey stick graphs -- repeatedly (PDF). You deceive about "points of no return." You manipulate data and promote "tailored climate information." You claim there is agreement among scientists that supports your alarmist beliefs when in fact there is no such consensus. You attribute weather-driven disasters (PDF) to anthropogenic global warming. You talk all benefits and no costs when you tout the wonders of "green jobs." You've created a whole new industry sector for yourselves with this garbage. And now you've corrupted companies who want to skim off their portion.

Please, you're killing us with this crap.

Why are so many of you are a bunch of abortion promoting, population control socialists who hate the idea that free markets, capitalism, and access to cheap energy resources do more to enhance health and prosperity than your treasured government-mandated programs? Why do so many of your multimillion-dollar foundations have programs that support environmentalism excess and species protection while at the same time they promote human extermination? I suggest you visit places like Burma and North Korea, make your pitch about the horrid pollution that their economy-suffocating practices produce, and then come back and see us when you've got those bad boys straightened out. Then we'll know you're sincere about your priorities.

That anyone takes you seriously about CO2 emitting a stronger global warming "signal" than other contributing factors is amazing, but then again, we are talking about the environoia promoters in the media who love to stir up the sheeple, aren't we? Well, they had a good run of peril pushing for several years, but now the truth (and economic factors) appear to be turning public thought:

There is both growing public reluctance to make personal sacrifices and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the major international efforts now underway to battle climate change, according to findings of a poll of 12,000 citizens in 11 countries….

Less than half of those surveyed, or 47 per cent, said they were prepared to make personal lifestyle changes to reduce carbon emissions, down from 58 per cent last year.

Excellent.  Go read the rest... 

Until recently, the post-election conventional wisdom had been that Barack Obama was off to a “great start” in his quest to unite the country, clean up its politics and prepare it for a presidency that would inevitably become the hinge of recent American history.  Since then, however, events have intervened.  In recent weeks, the Obama transition has been most notable for being marred by scandal, humbled by losses at the ballot box and conspicuous in its lack of leadership.  

Most recent, of course, was the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat with strong ties to Obama and his team.  By now, most of you know the story surrounding Blagojevich’s alleged crimes, the severity of which provoked U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to state, “The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering.”  

Most prominent is the charge that Blagojevich was conspiring to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder.  Though Fitzgerald said this week that there is no evidence that the president-elect knew about Blagojevich’s plan, there is a press report from November 5th, the day after the election, noting that the governor and Mr. Obama were supposed to meet that day.  When asked about possible Senate replacements for Mr. Obama during a November 23rd interview on Fox News Chicago, David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisors, said, “I know he’s [Obama] talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them.”

Here’s the bottom line: While many media talking heads are working overtime to create the illusion of distance between Mr. Obama and his staff and anyone remotely connected to Gov. Blagojevich, the governor has been under investigation for three years. All the key actors here are Chicago politicians. And there’s a union boss involved too. To borrow a phrase, it requires the willing suspension of disbelief to suggest that the junior senator from Illinois; Axelrod, a long-time political insider from Illinois; Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a former congressman from Illinois; and the governor of Illinois have not talked since the election.

This is how the “game” of politics is played by hardball Chicago liberals, union bosses and community organizers.  Obama is a product of the Chicago political machine and from a state in which four of the last eight governors have gone to jail. Now there’s a major political scandal brewing around someone on whose behalf Obama once eagerly campaigned and endorsed as a man “who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois.” As Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, told ABC News some months ago, “We have a sick political culture, and that’s the environment Barack Obama came from.”  

Others scandal-plagued Democrats have been making headlines lately. Rep. William Jefferson, caught with $90,000 in his freezer, was finally shown the door by voters. And Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida, elected in the fallout of Foley scandal, was caught in multiple affairs.

Then there’s New York Rep. Charlie Rangel.  The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has been in hot water lately for failing to file his own taxes properly, among other violations.  Even the liberal Washington Post and New York Times have demanded Rangel’s resignation. All this comes only three years after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the Republican-led congress the “most corrupt in history,” and two years since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced, “This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.”   

Things haven’t looked good for Democrats on the election front either.  First, Democrats’ dreams of a supermajority in the Senate were dashed when Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss easily won his Georgia runoff election.

Then the Republican Party scored two more victories when Republican John Fleming held onto Louisiana’s Fourth Congressional District and Anh “Joseph” Cao became the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress by defeating William Jefferson to capture the New Orleans-based Second Congressional District.  The Obama-led Democratic Party is now 0-3 in “post season” elections.

Things aren’t much better for Obama on the policy front. Obama’s Democratic allies are getting impatient with him, demanding he put more specifics on the table to address growing economic anxieties. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Banking Committee, complained recently that Obama is “going to have to be more assertive than he’s been.”  Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, reportedly said, “The Obama team has to step up. In the minds of the people, this is the Obama administration. I don’t think we can wait until January 20.”

And Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) is demanding President-elect Obama intervene in the auto bailout talks, saying, “It would be very helpful if the president-elect would become more involved in resolving the issue over the source of the funds. I want him to offer his assistance.” This week, Obama had more to say about the economy.  But his most memorable line wasn’t very reassuring.  “The economy is going to get worse,” Obama told us, “before it gets better.”

Imagine if the situation were reversed. Had John McCain won and Republicans subsequently became embroiled in a corruption crisis, lost three races in a row and began calling out the president-elect about a lack of leadership, there’s no doubt that the liberal media would be writing the McCain Administration’s obituary and trumpeting these elections as clear evidence of “buyers’ remorse.”

I don’t want to overstate my case.  The Democrats are still in the driver’s seat, and Republicans still have a lot of work to do to regain the trust of voters.  But Obama should think twice if he believes he has a mandate to shift the nation dramatically to the Left.

Human Events 

Internal Freddie Mac documents show that senior executives at the company were warned years ago that they were offering mortgages that could pose dangers to the firm, hurt borrowers and generate more risky loans throughout the industry.

At Fannie Mae, top executives were told it was necessary to develop "underground" efforts to buy subprime mortgages because of competitive pressures, although there were growing risks and borrowers often didn't understand the terms of the loans, documents show.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has the documents, is holding a hearing today to discuss Fannie and Freddie's downfall. The companies were seized by the government three months ago after nearly collapsing in the wake of billions of dollars of losses on mortgages.

In a memo to former Freddie chief executive Richard F. Syron and other top executives, former Freddie chief enterprise risk officer David Andrukonis wrote that the company was buying mortgages that appear "to target borrowers who would have trouble qualifying for a mortgage if their financial position were adequately disclosed."

Andrukonis warned that these mortgages could be particularly harmful for Hispanic borrowers, and they could lead to loans being made to people who would be unlikely to pay them off. "The potential for the perception and the reality of predatory lending with this product is great," Andrukonis wrote.

Surprise, surprise...

Washington Post
 

Remembering Pearl Harbor

It's been 233 years since Paul Revere and William Dawes made their nighttime horseback ride to warn the American colonists that British redcoats were marching from Boston to Lexington and Concord to seize the weapons with which they would defend themselves. Having been warned, the Minutemen met the British and the Revolutionary War began that April night in 1775.

 So it is once more. But instead of red-coated infantry coming to take away arms, this time it's green-obsessed enviro-wackos coming to take away your incandescent light bulbs. And your SUV. And your flush toilet. And your livestock. And most of all, any semblance of freedom you may still have left.

Forget about reasoning with them. It matters not that the country simply can't run without the oil, coal and nuclear power they are determined to ban. Or that fulfilling ethanol mandates would require all the arable land of North America be converted to corn production, thereby leaving none for food. Or that the global warming – oh, I'm sorry, I meant “climate change” (wink, wink) – in which they so fervently believe, is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated.

The only heat we're dealing with here is from the steaming pile of Grade A bull cookies they're serving us so as to scare us into accepting the totalitarianism they want to shove down our throats. (Speaking of which, the EPA wants to tax farm animals as greenhouse gas emitters. Enjoy that steak, pork chop and milk while you still can.)

There is simply nothing they won't go after and destroy for the sake of “the environment.” There isn't any aspect of your life too small for them to not control. There isn't any limit on what they think falls within their purview. As far as they're concerned the end – Mother Earth, or Gaia, or whatever – justifies any means, no matter how much it tramples, if not annihilates, personal liberties.

Excellent article.  Go read the rest.

North Star Writer's Group