Fables of the Reconstruction (Or, How to Make Your Own Hockey Stick)

Via Iowahawk - not humor but real analysis.

What the leaked emails reveal, among other things, is some of that bit of principal component sausage making. But more disturbing, they reveal that the actual data going into the reconstruction model -- the instrumental temperature data and the proxy variables themselves -- were rife for manipulation. In the laughable euphemism of Philip Jones, "value added homogenized data." The data I provided here was the real, value added global temperature and proxy data, because Phil told me so. Trust me!

Read the whole thing.

Global Warming and the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."

Not one person in ten thousand has read the infamous “protocols” written at the turn of the 20th Century in Russia. It is interesting as an historical artifact. What gave it currency and what caused it to be widely accepted was that it validated the anti-Jewish prejudice of many in Russia, Europe and the United States at that time.

The Protocols were introduced at a time when the old aristocratic order was breaking down and meritocracy coupled with capitalism was gaining ascendency. The Protocols supposedly “revealed” that a grand Jewish conspiracy was bent on world control via domination of the media and finance.

The fact that the “Protocols” was a hoax was not believed by those for whom Jewish bankers and media moguls were assumed to be behind the transformation of society. And make no mistake, there were Jewish bankers and media moguls to prove that the threat was “real.”

With this much evidence to validate their theories, who wanted to disprove a theory that made so much sense?

Man Made (Anthropogenic) Global Warming (MMGW) has a great deal in common with the Protocols. Just as it’s obvious that there are powerful Jews in publishing and finance, who can argue with the fact that winters have been warmer than they were in the 1960s? And that as the earth’s population becomes more industrialized – as Chinese peasants move from transport by horse, donkey or oxcart to cars and trucks – they use more hydrocarbons. So it’s intuitively obvious that man is responsible for climate change leading to the heat death of the earth; just as it’s obvious that Jews were responsible for the destruction of the old order, the revolution in Russia, and the eventual domination of the earth.

Right?

No one really asked for proof of the validity of the Protocols, just as the proof of MMGW was not an issue for true believers. It was enough that their beliefs were validated by the right people. In the case of MMGW, by people who went by the title of “scientist;” a designation that is afforded a degree of belief that was previously reserved for clergy in an earlier age.

And what is the “logical” reason that is being given for MMGW in the largest gathering of true believers in the world? See below for the “scientific” rationale.

Mikkel Blaabjerg Poulsen’s “Please Help the World” film from the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009.

This is what the science of manmade global warming consists of: an apocalyptic lie backed by faked data fed into hopelessly compromised computer programs which even its enablers gave up on. It morphed from a scientific pursuit into a pursuit of grants and ideology and vast transfers of wealth, at each stage torrents of dollars would be diverted to make the chosen elite very rich and very powerful.

There was money and power to be made by persecuting the Jews following the publication of the "Protocols" and there is money and power to be made in regulating carbon dioxide. And those who engaged in both knew they were doing "good work."

Be careful what you wish for.

As the majority of the country applauds Obama’s defense of a robust American foreign policy in Oslo, we should examine our assumptions.

Is it really self-evident that we want to see an activist foreign policy employed by acolytes of Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright who accused Israel of racism? Would we really be comfortable with the foreign policy initiatives of Bill ”Pentagon Bomber” Ayers? Of Van “I am a communist” Jones? Of Anita “My favorite political philosopher was Mao” Dunn?

Is it unfair to point out that many in the Obama administration and in his past are not in the mainstream of American thought and that this gives us a clue as to what a robust foreign policy would be like? We can see what an Obama administration is doing to revolutionize America at home, do we really want to see a radical Left foreign policy enforced by American troops?

I view Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan as a cynical political move designed for domestic purposes. To abandon the field after repeatedly telling the country that Afghanistan was the “good war” would have damaged his image beyond repair. The surge is “boob bait for the Bubbas” as Moynihan famously said: not enough to get the job done but enough to placate the country.

If the sides we took in Honduras and during the anti-government riots in Iran are an indication, I do not want to applaud an Obama administration should it ever take its eye off of domestic policy and focus on foreign fields.

The need to believe that everything's normal.

Many years ago there was a brief TV show which had as its highlight talking dogs. The dogs’ owners had trained their pets to utter sounds that sounded like a faint echo of human speech. After being prompted for a minute or so the dog would utter sound that sounded like a distorted version of human speech. The one word that I remember a dog sounding out was “hamburger.” And the crowd applauded.

I was reminded of that after Obama gave his acceptance speech at Oslo’s Nobel Peace ceremony today. In it, the President of the United States stopped, just for few minutes apologizing for America and defended our role in the world. And the crowd (the American crowd, not the one in Norway) went wild.

Why?

Because we have been conditioned to hear Obama tell us what a rotten country the US has been until He ascended to the Presidency. So to hear him say that America has defended freedom in the years before he became the country’s leader was a bit of a shock. Sort of like hearing that dog, so many years ago, utter a word the sounded like human speech.

Has Obama been transformed into a Kennedy, a Reagan, a Bush? Alas, no, because for the rest of the speech he recounted how he has transformed this sinful nation. There appear to be some who are so desperate to validate their belief in Obama that one speech, at a forum of "... well dressed European Lefty Twits", has changed the man who had – as his spiritual advisor – Jeremiah Wright, and as his political associate (and possible ghost writer) - Bill Ayers.

The need to believe that everything is normal is very strong.

Some of the “Homogenized” Temperature Data is False

Read the whole thing.

When the CRU at East Anglia disclosed that it had lost some of the raw temperature data, leaving only the “homogenized” data, some honest commentators expressed the hope that the homogenizing was competently done.

Anyone who has been following Climate Audit for the last few years knows that at least some of the adjustments to the raw data done by the major data depositories appear to have been incompetently done at best. The statistical techniques used in the scientific backwater of historical climatology are often ad hoc, bearing little relation to the techniques that are standard in other fields. In particular, their techniques for handling missing data are particularly unscientific.

Perhaps the most accessible blog post demonstrating the effects of homogenization adjustments on a set of temperature records is by Willis Eschenbach at Watts Up With That.

Here's the raw data:


Here's the data after the "scientists" pushing global warming get done with it:



If I did this with my portfolio performance reports, I would be in jail. This is Bernie Madoff stuff in the science arena.

Jon Stewart is Still an A*Hole But His Comments are an Indication that Obama is Losing the Popular Culture.

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National Press Club Songs

The National Press Club held an event at which Barney Frank & Sarah Palin co-hosted. They took the opportunity to sing a parody song lampooning Rush Limbaugh. With all of the events in the news, it's amazing how fixated these goons are by dissent in the media in the form of Limbaugh, Beck and Fox News.

Here is one person's response (it's both funnier than their song and more politically incorrect):

On the first day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: World government based on one tree.

On the second day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: a two trillion dollar deficit

On the third day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: Three bows to foreign rulers

On the fourth day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: forearms as toned as Rolo's

On the fifth day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: Five reasons why its all Bush's fault

On the sixth day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: six hours to vote on a thousand page trillion dollar bill (or the world would end)

On the seventh day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: Seven nice things from the British he re-gifted

On the eight day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: Eight allies he'd screwed over

On the ninth day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: Nine months to decide on Afghanistan

On the tenth day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: Ten percent unemployment

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: lots of eleventh-hour resignations

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Obama gave to me: Twelve carols schoolteachers wrote to him

Why Switzerland Has The Lowest Crime Rate In The World

Mark Steyn Guts Andrew Revkin Like a Fish, Then Shows the Media in its Full Politically Correct Glory

I'm beginning to feel sorry for Andrew "Andy" Revkin, Senior Climate Alarmist at The New York Times. He does not emerge well from his chummy e-mails with the Settled Science enforcers ("You took the words right out of my mouth"), and evidently he resents the notion that he was merely a willing dupe: ...

So the other day he makes the briefest of references to the news that during the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen the city's prostitutes will be offering their services free to "climate campaigners". He eschewed the cheap jests - nothing in there about what to do if you're a climate scientist and it's not just the temperature rising; no jokes about letting you sample her tree rings. Nonetheless, even the mere mention of this story from the Euro-press prompted Professor Michael Schlesinger, Head of Warm-Mongering at the University of Illinois, to take the metaphorical tire-iron to Revkin's legs:

Climate prostitutes?
Shame on you for this gutter reportage.
This is the second time this week I have written you thereon, the first about giving space in your blog to the Pielkes.
The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists... I sense that you are about to experience the 'Big Cutoff' from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included.
Copenhagen prostitutes?
Unbelievable and unacceptable.

And then, as an exit ...

Another Case of PTSD?

...and this time the poor guy's not even in the military! From Channel 12 WBNG:

A Binghamton University professor is dead tonight after being stabbed by an anthropology student.

That's one way of putting it. Another is that Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani killed Richard T Antoun, author of Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic and Jewish Movements.

Iran Demands Nurses In Bolivia Wear Hijabs

Coming to a hospital near you:

On Wednesday, November 24, Iranian demands that female nurses don the hijab in response to Iran’s providing $1.2 million for funding of the new El Alto city hospital in Bolivia sparked a national outcry among women’s rights advocates within Bolivia. In an international teleconference in La Paz held between Bolivian President, Evo Morales, and Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to celebrate the hospital’s opening, nurses were shown wearing hijabs as part of their new uniform regulations.

This imposition of political Islamic pseudo-religious attire from another country is causing a rift within Bolivian political ranks. Even though the Morales administration is the profoundly socialist MAS party, the Iranian demand is still seen as an affront on Bolivian cultural integrity especially in a country with a Roman Catholic majority.

Lourdes Millares, the Deputy for the Democratic and Social Power Party called the Iranian hijab demand, “…an assault on the dignity of women…” and excoriated Morales for, “…submission to the rules of another government.”

Millares went on to state, “We must make clear to the Iranian government that that hospital is Bolivian territory. They have made their money is one thing but this is Bolivian territory.”

Although Millares finds it hard to believe that the hospital would willingly impose the hijab, the government run newspaper, Cambio, states that the hijab reflects, “…health, cleanliness and respect for the culture of Iran.” However, Health Minister, Ramiro Tapia, also called the new hijab regulation an, “…assault on women.” His office is under heavy demand by outraged Bolivians for an explanation of the veil, which is not an Islamic religious requirement, but a visible manifestation of aggressive Islamic political conquest much like secular clothing and colors represent gang territorial boundaries.

56 Newspapers to Sing As One About Copenhagen

Via Legal Insurrection ...

Despite mounting evidence that key climate researchers were less than honest, and other indications that the science is not settled, tomorrow 56 newspapers will run a common front page editorial saying we have 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation':

Tomorrow 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency....

The graphic below, reprinted from The Guardian in Britain, show the newspapers which will be participating. Here's what's really motivating the alarmism, from the editorial:

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions.... And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

Social justice and fairness? I thought this was supposed to be about science.

Thankfully, we still have the internet, and bloggers who still care about uncovering the truth as to climate change. We certainly can't rely on the mainstream newspapers anymore, if we ever could.

Glenn Reynolds comments:

YOUR FREE, FIERCELY INDEPENDENT PRESS AT WORK: 56 Newspapers to Sing As One About Copenhagen. Fiercely independent.

Are Politicians or Scientists to Blame for Climategate?

Via Powerline ...

This was a big weekend for the Washington Post. In a front-page story today, it exposed, albeit almost sub silentio, the incompetence of the Obama administration's decision-making process with respect to Afghanistan. And in a front-page story yesterday, it reported, for the first time I believe, on Climategate.

Why did it take the Post so long to provide an account of Climategate? It seems to me that the authors, David Farhenthold and Juliet Eilperin, reveal the reason when they claim that the "scandal has done what many slide shows and public-service ads could not: focus public attention on the science of a warming planet."
...
The Post suggests that science was the victim of politics. In other words, politicians have demanded more certainty than science can provide, and this created pressure on scientists to fudge results or give short shrift to science they don't like.

This is a questionable hypothesis. It seems just as likely that fanatical scientists, with opportunistic politicians as their hand-maidens, have helped create the frenzied political atmosphere that some now blame for the bad science. To me, it's a "chicken or the egg" sort of question that's of little interest...

Perhaps it is an appreciation of these costs, or more likely an appreciation of their resonance in the public mind, that induces some scientists to engage in propaganda, instead true science, so as to create undue alarm.

The more things Hope and Change…

From Code Pink via Moe Lane...

The Obama Recovery In Full Effect: Deficits Running 25% Higher Than Highest Estimates

From Doug Ross Journal:

Red ink: the government is drowning in it. The first two months of fiscal 2010 set a new record. Curiously, this report was issued late Friday -- the slowest news day -- and it has been completely ignored by state-run media.

Here's the updated graph showing theory vs. reality. It's as if the Climategate scientists were making the projections.

If the deficits continue to overshoot prior estimates, which they almost certainly will, the country is headed for total, hyper-inflationary meltdown: China and Japan will simply cease buying debt that can't be repaid.

Oh, and recall that these totals don't even include state and local governments -- like the Blue State Utopias of California, Michigan, New York and New Jersey -- that are hemorrhaging revenues and residents as fast as they can pack their belongings, stuff them in U-Hauls and clear out for greener pastures.

That deficit represents a 25% overshoot.

Congratulations, Mr. President: your strategy is working.

The Fiction Of Climate Science

It was not all that long ago that this was the climate story coming from Washington, scientists and science popularizers like the Smithsonian.

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age."

You can't blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed's mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today's scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work.

In 2002 I stood in a room of the Smithsonian. One entire wall charted the cooling of our globe over the last 60 million years. This was no straight line. The curve had two steep dips followed by leveling. There were no significant warming periods. Smithsonian scientists inscribed it across some 20 feet of plaster, with timelines.

So what have they done to airbrush the past?

Last year, I went back. That fresco is painted over. The same curve hides behind smoked glass, shrunk to three feet but showing the same cooling trend. Hey, why should the Smithsonian put its tax-free status at risk? If the politicians decide to whip up public fear in a different direction, get with it, oh ye subsidized servants. Downplay that embarrassing old chart and maybe nobody will notice.

Sorry, I noticed.

Time was when Americans laughed and marvelled at the Soviet press and textbooks as they removed pictures and comments about people who had been "disappeared" by Comrade Stalin. It's not nearly so funny when it's your media, government and scientific community is now engaged in something eerily similar.

The echoes of the past have not been removed, but given time the people who remember and bring these things to light will be tagged as "deniers." So it may be a good time to memorialize a few of these things.

The fall of Saigon in the '70s may have distracted the shrill pronouncements about the imminent ice age. Science's prediction of "A full-blown, 10,000 year ice age," came from its March 1, 1975 issue. The Christian Science Monitor observed that armadillos were retreating south from Nebraska to escape the "global cooling" in its Aug. 27, 1974 issue.

That armadillo caveat seems reminiscent of today's tales of polar bears drowning due to glaciers disappearing.

Obama's "Safe Schools Czar" Reading List

At Gateway Pundit you can read excerpts from the reading list of books that "Safe Schools Czar" Kevin Jennings compiled while head of GLSEN.

GLSEN’s stated mission is to empower gay youth in the schools and to stop harassment by other students. It encourages the formation of Gay Student Alliances and condemns the use of hateful words. GLSEN also strives to influence the educational curriculum to include materials which the group believes will increase tolerance of gay students and decrease bullying. To that end, GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books that it claims “furthers our mission to ensure safe schools for all students.” In other words, these are the books that GLSEN’s directors think all kids should be reading: gay kids should read them to raise their self-esteem, and straight kids should read them in order to become more aware and tolerant and stop bullying gay kids. Through GLSEN’s online ordering system, called “GLSEN BookLink,” featured prominently on their Web site, teachers can buy the books to use as required classroom assignments, or students can buy them to read on their own.

In reality, it appears that many of the books on the list are homosexual porn. I will not put any of it on my website, but click on the link to Gateway Pundit to read the excerpts.

This is the world of the Obama administration.

THE CBC’S REX MURPHY ON CLIMATEGATE:

Via Instapundit.

MSM Rises from the Dead?

I have often commented on the fact that newspaper industry is the only one I know that makes it a point to deliberately insult its customers. This trend may be coming to an end. The Dallas Morning News will now have editors reporting to sales managers.

So what will be the effect? Instead of printing press releases from the Democratic National Committee we’ll read press releases from local advertisers. On the whole they will be more truthful and much less bigoted.

The newspaper business could be looking up.

Is Afghanistan Obama’s Viet Nam?

I have referred before to the Left’s glory in the American defeat in Viet Nam. To hear them tell it, it was a dirty imperialist war in league with a corrupt South Vietnamese government fought by baby killing, torturing murderers that led to our righteous defeat.

Forget for a moment about the enemy that long-ago war. On our side we had a reluctant president, Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to “manage” a war to a draw – not win it - who committed troops but pulled his punches and whose party was vehemently against the war in the first place.

If you are of a certain age, Obama’s war in Afghanistan, the Left’s vehemently anti-war rhetoric, the demonization of the Afghan government and Obama’s desire to avoid making victory a goal while increasing troop levels is a grainy image of a movie we’ve seen once before. Marx argued that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Viet Nam was a tragedy. Unfortunately, there is nothing funny about sending as many as a hundred thousand brave Americans to Afghanistan in a false display of resolve.

Another blogger who ties Afghanistan to Viet Nam is Scott Johnson at Powerline.

Obama’s words and actions prove that he’s not sending troops there to win. The strategy is to buy time and demonstrate that he’s not a wimp. Nina Easton claimed that Obama was showing courage by defying the radical Leftists of his party. In Washington circles risking the loss of a few points in a popularity poll is defined as courage. No Nina, courage is taking the bullets and bombs of an enemy that’s trying to kill you. All Obama risks is four more years before an early retirement with full presidential pension, his own presidential library and the opportunity to cash in on his fame with book deals, lecture fees and seats on boards of directors. It’s a Dan Rather form of “Courage.”

UPDATE: I got an e-mail from a prominent columnist agreeing with my assessment of the "courage" Obama is exhibiting. I shared a few more thoughts in my reply to him.

Sending 30,000 more troops for 18 months is a sure recipe for failure. McCrystal asked for many more troops (as many as 60,000 I believe although the 40,000 number which is most frequently cited would give him a good chance). But sending fewer and managing the war from Washington with a date certain for the beginning of withdrawal is the most blatant and cynical political move that I have ever witnessed. All it will accomplish is the death and dismemberment of more American servicemen all for the purpose of burnishing Obama's credentials. Rush Limbaugh calls Obama "cold" and this is as cold as it gets.

Republicans who support this move will live to regret it because in the end he will say not only that Bush put him in an impossible situation ("It's all Bush's fault") but that he was forced to sacrifice these soldiers because of the drumbeat for war on the Right. The Left will take out the Viet Nam playbook and tell of the atrocities committed by the Americans and the corruption of the Afghan government. The brave or foolish Afghans who supported us will be slaughtered and a book or two will be written about the "Afghan killing fields" without a mention of how this could have been avoided.

Rush should do an hour on this and repeat from time to time because it will happen like this as sure as the sun rises in the East. It's another "I told you so."

Really good question!

Who's winning the stonewalling contest? Tiger vs the
local police, or the MSM vs the idea that Climategate's a major story?