“Enormous investment in energy infrastructure is required to address the twin threats of energy insecurity and climate change”, said Max von Bismarck and Anuradha Gurung from the World Economic Forum, authors of the report Green Investing: Towards a Clean Energy Infrastructure. “In the light of the global financial crisis, it is crucial that every dollar is made to multitask to create a sustainable low-carbon economy”.

The World Economic Forum identifies onshore wind, offshore wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal electricity generation, municipal solar waste-to-energy, sugar-based ethanol, geothermal power, and cellulosic and second-generation biofuels, as significantly contributing in the move to a clean energy infrastructure.

The World Economic Forum also reported that clean energy investment increased $110 billion between 2004 and 2008, from $30 billion to $140 billion, and that the investments diversified geographically. Developing countries attracted 23% of asset financing 2007, compared to 13% in 2004.

The World Economic Forum is a Geneva based non-profit, non-partisan international organization founded in 1971.

Be very afraid.  "Climate Change" is nothing more than a scam to redistribute wealth, code for SOCIALISM.

The Observer

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was all smiles in 2006 when he signed into law the toughest anti-global-warming regulations of any state. Mr. Schwarzenegger and his green supporters boasted that the regulations would steer California into a prosperous era of green jobs, renewable energy, and technological leadership. Instead, since 2007 -- in anticipation of the new mandates -- California has led the nation in job losses.

The regulations created a cap-and-trade system, similar to proposed federal global-warming measures, by limiting the CO2 that utilities, trucking companies and other businesses can emit, and imposed steep new taxes on companies that exceed the caps. Since energy is an input in everything that's produced, this will raise the cost of production inside California's borders.

Now, as the Golden State prepares to implement this regulatory scheme, employers are howling. It's become clear to nearly everyone that the plan's backers have underestimated its negative impact and exaggerated the benefits. "We've been sold a false bill of goods," is how Republican Assemblyman Roger Niello, who has been the GOP's point man on environmental issues in the legislature, put it to me.

The environmental plan was built on the notion that imposing some $23 billion of new taxes and fees on households (through higher electricity bills) and employers will cost the economy nothing, while also reducing greenhouse gases. Almost no one believes that anymore except for the five members of the California Air Resources Board (CARB). This is the state's air-quality regulator, which voted unanimously in December to stick with the cap-and-trade system despite the recession. CARB justified its go-ahead by issuing what almost all experts agree is a rigged study on the economic impact of the cap-and-trade system. The study concludes that the plan "will not only significantly reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions, but will also have a net positive effect on California's economic growth through 2020."

This finding elicited a chorus of hallelujahs from environmental groups. The state finally discovered a do-good policy that pays for itself. Californians can still scurry around in their cars, heat up their Jacuzzis, and help save the planet. But there was a problem. The CARB had commissioned five economists from around the country to critique this study. They panned it.

Don't you liberals ever get tired of being dead wrong?

WSJ

• 1. Each year 186 billion tons of CO₂ enter the earth's atmosphere. Of that, only 6 billion tons are from human activity (3.2%). Some 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and the rest from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
• 2. CO₂ is an odorless, colorless, and tasteless gas. The CO₂ that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there for long. It is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth's oceans -- the great retirement home for most terrestrial carbon dioxide. The buffering capacity of the oceans is enormous. The oceans currently contain about 50 times as much CO₂ as the atmosphere.
• 3. Plants absorb CO₂ and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals both breathe oxygen and emit CO₂ as a waste product that helps keep our bodies' pH normal. It works out nice for all those involved.
• 4. CO₂ is a nutrient to plants, not a pollutant. Plant-growers introduce more CO₂ into their planting sheds when they want to stimulate growth. And all life -- plants and animals alike -- benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO₂ is an essential ingredient.
• 5. CO₂ has great personal importance to us biologically and medically. Red blood cells convert CO₂ to H₂CO₃ (Carbonic Acid) and Bicarbonate ions. Carbonic acid is used to help off-load body acids, keeping our pH healthy. When you expire CO₂ from your lungs, CO₂ is removed from your blood. As the blood looses CO₂, blood levels of Carbonic Acid drop, causing the blood to become less acidic (raising blood pH). Without this profitable exchange, we would die.
• 6. Prolonged hyperventilation (rapid, deep breathing) releases so much CO₂ through the lungs that our blood level of Carbonic Acid are drastically lowered, leading to alkalosis. Hypoventilation (slow, shallow breathing) produces a build-up of CO₂ in the blood. The resulting rise in Carbonic Acid levels can become high enough to produce acidosis. But mild hypoventilation can be useful when a person panics, encouraging them to hypoventilate by breathing into and out of a paper bag, or by sitting down and simply breathing slowly. As the person's CO₂ levels rise, the resulting acidosis inhibits neurons enough to relax the body and calm the mind, restoring normal breathing.
• 7. As an added caveat, when CO₂ is frozen and placed in water or a punch bowl for kids' parties, it evaporates so rapidly it appears to boil, producing a milky-white gas that's really cool...

With liberals, apparently a lot.

Libs are always changing the name of things they are passionate about because inevitably everything they are passionate about crashes and burns. Global warming became "climate change" once they realized that the world wasn't, in fact, warming. Besides, climate change allowed them to blame every snow storm, hurricane, tsunami, rainstorm, ice storm and fog on "climate change". Even they know they sounded stupid blaming a blizzard on "global warming".

Hell, they even changed their words for themselves. Once Ronald Reagan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick turned the word "liberal" into a dirty word, they switched it to "progressive".

They're at it again and it's by executive fiat this time:

Lesson in political correctness from the Obama administration:

No longer call the $819 billion spending bill in the Congress the “economic stimulus” package.

Henceforth, it shall be known as the “economic recovery” bill.

That’s the command from the White House to all federal agencies.

The Federal Highway Administration notified state transportation departments of the change in terminology this week.

Apparently, the word stimulus may give too much of an impression that the bill spends a gigantic load of tax dollars.

The word “recovery,” however, has a lot more hope in it. And “hope,” if you’ll remember from the campaign, was a major theme of the new president.

Emphasis mine. Apparently, progressives liberals aren't all that comfortable with this bill now that the Republicans have given them sole ownership. Apparently, the public isn't too hip on it either judging by the latest polling data.

Instead of calling it a "recovery" bill, let's call it was it truly is: The "Huge Fucking Spending Bill That Will Handicap Our Children With Debt"...That's a mouthful I know but why not be more truthful with ourselves than liberal are with themselves?

Environmental Republican 

Get your car's oil changed, or if you're so inclined, do it yourself. Do it today. To connect the dots: President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency almost certainly will impose tough new emissions and fuel-economy standards on automakers. That means the next generation of cars, pickups and sport-utility vehicles will be less reliable, smaller, less versatile and more dangerous. And there will be fewer of them because the Obama plan is destined to run the weakest automakers out of business.

That's why everyone should commit to a regular regime of oil changes and other maintenance on their autos. If what you're driving today is serving your needs, you'd better plan on keeping it because a vehicle with the same attributes likely won't be available much longer. And even if it is, you will be unable to afford it.

Of course, that means more emissions, not less, as older cars continue to run past their prime. It means fewer new cars sold, fewer jobs in the automotive industry, more corner-cutting by surviving automakers, and a slower pace of technological advance.

Former President Bush was right to stifle efforts by California and 13 other states, including Connecticut, to impose their own emissions rules rather than abiding by the federal standard.

For one thing, it's unconstitutional for a coalition of states to dictate national policy, as this plainly would do, since more than half the motor vehicles sold in the United States go to one of those 14 states. The Constitution endows Congress with authority over interstate commerce.

Today's motor vehicles, whether built in the United States, Japan, South Korea or Europe, are more durable in every way than those from the heyday of American manufacturing. President Obama may think he's cleaning the air and saving the world from the ravages of global warming by rapidly toughening fuel-economy and emissions regulations, but what he's really doing is conspiring with today's ailing economy to compel people to keep their old cars longer.

If he wants to turn America into Cuba, where 1950s American iron still rules the road, he's off to a rousing start.

WRA 

This is a memo from Speaker Nancy Pelosi's communications director, Brendan Daley,  to Democratic members and staff sent after the stimulus vote yesterday. Pelosi is apparently panicked at Republicans’ success in uniting against her hyperpartisan actions in shutting them out of the formulation of the stimulus bill and in peeling nearly a dozen Dems off to vote in opposition.

Here is the full text of the memo leaked to HUMAN EVENTS this morning.

Memo

To: Interested Parties
From: Brendan Daly
Re: The Republican Problem
Date: January 29, 2009

The House Republican Leadership put its Members in another politically untenable position yesterday: trying to reclaim the mantle of lower taxes and small government -- at the exact time when economists of every ideological stripe agree that government investments are the only way to get our economy moving again and make us competitive for the long term.

So yesterday, while we are facing the greatest economic crisis in decades, Republican House Members ended up voting unanimously against:

* Jobs in their own communities

* Tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers

* Long overdue investments that will transform and grow their economies to compete globally

* Critical services in their own communities, such as police officers, teachers, and health care

Instead, their substitute did not create as many jobs and it increased the number of people subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The hypocrisy of the Republicans complaining about the process does not obscure the record of recent Republican leadership:

* 2.6 million American jobs were lost in 2008 alone.

* The national debt has almost doubled in the last eight years; the debt borrowed from foreign countries has tripled.

* The Clinton Administration left a record budget surplus. President Bush turned it into the worst deficit in American history.

* We face an economic recession unrivaled since the Great Depression, as a result of years of failure to invest in our own global competitiveness, failures to bring common sense to Wall Street and our housing market, and tax policies that favored massive corporations and most affluent individuals.

This is not the first time the Republicans in the House have unanimously voted against a needed economic package. The last time, in 1993, when Democrats voted for tough action to clean up after Republican economic mess, not a single Republican voted for the legislation that produced record surpluses and a balanced budget.

Once again this week, as another Democratic President and Democratic Congress worked to address historic deficits and recession brought on by Republican mismanagement of the economy, not a single Republican voted for the legislation. There's a pattern here of Republican economic mismanagement and Democrats stepping up to do what's needed for the good of the country while Republicans acted in a partisan and irresponsible manner.

..."at the exact time when economists of every ideological stripe agree that government investments are the only way to get our economy moving again and make us competitive for the long term."

Guess Nancy missed this one: 

Economists slam Barack Obama's stimulus package

By John Coleman
January 28, 2009

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.

How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?

The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.

Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels.

These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.

Now let me take you back to the1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.

But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.

The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about .41 hundredths of one percent.

Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.

Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.

Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been lead to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Excellent.  Go read the rest.

KUSI 

Islamic ‘political correctness’ seems to be taking over our reason and resolve. How far can this go in America?

Unfortunately, it is likely that it could go very far given that most Americans appear to be asleep at the switch. American’s are tired and just want the ‘Change Fairy’ to take care of it all. There is no ‘Change Fairy’. America and the world are faced with a patient, determined adversary. Islamic terrorists/radicals have made substantial progress in Great Britain, Denmark and Minnesota towards their goal of establishing Sharia law throughout the world.

Atlas Shrugs has an interesting article illustrating the constant chipping away of western systems of law and values. In Great Britain, a Muslim killer is threatening legal action to force female prison guards to wear veils because his ‘human rights’ are being violated! Give me a break!

First prisons face their toilets towards Mecca, what will be next? Will radical Islamic parents bring lawsuits against our schools to force female teachers to wear burkas?

If the only lines of defense are our courts, school boards and the teachers’ unions, there’s not a lot of hope that ‘political correctness’ won’t replace our Constitution and way of life. Step by step, they are winning.

Just consider the Supreme Court’s dealing with Obama’s probable lack of eligibility to serve as President of the United States. The Supreme Court's silence set back Berg v Obama, Lightfoot v Bowen, and some of the other lawsuits instead of looking at the merits of the allegations. It seems that ‘Obama political correctness’ has trumped the Constitution of the United States. Apparently, the Supreme Court is refusing to risk the outrage of Obama supporters (most of whom have never read the Constitution) by asking Obama to demonstrate his eligibility and answer the allegations against him.

If the Supreme Court will not protect the Constitution, what makes anyone think that they will protect the rights of a female school teacher if their actions might offend the Islamic community? Step by step, change is coming, Islamic change. With each step, America’s Liberty Bell sees her crack get larger.

The American media is playing a pivotal role in facilitating Islamic radicals’ goals by manipulating the psyche of Americans. The media is putting the average American’s awareness to sleep. One day, ‘Joe the Plumber’ will wake up and his wife will need to dawn(sic) her burka before going out of their house.

The media downplays the “War on Terror”, blames America, and refuses to look seriously at any of the controversies that impact Obama. They have ignored the 30 legal actions challenging Obama’s eligibility. They have ignored the very real possibility that Obama may have held (or holds) citizenship in a predominately Muslim country, Indonesia. They have misrepresented the scope of what Obama’s short form birth certificate can establish (only the long form can show a Hawaiian birth). They have ignored Obama’s associations with Tony Rezko, Wright, Ayers, Larry Sinclair, Farrakhan, ACCORN(sic), etc. Had the press been doing their job as journalists/reporters, there would not be Barack Obama in the Oval Office.

An objective and free press, that reports the news and does not try to ‘shape the news’, is vital for our Republic to survive. Right now the American Press is AWOL. Truth is what protects our freedom. Step by step, ‘change’ is coming, Islamic change. I can hear the Liberty Bell’s crack growing.

All the while, Obama is giving his first interviews to Arabic media, appeasing Iran, closing the prison for terrorists in Cuba, planning his first trip overseas to Indonesia, appointing a tax evader as Sec. of the Treasury, attacking Rush Limbaugh and voices of opposition, and including billions of funding in the bailout for groups like ACCORN! Did you hear the crack grow larger just now?

Let’s not let the Congress off the hook. Members of Congress, having been made aware of the existence of reasonable allegations challenging Obama’s eligibility to serve as President, proceeded to ratify the vote of the Electoral College without objection from even one Senator or Representative. The ‘Obama Political Correctness’ trumped the Senators’ and Representatives’ oaths to uphold and protect the U. S. Constitution. If our members of Congress are so worried about offending Obama’s supporters, even in the face of a likely violation of the Constitution’s eligibility requirements; what makes anyone think that they will stand up to outrageous demands from some segments of the Islamic community?

The Supreme Court’s action and the Congress of the United States’ regrettable certification of the vote of the Electoral College have effectively thrown the political football down to the individual members of the United States Military. Each individual soldier, sailor, and airman may now reflect upon the possibility that Obama is not the President of the United States and as such cannot give ‘lawful orders’ to follow.

Make no mistake; this is a political football that has arisen because America’s obsession with ‘political correctness’ has gone wild. Somehow the powers that be (the courts, Congress, politicians, the media) have determined that it is not ‘politically correct’ to stand up for the Constitution if it means that the historic circumstance of the first African-American President would be required to be undone. Shameful!

Given that some of our leaders in government and the media have lost their integrity and spines, (it does seem very likely that in the not too distant future) America’s female teachers, prison guards, police, and military will be required to wear burka so as to not offend.

Great Britain is leading the way so why not jump on board? Okay fathers, it’s time to take a good long look at your mothers, daughters, sisters and spouses to glimpse the future.

Lawful orders are lawful orders and unlawful orders are unlawful! How can anyone serving as President who is not a “Natural Born Citizen” issue any lawful orders? The issue needs to be resolved.

Way over the top at times, but some valid points. 

Link

It has been an interesting couple of days. Today yet another scientist has come forward with a press release saying that not only did their audit of IPCC forecasting procedures and found that they “violated 72 scientific principles of forecasting”, but that “The models were not intended as forecasting models and they have not been validated for that purpose.” This organization should know, they certify forecasters for many disciplines and in conjunction with John Hopkins University if Washington, DC, offer a Certificate of Forecasting Practice. The story below originally appeared in the blog of Australian Dr. Jennifer Marohasy. It is reprinted below, with with some pictures and links added for WUWT readers. - Anthony

Guest post by Jennifer Marohasy

YESTERDAY, a former chief at NASA, Dr John S. Theon, slammed the computer models used to determine future climate claiming they are not scientific in part because the modellers have “resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists”. [1]

Today, a founder of the International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Forecasting, International Institute of Forecasters, and International Symposium on Forecasting, and the author of Long-range Forecasting (1978, 1985), the Principles of Forecasting Handbook, and over 70 papers on forecasting, Dr J. Scott Armstrong, tabled a statement declaring that the forecasting process used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lacks a scientific basis. [2]

What these two authorities, Drs Theon and Armstrong, are independently and explicitly stating is that the computer models underpinning the work of many scientific institutions concerned with global warming, including Australia’s CSIRO, are fundamentally flawed.

In today’s statement, made with economist Kesten Green, Dr Armstrong provides the following eight reasons as to why the current IPCC computer models lack a scientific basis:

1. No scientific forecasts of the changes in the Earth’s climate.

Currently, the only forecasts are those based on the opinions of some scientists. Computer modeling was used to create scenarios (i.e., stories) to represent the scientists’ opinions about what might happen. The models were not intended as forecasting models (Trenberth 2007) and they have not been validated for that purpose. Since the publication of our paper, no one has provided evidence to refute our claim that there are no scientific forecasts to support global warming.

We conducted an audit of the procedures described in the IPCC report and found that they clearly violated 72 scientific principles of forecasting (Green and Armstrong 2008). (No justification was provided for any of these violations.) For important forecasts, we can see no reason why any principle should be violated. We draw analogies to flying an aircraft or building a bridge or performing heart surgery—given the potential cost of errors, it is not permissible to violate principles.

2. Improper peer review process.

To our knowledge, papers claiming to forecast global warming have not been subject to peer review by experts in scientific forecasting.

3. Complexity and uncertainty of climate render expert opinions invalid for forecasting.

Expert opinions are an inappropriate forecasting method in situations that involve high complexity and high uncertainty. This conclusion is based on over eight decades of research. Armstrong (1978) provided a review of the evidence and this was supported by Tetlock’s (2005) study that involved 82,361 forecasts by 284 experts over two decades.

Long-term climate changes are highly complex due to the many factors that affect climate and to their interactions. Uncertainty about long-term climate changes is high due to a lack of good knowledge about such things as:
a) causes of climate change,
b) direction, lag time, and effect size of causal factors related to climate change,
c) effects of changing temperatures, and
d) costs and benefits of alternative actions to deal with climate changes (e.g., CO2 markets).

Given these conditions, expert opinions are not appropriate for long-term climate predictions.

4. Forecasts are needed for the effects of climate change.

Even if it were possible to forecast climate changes, it would still be necessary to forecast the effects of climate changes. In other words, in what ways might the effects be beneficial or harmful? Here again, we have been unable to find any scientific forecasts—as opposed to speculation—despite our appeals for such studies.

We addressed this issue with respect to studies involving the possible classification of polar bears as threatened or endangered (Armstrong, Green, and Soon 2008). In our audits of two key papers to support the polar bear listing, 41 principles were clearly violated by the authors of one paper and 61 by the authors of the other. It is not proper from a scientific or from a practical viewpoint to violate any principles. Again, there was no sign that the forecasters realized that they were making mistakes.

5. Forecasts are needed of the costs and benefits of alternative actions that might be taken to combat climate change.

Assuming that climate change could be accurately forecast, it would be necessary to forecast the costs and benefits of actions taken to reduce harmful effects, and to compare the net benefit with other feasible policies including taking no action. Here again we have been unable to find any scientific forecasts despite our appeals for such studies.

6.  To justify using a climate forecasting model, one would need to test it against a relevant naïve model.

We used the Forecasting Method Selection Tree to help determine which method is most appropriate for forecasting long-term climate change. A copy of the Tree is attached as Appendix 1. It is drawn from comparative empirical studies from all areas of forecasting. It suggests that extrapolation is appropriate, and we chose a naïve (no change) model as an appropriate benchmark. A forecasting model should not be used unless it can be shown to provide forecasts that are more accurate than those from this naïve model, as it would otherwise increase error. In Green, Armstrong and Soon (2008), we show that the mean absolute error of 108 naïve forecasts for 50 years in the future was 0.24°C.

7. The climate system is stable.

To assess stability, we examined the errors from naïve forecasts for up to 100 years into the future. Using the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre’s data, we started with 1850 and used that year’s average temperature as our forecast for the next 100 years. We then calculated the errors for each forecast horizon from 1 to 100. We repeated the process using the average temperature in 1851 as our naïve forecast for the next 100 years, and so on. This “successive updating” continued until year 2006, when we forecasted a single year ahead. This provided 157 one-year-ahead forecasts, 156 two-year-ahead and so on to 58 100-year-ahead forecasts.

We then examined how many forecasts were further than 0.5°C from the observed value. Fewer than 13% of forecasts of up to 65-years-ahead had absolute errors larger than 0.5°C. For longer horizons, fewer than 33% had absolute errors larger than 0.5°C. Given the remarkable stability of global mean temperature, it is unlikely that there would be any practical benefits from a forecasting method that provided more accurate forecasts.

8.  Be conservative and avoid the precautionary principle.

One of the primary scientific principles in forecasting is to be conservative in the darkness of uncertainty. This principle also argues for the use of the naive no-change extrapolation. Some have argued for the precautionary principle as a way to be conservative. It is a political, not a scientific principle. As we explain in our essay in Appendix 2, it is actually an anti-scientific principle in that it attempts to make decisions without using rational analyses. Instead, cost/benefit analyses are appropriate given the available evidence which suggests that temperature is just as likely to go up as down. However, these analyses should be supported by scientific forecasts.

The reach of these models is extraordinary, for example, the CSIRO models are currently being used in Australia to determine water allocations for farmers and to justify the need for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) – the most far-reaching of possible economic interventions.   Yet, according to Dr Armstrong, these same models violate 72 scientific principles.

********************

1. Marc Morano, James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic, January 27,2009. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&" title="http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&" target="_blank"http://epw.senate.gov/public/...;ContentRecord_id=1a5e6e3 2-802a-23ad-40ed-ecd53cd3 d320

2. “Analysis of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Greenhouse Gases”, Drs. J. Scott Armstrong and Kesten C. Green a statement prepared for US Senator Inhofe for an analysis of the US EPA’s proposed policies for greenhouse gases.  http://theclimatebet.com" title="http://theclimatebet.com" target="_blank"http://theclimatebet.com

Anthropogenic "Climate Change" is modern day phrenology on a effing global scale...

Watt's Up With That? 

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”  [Bullshit.  He's lived in Chicago for ages.  I think it's a tad colder there than in D.C.  --ed]

“We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That's not leadership. That's not going to happen,” he added.

Some pigs are more equal than others, it appears...

NYT 

(CNN) -- Unfortunately, we are again asking the president to explain why exactly he announced, with great fanfare, new ethics rules if he had no intention of abiding by them.

The Obama administration is yet again asking for a waiver to its very own rules about hiring lobbyists.

This time, it is the new treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. He wants a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs to be his top aide at the Treasury Department.

My view is simple: Mr. President, if you want to hire former lobbyists because you think they are the best people to do the job, then hire former lobbyists. Just don't hold a big news conference first to tell us how your administration is going to be so different from previous administrations in that you won't be hiring lobbyists.

Don't make your disdain for lobbyists and your pledges that they won't wield influence in your administration a centerpiece of your campaign.

It's the hypocrisy and the double-talk that makes so many of us so cynical. Do what you think is best for the country. Just be straight with us about how you're going to do it.

My goodness!  THIS from Campbell Brown???

CNN 

Recycling could be adding to global warming rather than reducing it, a key government adviser on waste management has said.

Peter Jones suggested that an "urgent" review of Labour's policy on recycling was needed to make sure the collection, transportation and processing of recyclable material was not causing a net increase in greenhouse gases.

Mr Jones, a former director of the waste firm Biffa and now an adviser to environment ministers and the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, also dismissed kerbside recycling collections in many areas as "stupid" because they mixed together different materials, rendering them useless for recycling.

He suggested that much of the country's waste should simply be burnt to generate electricity.

"It might be that the global warming impact of putting material through an incinerator five miles down the road is actually less than recycling it 3,000 miles away," he said.

"We've got to urgently get a grip on how this material is flowing through the system; whether we're actually adding to or reducing the overall impact in terms of global warming potential in this process."

Mr Jones's outspoken comments come amid increasing controversy over household recycling.

Last month, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that councils in England and Wales were dumping more than 200,000 tons of recyclable waste every year – up to 10 per cent of all the glass, paper, plastic and other materials separated out by householders. Thousands of tons of recyclables are shipped to China because of insufficient capacity and demand in Britain.

In some parts of the country, residents have to sort their waste into as many as seven containers, including food waste bins, which has helped councils to justify the scrapping of weekly bin collections.

Some town halls have admitted using anti-terrorism legislation to snoop on householders who fail to recycle properly, but councils have so far refused to test the Government's bin taxes, under which people would be fined for throwing out too much rubbish.

But a collapse in the market value of recyclable waste as a result of the global recession means many waste disposal firms are having to stockpile paper, metals and plastics in vast warehouses because they are unable to sell it on.

Mr Jones's comments will add to the suspicion of many householders that the Government's recycling strategy is in chaos.

He said: "In overall terms we are reducing our carbon footprint by diverting material from landfill, but we are in danger of losing those reductions through the wrong policy decisions."

Mr Jones suggested generating electricity by burning waste instead. Alternatively, organic rubbish could be pulverised and stored in vats so that it releases methane, which could be captured and used to generate electricity.

Good Lord...

The Telegraph

"And on the fifth day, subpoenas were served to Obama senior staff."

A veritable "who's who" of Obama staffers, surrogates and affiliates were among those served with subpoenas. Put simply, within one week of President Barack Obama's administration taking office, it is already under significant legal scrutiny that will -- at a minimum -- take precious time away from dealing with the country's monumental economic and foreign policy challenges.

 

David Axelrod, Obama's "Karl Rove" and the biggest surprise on the list. Obama's team issued a report in December that said his staff had no "inappropriate contact" with Blago, so the inclusion of Axelrod is a bit of a shock.

Valerie Jarrett, Blago's "Senate Candidate 1", a real estate management executive and political hack of the first order. Her ties to failed and fraudulent real estate deals in Chicago were the subject of numerous investigations and should have instantly disqualified her for any public office.

Rahm Emanuel was already deeply involved in the case with some reports describing as many as 21 conversations with Blago's office during the period in question.

Tony Rezko, Obama's first advocate, fundraiser and adviser, was convicted last year on numerous charges related to kickbacks, is awaiting sentencing. Rezko is "cooperating with authorities, FBI Agent Daniel Cain said in an affidavit."

 

Federal agents raided two small Pennsylvania defense contractors that were given millions of dollars in federal funding by Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the defense appropriations committee and one of the most powerful men in Congress.

Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems shut down for the day after the raid by officers from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and an Internal Revenue Service criminal unit.

In a statement Thursday night, the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney confirmed that offices in Windber, Johnstown and Summerhill were raided "as part of an ongoing investigation." A second federal official said that ties to lawmakers would be examined as part of the probe.

A spokesman for Mr. Murtha, Matthew Mazonkey, said, "We know nothing more than what we've read in the press today," referring to an initial report on the Web site of the Tribune-Democrat newspaper in Johnstown. Messages left last night for Kuchera executives weren't returned.

Pentagon auditors have been looking at the use of earmarks, which are special-interest spending items directed to a specific company by members of Congress. An Oct. 30, 2007, page-one story in The Wall Street Journal identified Rep. Murtha as the largest earmarker in the House.

Meanwhile, a senior Democratic lawmaker is pushing back on the Obama administration's choice for the No. 2 Pentagon official because of potential conflicts of interest and recent lobbying work for defense contractor Raytheon Co.

Change!

WSJ 

Obama is expected to sign "several" executive orders Thursday, directing the CIA to close secret foreign prisons and Guantanamo Bay, and limiting detention and interrogation methods.

President Obama is expected to sign "several" executive orders on Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to close its network of "black sites," or secret foreign prisons, and order the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year.

The executive orders, aimed at rolling back much of former President Bush's architecture for the war on terror, involve "altering CIA detention and interrogation rules, limiting interrogation standards in all U.S. facilities worldwide to those outlined in the Army Field Manual, and prohibiting the agency from secretly holding terrorist detainees in third-country prisons," the Washington Post said citing sources familiar with the briefings.

The New York Times said the "orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years," and "also prohibit the CIA from using coercive interrogation methods."

A revised version of the Army Field Manual was released in 2006, explicitly banning enhanced interrogation techniques such as beating, using dogs to intimidate, electric shocks and waterboarding, which critics say is tantamount to torture.

Fox News

Hmmm...  That's funny, Bush did that in 2006.

Bush orders CIA 'black sites' closed

Flying Pig Dept.:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said it will file suit today against a publicly funded charter school, alleging that it is promoting the Muslim religion and that its directors are using a holding company to illegally funnel taxpayer dollars to a Muslim organization.

The suit was to be filed this afternoon in U.S. District Court against Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, known as TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education, which the ACLU says is at fault for failing to uncover and stop the alleged transgressions. The suit names the department and Alice Seagren, the state education commissioner, as co-defendants.

The department investigated the Twin Cities school last year, and the school said it had taken corrective actions in response to concerns about the practicing of religion in the school. TIZA officials have previously said they are in compliance with federal and state regulations.

In May, Asad Zaman, TIZA's director, said the state inquiry vindicated the school's position.

"I now have proof that this is not a religious school," Zaman said at the time. He is one of the defendants, as is Islamic Relief USA, a California non-profit organization and TIZA's sponsor.

But the ACLU claims the school is using federal and state money to promote religion in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The state ACLU said that the suit was being filed after a lengthy investigation by the organization.

"TIZA has received millions of dollars of taxpayer money to support what is, in essence, a private religious school," said Charles Samuelson, state ACLU executive director.

Star-Tribune 

It was the all-Obama Comcast channel that drove me over the edge.

Finally, I thought, this was the last straw. I would cancel Comcast and switch my cable service to Verizon. But before I could make my move, somebody called and told me that Verizon was robo-calling its customers and telling them to watch their Obama-mania special.

So I turned on the radio and heard an ad for some Obama commemorative coins. I clicked that off and went to the mailbox and saw Newsweek. Guess who was on the cover? I flipped on the Internet and went to Drudge, and he had a headline about Time magazine running its 13th cover in a year on you-know-who.

And the mainstream media wonder why they’re going out of business.

All I can say is, thank God for the NFL playoffs. That’s the only TV I’ll be watching this weekend. This is one of those historical moments - like the death of Princess Di, or anything involving the Kennedy family - where the only way to avoid the overkill is to go to total radio silence. It is for moments like this that the Turner Classic Movie channel exists.

Speaking of the NFL, the Obama-ites have cut up the coverage so everyone in TV can have a piece of the pie, just the way pro football does. Even HBO - but what if you need a bailout to pay for the monthly charges? What if you don’t have Internet access to watch the ABC webcast on Tuesday night?

Every Saturday morning I drive my kids to work in a nonprofit kitchen in Jamaica Plain. It’ll look good on their college application forms. About a month ago, a rusted-out truck appeared on Columbus Avenue. It has a mural painted on its side of the Messiah, and out of the back they’re selling T-shirts with Himself’s picture on them.

The first week, I laughed and told the kids I was going to pull over and ask ’em if they had any commemorative T-shirts for Superfly Turner and Dianne Wilkerson. They didn’t get it. Last Saturday, my 15-year-old asked if she could buy one (even though she’s angry “The Secret Life of American Teenagers” is being pre-empted by the 24/7 Inauguration coverage).

What I would really like to get for posterity is an Obama cigarette lighter. Will HSN be selling them on their live Inaugural special from D.C.?

Heh!^TM  Go read the rest.

Boston Herald

All schools in the Bloomington School District will be closed today after state-required biodiesel fuel clogged in school buses Thursday morning and left dozens of students stranded in frigid weather, the district said late Thursday.

Rick Kaufman, the district's spokesman, said elements in the biodiesel fuel that turn into a gel-like substance at temperatures below 10 degrees clogged about a dozen district buses Thursday morning. Some buses weren't able to operate at all and others experienced problems while picking up students, he said.

"We had students at bus stops longer than we think is acceptable, and that's too dangerous in these types of temperatures," Kaufman said.

About 50 of the district's 10,000 students were affected. Some waited at bus stops for up to 30 minutes; others were stuck on stalled buses.

Backup buses were sent out, but four of the district's 10 backup buses were also affected, Kaufman said.

(1) Biodiesel/biofuel hailed as answer to the “crisis” of GLOBAL WARMING;
(2) State mandates biodiesel/biofuel for school buses;
(3) [Pause here for reality to intrude];
(4) Buses fueled with biodiesel can’t run because it’s TOO COLD.

--ForeignDude 

Heh!^TM 

Stat-Tribune Online 

Our 2008 analysis of global warming misinformation finds that there was a very significant upswing in online activity.

This trend should be troubling to US policymakers and campaigners wanting to implement new greenhouse gas reduction strategies.

Here's the stats I've generated as evidence of my conclusions:

"Global Warming" hoax

A Google blog search for the term "global warming" hoax between January 1, 2008 and January 1, 2009 reports 49,719 page results. The same search for the previous year reports only 22,077 page results.

Eeek! The number of global warming thought crimes more than doubled in just a year. Grandia continues to give us more "grim" Google statistics about this growing heresy:

"Global Warming" skeptic

A Google blog search for the term "global warming" skeptic between January 1, 2008 and January 1, 2009 reports 73,956 page results. The same search for the previous year reports only 38,346 page results. Fancy graph.

Outside of a small band of ideologically motivated outlets, the majority of the mainstream media is unwilling to cover the nonsensical junk science of the right-wing think tanks and their cadre of scientists for hire. With this the case, the Internet is exploding with such information. And at the same time that we're seeing significantly more of this misinformation being spread about global warming online, we're also seeing more people than ever using the Internet as their main source of news and information.

But..but Kevin. How can we keep the majority of mainstream media, who are in the tank with you over global warming, from preventing their weather people from delivering reports about the record cold temperatures? Grandia delivers more sad news about why the global warming ideology is crumbling:

Here's some recent findings that should trouble anyone working to implement new laws to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

1) The Internet is now a larger source of news for people than newspapers.

Research conducted in December, 2008 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that the Internet is now used as a news source by more Americans than newspapers. The report found that: "for the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the Internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%."

2) Millions of people are seeking global warming information online.

In an average month more than 2.2 million people in the United States search for the term "global warming" on Google and another 368,000 people search for the term "climate change." The more climate misinformation that is posted on the Internet, the more likely that people searching for information on global warming will be exposed to it. In fact the number 2 search result for "global warming" on Google is currently a website run by the thoroughly discredited Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Gasp! How dare people search for global warming information on their own outside of the reliable mainstream media which continues to support this climatic notion despite evidence to the contrary! Grandia concludes that in order to combat the growing global warming skepticism, more propaganda is going to have to shoved down the throat of the public:

If this is going to be the year that we have the political leadership in the United States with the will to take real action on climate change, we're all going to have to double, or even triple our efforts to dispel the myths and lies being spread online about the realities of the situation.

Of course, in order to promote the global warming ideology, Grandia might want to start by silencing Harold Ambler who wrote this incredible heresy in his own Huffington Post:

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

News Busters

Thank God people are starting to catch on to this scam. I know hits on this site about AGW have increased greatly over the past year.

You're welcome.

Appearing in the Jan. 16, 2009, issue of JBC

As bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics continue to increase in number, scientists keep searching for new sources of drugs. In this week's JBC, one potential new bactericide has been found in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.

The protein identified by Joachim Grötzinger, Thomas Bosch and colleagues at the University of Kiel, hydramacin-1, is unusual (and also clinically valuable) as it shares virtually no similarity with any other known antibacterial proteins except for two antimicrobials found in another ancient animal, the leech.

Hydramacin proved to be extremely effective though; in a series of laboratory experiments, this protein could kill a wide range of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including clinically-isolated drug-resistant strains like Klebsiella oxytoca (a common cause of nosocomial infections). Hydramacin works by sticking to the bacterial surface, promoting the clumping of nearby bacteria, then disrupting the bacterial membrane.

Grötzinger and his team also determined the 3-D shape of hydramacin-1, which revealed that it most closely resembled a superfamily of proteins found in scorpion venom; within this large group, they propose that hydramacin and the two leech proteins are members of a newly designated family called the macins.

Very cool.

Eurekalert

German police officials in the cities of Duisburg and Düsseldorf, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, prohibited pro-Israeli supporters from displaying Israeli flags.

During an anti-Israeli demonstration organized by the radical Islamic group, Milli Görüs, which attracted 10,000 protesters last Saturday in Duisburg, two police officers stormed the apartment of a 25-year-old student and his 26-year-old girlfriend and seized Israeli flags hanging on the balcony and inside a window.

The hostile crowd pelted stones and other objects at the flags.

A video that appears on YouTube shows an angry crowd in front of the apartment house and the police forcibly seizing the Israeli flags. The confiscation of the flags was greeted by cheers from the anti-Israeli protesters.

The student told the online magazine Spiegel that he wanted to show "solidarity with the sole democracy in the region," and complained about societal indifference in Germany toward Hamas rocket attacks on Israel.

"Can anyone imagine the German police going into a private home to remove a Hamas flag?" Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said in a statement.

"This type of response will only encourage more aggressive and violent behavior by anti-Israel demonstrators and send the message that in Germany, Jews and supporters of Israel do not enjoy the full protection of the law," he said.

Responding to Zuroff's criticism of the police conduct as "cowardly" and "incomprehensible&qu ot; as well as to the outrage of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Duisburg Police Chief Rolf Cebin posted a statement on the police Web site on Wednesday, saying "I deeply regret that feelings, especially those of our Jewish fellow citizens, were hurt.

"The removal of the flags was, as we see it today, the wrong decision," Cebin said. "The situation was very heated and the officers wanted to avert harm to the participants, including the residents of the apartment. They acted with the best of intentions in a tricky situation, under considerable time pressure, in order, from their point of view, to prevent an escalation."

Unbelievable.  I guess arresting the violent protesters was to intolerant?

Turkish Weekly 

In a study titled Carbon Bigfoot, the IFL concludes that the CO2 glut will be substantial. From the global warming wrecking celebs flying all over the place in their many private jets, to the many hundreds if not thousands of vehicles that will be used to get people to and in the midst of the inaugural, the CO2 carnage is at the amazingly high level.

The IFL finds:

• Celebrities, politicians, and bigwigs using 600 private jets will produce 25,320,000 POUNDS of CO2
• Personal vehicles could account for 262,483,200 POUNDS of CO2
• n the parade, horses alone will produce more than 400 POUNDS of CO2

The IFL also came up with a revealing illustration about what this all means.

It would take the average U.S. household 57,598 years to produce a carbon footprint equal to that of the new president’s housewarming party

Granted the IFL scoffs at the very notion of worrying, as greenwits do, that all this revenue generating travel and commerce is a bad thing.

But, it is interesting that the folks that claim to be the best, most mean and green, tree hugging, global warming priests around are going to be responsible for this conflagration of globalony destruction.

The Obamathon in Washington will be a global warming catastrophe… but here’s guessing that no one will say a cross word in the Old Media!

Red State

Although it has been dismissed by some observers as a “hiccup” in an otherwise smooth confirmation process, treasury secretary-designate Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay self-employment taxes during the years he worked at the International Monetary Fund is causing some Republicans on Capitol Hill to ask serious questions about his actions. First among those questions is why he accepted payment from the IMF as restitution for taxes that he had not, in fact, paid.

Documents released by the Senate Finance Committee strongly suggest that Geithner knew, or should have known, what he was doing when he did not pay self-employment taxes in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. After his failure to pay was discovered, first by the IRS and later during the vetting process, Geithner paid the federal government a total of $42,702 in taxes and interest.

The IMF did not withhold state and federal income taxes or self-employment taxes — Social Security and Medicare — from its employees’ paychecks. But the IMF took great care to explain to those employees, in detail and frequently, what their tax responsibilities were. First, each employee was given the IMF Employee Tax Manual. Then, employees were given quarterly wage statements for the specific purpose of calculating taxes. Then, they were given year-end wage statements. And then, each IMF employee was required to file what was known as an Annual Tax Allowance Request. Geithner received all those documents.

The tax allowance has turned out to be a key part of the Geithner situation. This is how it worked. IMF employees were expected to pay their taxes out of their own money. But the IMF then gave them an extra allowance, known as a “gross-up,” to cover those tax payments. This was done in the Annual Tax Allowance Request, in which the employee filled out some basic information — marital status, dependent children, etc. — and the IMF then estimated the amount of taxes the employee would owe and gave the employee a corresponding allowance.

At the end of the tax allowance form were the words, “I hereby certify that all the information contained herein is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I will pay the taxes for which I have received tax allowance payments from the Fund.” Geithner signed the form. He accepted the allowance payment. He didn’t pay the tax. For several years in a row.

According to an analysis released by the Senate Finance Committee, Geithner “wrote contemporaneous checks to the IRS and the State of Maryland for estimated [income] tax payments” that jibed exactly with his IMF statements. But he didn’t write checks for the self-employment tax allowance. Then, according to the committee analysis, “he filled out, signed and submitted an annual tax allowance request worksheet with the IMF that states, ‘I wish to apply for tax allowance of U.S. Federal and State income taxes and the difference between the “self-employed&rdqu o; and “employed” obligation of the U.S. Social Security tax which I will pay on my Fund income.”

In a conversation today with sources on Capitol Hill who are familiar with the situation, I asked, “Was Geithner made whole for tax payments that he didn’t make?”

“Yes,” one source answered. “He was getting the money. He was being paid a tax allowance to pay him for tax payments that he should have made but had not.”

Geithner paid his 2003 and 2004 obligations after an IRS audit. He paid his 2001 and 2002 obligations after he was nominated to be treasury secretary. The Obama transition team argues that Geithner simply slipped up, saying Tuesday that Gieithner “mistakenly had not paid self-employment taxes” for the years in question. In a closed-door meeting with Senate Finance Committee members on Tuesday, Geithner explained his failure to pay the self-employment taxes as an oversight. In the days before his confirmation hearing, senators are going to want to know more about how that happened.

What an absolute load of crap.

NRO

Normally I’d drop this one into Headlines, but since everyone’s caught up in his tax dodging, I want to emphasize the point I made yesterday: The real objection to Geithner isn’t back taxes, it’s the fact that the financial collapse happened on his watch as head of the New York Fed. What does that mean, exactly? In the case of Citigroup, evidently it meant a lot of rhetoric about making sure banks have enough capital to offset their risk while politely ignoring Citi making riskier and riskier deals as its capital dwindled.

Because the Fed conducts much of its work in secret, details about Geithner’s role in the Citigroup debacle remain hidden. But a review of publicly available records shows that the New York Fed, in a key period, relaxed oversight as Citigroup went on a risky spree…

In 2006, Citigroup’s issuances of collateralized debt obligations – securities in which mortgages and other debts are bundled and sold based on risk – grew to $40.9 billion, more than double the prior year. The number of subprime mortgages originated by Citigroup rose 85 percent that year, while other top originators had begun reducing subprime output, Fed data show…

These deals pumped up Citigroup’s balance sheet. Assets went from $1.2 trillion at the end of 2003 to $2.3 trillion by September 2007. But the bank’s defenses weakened during the same period. By the end of September of 2007, records show, Citigroup’s once comfortable Tier 1 capital ratio had fallen to 7.32 percent, below the bank’s target…

When it comes to valuing [a company's capital] base, regulators and credit rating agencies favor using common stock. But Citigroup, beginning in late 2007, relied increasingly on “hybrid” capital forms, such as trust-preferred securities, to prop up its Tier 1 ratio.

Even with these hybrids, its capital ratio dipped to 7.12, well below peers like JP Morgan Chase, at 8.44 percent, or Bank of New York Mellon, at 9.32 percent. In general, the NY Fed and the Federal Reserve allow the use of hybrid capital but apply limits and ask firms to obtain prior approval. In 2007, Citigroup exceeded the limit, the only bank among its peers to do so.

Don’t expect Republicans to hassle him at his confirmation hearing for not being a strict enough regulator. Will Democrats? They’re chomping at the bit to “fix” Wall Street; The One himself, in his speech on the stimulus, vowed that “No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through regulatory cracks.” Why he’d pick Geithner as his economic quarterback in those circumstances seems bizarre — until you realize what his real job will be, and the fact that Larry Summers almost certainly would have been Treasury Secretary instead if not for the “unpleasantness&rdq uo; at Harvard.

The confirmation hearing’s been postponed from Friday to next Wednesday, incidentally. Not that it matters.

For fucks sake.  Hopeychangey yet morons?

Hot Air

How many times have you heard or read words to the effect that 4000 scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) supported the claims about a significant human influence on climate? I think I’ve seen it on television, radio and the Internet and I know that politicians at national levels have quoted such figures. There’s no question whatsoever. It’s utterly wrong.

In fact, once the duplicated names are removed that number falls below 2,900 and if we only want those who explicitly supported the claims it falls to only about 60. So how does 4,000 become 60? Let’s take a closer look at the real numbers.

The IPCC Can’t Count - Author and Reviewer numbers are wrong by John McLean, Jan 2009

Climate Research News 

A woman has been charged in federal court with submitting false information on Missouri voter-registration cards, including turning in cards from nursing home residents without their knowledge. Deidra Humphrey of East St. Louis, Ill., faces two felony counts of voter-registration fraud. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway's office said Humphrey, 44, worked for ACORN and the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition from June to August of last year.

I wonder who those votes went for.

Feeling all hopeychangey yet? 

The Washington Post 

It seems that NASA's James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), is at it again.  He just can't let the data speak for itself.  In yet another egregious display of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) arrogance, he changed the temperature data from 1910-2008 to reflect what is clearly a cooling trend to reflect a warming trend.  (Y-axis = Annual Mean Temperatures in centigrade; X-axis = Year)

"Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover.... To the extent global warming was ever valid, it is now officially over. It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history, next to Aristotelean physics, Neptunism, the geocentric universe, phlogiston, and a plethora of other incorrect scientific theories, all of which had vocal and dogmatic supporters who cited incontrovertible evidence. Weather and climate change are natural processes beyond human control. To argue otherwise is to deny the factual evidence."  

In the past few days, Israel has moved back into the Gaza strip with ground forces, in order to put a stop to Hamas rocket attacks across the border. This is almost a carbon-copy repeat of what happened in southern Lebanon after Israel pulled out of there, only to be greeted with rocket attacks from Hezbollah into Israel proper.

But in that case, Israel did not crush and finish off Hezbollah, thus incurring the morally blind and hypocritical wrath of much of the West while having accomplished nothing substantial in exchange for it. (And arguably making matters worse, if Hezbollah recruitment was aided any in the process.) One hopes that Israel, having learned its lesson then, will not repeat that mistake now and instead remove all capability Hamas has to attack further. In so doing, they will have dealt an enemy a mortal blow, made their own citizenry materially safer and sent a clear message to all who would pick up where Hamas leaves off.

And as for that morally blind West – the United Nations, the mainstream media, some governments – here are some thoughts for them to ponder:

•  The Palestinians bring whatever ill-treatment they may experience entirely upon themselves. If you perpetually behave in a way that puts others in danger, you shouldn't be surprised when they respond to protect themselves. Perhaps if you didn't spend every waking moment trying to “exterminate the Zionist entity”, strapping bombs to yourselves to attack innocent civilians and launching rockets into your neighbors' homes, your movements wouldn't be so restricted. This is happening because you've given the Israelis no choice if they want to live.

They don't want to have to do this. They've tried to give you what you claim to want, pulling out of both southern Lebanon and Gaza, and their thanks for it was nothing but countless explosion craters where your rockets have hit. The next logical step, therefore, is to prevent them from being launched at all.

•  Were this the United States, and militants in Tijuana were lobbing rockets into San Diego and Los Angeles, do you think we'd put up with this for one second? We'd give Mexico one chance to crush the perpetrators, and if they either refused or were unable to do it, we'd march in there and annihilate them ourselves. Yet when Israel does precisely the same thing for the protection of its citizens, they receive nothing but scorn. The only explanation for such an intellectually bankrupt double-standard has to be latent anti-Semitism.

Outstanding.  Read the rest at North Star Writer's Guild. 

Not a day goes by without a journalist reminding us that “this is the worst economy in seventy-five years.” A quick mental calculation takes us back to the early 1930s and — bam! — it’s the Great Depression all over again. It’s a convenient historical marker. In 1933, 4,000 banks went belly up. The unemployment rate reached 25 percent. While the economy grew late in the decade, poverty, suffering, and desperation lingered across the national landscape — perhaps most memorably captured in the migrant imagery of photographer Dorothea Lange. It wasn’t until after World War II that the psychology of economic prosperity returned to pre-1929 levels.

There is no doubt that today’s economic crisis ranks among the most severe we’ve seen in decades, and no one discounts the painful dislocation millions of Americans are feeling amid housing losses and widespread job market instability. But it’s less persuasive that today’s recession equals the fundamental collapse of capitalism of the New Deal era. Indeed, recent public opinion polling suggests that Americans see business journalism as contributing to the economic downturn. As a January 1 Opinion Research Corporation survey reported:

Seventy-seven percent of Americans believe that the U.S. media is making the economic situation worse by projecting fear into people’s minds. … The majority of those surveyed feel that the financial press, by focusing on and embellishing negative news, is damaging consumer confidence and damping investment, making a difficult situation much worse.

Careful observers of news and public opinion know that the mass media is consumed by “Depression fetishism.” It’s an affliction of the political left where pundits, liberal economists and far left bloggers endlessly decry “predatory capitalism.” Economic exaggeration and doomsday scenarios proliferate far and wide, with attacks on the Bush administration’s “malign economic neglect” bolstering the case on the Democratic left for a “New, New Deal.” Recall, for example, one of the great national newsweeklies sold magazines with a mock-up of President-elect Barack Obama riding in a vintage open-air sedan, while decked out with a crumpled fedora and an elongated cigarette filter. Can a new National Industrial Recovery Act be far behind?
<!–nextpage&ndas h;>

Depression fetishism is just the latest indication of the steady decline of the professional media ethos of accuracy, fairness, and impartiality. Today’s media is the new partisan press. In business journalism, economic fear-mongering has replaced the who, what, when, where, why, and how of objective, rigorous, in-depth reporting. Banner headlines pump up subliminal 1930’s analogies like “Customers Line Up at IndyMac to Withdraw Money”, while the story itself omits mention that in 1929, depositors lacked FDIC guarantees of a return on checking and savings deposits of up to $100,000. It’s telling that the Washington Post just lured hardline leftist blogger Greg Sargent away from Talking Points Memo, in a development that Newsbusters’ Tim Graham says is revealing of today’s reporting environment and its “revolving door between the mainstream media and the leftist barricades.”

It’s worth noting that additional polling data reveal considerable optimism amid all of the economic doomsaying. A mid-December Pew survey found a “psychology of bad times” influencing consumer and business decision-making, while the “silver lining” of the poll found that the public remains “steadfastly confident in the ability of the American people to solve the nation’s problems.”

I exchanged e-mail greetings with a number of folks this Christmas, and one friend who’s business keeps him traveling across the Southwest sent along this apology for his late response to my well-wishing:

I have been extremely busy with work for the past couple of months and January is shaping up to be even more hectic. That’s all good — most folks are crying about the economy and our business is growing like crazy.

Again, in sharing this polling data and personal testimonial, I make no inferences that the large numbers of Americans who are facing difficulties are “whiners” who have renounced personal responsibility while on the prowl for government handouts. The point is more a reminder that we should be putting things in perspective.

There’s a wide gap between Main Street sticktoitiveness and the media reporting from the sky-is-falling newsrooms of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington. For the past year — from the beginning of the presidential primaries to election night in November — Americans have been bombarded with a steady stream of media bias and fundamental press corruption. President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign received kid glove treatment on his inexperience and past relationships, and the media pooh-poohed questions of ideological radicalism and legal propriety on a range of issues such as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Obama’s fundamentally corrupt model of presidential campaign finance.

Meanwhile, the media “watchdogs” deployed dumpster divers by the dozens to Alaska within days of Sarah Palin’s announcement as the GOP vice-presidential running mate. When terrorists attacked India’s financial capital of Mumbai on Thanksgiving weekend, it took three days before major press outlets reported the explicit targeting of the Jewish Chabad house where Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were tortured and mutilated before their murders, and few outlets reported realistically — and emphatically — on the random extermination of the innocents as our most recent example of Islamic radicalism’s barbarous evil and its challenge to the West.

All of this represents a debilitating crisis of the American democracy. It’s a well-worn cliche to suggest that a free people cannot thrive in the absence of means for holding accountable governmental officials and political candidates. The Depression fetishism that has overwhelmed financial journalism is just one more indicator of the triumph of postmodern truth in a world increasingly mesmerized by grand calls to global equality, the Promised Land of moral equivalence, and hypnotism of a new generation of leadership who talk of transcending the recent era of demonic polarization through a burst of etherial post-partisan transformation.

Pajama's Media 

View video here.

Newsbusters 

Reporting from Moscow -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev paused in the last, quiet hours of a dying year to sign into law a controversial bill that eliminates jury trials for "crimes against the state," a move that lawyers and human rights groups fear will be the start of a dangerous exertion of Kremlin control over government critics.

The law does away with jury trials for a variety of offenses, leaving people accused of treason, revolt, sabotage, espionage or terrorism at the mercy of three judges rather than a panel of peers. Critics say the law is dangerous because judges in Russia are vulnerable to manipulation and intimidation by the government.

The purpose, many observers agree, is not only to give the government greater tools in cracking down, but also to send out tremors of fear.

"Not that they necessarily will go ahead and do it, but they are threatening us very, very seriously that they can do it and are ready to do it," said Lev Ponomaryov, leader of the For Human Rights movement. "They want to have the legitimate possibility to call all opposition people enemies of the state."

Medvedev's last-minute signing had all the trademarks of a pre-holiday news dump engineered to generate the least possible media coverage. New Year's Eve is the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, and even those watching the news were distracted by the failing negotiations over shipments of Russian gas to Ukraine. The law was announced by a single sentence on Interfax.

Human rights and civil society groups have banded together to speak out against the move toward a broader definition of treason, which will be debated in a parliament dominated by Putin's United Russia party.

The government has framed the jury law as an anti-terrorism measure, but legal experts say its implications are broader and more ominous -- especially if the treason changes go through.

A chilling effect had begun to creep into the legal system even before the bill was signed into law, critics said. Svetlana Gannushkina, a human rights lawyer and chairwoman of Russia's Civic Assistance committee, gave the example of a man from the Dagestan region who is represented by her organization. A jury found him not guilty of sabotage more than a year ago, and Russia's Supreme Court backed the verdict, rejecting an appeal by prosecutors. The man was cleared -- until a few weeks ago.

"And now what's happening? When this campaign to change the law began, the prosecutor's office immediately filed a new appeal," Gannushkina said. "And this time, the Supreme Court cancels the decision of the trial and the verdict of the jury, and the whole process starts all over again."

"They call it 'managing the signals,' " she said. "You don't even need to pass a decision anymore, you just need to send the signals."

In the last week, there had been a faint hope among human rights organizations that Medvedev might refuse to sign the bill. The Russian president is a lawyer who was once seen as more moderate than Putin. He campaigned on promises to uphold the rule of law in the country.

Some are more equal than others.  Four legs goooood!

LA Times

An Israeli diplomat says it's unfortunate that during a time when the Jewish state is trying to defend its citizens from the terrorist organization Hamas, his government had to deal with the irresponsible behavior of former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

Ambassador Reda Mansour is Consul General of Israel to the Southern United States. He says McKinney took it upon herself to commit an act of provocation when she led a small boat of supposed assistants into the combat zone to try to deliver medical supplies to Gaza.
 
According to Mansour, McKinney endangered herself, her assistants, and the ship's crew. Her ship refused to respond to a warning from the Israeli navy and collided with an Israeli patrol boat, forcing it to sail to a Lebanese port.
 
"Why take a small boat from Cyprus and sail in the middle of the night and surprise the Israeli navy near the coast of Gaza?" Mansour asks. "The only explanation we could think of is that it was an act of provocation to get some titles in the media," he contends. "It's just unfortunate. We also have to mention when she was escorted outside the Gaza area, instead of coming back to Cyprus she detoured the ship and went to Lebanon where she was received as a hero by Hezbollah leaders."
 
Mansour adds about the same time McKinney was engaged in her publicity stunt, nearly 100 trucks entered Gaza to deliver aid to the Palestinian people. He points out the Israeli government is working with organizations like the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the Red Cross to ensure the entry of the required aid, especially food and medical equipment.

Except for a two-year period (2003-2005), McKinney represented two of Georgia's districts -- the 4th and the 11th -- starting in the early 1990s until January 2007. Later that year the Democratic lawmaker switched to the Green Party, and eventually became that party's presidential nominee in the November 2008 election. She is the first black woman to have represented Georgia in the U.S. House.

One News Now

Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

Nicastro represents Connecticut's 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.

I already spoke about the absurdity of bailing out newspapers when I thought it was theoretical.
It is time to stop talking in theory. Bailing out newspapers is unconstitutional. We have a free press. That means it is free of government interference or control. Any money that comes from the government will by its nature corrupt that freedom. It matters not whether the government actually gives any overt indication in the way in which the news should be covered as a result of this money. The very fact that the government is giving a newspaper money means the newspaper is no longer free of government interference. That is a clear violation of the first amendment.

That any elected official would propose something so obscene and unconstitutional is immediate grounds for their recall. State Senator Frank Nicastro should no longer be allowed to legislate. Anyone that can't understand the basic principles of our Constitution shouldn't be making laws. Any day that he continues in his role is a day that the state of Connecticut should feel total shame. It's bad enough that bailouts are dangerous and stupid. It is not acceptable that they be unconstitutional. Any politician involved with this aversion to our Constitution needs to be removed from any power immediately.

The Provocateur 

The Blagojevich scandal just keeps getting better and better.  It’s not just about Blago, Obama and the Chicago political machine any more.  By the way Democrats in general are handling this mess, it’s shining a light about liberal attitudes toward the law in general.

Should Roland Burris show up for duty in the Senate on Tuesday, armed police officers stand ready to bar him from the floor.

This cinematic showdown is among an elaborate set of contingencies that Democratic leaders are planning if, as expected, the former Illinois attorney general appointed by Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich shows up with newly elected senators to press his claim that he is the legitimate replacement for President-elect Barack Obama.

Democratic leaders hope to avert such a standoff. And Burris, in an interview Wednesday, said he hoped to claim the Senate seat without added drama.

“We’re not going to create a scene in Washington,” Burris said. “We hope it’s negotiated out prior to my going to Washington.”

Still, the Senate leaders’ planning, detailed by a Democratic official briefed on their deliberations, even covers scenarios such as Blagojevich appearing in person to escort Burris.

Ironically, as a sitting governor, the scandal-plagued Blagojevich is allowed floor privileges. But Lucio Guerrero, Blagojevich’s spokesman, said the governor had not decided whether to go to Washington with Burris.

With Democratic leaders vowing to bar anyone appointed by Blagojevich because of federal charges that he attempted to sell Obama’s seat, leaders hope to stall Burris with paperwork. Senate rules require that an incoming senator’s selection be certified by the secretary of state for his home state, and Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White has declined to sign a certification of Burris’ appointment.

I have a feeling that Burris appointment is going to end up before a judge (which, for Blago, will undoubtedly be a welcome distraction from his own legal problems), but what I’m still wondering is how these Democrats think they can keep Burris from taking his seat in the Senate?

Like it or not, Blago is still the governor in Illinois until he gets impeached.  Appointing a replacement for Obama is the responsibility of his office.  Burris meets all of the requirements for being one of Illinois’ senators laid out in state law and the Constitution.  Blago may be a corrupt piece of dirt, but with this appointment he didn’t break any laws.

Plus, what about innocent until proven guilty?  I, personally, feel that Blago is guilty as sin.  But he hasn’t be convicted, so what basis does anyone have to stop him from using his powers as the elected executive (thanks in large part to Barack Obama) of the state of Illinois?

If Burris is barred from taking his rightful place in the Senate by armed guards I think the Democrat party leaders are the ones showing a decided lack of respect for the law.

Say Anything