MIT Profs Duke It Out Over Global Warming: Good Guy Wins

A few days ago, MIT prof and hurricane specialist Kerry Emanuel went out of his way to call the rascally shenanigans of the IPCC "alleged," as though IPCC officials have not already admitted to falsely threatening the world with imminent melting of the Himalayan glaciers and destruction of the rain forests due to rising temperatures, hiding the decline of global temperatures for more than a decade, and labeling the growth of Antarctic ice as "insignificant." 

More important, Emanuel claimed, are the "compelling strands of scientific evidence that have led almost all climate scientists to conclude that mankind is altering climate in potentially dangerous ways." 

Quick reality check:

I

"It is easy," said Emanuel,

"to be critical of the models that are used to make such predictions - and we are - but they represent our best efforts to objectively predict climate; everything else is mere opinion and speculation. That they are uncertain cuts both ways; things might not turn out as badly as the models now suggest, but with equal probability, they could turn out worse.

Emanuel is right that it "is easy to be critical of the models used to make such predictions." Far too easy. Garbage in, garbage out, as almost everybody knows, and it is no longer a secret that much of the data and computer coding that comprise the models were garbage. Where most of us non-"climate scientists" come from, putting "garbage in" does not represent "our best efforts." If this were not the case, there would be no such thing as ClimateGate. 

The real head-scratcher for me in Emanuel's statement is why we should accept a total (and totally painful) "remaking" of the world economy on the likelihood that the future might turn out either better or worse than a handful of self-proclaimed experts predict. If rapid global warming is a reality, and Siberia and Northern Canada blossom into breadbaskets for the world and Irish farmers start growing wine grapes, will that be "better" or "worse" for humankind?

Moreover, "everything else" not covered by the IPCC's model is not "mere opinion and speculation" as Emanuel claimed. IPCC officials already have admitted that a number of the tall tales they spun and then presented to world policymakers as "settled science" were, in fact, regurgetations of unproven opinions of global warming advocates (not scientists) based on speculation and hearsay, not data.

"We might begin," Emanuel concluded, "by mustering the courage to confront the problem of climate change in an honest and open way."

"Open and honest." That would be a welcome change indeed.

Perhaps that's why I was mighty glad to read this response to Emanuel by another MIT prof, atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen (via Watts Up With That):

KERRY EMANUEL’S Feb. 15 op-ed “Climate changes are proven fact’’ is more advocacy than assessment. Vague terms such as “consistent with,’’ “probably,’’ and “potentially’’ hardly change this. Certainly climate change is real; it occurs all the time. To claim that the little we’ve seen is larger than any change we “have been able to discern’’ for a thousand years is disingenuous. Panels of the National Academy of Sciences and Congress have concluded that the methods used to claim this cannot be used for more than 400 years, if at all. Even the head of the deservedly maligned Climatic Research Unit acknowledges that the medieval period may well have been warmer than the present.

The claim that everything other than models represents “mere opinion and speculation’’ is also peculiar. Despite their faults, models show that projections of significant warming depend critically on clouds and water vapor, and the physics of these processes can be observationally tested (the normal scientific approach); at this point, the models seem to be failing.

Finally, given a generation of environmental propaganda, a presidential science adviser (John Holdren) who has promoted alarm since the 1970s, and a government that proposes funding levels for climate research about 20 times the levels in 1991, courage seems hardly the appropriate description - at least for scientists supporting such alarm.

There exist paltry computer models that can be manipulated by a handful of fallible human beings, and there exist natural systems whose powers are beyond human comprehension, but, as Lindzen pointed out, which do exhibit processes that can be "observationally tested" to challenge predictions based on computer model results.

For example, in contradiction to years and decades of global warming projections based on what Emanuel called "compelling strands of evidence," snowfall in the Northern Hemisphere has been extending farther and farther south ever since the start of the decline in temperature that the IPCC and others worked so hard to hide. Almost everyone in the Northern Hemisphere has observed this phenomena, often with snow shovel in hand. Here's the graph:

That's what I call a "compelling strand of evidence."
__________

American Buddhists: Obama Doesn't Want Your Support!

In fact, he doesn't want your support if you are simply an American who believes in common courtesy.

How do I know? Here's photographic evidence of Obama putting the Dalai Lama out with the trash:

Classless. Clueless. Infuriating. Heartbreaking.

I've seen thousands of photos of the White House, but I don't recall ever seeing a photo of the White House trash. Have they always piled up trash at one of the doors of the nation's Executive Mansion?

Here's George Bush with the Dalai Lama:

Now that's more like it.

In Obama's mind, though, some people obviously are more equal than others:

Hat tip: Gateway Pundit via There's My Two Cents.

___________

Links between Fort Jackson and DC-Area Terrorist Wannabes?

As is being widely reported on the blogosphere, CBN News has broken the story that five Muslim translators were arrested just before Christmas for trying to poison the food supply of their fellow soldiers at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. The group, now being called the "Fort Jackson Five," are suspected of having been in contact with five young Muslims from the Washington, DC area who traveled to Pakistan to wage jihad, but instead were captured by Pakistani police.

Since December, I have been following reports on the five U.S. nationals being held in Pakistan, namely, Pakistani Americans Umer Farooq and Waqar Hussain; Ethiopian Americans Aman Yamar and Ahmed Abdullah Mimi; and Egyptian American Ramy Zamzam.

CBS ran the following report on them back in December, immediately after their arrest. Since then, the "DC-area Five" have been formally charged by Pakistani officials with attempting to target important installations in Pakistan, fight in Afghanistan, and embrace martyrdom. The five also have made claims that they have been tortured while in Pakistani hands, a move right out of the terrorist playbook.



Pakistani officials claim that there is a connection between the DC terrorist wannabes and al Qaeda, which, if correct, also establishes a link of some sort between the Fort Jackson wannabe poisoners and al Qaeda.

Why is the news of the attempted poisonings being released a month and a half after the event? Among several other reasons that leap to mind, one is that the arrest of 5 Muslim soldiers attempting a terrorist act on a U.S. Army base would not support the "lone extremist" theory favored by Barack Obama.

Why does the president want Americans to believe in the "lone extremist" explanation of Islamic terrorism?

That's another question.
__________
Related posts:

• About that "Jihad Isn't Terrorism" Thing: 5 U.S. Nationals Sweating It Out in Pakistan
  
• "We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism"
  

Obama Tells NASA: Space Programs For Muslims

From the Orlando Sentinel:

WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy.

“In addition to the nations that most of you usually hear about when you think about the International Space Station, we now have expanded our efforts to reach out to non-traditional partners,” said Bolden, speaking to a lecture hall of young engineering students.

Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping them conduct science missions. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia, including an educational program that examines global climate change.

“We really like Indonesia because the State Department, the Department of Education [and] other agencies in the U.S. are reaching out to Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. We would love to establish partners there,” Bolden said.

As a presidential candidate, Obama espoused a space program that invited more participation from the international community and Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver said recently that the next time NASA lands on the moon it would be part of an international exploration effort.

Former astronaut Charlie Bolden, Jr. got his job as leader of NASA from Barack Obama and has been managing NASA's missions and goals for 7 months. In that brief time, NASA's moon mission has been cancelled, the space shuttle program is being abandoned (with the U.S. hitching rides to the International Space Station), and the satellite program is being pressed into service as a lackey for the discredited Global Warming Doomsday tax scam. Now, Muslim nations in space--at US taxpayer expense.

What could go wrong?

After all, today President Barack Hussain Obama telephoned the astronauts aboard the International Space Station and told them, ". . . my commitment to NASA is unwavering."

As First Mate Piggy said to Captain Hogthrob: "I think your landings are hard and your brain is soft."
__________

Related post: Will NASA Dare to Go Where Japan Has Been Before?

Climate Change: Texas Sues EPA Over CO2 Claims

Last December, the tip of the Iceberg ClimateGate was just visible above the waterline, and two of the world's apparently unsinkable vehicles of international taxation and wealth redistribution, the HMS Copenhagen and the USS Cap'n'Tax were racing toward it, preparing for dual head-on collisions.

With those left in the West's taxpayer base destined to learn that Global Warming/Climate Change Doomsday claims were founded on doctored data, the time to divest them of their money was getting very short.

As the clock ticked, Obama's EPA did what they could: They launched what they hoped would be a truly "unsinkable" vehicle to halt the warming of America, this time a ruling that carbon dioxide endangers human health. According current law, that ruling is thought to mean that the EPA can force carbon-emissions "regulations" down America's throat without a single Congressional vote. And even without legitimate scientific evidence.

But even the invincible EPA is now headed for the Iceberg.

From Ed Stoddard at Reuters:

Texas and several national industry groups on Tuesday filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the government's authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

[snip]

Texas said it had filed a petition for review challenging the EPA's "endangerment finding" with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Texas has also asked the EPA to reconsider its ruling.

"The EPA's misguided plan paints a big target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers and the hundreds of thousands of Texans they employ," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said.

The National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association also said on Tuesday they filed a petition challenging the EPA in federal appeals court.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. iron and steel makers have also signaled they would file lawsuits.

These petitions challenging the EPA's CO2 "endangerment finding" are mighty welcome. The EPA has painted their "big target" not only on the backs of Texas farmers and oil and natural gas drillers, but on each and every American destined to pay for the de-carbinization of a planet occupied by carbon-based life forms.

It is unconscionable that the EPA, headed and staffed by unelected officials driven by an ideological and political agenda, could sign, seal, and deliver economy-killing regulations based on scientific claims now being recanted by their very authors.

What about the argument that Texans should be concerned about their contribution to global warming? Check out this, from Stephen Goddard at Watts Up With That?

Brenham, Texas is a relatively rural area (population 13,500) centrally located between San Antonio, Houston and Dallas.  They have a good temperature record extending back nearly 120 years. According to USHCN records, Brenham was at least as warm 100 years ago as it is now. 

Yet the race continues. Will the EPA manage to issue its economy-strangling regulations before it hits Iceberg ClimateGate?

Not if the American people remove enough Democrats from office in the upcoming elections.
__________

Democrats in Congress: A Walk in Their Shoes

If you want to understand someone, the advice goes, walk a mile in their shoes.

There isn't much chance that I'll ever plant my feet in whatever footwear is today's fashion in the halls of Congress, but I'm willing to do the thought experiment, if not for a mile, at least for a few yards. Here goes:

I'm a Democrat legislator, which is to say that my skill set is heavily centered in the smooth-talking, looking good, negotiation, and power-grabbing areas. I'm good at making promises that are appealing to folks and at getting people to like and trust me enough to vote for me, despite my shortcomings, which I'm pretty good at either covering up or popularizing. I have unimaginably large amounts of "government" money at my disposal to encourage people "like" and "support" me, and I, in turn, define their "like" and "support" in terms of the financial and other benefits they provide to me.

In short, I've devoted my life to making a sow's ear look like a silk purse, and I'm pretty good at it. I may have learned these skills from the cradle, under the counsel of parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents all expert at the game of politics. If I need to find a legal needle in the legislative haystack to pass a bill taxing everyone in the country except Congress (and our good buddies), I can do that pretty much in my sleep. I've had to do that many times, in good political times and bad.

The strictures imposed on me by my political party are pretty narrow, in that I have to vote and speak along party lines that I may have had little part in creating.

In other ways though, I enjoy enormous freedoms unavailable to most mortals who hold positions of responsibility. For example, I don't have to tell the truth, ever. Increasingly, I don't even have to look like I'm telling the truth. There are travel perks, too: my staff will round up a free (to me) luxury stay in Copenhagen or wherever for my family and friends at a moment's notice.

Now I--someone who has made a fat living from staying alive in the competitive game of "who's going to dole out the money and hold the reigns of power"--must wake up every morning to find that the Obama administration has completely squandered the political dream of dreams: a supermajority in Congress, and they managed to do it in only 10 months. Ten months.

Every day, I get to indulge in imagining what I could have done with a supermajority in Congress, a flattering photo of myself on every magazine cover with an even more flattering article inside, enough money to pave a road to the moon (or is it Jupiter?) and back, and crowds of people cheering and fainting at my feet. 

And then I get to look at what the current administration has done with that wealth of possibility. 

Really, it's enough to make a halfway competent politician sick.

I'm glad I performed that little thought experiment.

Now it seems easier to predict what's likely to happen inside the Democrat Party.

__________

Evan Bayh: If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen

Word is spreading fast: Indiana Senator Evan Bayh is retiring. Bye bye, Evan Bayh.

My first reaction is elation; second reaction, suspicion.

Call my first reaction of elation schadenfreude. I'm glad to see any evidence of weakness in the Democrat party. The Democrats have hideously squandered their supermajority in the Senate. Instead of working to safeguard Americans and further our prosperity, more and more of us feel cornered and ill-used.

Call my second reaction of suspicion the natural result of observing the current crop of Democrats at work. Their modus operandi has been to do whatever they want--in secret--lie about what they are doing (when they even know what they are voting on), and then smear anyone who'd like to put the brakes on or have actual public "dialog" about their bills. Democrats have promoted "dialog" with Ahmadinijad but not with Independents and Republicans, or even with Democrats who attempt to stray too far from the Obama line.

Some pundits are guessing that Bayh, a Democrat, might not want to work as hard as necessary to keep his seat in the current atmosphere of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and anger among many American voters. Others think that he wants to get out of the fray relatively unscathed so that he can return to politics later, maybe as presidential candidate. Some wonder whether he's getting out now because he sees something coming down the road that the rest of us don't see yet.

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection is giving Bayh more credit:

I think it would be a mistake to view this decision solely or even primarily as a reaction to election chances.

Rather, Bayh has seemed sick of the whole process the past year.

I have commented before that Bayh was largely missing in action, or in hiding, during the health care debate when one would have expected him to be front and center. Back in mid-December, just before the Senate health care vote, I asked:

Where is Evan Bayh? His silence has been deafening.

I even issued an Amber Alert for Evan Bayh.

We have found Evan Bayh, and he apparently didn't want to be found.

Or how about this, "Evan Bayh didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left Evan Bayh."

I hope Jacobson is right. If he is, if Evan Bayh's retirement is an acknowledgment of his loss of the Democrat Party, his leaving the Senate is the honorable thing to do. And it's smart. One way or another, Bayh's decision means he's following Harry Truman's famous advice: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

In America's political kitchen today, we need people with the courage to stand up for what they believe, while they still can.
__________

How Many Terrorists Really Are in U.S. Prisons? Compare and Contrast

We know that we can prosecute terrorists in our federal courts safely and securely because we have been doing so for years. There are more than 300 convicted international and domestic terrorists currently in Bureau of Prisons custody including those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the attacks on embassies in Africa.

~ Attorney General Eric Holder before a Senate Judiciary Committee, Nov. 18, 2009.

Attorney General Holder used the 300+ prosecuted terrorists figure in an attempt to convince Americans that giving Kalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial in New York City would be pretty much routine. The argument goes: "Hey, we've done it hundreds of times! Where have you been?"

I know you thought that number seemed high. Although the MSM uses some pretty fancy footwork to stamp out discussions of the T-word, it didn't seem likely that they had managed to submerge from public view the public trials of several hundred international and domestic terrorists.

Ready for the real figure of Islamic jihadists convicted in federal court of serious terrorism-related crimes comparable to many of the Guantanamo detainees who got federal convictions?

Less than a dozen.

These include:

Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber"; Bryant Neal Vinas, an American convicted of supporting al-Qaida plots in Afghanistan and the United States; Mohammed Jabarah, a Canadian who was active in al-Qaida and convicted of terrorism-related offenses; Shahawar Matin Siraj, a Pakistani-American who plotted to bomb Herald Square in New York; and Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani-American convicted of terrorist-related offenses in New York, and who testified in 2006 against a group of men accused of plotting bomb attacks in London.

The other convicted felons Holder was talking about number less than 200, according to Human Rights First, a nonpartisan international human rights organization based in New York and Washington, D.C. Andrew McCarthy of the National Review has pointed out that these felons "often are would-be terrorists who have, for example, been convicted of relatively minor offenses such as immigration fraud or giving false information to federal authorities, or who have helped to finance a terrorist organization." Legal scholar Karen Greenberg, author of "Terrorist Trial Report Card: September 11, 2001-September 11, 2009," found that "[M]ost of those cases do not involve people affiliated with a radical Islamist organization, but rather with such groups as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a group of Marxist guerillas."

Dangerous people of this sort should be in the slammer at the very least and their crimes should not be taken lightly. No doubt this list does include wanna-be jihadists who, given a little more time and a little more rope, would have murdered Americans in cold blood. Maybe in great numbers.

But civilian court appearances by immigration law violators whose crimes would have been winked at by U.S. authorities if the violators had not gotten mixed up with South American revolutionaries should not for one minute be confused with court appearances by Islamic terrorist mass murderers at war with the U.S. civilian population.

And the person causing the confusion should not be the Attorney General of the United States, or his boss.

H/t: Nice Deb
__________

Dean Martin: That's Amore

Getting Taxpayers to Foot the Bill "Is Easier Than Ever"

Income tax time is on its way, with the inevitable question for about 60% of the U.S. adult population, "What are they doing with my money?" (The other 40% pay zero federal income taxes.)

From Libertyblog:

Self-reliance narrowly averted:

A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they made people register one day and return the next just to get an application. The welfare commissioner said the program caused dependency and the poor were “better off” without it.

Now the city urges the needy to seek aid (in languages from Albanian to Yiddish). Neighborhood groups recruit clients at churches and grocery stores, with materials that all but proclaim a civic duty to apply — to “help New York farmers, grocers, and businesses.” There is even a program on Rikers Island to enroll inmates leaving the jail.

“Applying for food stamps is easier than ever,” city posters say.

[snip]

Juan Diego Castro, 24, is a college graduate and Americorps volunteer whose immigrant parents warned him “not to be a burden on this country.” He has a monthly stipend of about $2,500 and initially thought food stamps should go to needier people, like the tenants he organizes. “My concern was if I’m taking food stamps and I have a job, is it morally correct?” he said.

But federal law eases eligibility for Americorps members, and a food bank worker urged him and fellow volunteers to apply, arguing that there was enough aid to go around and that use would demonstrate continuing need. “That meeting definitely turned us around,” Mr. Castro said.

Thank heavens he followed Obambi and Twofer’s advice to avoid the dreaded private sector and not his parents’ warning. Otherwise, taxpayers wouldn’t have the privilege of paying both his “stipend” and his food bills.

There's always "enough aid to go around," until there isn't:

 


And here are the foreign countries making sure that there's "enough aid to go around," until they don't:

Reality check: The top 5 foreign providers of loans to pay for all those "continuing demonstrations of need" are Mainland China, Japan, the UK, Oil Exporting Countries, and Caribbean Banking Centers.

Those lenders are going to want to keep getting their interest payments on all that money--and whose supposed to pay those payments? Surely not the lenders themselves. And surely not the people on food stamps. Must be all those "farmers, grocers, and businesses" who can't quite keep their doors open unless their customers use food stamps. Plus the government workers who won't have jobs unless there's a food stamp or other entitlement program to work for.

Something doesn't add up.
__________

Families Walk the Last Miles of Flight 3407

One year ago today, a Continental Connection commuter plane, Flight 3407, dove from the sky as it approached the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and crashed into a home in Clarence Center, New York, killing fifty people, the forty-nine on board and a man in the home destroyed by the aircraft.

Today, an estimated 800 people symbolically completed the failed flight by walking the 10-mile distance from the former site of Douglas and Karen Wielinski's home to the airport.

From Jerry Zremski at The Buffalo News:

Local residents stepped out of their homes, and workers stepped out of their offices to wave at the marchers and to wish them their best.

At Nativity of Mary School in Clarence, all the students from Pre-K through eighth grade stood outside, handing roses to family members and giving high fives to people walking with them.

Along Goodrich Road, Mary Jane Jentz of Lancaster stood alone and said "God bless you" to every passerby.

"There is nothing I can do except to say a prayer for those lost," Jentz said.

The huge crowd of people, many wearing red hats and scarves and photos of their lost loved ones hanging from their necks, left the Clarence Fire Hall about 9:30 a.m.

A large contingent of police accompanied the walkers and closed the streets on their route. The walk's first stop was the small vacant lot on Long Street, where a house stood until the plane crashed into it a year ago.

Family members laid a wreath on the site, said a prayer and set off to complete the journey their loved ones never finished.

The symbolic walk to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport honors the 50 victims of the crash, but also is intended further the cause the families took up shortly afterwards: promoting aviation safety to prevent any such tragedy from happening again.

[snip]

And Jeffrey Skiles, the co-pilot of the USAirways jet that made an emergency landing on the Hudson River last year, will be with the families for the whole day.

"I'm here to support the families and to support this issue," Skiles said. "We're all doing this to make some changes, to make sure this sort of tragedy is never visited upon another community and other families."

Scott Maurer, who lost his daughter, Lorin, in the crash, praised Skiles for his efforts on behalf of the families.

"Jeff has been a phenomenal supporter of our efforts," Maurer said. "He exemplifies the importance of experience in the cockpit and has the results to prove it. Hopefully, the Senate leadership will take note of his message and act decisively to raise the unacceptably low standards for pilots to be hired commercially today."

Those standards came into sharp relief last week as the National Transportation Safety Board issued its report in the Clarence crash, blaming it primarily on the crew's actions.
Colgan Air, the regional airline that operated Flight 3407 for Continental, hired the pilot of Flight 3407 without knowing he had a history of flunking flight tests.

And as Flight 3407 approached Buffalo for landing last February, the pilot, Marvin Renslow, let the plane get too slow and then mishandled the stall warning, the safety board said. Meanwhile, the co-pilot, Rebecca Shaw, inputted the wrong speed settings into the plane's controls and put the flaps on the wings in the wrong position once the plane encountered trouble.

That history has haunted the Flight 3407 families since the safety board held hearings in the crash last May. 

May they rest in peace.
__________

DOD Says Global Warming Is a Threat, Not Islamic Radicalism!

Last week, as required every four years, the US Department of Defense released its Quadrennial Defense Review, a review of threats to the nation's security which it supplies to Congress. The idea is to help Congress understand and plan for US security.

From James Corum at the UK Telegraph:

The 128-page Defence Review says some important things. It outlines the problems with maintaining the US military’s technological lead over potential adversaries. It discusses the need to counter terrorism. The threat to Western cyber systems is noted. The proliferation of Russian high-tech anti-aircraft missiles around the world is noted as a problem.

However, it’s not what is in the document that surprises the reader – it’s what was left out. There presence of two elephants in their living room apparently escaped the notice of American’s top civilian and military leaders. Islamic radicalism does not receive any mention whatsoever in the American Defence Review and the threat posed by a nuclear Iran is mentioned in only one general sentence at the end of a document (page 101). To put this lack of discussion in proportion, contrast this non-discussion with other security issues mentioned in the document. For example, the security effects of climate change are highlighted and discussed in depth in eight pages of the document.

I would not have thought it possible that one could publish a book-length assessment of America’s security challenges and responses and NOT address the problem of Islamic radicalism or the Iranian bomb – but that’s just what Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen have done. From this one can draw one of two possible conclusions: these men are really, really stupid (not very likely), or they have deliberately minimised the current security threats to please the Obama administration and support the President’s desire to cut defence spending. The smart money is on the latter explanation.

Obama’s plan is to spend, spend, and spend on domestic entitlement and welfare programmes. His next budget contains a deficit of $1.6 trillion – almost as much as Bill Clinton’s whole government budget of 2000. But Obama is under pressure to make some budget cuts somewhere. Clearly the massive domestic budget with really necessary items like a $35 billion General Motors bailout can’t be touched without offending essential groups such as the United Auto Workers Union.

However, President Obama HAS finally found the place to cut waste – defence! In late January he demanded that Congress cut $2.5 billion from the defence budget for the purchase of C-17 transport planes. Obama declared the money for military transport was “waste, pure and simple”.

Of course, “waste” is a matter of interpretation. No one says that the C-17 is a bad aircraft or doesn’t do its job very effectively. In fact, it’s probably the best and safest large transport plane in the world today, and has done sterling service in Afghanistan and Haiti. But, according to Obama’s Pentagon officials, there is just no need to maintain such a large military transport fleet. If the Pentagon’s own assessment determines that there are not too many threats out there – and you can do that if you ignore minor things like Iranian nuclear weapons and the radicalisation of millions of followers of Islam – then you can feel safe in cutting defence expenditures and free up even more money for the President’s domestic agenda.

It’s a neat political trick to ignore the elephants in your living room. But Obama is making a huge gamble and betting the lives and security of Americans that these particular elephants will remain perfectly behaved for the next four years.

Is it too harsh to note that it's easy to gamble with something you really don't care about?

In any case, prepare for much more global warming nonsense. Much more.

But keep your snow shovel near the door. Just in case.
__________

Big $$$ in Global Cooling, Too--Meet a Green "Super-Company"

Hey, the Obama government's got you covered--six ways to Sunday--as long as you buy into their constant propaganda about the need for green. And I do mean buy.

Check out this John Stossel report, via Joaquin at one of my favorite blogs: How's That Obama Vote Working Out for You?:

The Energy Department's weatherization boss sleeps with the policy boss of Serious Materials, the only window company in the U.S. to get a special "green" tax credit.

Hey, it's perfectly legal. They're even married!

Isn't that cosy?

And stimulating.
__________

Climate Change: Michael Mann Global Warming Lecture Snowed Out

In the Mann-Caused Global Warming Department, "IRONY ABOUNDS." Thanks to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:

A reader emails: “Today, Michael Mann was scheduled to give a colloquium on climate change at the University of Pennsylvania, where I am a graduate student. As you may know, Philadelphia has been hit by multiple snowstorms in the past week. Today, for what I am told is the first time since the mid-1990s, the university suspended normal operations due to snow, and his colloquium on climate change has been postponed.”

The screen shot below is from the Web site of the University of Pennsylvania. "It's hard to find anything in the history books of these types of storms back-to-back," said National Weather Service meteorologist Stephen Konarik."

"Essential personnel" of course, means the snow-removal crew.

Heh, heh, heh.

Maybe the Gore Effect is contagious.

Or maybe Somebody Up There has a sense of humor.
__________

Related: What You Did Was Such a Crime

Or He Could Move to NY, NJ, or CA and Pay Taxes . . .

From the UK Telegraph comes word about Austrian self-made millionaire Karl Rabeder, who "is giving away every penny of his £3 million fortune after realising his riches were making him unhappy." 

Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder is giving away his fortune

He is in the process of selling his luxury 3,455 sq ft villa with lake, sauna and spectacular mountain views over the Alps, valued at £1.4 million.

"My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come."

Instead, he will move out of his luxury Alpine retreat into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit in Innsbruck.

His entire proceeds are going to charities he set up in Central and Latin America, but he will not even take a salary from these.

The 47-year-old businessman who grew up poor and made his fortune selling interior furnishings and accessories is selling his £1.4 million luxury Alpine villa and his £613,000 stone farmhouse in Provence. He's already sold his collection of six gliders and his Audi A8, and is giving his money to charities that help small businesses get started.

The tipping point came while he was on a three-week holiday with his wife to islands of Hawaii.

"It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five star lifestyle is," he said. "In those three weeks, we spent all the money you could possibly spend. But in all that time, we had the feeling we hadn't met a single real person – that we were all just actors. The staff played the role of being friendly and the guests played the role of being important and nobody was real."

[snip]

Suddenly, he realised that "if I don't do it now I won't do it for the rest of my life".

[snip]

Since selling his belongings, Mr Rabeder said he felt "free, the opposite of heavy".

Rabeder has placed his mountain retreat up for raffle at a price of 99 euros per ticket. If you'd like to purchase one, you must be an EU citizen and buy your ticket by February 28. Your chance of winning? One in 21,999,  the number of tickets being sold.

If, on the other hand, you'd like to buy his house in Provence, contact the real estate folks there.

Worker bees, dream on.
__________

Record Snows Embarrass New Gov't "Climate Service" (Updated)

R Street, NW, Washington, DC  February 6, 2010, 7:00 a.m.  Photo by Tom Brown

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a new division called the NOAA Climate Service. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

This is what they are predicting for the USA: "sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters." The new Climate Service's job is to offer "relevant and timely information" about the effects of global warming in our "own backyards."

It seems that the Climate Service folks might be placing a little too much trust in their own prognostications. Just as they were about to hold a big press conference announcing the launch of their services, 30 inches of snow fell on their own backyards and on the National Press Club where the press conference was scheduled to be held. Another 10 to 20 inches is predicted to follow.

For the safety of all concerned, the press conference was held by telephone.

Not to worry, though. The Climate Service wants to reassure you: Global warming is advancing as advertised.

After all, climate is not weather.

Uh huh.

And carbon credits are not an energy-rationing scheme designed to create a huge new revenue source for governments and fat cats everywhere. 

UPDATE (4 p.m. Eastern): And now this time-lapse video of the DC storm, via the ever-scintillating Mad Minerva:

Philly, NYC, Boston, and the Cape: "Get ready, Teddy."
__________
Related:

• Climate Change: Cooking the Books, African Edition...
• Nor'Easter Weather Report: White on White
• Funnin' With Al Gore
• The Climate Change Outside is Frightful (UPDATE)
• Climate Change Brings Snow to French Riviera
• Friday Nite Movie: Climate, Clouds, and Cosmic Ray...
• ClimateGate: Cooking the Books, Swiss Edition
• ClimateGate: Warming Earth by Cooking the Books, S...
• Copenhagen: The "Multitrillion-dollar Shakedown"
• ClimateGate: Science Fiction Level of Accuracy?
• Earth Climate Data: Some Real Stunners
• 22 Inches of Global Warming Hit Flagstaff, AZ
• Copenhagen: The Climate Fiction Experience Begins ...
• ClimateGate: New Zealand Climate Scientists Aren't...
• Make Way for the Code Breakers
• Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus
• What You Did Was Such a Crime

"Hyper-Smart" Obama Detects "Logistical" Problem: NYC Doesn't Want KSM!

Yesterday, Katie Couric asked Barack Obama straight out: "Have you ruled out trying confessed 9-11 mastermind  Kalid Sheik Mohammad in New York City?" To which Obama replied:

I have not ruled it out,  but I think it's important for us to take into account the practical, logistical issues involved. I mean, if you've got a city that's saying no, and a police department that's saying no, and a mayor that's saying no, that makes it difficult.

Ya think?

A really, really smart guy--I mean a really practical guy--the kind of guy who is on top of logistics, might have consulted that city, that police department, and that mayor before making the decision to plant a terrorist magnet in their midst, just a short distance from the former World Trade Center, and give him all the rights and comforts that he denied almost 3,000 innocent people on that terrible day in 2001.

The quote is in the first 22 seconds of the video:

__________

Climate Change: Cooking the Books, African Edition

Last September, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri,  Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC), Director General of the Energy and Resources Institute, and Director of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute, addressed dignitaries attending the UN Summit on Climate Change. 

Pachauri emphasized that he spoke "in the voice of the world’s scientific community" when he claimed that global warming will likely produce widespread thirst and starvation in Africa in a mere 10 years:

In Africa, by 2020, between 75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to water stress due to climate change, and in some countries yields from rainfed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. [Hat tip: David Brewer]

Wow. Up to 250 million people will suffer from lack of water due to global warming in only 10 years? That's disturbing.

But wait! Oops! It turns out that the man the UK Telegraph called "the world's most powerful climate scientist" has again neglected to check his references:

Pachauri’s recent claim of an imminent potential 50% reduction in yields from rain-fed African agriculture comes from misrepresenting an IPCC WGII suggestion that itself is based on an un-peer reviewed paper which quotes unnamed studies that may themselves only reflect the existing fact that North African crop yields drop by 50% in drought years. [Hat tip: David Brewer]

The un-peer reviewed paper on which Pachauri based this claim was issued by a lobby group, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, which suggested, on no particular evidence, that Africa faced the risk, "linked to climate change," of "deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50 per cent during the 2000–2020 period.”

One problem with Pachauri's claim is that, although North African crop yields can be cut in half by drought, no reputable studies have suggested that global warming will plunge Africa into a permanent (or even temporary) state of drought. (Interestingly, greenhouse warming wouldn’t be expected to increase high temperatures near the equator so much as to moderate low temperatures in the temperate zones and the poles. Hat tip to crosspatch.)

Pachauri is not doing too well lately in his previously wildly successful Department of Extravagant Global Warming Doomsday Prognostications. The dust has not settled on the IPCC's claim that the Amazon rainforest "might be wiped out by global warming because they are extremely susceptible to even modest decreases in rainfall."

The sole source for that claim, reports The Sunday Times of London, was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF [World Wildlife Fund]. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article “a mess.”

And the dust is still swirling over Pachauri's absent-minded-professor failure to check the references on the IPCC's absurd claim that the Himalayan glaciers will melt in the next 25 years, which was based on a copy of a copy of a typo of a copy of a single estimate by one researcher who projected glacier melt in 325 years. Three hundred and twenty-five years, not twenty-five years.

Of course, failure to check references is not the kind of forgetfulness that plagues your typical head-in-the-clouds scholar, who is much more likely to be guilty of forgetting to match his or her socks than to be excoriated for presenting for public acceptance a rumor pulled straight out of a global-warming alarmist's tin-foil hat.

Is it too much to imagine that the IPCC could afford a fact checker or two? Or, alternatively, could Pachauri be benefiting by his wild prognostications? A head honcho of the UN? Hmmm.

On May 19, 2009, the European Union announced a $4.5 million (3 million euro) project to study retreat of Himalaya glaciers, with TERI being one of the institutions.

And what is TERI, one of the chief recipients of this largesse? TERI is The Energy and Resources Institute, a think tank in India headed by none other than Pachauri himself. No conflict of interest there, obviously.

It should be noted that Pachauri has categorically stated that “TERI is not involved in this [Himalayan glacier] mistake.”

And if you believe that, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri has a bridge over the River Ganges to sell you, paid for with your tax dollars.

__________
Related:

• Will NASA Dare to Go Where Japan Has Been Before?
• Funnin' With Al Gore
• The Climate Change Outside is Frightful (UPDATE)
• Climate Change Brings Snow to French Riviera
• Friday Nite Movie: Climate, Clouds, and Cosmic Rays
• ClimateGate: Cooking the Books, Swiss Edition
• ClimateGate: Warming Earth by Cooking the Books. South Pole Edition
• Copenhagen: The "Multitrillion-dollar Shakedown"
• ClimateGate: Science Fiction Level of Accuracy?
• Earth Climate Data: Some Real Stunners
• 22 Inches of Global Warming Hit Flagstaff, AZ
• Copenhagen: The Climate Fiction Experience Begins ...
• ClimateGate: New Zealand Climate Scientists Aren't too Hot Either
• Make Way for the Code Breakers
• Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus
• What You Did Was Such a Crime

Nor'Easter Weather Report: White on White

Forecasters said the snowstorm pounding Washington, DC, "could be the biggest for the nation's capital in modern history." As Washington tries to keep up with a storm predicted to drop 2 1/2 feet of snow, the U.S. Weather Service is reminding folks that Washington "has gotten more than a foot of snow only 13 times since 1870."

The storm comes with the predictable results of poor visibility, slick highways, and heavy, wet snow: hundreds of traffic accidents, abandoned vehicles, empty store shelves, downed power lines, falling trees, and collapsing roofs. DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and parts of New Jersey are being blanketed by the white stuff. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 60,000 people are without power.

AJ at The Strata-Sphere reporting in:

We have been shoveling snow for two days now to keep ahead of this. Never seen anything like it in the DC area, and I have lived here almost 50 years.

The image above is from Centreville, Virginia. The image on the right (courtesy lifeontheedges) shows road conditions this morning from Laurel to Greenwood, Delaware. It's stay-off-the-road time, folks.

Here in central New York State, I recently heard a local "expert" confidently broadcasting the notion that unusually big snowstorms are the result of global warming. I have this to say about that:

The biggest snowfall for the Washington-Baltimore area is believed to have been in 1772, before official records were kept, when as much as 3 feet fell, which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson penned in their diaries.

I guess the Founders could have avoided record-setting blizzards if they only could have been driving "low-carbon-footprint" electric cars instead of carriages drawn by carbon-munching horses.
__________
Related:

• Will NASA Dare to Go Where Japan Has Been Before?
• Funnin' With Al Gore
• The Climate Change Outside is Frightful (UPDATE)
• Climate Change Brings Snow to French Riviera
• Friday Nite Movie: Climate, Clouds, and Cosmic Rays
• ClimateGate: Cooking the Books, Swiss Edition
• ClimateGate: Warming Earth by Cooking the Books. South Pole Edition
• Copenhagen: The "Multitrillion-dollar Shakedown"
• ClimateGate: Science Fiction Level of Accuracy?
• Earth Climate Data: Some Real Stunners
• 22 Inches of Global Warming Hit Flagstaff, AZ
• Copenhagen: The Climate Fiction Experience Begins ...
• ClimateGate: New Zealand Climate Scientists Aren't too Hot Either
• Make Way for the Code Breakers
• Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus
• What You Did Was Such a Crime

Tonight's Nor'Easter Theme Song

Stay warm and dry, everyone!

__________

The Real Unemployment Picture

Discouraged Workers from January 1994 to January 2010:

__________

Crotch Bomber's Houston Imam: The Truth Will Out (Video) (Updated)

One of the teachers of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the infamous crotchbomer, is Yasir Qadhi, a homegrown "moderate" Islamic Scholar, who was born in Houston of Pakistani parents. From Fox News:

Here's a sample of what Qadhi has to say when he's not appearing on US television or sitting on panels at U.S. universities:

No Supreme Court, no system of government, no democracy where they vote! Can you believe it, a group of people coming together and voting? And the majority vote will then be the law of the land? What gives you the right to prohibit something or allow something? Who gave you this right? Are you Creators? Are you all-knowledgeable?

Sounds like Qadhi thinks only imams should have a say in how societies operate.

In addition to his numerous TV appearances, Qadhi has access to some of the most respected podiums in the Western world, including the U.S. National Terrorism Center, Harvard Law School, and University of Edinburgh. He is on record as describing the Holocaust as "false propaganda."

Qadhi has complained that Muslims suffer from a "presumption of guilt."

Would it be too much to presume that many Muslims do not approve of democracy?

UPDATE (8:00 p.m. Eastern):

It gets worse.  One of Qadhi's favorite people is Ali Al-Timimi,

who was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of soliciting others to wage war against the United States. Even after Timimi's conviction, to Qadhi, he is someone "who I can say (with pride) that fifteen years ago, back in the early 90s, he played an instrumental role in shaping and directing me to take the path that has led me to where I am today."

If you have a strong stomach, read the rest at Atlas Shrugs.
__________
Related:

• The Christmas Bomber: Curiouser and Curiouser
• A Question of Enemy Identification
• Christmas Bomber's Briefs: The Photo
• What? Two Gitmo Guys Planned the Christmas Bomb Plot?
• Christmas Bomber: No Passport. No Luggage. No Problem
• Christmas Bomber: "I don't have funds" for Lawyer ..

About that "Jihad Isn't Terrorism" Thing: 5 U.S. Nationals Sweating It Out in Pakistan

Early in January I reported about these five young Muslim men, ages 19 to 25, who left their homes and families in the Washington, DC area and headed east, aiming to help Taliban militants in Pakistan "battle U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan and die as martyrs," according to the Pakistani police who captured them after they were turned in by suspicious locals. Back home, their families had already discovered the farewell video they left behind "showing scenes of war and casualties and saying Muslims must be defended." In Pakistan, the militants that the group managed to contact reportedly didn't want anything to do with them because they lacked trusted references. There also was a language barrier: none of the group was able to communicate in fluent Urdu.

Soon after their capture, and before they had been charged, Egyptian-American Ray Zamzam, 22 (bottom row, right), boasted, "We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism."

Now, from PTI via Jihad Watch, comes word that the five have been charged, and that their charge
sheets allege that they wanted to target important installations in Pakistan, to fight in Afghanistan, and to embrace martyrdom.

You can't always get what you want. These young men sought martyrdom, but they're getting jail. And they don't like it. The story they are sticking to is that they never committed any crime and never had any intention of committing any crime. They've also managed to claim that they have been "subjected to torture by the FBI and the Pakistani police." They've appealed to the media for help.

The identities attached to the mugshots above are: Pakistani Americans Umer Farooq and Waqar Hussain; Ethiopian Americans Aman Yamar and Ahmed Abdullah Mimi; and Egyptian American Ramy Zamzam.
__________
Related post: "We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism"

Will NASA Dare to Go Where Japan Has Been Before?

 

In a memorable exchange featuring two Mercury 7 astronauts in the film, The Right Stuff, Astronaut Gordon Cooper points out, "You boys know what makes this bird go up? FUNDING makes this bird go up." Astronaut Gus Grissom backs him up with, "He's right. No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

If Congress backs up Barack Obama in his proposed 2011 budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA's old vision of pioneering manned space flight will be "reset" to Obama's new vision of tracking "climate change." From the Associated Press:

Obama's budget would kill former President George W. Bush's $100 billion mission to return to the moon, on the seventh anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

[snip]

The budget is much more about spending closer to Earth. It promises a speeding up of launching new Earth's observing satellites, especially to monitor climate change. It includes money to fly a replacement for a carbon dioxide monitoring satellite that fell into the ocean last year instead of going into orbit.

Despite deepening scandals that make the "science" of global warming look like a house of cards about to make contact with an occluded mesocyclone tornado, Obama is determined to put NASA in charge of demonstrating that we really really really do need Cap and Trade, in whatever form he can push it through.

It is a little advertised but uncomfortable fact (for global warming alarmists, at least) that, although the U.S. carbon dioxide monitoring satellite hit the drink, Japan's carbon dioxide monitoring satellite, named IBUKI, made it into orbit (see image above) and recovered very interesting data. According to that data, the United States, rather than being the expected major producer of widely dreaded CO2, actually lags behind most of the world in CO2 production.

Yes, the U.S. has one of the world's smallest CO2 footprints!

Below is the Japanese chart of worldwide CO2 production. The little dots show various concentrations of CO2 in the air, with the blue dots representing lower concentrations, green dots representing higher concentrations, and orange and red dots representing the highest concentrations.
 

 

Notice who the CO2 culprits really are? India, China, Northern Africa, Southern Africa, Australia, and Eastern Europe. See who's lagging behind, primarily because of the efficiency and environmental consciousness of our operations?

Evidence like this isn't going to make it any easier for NASA to fulfill Obama's dreams of a (purportedly) rapidly overheating Earth being saved by carbon credits bought and paid for by guilty Americans.

Read more about it at The Strata-Sphere

__________

Related posts:

• Funnin' With Al Gore
• The Climate Change Outside is Frightful (UPDATE)
• Climate Change Brings Snow to French Riviera
• Friday Nite Movie: Climate, Clouds, and Cosmic Ray...
• ClimateGate: Cooking the Books, Swiss Edition
• ClimateGate: Warming Earth by Cooking the Books, S...
• Copenhagen: The "Multitrillion-dollar Shakedown"
• ClimateGate: Science Fiction Level of Accuracy?
• Earth Climate Data: Some Real Stunners
• 22 Inches of Global Warming Hit Flagstaff, AZ
• Copenhagen: The Climate Fiction Experience Begins ...
• ClimateGate: New Zealand Climate Scientists Aren't...
• Make Way for the Code Breakers
• Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus
• What You Did Was Such a Crime