Strong As An Ox And Nearly As Smart

Non Sequitur - A Natural Global Warming Denier Cartoon

2012-01-12T13:37:00.000-08:00

(Click on cartoon to enlarge it)

This Non Sequitur cartoon by Wiley Miller ran in our area newspapers the San Francisco Chronicle and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat yesterday (January 11, 2011). In the same newspapers, and in on-line news aggregators such as Drudge Report and Google News, were reports of record setting snow storms in Alaska, and the London Daily Mail reported that thousands of Britons were trapped by 18 feet of snow at Alpine ski resorts.

At Cordova, Alaska, the snow was so deep that 97 members of the Alaska National Guard have been put on snow shoveling duty. And they are struggling just to keep up.

Last snow season, we Californians were treated (or subjected) to a very long and heavy snow season. The Central Sierra Snow Lab reported 207 inches (17.2 feet), the fifth highest snow depth in roughly the past 100 years.

I hope Mr. Miller enjoys the snow-free days wherever he is, and counts his blessings that he isn't shovelling snow in Alaska, or trapped in the Alps. Since the Earth has been warming naturally and sporadically for 400 years since the Little Ice Age, and recently has been cooling as much as warming as CO2 steadily increases, perhaps Mr. Miller will stop denying that climate change is natural, and has been for billions of years.

Card Carrying Former Member of the Working Poor

2012-01-03T23:51:00.000-08:00

In a letter to our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer of Gualala, California, a UC Davis history major erroneously said I insult the working poor whose taxes pay (my) military pension. However, the bottom 48% pay none while the top 25% pay 90% of personal income taxes, so the working poor pay nobody anything. Fifty years ago my poor working-class family paid income taxes instead of receiving tax credits. Now Alice and I pay income taxes (including on Social Security) which cover most of my retirement.

I also understand him confusing facts from studies of employment and single-parent families from Sweden and the United States and considering them my opinions, since few today value facts over opinions.

I dont insult the working poor, since for many years that included my family. After we towed our trailer to Point Arena in 1949 we lived in an abandoned high school. In 1954, when I was 12 and brother Ron was11, we borrowed a workhorse and dug a full-sized basement and helped build the house east of the Pacific Charter School. Pop was an oil field roughneck before becoming a lumberjack, and Mom cleaned the Arena Theater and hotels before her crippled leg prevented her from walking downtown, so she cut and set hair in our kitchen.

I bucked hay bales for Vic Soldani and Walt Stornetta, worked at Bojock Lumber and the Biaggi Lane veneer mill, hand-milked a cow, and other jobs. My friends did as much or more. None of the best Point Arena High graduates, including me, received scholarships.

To supplement my Air Force income I drove school buses, and later taught accounting, management, and economics at night for eight colleges in a 10-year period.

The history major apparently overlooked my solutions: pursue marketable skills and education; go where the jobs are and work hard; discourage single parenthood.

Income Inequality is Caused by the 99%

2011-12-26T00:04:00.000-08:00

It is an inconvenient truth that income inequality is not caused by the 1%, but by the growing segment of society which lacks marketable skills and education. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 40% of babies are born to single moms and each year half a million teens have children. Are Republicans the only ones who think this is a problem?

A study in Sweden found that single-parent children were twice as likely to have serious health problems, addictions, mental illnesses, and to commit suicide. This was not a right-wing hate study. Of course, other studies have found the same problems here which are contributing to a rapidly growing underclass that requires ever-increasing support services such as day care, Medicaid, housing assistance, and remedial education, to name just a few chronic and increasing problem areas. Will these problems go away if we avoid looking at a primary root cause? That’s what we’ve been doing, and it’s only getting worse.

Unemployment is bad at 8.6% (12% in California), and only looks like it is getting better because of seasonal hiring. However, good jobs go unfilled because Americans don’t have the education, skills, or required willingness to work. Many high-tech, high-paying jobs go begging unless businesses can hire foreign workers. In Wyoming (3.5% unemployment) over 16,000 high-paying energy jobs go unfilled because Americans are unwilling to relocate and work hard. Fifty years ago in Point Arena many of us worked at jobs that only illegal immigrants will take now, which depresses wages for unskilled and undereducated Americans, including college graduates.

The cartoon “Zits” summed it up nicely: Jeremy wants to major in music theory to “totally justify playing in a band while racking up $100,000 in student loans and graduating with minimal marketable skills.” Unfortunately, he’s not alone.

Our 2011 Christmas Letter

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah

Writing our annual Christmas letter is a challenge, but physically getting them all folded, stuffed, addressed, and stamped should be an Olympic event. I just mailed out the last of 360 cards. The easy part is recording our travels, which were compressed into the last half of the year so we could fulfill our “presidential” obligations in the first half – Alice in her Book Club, and me in Lions. We finished our terms, then headed to the East Coast in late June for almost a month. We saw three Broadway plays: War Horse (a moving World War I drama with life-size and lifelike horse puppets, now a movie), Priscilla Queen of the Desert (funny and entertaining gay musical), and Book of Mormon (great reviews, lousy musical – Alice says she liked it, which I guess shows you don’t need memorable songs and dances anymore to have a hit on Broadway if you do it in the infantile, raunchy South Park style. There is nothing brave or daring about ridiculing a small, peaceful religion like the Mormons. I would have been impressed if South Park did The Book of Islam, and showed Mohammad at his mythologically inspired best).

We did the Fourth of July in Bristol, Rhode Island, and toured Connecticut, and especially enjoyed the Mark Twain Museum. Hartford was a revelation; I never knew how Hartford had been such an important city in the Industrial Revolution in America.

Next we went to exotic Bakersfield for a Combs Cousins Reunion. I only know a few of my almost fifty first cousins – and innumerable second cousins – but it brought back memories of how Pop used to keep in touch with everyone.

We spent all of October in southeast Asia – The Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Although we were there during the big floods, we had a great trip. In retrospect we would liked to have spent more time sightseeing in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are amazingly energetic and capitalistic – our kind of people.

In 2013 we’ll be going to Panama and Costa Rica for certain, and hopefully to Colorado for Alice’s aunt’s 100^th birthday celebration.

While we’re home here on the Pacific coast among the redwoods, our typical day begins leisurely – no alarm clock. I feed Buddy and brush his teeth, then run a few miles. Alice has breakfast, listens to talkradio or recorded Great Courses lectures, reads the newspapers, then hopes for time to read books and to write her own. Lately she’s had to put in quite a bit of time on her business, Vulcan Incorporated (manufacturing and distributing industrial baling wire), but still makes sure to swim in her pool, or bicycle in the hills and down to the cliff above the ocean. Then we share a two-mile walk to the beach with Buddy, and just before going to bed we all take another mile walk so Buddy can do his nighttime piddles and poo. Buddy is 14 1/2 now, and all this exercise is probably what keeps him going.

In between exercise periods, we do our club activities, work at the computers – Alice on spreadsheets for Vulcan, planning our trips, emailing friends and family, writing her autobiography – when Alice read a bit to her eldest daughter and three of her grandchildren, they wouldn’t let her stop - and me researching natural climate change for my anti-Al Gore book – we keep very busy for retirees.

We wish you a safe, sane, happy, and prosperous New Year!

Alice, Michael and Buddy

Mainstream Media is Hateful to Occupy

2011-12-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

Criticizing Occupy activists is considered hateful, judging from responses to recent criticisms of Occupy in our local weekly newspaper, The Independent Coast Observer. Now it looks like the left-leaning Press Democrat should also be tagged “hateful” because of their November 28 editorial, “More muddled messages from Occupy folks”, which noted that the attempt to disrupt “Black Friday” shopping damaged Santa Rosa Occupy’s credibility and focus.

Occupy Wall Street’s national shopping boycott failed spectacularly, as Black Friday sales were up a record 7%, showing OWS has no clout as a national movement.

The ultra-left San Francisco Chronicle was “hateful” two weeks ago when in an editorial “Oakland says ‘enough’”, the Chronicle opined: “Oakland leaders finally acted decisively to remove a sprawling and unruly camp from the city's central downtown plaza. It was the right move, one that San Francisco should consider in responding to a similar tent city that's taken over an Embarcadero park.”

In another “hateful” editorial, the Chronicle concluded: “The Occupy movement is no longer associated with protests over income inequality or Wall Street misconduct. Now it's about squalor and public safety, thanks largely to its nonexistent leadership and disorganization.”

What does OWS want? Income redistribution no doubt; having government take the rightful property of one group and give it to another, also known as theft. “When you take from Peter and give to Paul, you can count on Paul’s support.”

The rest of the OWS message is the usual Liberal hodgepodge of special interest issues, made particularly incoherent by its lack of leadership and direction. As OWS camps become full-time homeless camps and OWS activists flee their squalor – and Winter rain and freezing – the backlash by the media, municipalities, and weary voters will cause the Left to wish Occupy Wall Street never happened.

And as a coherent movement, it hasn’t.

Democrats' "Science" Of Belief

2011-09-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

An Independent Coast Observer (our local weekly newspaper, Gualala, California) reader says not believing in evolution is not believing in science, and that this should be a litmus test for voters. Interestingly, since studies show a higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans doubt evolution, I support them not voting for a candidate who believes in evolution.

Here in Northern California, not believing in science defines Democrat. Among many local unscientific belief systems are opposition to genetically modified foods and irradiation of food (and Smart meters), belief that organic foods are better, and of course, belief in catastrophic man-caused global warming.

Voluminous and rigorous scientific studies confirm that genetically modified foods (GMO) taste better, last longer, produce more using less fertilizer, pesticide, and water, and provide more healthful nutrition. A study concluded that opposing attitudes towards GMO, rather than science, were the determinant factors. Similar studies have shown that irradiated foods are better and safer, but again attitudes trump science.

Two years ago, the British Nutrition Foundation said exhaustive research by the Food Standards Agency confirms its advice that 'organic food offers no benefits over conventionally produced food in terms of nutrition'. Aside from psychic reward, the significant additional cost of organic food wastes resources. Organics also pose health threats; for example, an E. coli outbreak in Germany this year resulted in 3,900 cases including 908 instances of severe kidney failure and 52 deaths.

This week Al Gore underlined the desperation of Warmistas by presenting a 24-hour “Gore-bore-athon”. Given that global temperature have been flat for fifteen years, sea level increase became decrease, and accumulated tropical cyclone energy has fallen to its lowest level in thirty years, Al abandoned global warming and grasped “climate wierding” (all severe weather events are caused by man).

Dr. Tim Ball, Climatologist, noted: “Gore is taking normal events and claiming they are abnormal.”

And that’s unscientific.

Where Has All The Greenland Ice Gone? London Times Atlas Clueless

2011-09-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

The London Times Atlas recently created an incredible error, one that is hard to explain by rational analysis. According to its publisher, HarperCollins, the atlas is "turning Greenland 'green' because the new edition has had to erase 15% of Greenland's once permanent ice cover". Scientists immediately jumped all over this. Were it true, sea levels would have risen a bit more than three feet in twelve years, instead of less than the half-inch observed. This Guardian article Times Atlas ice error attempts to make lemonade from this lemon, but ends leaving the sour taste of advocacy science.

This is the comment I posted to the Guardian:
As Greenland ice supposedly shrank during the past 15 years, the obvious question is where did the water go after the ice melted? To answer "the sea" may seem as obvious as the question, but wait! Slow sea level increase has recently become sea level decrease, and the missing water must be somewhere. It's not in the oceans.

Quietly, without blaring headlines, in many inconvenient areas of the Earth, ice caps and glaciers are growing. Indeed, simply Googling "Greenland ice growing" produces links to many recent studies of ice cap and glacier growth worldwide. Antarctica as a whole is gaining ice. Ditto Greenland. And glaciers in Asia and North America too.

Of course, nothing is as simple as Al Gore and the Warmistas tell us. Historically, tepid water intrusion from the Atlantic into the Arctic caused a huge reduction of sea ice. This then became the source of the water vapor which was carried over the Hudson Bay area and produced incredible snow fall, feeding the ice cap that eventually extended over Canada and the northern United States. In the process, sea levels fell over 400 feet, eventually cutting off the Atlantic flow into the Arctic (the shallowest ocean) and ending the Ice Age just 12,000 years ago. Sea levels have risen an average of over 3 feet per century since, much greater at first, slowing to about 6 inches per century the past 1,000 years.

Recent sea level rise has mostly been caused by man, but not by warming. Enormous pumping of ground water and draining of lakes for agricultural needs has resulted in "de-watering," the taking of water from the land and depositing it in the seas. At the same time, de-watering causes land subsidence, leading to the appearance of sea levels rising as lands sink.

Recent ocean cooling, giving the lie to significant warming, can also play a part since colder water is denser and has reduced volume. Oddly, a recent study attempts to explain that the lack of warming the past 15 years is a result of heat being sequestered in the depths of the oceans. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, the world wide ocean temperature monitoring system (ARGOS) has not shown this heat being sequestered.

So far observational science refutes computer climate modeling. When this happens, the models must be changed or discarded, but Al Gore and his Acolytes cry, "Throw out the observations."

The "Tinkerbell" Effect

2011-09-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

By noting that the Arctic ice cap has shrunk 22 percent since 1979, Mr. Jacobs exemplifies the “Tinkerbell” effect and “young earth” philosophy, since regular satellite imaging of the polar cap only began in 1979, and Arctic ice was near a maximum then (remember the “global cooling” hysteria of the 1970’s?). 1960-70’s cooling followed an earlier warming period reported in The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington, March 29, 1958:

“... (everybody knows) existing glaciers — like those in the Swiss passes and Alaska — are melting. How could new ice hulks creep in upon us while weather experts are announcing that even the North Polar ice caps are thinning? And … weather records show the weather has been growing warmer over the years - so warm in fact that certain glaciers are melting fast enough to raise the level of the world’s oceans. Can such signs really foreshadow the coming of a new Ice Age?”

Dr. Maurice Ewing, in 1958 one of America’s leading oceanographers and geophysicists, produced this study. Read the complete, fascinating report on one of my blog posts.

Very recently, scientifically speaking: “Multiple proxy records and climate models indicate that early Holocene temperatures (about 8,000 years ago) were higher than today and that the Arctic contained less ice…”

Even Warmista scientists admit that doubling atmospheric CO2 could only raise global temperature one degree Celsius, but that additional warming will come from “positive” feedbacks (which climate science proves never existed because positive feedbacks would have caused unstoppable run-away warming).

Warmistas, who think Al Gore invented climate science, are in denial about its basics: it’s always changing, change is natural, and all this was happening before 1979. Mankind contributes only 3% of CO2 emissions, and it’s foolishly ignorant and arrogant to think that minuscule changes in a trace gas drive climate change. It never has.

"Don't Miss" TV - Al Gore's 24 Hours of Reality

2011-09-13T22:52:00.000-07:00

“Don’t miss” TV! Al Gore’s "24 hours of Reality" scheduled for September 14 and 15. Al says his Climate Reality Project “will connect the dots between recent extreme weather events and manmade pollution.” Alice and I just left the East Coast days before it was hit by a heat wave (relax, Al, 39 states’ heat records were set over 50 years ago) and I can see why, since the entire case of manmade global warming has collapsed around him, that he would take his movement into extreme weather because this is a much easier emotional case for him to make.

Al, everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.

They can’t - climate change is natural.

At any rate, global climate has slightly cooled for the past 15 years. A recent study says that this is because China has increased aerosols that block sunlight by burning huge quantities of coal (the very thing that increases atmospheric CO2 and supposedly global warming). However, since these aerosols were released in the Northern Hemisphere and there is little atmospheric mixing between hemispheres, it’s strange that there is slight warming in the Northern Hemisphere where the aerosols supposedly cause cooling, and cooling in the Southern Hemisphere without benefit of aerosols. Of course, other studies indicate overall aerosol levels haven’t increased for several decades, so the whole thing becomes warmist alarmists taking a fishing trip to a wading pool desperate to catch something to correlate to the lack of warming.

Still, even without warming, Al Gore and His Acolytes continue to point to every flood, drought, heat wave, snow storm, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, &etc. as proof of the evils of warming, even as they explain why there is no warming.

Be Really Bold, Obama

2011-09-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

President Obama challenged Republicans to extend payroll tax cuts and increase infrastructure spending. “(Republicans say they) are the party of tax cuts,” he said.... Show us what you got.”

To start, Republicans won’t cut taxes on Social Security when it is already in deficit spending, and do another stimulus plan when the last abjectly failed.

To really accomplish something, Obama should propose ending the mortgage interest deduction. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “just three (heavily Democrat) metro areas - greater New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco - receive more than 75 percent of the subsidy…The bigger the mortgage and the higher one's income, the bigger the deduction. A person in the top tax bracket of 35 percent who borrows $1 million can get a tax break of $17,500… households earning less than $75,000 get less than $200… More than three-fourths of taxpayers do not itemize, and so don't claim the deduction at all. Those who rent or have paid off their mortgages, most of them seniors, get no benefit.”

While Obama is being bold, he should also propose stopping the exclusion of employer-paid health insurance from taxes, which is the biggest federal tax subsidy.

And to be really bold, he should propose replacing the IRS with a national 15% sales tax. Much higher economic growth would result from eliminating the tax bias against work, savings, and investment. That one act would eliminate every unfair tax subsidy, be they for the wealthy or corporations, plus it would eliminate the unproductive economic drain of tax accounting and reporting.

Since I’m a CPA, real estate agent, and anti-tax hawk, my positions on these issues put the good of our country above my personal welfare. I’m one of Biden’s “barbarians”, one of the “sons of bitches” Hoffa wants taken out.

Blowin' in the Wind - Tropical Storm Irene

2011-09-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Irene was not nearly as windy as the politicians and warmists proclaiming it a harbinger of our climate future. As always, such talk inspired me to seek truth in science studies and climate histories. A 2011 study of 2,200 years of North Carolina’s Barrier Island storm history (the area most affected by Irene) concluded that climatic conditions of both the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1350AD) and Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850AD) compared to the present show "a general decrease in storminess" reflecting "more stable climate conditions (and) fewer storm impacts, and a decrease in the average wind intensity and wave energy," which suggests that the mean temperature of the past century has been neither as cold nor as warm as it was during the LIA and MWP, respectively.

In 1938 a Category 3 hurricane struck Long Island, killing between 682 and 800 people, damaging or destroying over 57,000 homes, and causing property losses estimated at $4.77 billion (2011 dollars). It’s still the most powerful, costliest, and deadliest hurricane in New England history.

Earlier, in 1815 a Category 3 hurricane hit New York City directly, causing extensive damage and creating an inlet that separated two Long Island resort towns into two separate barrier islands

In 1821 a Category 4 storm created the highest recorded storm surge in Manhattan of nearly 13 feet.

The 1869 Saxby Gale decimated the Maine coastline and the Canadian Outer Banks

In 1893 a Category 2 hurricane directly hit New York City, causing a great storm surge that pummeled the coastline, completely removing Long Island’s Hog Island resort.

Irene, a tropical storm when it reached New York which never made landfall as a hurricane, is much ado about nothing; panicked politicians and whacky warmists – excuse redundancies – foolishly hitched onto this global warming bandwagon.

Democrats "Played Chicken" with Debt Ceiling Many Times

2011-08-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

At least four times during George W. Bush’s presidency the Democrats “(played) chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States of America.” In May 2002, debt was within $15 million of the statutory limit. Raising the limit passed by one vote in the House (of 209 Democrats, 206 voted against).

In May 2003 debt limit legislation passed the Senate 53 to 44, with only one of 45 Democrats voting for it. The day it passed, debt was $25 million (or 0.0004%) below the limit.

On October 14, 2004, debt was again $25 million below the limit. The Treasury employed accounting tricks used in the previous two years to keep under the limit. Treasury Secretary John Snow informed Congress, just before the election recess, that available measures to avoid breaching the debt limit would be exhausted by mid-November, and the government would default.

Again, it barely passed. Senate Democrats voted 42 of 44 against, and 193 of 195 House Democrats voted against (it passed by 4 votes).

In 2006, Secretary Snow continued using tricks to avoid default. A debt limit increase was narrowly passed, with all 48 Senate Democrats (including Obama) opposed.

On the matter of the “essential” rural airports, all thirteen are served by better highways than Highway 1, and most are about half as far from a major airport as Gualala. Democrat Majority Leader Senator Reid’s airport at Ely, Nevada, population 4,255, served 227 passengers in 2010 (federal subsidy $1.8 million) at $4,107 per ticket.

Alamogordo, New Mexico, with Democrat Senators Bingaman and Udall, is subsidized at $3,127 per ticket for 376 passengers in 2010, and is the same driving time to Albuquerque as we are to San Francisco International.

By funding these “essential” airports, Democrats buy reelection with our money.

Democrats Throw Our Money "Up in the Air"

2011-08-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

The ICO editorial “Up in the air” (August 5, 2011) seemed familiar. I found “playing chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States of American” or variations used by White House press secretary Jay Carney at least six times. The next Democrat talking point in the editorial was that “Congress bailed out of Washington for vacation, leaving the Federal Aviation bill sitting in the ‘to do’ pile.”

Actually, the Republican House passed an FAA funding bill two weeks before their “vacation,” and inaction on passing it was due to the Democrat-controlled Senate. Normally the Senate would pass their FAA bill, and the differences between the House and Senate bills would be reconciled. But Dem. Senator Jay Rockefeller blocked it at a cost of $300 million in lost taxes to save little-used Morgantown airport (75 miles from Pittsburgh, PA).

More Democrat talking points were in a Huffpost article and appeared summarized in the ICO editorial, which referred to Republicans not funding “Essential Air Service that keeps vital rural airports open.” Since the US has 14,695 airports (133 more than the total of the next nine countries), what makes these essential?

The thirteen “essential” airports are in “strategic” Democrats’ districts, courtesy of unabashed pork-barrel spending. For example, John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pennsylvania (67 miles from Pittsburgh), cost $200 million to build and serves less than 30 passengers per day, each subsidized $147. Its $8.5 million radar has never been used. A military unit that was stationed on it to make it more “essential” only flies helicopters. The alternate runway was just repaved with $800,000 in stimulus funds, although the primary runway is hardly used.

One airport in Senator Reid’s Nevada receives EAS subsidies of $3,720 per passenger. That’s way “up in the air!”

Obama Wins Big!

2011-08-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

Obama declares victory! House Democrats voted 95 for and 95 against, and Republicans voted 174 for and 66 against, so the debt ceiling will be increased $2.1 trillion. California Democrats voted 14 for and 20 against; California Republicans were 16 for, 3 against. It’s not only a great day for Obama, it’s a great day for California Democrats.

Obama and Democrats have already identified that the Tea Party are the big losers: they only got $2.4 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, when they wanted $4 trillion. What utter failures!

Obama knows that with a few more victories like this, the outcome of the 2012 election is assured.

Wind Farm Slaughter

2011-07-31T22:19:00.000-07:00

For nine years, 1989 to 1998, I lived in sight of the Altamont Pass wind farms in California near Livermore. Often none of the turbines were turning, but when they did, they killed about 5,000 large predator birds per year, and large but not counted numbers of bats. This slaughter appeared to be done with impunity, and for what seemed to be little benefit in terms of power generated. I saw some information that the wind farm generated at less than 30% of its rated capacity, and that the power it produced fluctuated constantly, requiring back-up supplement by natural gas and hydroelectric power generation.

In contrast to the lax regulation of bird and bat kill, I recently read about very high fines assessed against Texas oil companies for the deaths of a few common water birds in storage tanks.

Why the one would be treated harshly, and the other leniently, makes no sense. The wind farms are causing horrendous environmental damage for no value – in fact they are an expensive waste of taxpayer and ratepayer money.

Scientists Predict: Another Ice Age Is On The Way - in 1958!

2011-07-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington, March 29, 1958

Scientists Predict: Another Ice Age is on the way (Article by Leslie Lieber)

(Those who were hardest hit by last month’s snowstorms may think the next ice-age is already upon us. Others may think it will never come. Whatever you think, it would be comforting to pay no attention to the weather forecast presented on these pages.

Unfortunately Maurice Ewing and William L. Donn are not men to be taken lightly. Dr. Ewing ranks as one of America’s leading oceanographers and geophysicists, its top authority on the world beneath the sea. President of the American Geophysical Union and director of Columbia University’s Lamont Geological Observatory, he has personally designed much of the equipment now used in underseas exploration.

His colleague, Dr. Donn, is Associate Professor of Geology, Brooklyn College, and Chief Scientist, U.S. Atlantic Island Observatories Program for the Inter- national Geophysical Year.

The two scientists point out that the full scientific presentation of their new theory, with graphs and weather charts, has already been made in scientific journals, but say “we have been pleased to co-operate with Mr. Lieber in presenting to the general public some of the highlights of our ideas.”)

Two leaders in their field say the enormous glacier that buried half the world 11,000 years ago is due back and present a startling theory to prove it.

Eleven thousand years ago — give or take a thousand years — the last of the great ice-age glaciers which blanketed the American continent from Northern Canada to the banks of the Missouri River began its retreat from the face of the earth. Known as the Wisconsin stage, it rang down the curtain on four separate Ice Ages which had come and gone during the preceding million years.

Since that time, mankind has been too busy with the problems of everyday living to worry about the staggering possibility that another continental glacier might be in the making. Undoubtedly our Neanderthal ancestors lived in the same ignorant bliss during the warm interludes between Ice Ages. The last thing they suspected was that their temperate weather would ever end. It did, though — in glacial onslaughts which drove them either into local caves or on long treks southward.

Modern man’s hunch that the Ice Age has gone for good is based on what he firmly believes to be common sense. How, we ask, can a new Ice Age possibly be shaping up when everybody knows that existing glaciers — like those in the Swiss passes and Alaska — are melting? How could new ice hulks creep in upon us while weather experts are announcing that even the North Polar ice caps are thinning? And what about the fact that weather records show the weather has been growing warmer over the years - so warm in fact that certain glaciers are melting fast enough to raise the level of the world’s oceans? Can such signs really foreshadow the coming of a new Ice Age?

The answer is very definitely yes — if you listen to two leading oceanographers, Drs. Maurice Ewing and William L. Donn. As a result of extensive research, these eminent scientists believe, in short, that the earth is passing through an interglacial period and that the cyclic phenomena which produced continental glaciers in ages past are at work producing another Ice Age. Its advent may be a matter of thousands of years. It could also conceivably be upon us in a few centuries.

Now how can slightly warmer climate and rising sea levels foster a cataclysm as drastic as another Ice Age? First you must understand just how a glacier is formed.

The glaciers that once blanketed a great part of the earth did not, as is popularly believed, gradually spread out from the poles, nor were they caused by a sudden plunge in the earth’s temperature during the Pleistocene Age.

Continuous Snowfall

Glaciers, Dr. Ewing explains, are created purely and simply when more snow falls than melts. Sub-zero temperatures are only one factor. Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Islands, for instance, share the same frigid latitude. But snow-covered Greenland lies under a perpetual blanket of ice whereas the Arctic Islands, with only light snow precipitation, are not glaciated.

Drs. Ewing and Donn reason that the great Ice Ages were produced by practically continuous snowfall coming from some rich source of moisture which has now been shut off.

It is becoming known that the thickest ice concentration during the glacial periods was in the Hudson Bay region. The Ewing-Donn conclusion is that the snow clouds must have gathered their moisture from the Arctic Ocean.

In other words, the Arctic Ocean in the Ice Age was itself free of ice, and offered thousands and thousands of square miles of water surface to winds blowing towards Northern Canada, Europe and Siberia.

The Ewing-Donn theory holds that the barrier standing between us and another Ice Age is a steadily thinning layer of about six feet of ice covering the Arctic Ocean, Should it melt completely, the birthplace of glaciers would be reopened. The weight of evidence from both American and Russian scientists is that the Arctic is warming appreciably. This could mean that all the conditions which led to the four ice-cycles of the last million years are still in operation.

There is an agent which, during past epochs, has repeatedly been able to melt the ice floes of the Arctic. According to Ewing and Donn, that great defroster is not the sun, but the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Whenever the tepid Atlantic has found a passageway into the Arctic, it has melted ice faster than the frigid air could form it.

As of this moment Ewing and Donn feel that this ‘hot-water faucet” has been turned on.

Why is it that the warm waters of the Atlantic can reach the Arctic Ocean now — for the first time since before the last glacial stage? It is possible because of the considerable rise in sea-level during the past few thousand years. Normally the Atlantic can’t flow freely into the Arctic because it must pass through several narrow bottlenecks between Greenland and Norway. (Denmark Strait and Faeroe Channel) So shallow is the ocean floor between the Arctic and Atlantic — much of it less than 50 fathoms - that little interchange occurs. But with a rise in sea-level the influx of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic increases many fold.

This traffic is not just one-way. There is a mutual interaction between the two bodies of water: the Arctic seas, swollen by their own melting ice, flow southward into the Atlantic, cooling it.

Some years ago Professor Harold Urey of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography discovered a revolutionary method of determining the temperature at which deep-sea shells were formed. Scientists now know, for instance, that a temperature decline in the surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean, due to the influx of cold Arctic water, was a prologue to the last Ice Age. From 90,000 B.C down to 11,000 years ago it plunged eight degrees Centigrade, a very significant decrease.

Dramatic Discovery

The fact that the temperature of the ocean is definitely tied up with ice ages came to light when sediments were cored out during various oceanographic cruises on the Lamont Observatory s research vessel Vema, In ancient ooze Ewing and Donn found marine evidence that an abrupt change in marine life took place in Atlantic and Caribbean waters approximately 11,000 years ago, at the precise time the Wisconsin ice stage was ending. What was this new development? The organisms dramatically changed from cold-water types to warm-water types.

In other words, something had happened (simultaneously with the disappearance of glaciers) to warm up the Atlantic Ocean. The only explanation is that its supply of “icewater” was blocked. What had happened? The Arctic Ocean had once again become covered by ice. The Canada-bound winds no longer found moisture there to stock up on.

And on the American continent, the snow-starved ice sheets gradually wasted away.

Examination of sediment from 11,000 years ago in the Arctic Ocean seems to show the reverse side of the corn. With the Atlantic no longer able to penetrate, the marine fauna switched from warm back to cold-water types. In other words, the pendulum had finally swung the other way, ending an ice cycle.

Just as high sea levels cause glacial periods, so do low sea levels result in a return to the kind of bottleneck that shuts the Arctic off from its warm-water source and ends the glacial period. Lower sea levels are caused when amounts of ocean water become locked in glacial ice.

How The Glaciers Started

Thus sea level has controlled the glacial- interglacial cycles of the past million years, and in turn, the glacial conditions have controlled sea level.

But, how did it all begin? What started these cycles? Much scientific evidence now exists for the startling theory that the crust of the earth can slip, and change its position relative to the interior. Such slipping would cause different places on the surface to be at the poles in different geological periods. There is also evidence to suggest that before the glacial period of the Pleistocene Era the mid-Pacific Ocean was at the North Pole and the South Atlantic was over the South Pole. To have the poles thus situated in open sea would prevent the formation of polar ice caps, since free interchange with warmer equatorial waters would keep them relatively warm.

The North Pole is now situated over the isolated Arctic Ocean, the South Pole over the Antarctic continent. With the poles no longer in freely circulating water and the cooler temperature of the higher latitudes isolated and concentrated, they became sources of cold polar air. Ewing’s and Donn’s startling theory is that this is what started the glacial period, and that as long as the poles remain thus isolated, glacial periods will wax and wane as the sea level rises and falls.

In case of another Ice Age, millions of those living in the most urbanized areas of Europe and the United States would have to flee southward.

But as bad as things would be, another Ice Age would offer tremendous compensations: the major desert areas .of the earth — 12,000,000 square miles —would again become arable, fertile, well-watered lands.

Should another Ice Age strike, the man who controls the Sahara could rule the earth! — The End

I Agree with Dr Fred Singer - Global Warming is Bunk!

2011-07-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

When was the last time you read that "controvesial speaker Al Gore" would be appearing? That's right, never, because the media has decreed the science of global warming is settled, and speaking on the side of a settled topic by definition cannot be controversial. So with great interest I went to the Coloradoan.com to read: Skepticism: Controversial speaker Fred Singer says that global warming and climate science 'bunk'

After reading the article, I was inspired to post the following comment, and this led to a rambling, polite discussion over a couple of days with Dr Scott Denning, Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, and occasionally less polite discussions with a couple of other commenters.

My opening comment:

Scott Denning's statement about all the heat generated by burning fossil fuels is quite foolish. What does he think caused five periods of greater warming than the current one in the past 11,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age? More recently, 39 of the 50 states records of hottest days were set over 50 years ago. Coral mounts rising ten feet above current sea levels show that temperature and sea level were much higher 4,000 years ago at the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum. Just 1,000 years ago the global Medieval Warm Peiod was warmer, sea levels were higher, and humanity prospered. We are now coming off the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) and the warming we are now experiencing is a natural rebound from the coldest period of the past 11,000 years. If you won't listen to skeptics, lend an ear to the Earth - it tells the story of natural climate change eloquently.

Zippy-1 (the first commenter)

Your logic is flawed. None of your examples negate the 'greenhouse effect' warming caused by rising CO2 levels from humans burning fossil fuels. And 39 states temperature records? Come on. Even if you're correct cherry-picked local examples are meaningless in the context of global average annual temperatures, which puts the most recent decade as the hottest on record. 2010 was tied for the hottest full year on record and the first half of 2011 is a record.

Dr Scott Denning's reply to my comment:

Hi Michael,

Simple question ... simple answer. Earlier climate changes were caused by heat coming into the Earth and heat going out from the Earth. Modern climate change responds to precisely the same physics that past climate changes responded to.

Is there some reason that you think the Earth warmed and cooled in the past when heat was added or subtracted, but that somehow the extra Watts of heat from CO2 "don't count?"

Interesting theory. I guess as a scientist I have to be a bit skeptical of the logic though.

Most of us understand that adding heat to things warm them up. Always has. Always will.

Best regards,

Scott Denning
Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science

My reply to Dr Denning:

Dr Denning

The portion of additional CO2 created by the burning of fossil fuel is only a tiny part of the CO2 created naturally by oxidation by plants, animals, and decay of plant matter. And in all that, CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere by volume, of which only 3% is produced by human activity. In previous periods of warming, when CO2 was 10 to 20 rimes current levels, the Earth has plunged into ice ages while CO2 was still at high levels. The Holocene Optimum of 8,000 to 4,000 years ago was much warmer than now and followed the Ice Age which ended 11,000 years ago, yet CO2 was much lower. The additional warmth of the Holocene Optimum did not come from burning fossil fuels, just as hundreds of other periods of warming were not caused by increased CO2.

There is now good scientific reason to doubt the existence of a "greenhouse warming effect."

The Monterrey science research institute also recreated Wood’s test into the effect of longwave infrared radiation trapped inside a greenhouse. Unlike Pratt it found that Wood’s findings were correct, absolutely valid and systematically repeatable. The Bio Cab man affirms, “ the greenhouse effect does not exist as it is described in many didactic books and articles.”

Put simply, one of the aforementioned professors has their reputation perilously on the line and Nahle is gunning for an explanation from his U.S. Rival. A clue to the outcome: Pratt isn't even qualified in science - he's a (warmist) mathematician specializing in computers.

Professor Nahle’s findings will come as no surprise to anyone who is up to speed with the other big climate story that has raised huge doubts over any so-called greenhouse effect. NASA now admits global warming just isn’t happening despite ever-rising levels of CO2.

Laughably, the once illustrious U.S. space agency is blaming no warming this century on China."

A closing point - current warming started 300 years ago

My reply to Zippy-1:

"39 of the 50 states records of hottest days were set over 50 years ago."

Zippy-1

These are not cherry-picked. I simply googled heat records by state and found a table from USA Today. The initial reason I did this was because Al Gore and His Acolytes have now adopted a new appoach to alarmism by claiming all severe weather events are evidence of man-caused climate change. Kevin Trenberth also has made this claim. As far as this being the hottest period on record, I noted in a previous post that Greenland ice cores for the past 10,000 years show that not one of the past 100 years were warmer than 9,100 of the past 10,000. So much for exceptional warmth.

Current warming is "unprecedented" only if you think climate began after Al Gore earned his D's at Harvard.

The next reply from Dr Scott Denning

Good morning Michael,

I asked you why past climate changes can be explained by changes in heating, and you replied that there isn't much CO2 in the atmosphere. (Note: that's what I said and it's true; CO2 is only 0.0387% by volume) Then you said most CO2 doesn't come from combustion. (Note: that's also true, since 96% of CO2 is produced by natural, not human sources)Then you claimed the greenhouse effect doesn't exist (Note: this is not exactly true, since I only provided quotes from the scientists that say the greenhouse effect doesn't exist.

I'll ask you again: if changes in heating produced ice ages and warm periods in the past as you mention, why on Earth do you expect extra watts of heat from CO2 to have no effect now? Have the laws of thermodynamics changed? (Note: thousands of times in the past cooling began when CO2 was high; enormous quantities of CO2 were being added to the atmosphere from the warming seas and from decay - that's oxidation - of vegetable matter, and heat is heat)

We don't expect global warming because 39 states are hot today. We expect global warming because adding heat to things changes their temperature. Don't believe me? Put a pot of water on the stove and see what happens! (Note: conversely, we expect global cooling when the orbital dynamics that caused global warming are reversed)

Have a great day,

Scott Denning

My reply to Dr Denning:

Where did all the extra heat come from when the temperatures were much higher five times in the past 10,000 years since the end of the Ice Age than they are now? CO2 was much lower then. In fact, even now it is close to its lowest level in parts per million going back about a billion years. Several things are undeniable: CO2 levels have been over ten times current atmospheric levels previously without causing run-away warming; in all instances, warming began before CO2 increased, and cooling began when CO2 was high and before it started dropping; CO2 and the rest of the atmosphere is warmed by convection, just as trapped air in a greenhouse is - unlike a greenhouse, the warm air rises and mixes with the cooler air above; CO2 has neither the volume nor properties to cause a difference in temperature to the point that it could be distinguished from natural environmental noise.

A thought I am now developing is that the current production of heat by the Earth is very small compared to periods when plants grew, died, decomposed to form huge deposits of coal and oil, and along the way emitted enormous quantities of CO2 - which further fed plant growth. Of course, the same is happening today, only the naturally produced CO2 is much less because the plant mass is so much smaller, although it is over thirty times what is produced by human activity.

A comment from Elmer Jones:

I haven't heard anyone explain why the earth's glaciers are melting at a pronounced rate according to those that have studied them . I give little weight to those people whom have not studied them. Where did the North polar ice cap go?

Why is the Greenland ice cap melting at an advanced rate? If heat is being generated internally by the planet then what is the cause? There is too much body of evidence to prove that "yes indeed the ice deposits are melting."

My reply to Elmer Jones:

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. I hope I answered your questions, Elmer. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

Then I passed this reply on to Dr Denning:

Some more musings about current natural climate change. Where did the heat come from over 200 years ago when CO2 was low?

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

Then I replid to Zippy-1:

"Your logic is flawed. None of your examples negate the 'greenhouse effect' warming caused by rising CO2 levels from humans burning fossil fuels."

Your logic is flawed. Current warming began over 100 years before human activity caused any significant increase in CO2 levels. The Little Ice Age ended by 1850 or earlier, and there were two periods of much more rapid warming than now from 1850 to 1945. Ironically, as CO2 increased steadily after 1950, there was a cooling period that lasted until 1975, then warming, then cooling the past decade.

And I further reply to Zippy-1:

Concerning "hottest on record" temps, if you go to: http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl (which is a government website) you will see a chart of contiguous US temperatures for the past 115 years which show an increase of about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit during that period, roughly half before 1950 and half after. This NOAA chart also shows no warming for 12 years, and that 2009 and 2010 were the lowest annual temperatures since 1994. As far as a decade being the hottest on record, you are lucky science can't break out any but the most recent warm periods by decade. Suffice it to say, since Greenland ice cores show 9,100 of the past 10,000 years were warmer than any of the past 100, there were centuries 4,000 to 8,000 years ago that were hotter than the past decade.

Then Dr Denning replied to me:
Michael,

The Earth's surface receives virtually all of its heat from only two sources: incoming radiant energy from the Sun and from the warm air above us. Believe it or not, almost two-thirds of the total comes from the air. This is easily measured by comparing the total energy in at night to that during the day. It's not in dispute. Energy leaving the surface is mostly through radiant energy as well, with about 20% going up as convective heat transfer and evaporative cooling.

Whenever more heat comes in than goes out, the Earth's surface warms up. Whenever more heat goes out than comes in, the Earth's surface cools off. This is what explains the difference between day and night, summer and winter, Miami and Minneapolis. Pretty simple.

In fact, this simple physics also explains EVERY CLIMATE CHANGE THE EARTH HAS EVER EXPERIENCED. So all of your examples of warmer and colder periods in the past, the Little Ice Age, the Big Ice Age, the Age of the Dinosaurs, everything.

Precisely the same physical laws also govern the changes that will certainly occur if the amount of radiant energy delivered to the Earth's surface increases by 8 Watts per square meter when China and India build modern industrial economies using coal.

Look, I'm not selling something smelly here: adding heat warms things up. Removing heat cools things off. That's how climate has worked for billions of years. That's how it will continue to work for the rest of our children's lives.

I do appreciate your interest in the science. Contrary to your original comment, there's nothing foolish about this!

Sincerely,

Scott Denning
Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University

I persist in disagreeing with Dr Denning:

Where did the heat come from over 200 years ago when CO2 was low?

A map of Glacier Bay, Alaska, shows glacier retreat of 60 miles from 1760 to 1912, and only about six miles since. Glacier retreat and advance during the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age has been extensively studied and documented by such climate experts as H H Lamb, "Climatic History and the Future", and the founder of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, now famous for its role in Climategate. A study of glacier history shows glaciers are not now retreating at an advanced rate, and neither is the Greenland ice cap. In fact, Greenland ice cores show that Greenland was warmer for 9,100 years of the past 10,000 than for any year of the past 100. Glaciers in the Alps retreated further 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period than during the recent warming. The Alpine glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850 AD) then began retreating over 100 years before significant increases in atmospheric CO2. Current retreat is uncovering man-made artifacts that were created during the Medieval Warm Period, then covered during the Little Ice Age, and are now being exposed again. Russian Arctic studies have determined there were several periods in the past 11,000 years since the last Ice Age when there was less Arctic ice than now, particularly during the much warmer Holocene Climate Optimum when it was so much warmer than present that sea levels were over ten feet higher than now at the peak of Holocene warming about 4,000 years ago. There are coral mounts ten feet higher than the current sea level that prove it was much warmer and sea levels were higher then - corals don't grow out of the water, you know, and they grow particularly well in warm water. This information, and a lot more, is written clearly in the Earth for all to see that seek it with open minds and scientific curiosity.

And Dr Denning replies:
You've asked where the heat came from 200 years ago when we began warming from the Little Ice Age. You've also told me to look at the Earth for answers. Fine. Notice that there's no need to yell at me or insult me. I'm being pretty reasonable and answering you politely.

Regarding the warming that began at the end of the Little Ice Age the answer is the Sun. The warming actually began more like 300 years ago following a period when the sun dimmed by about 1 Watt per square meter (compared to 1367 Watts per square meter today) during the Maunder Minimum. As the sun gradually brightened, even that tiny change (1 W out of 1367) steadily warmed the Earth's climate and produced all those changes you wrote about.

Regarding listening to the Earth, I've been doing it professionally for almost 30 years now. My undergraduate degree was in geology and I used to work in the oil industry. I'm not the crackpot socialist you might imagine! Paleoclimate has always been fascinating to me and I've read thousands of pages of that material over half my lifetime.

Natural climate change shows us a very clear picture of the response of the Earth to changes in the amount of energy coming in and going out. During the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago ice sheets covered much of North America, Europe, and Asia which made the albedo much higher so that sunlight was reflected to space. Cold oceans and fertilization by iron in dust at that time allowed the oceans to dissolve nearly 1/3 of all the CO2 in the air. Together the brighter surface and lower CO2 levels reduced the energy input by about 7.5 Watts per square meter (7.5 times as much as the Little Ice Age). And the changes persisted much longer, allowing climate to cool drastically.

By the time my children are old, Earth's surface will receive 8 Watts per square meter more energy than it did in 1800 (if India and China go big for coal). Do you see why I'm concerned?

Sincerely,

Scott Denning

Again I respond to Dr Denning

Thank you for your replies. I won't SHOUT AT YOU or write insulting things (some pointed comments in this thread are addressed to a Zippy-1), although physics I've learned has convinced me that a colder object (air) does not warm a warmer one (earth), or a smaller one (air) a massive one (ocean), The air does not have the mass to contain heat sufficient to provide two-thirds of warming. On a contrary note, the Sun warms the earth, and after sundown the earth warms the air. My sense of touch confirms this daily.

Of course, increasing levels of CO2 only correlate with temperature 22% of the time, and as Kevin Trenberth said, it's a travesty that the current lack of warming can't be explained. That is why China aerosols have been plugged in to explain the lack of warming, even as the aerosols are due to the enormous quantities of coal the Chinese are burning. Aerosols seem to be a wild card, played when the climate models don't add up.

I have no concern for my grandchildren in a warming world. As Bjorn Lomborg suggests, "Cool it" and adapt. Adaptation has been the genius of humanity for thousands of years, through much warmer and much colder periods. My reading of H H Lamb's "Climatic History and the Future" makes me welcome the idea of a warmer, higher CO2 environment because of high food production. The lessons of the Little Ice Age, of crop failures and starvation and population displacements, incredibly violent and ruinous storms, horrendous flooding and loss of millions of lives in the Yellow River region of China, flooding and enormous erosion on the coasts of England and the Netherlands, and many more disasters than you would get in a warm climate.

Civilization thrived in recent warm periods. The Holocene Climate Optimum of 8,000 to 4,000 years ago, the Roman Warm Period of 200 BC to 500 AD, the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1300 AD), and the current warm period following the Little Ice Age. Fear cold, not warm.

I See the Future of Renewable (Green) Energy - It Ain't Pretty

2011-06-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

In comments concerning where nenewable energy was heading - meaning wind, solar, and biomass - a commenter "Bad Andrew" said: "If anyone tells me he knows for sure what will happen to renewable energy in 40 years, I will laugh at him."

I waved my hand excitedly and commenced to prognosticate:

I know Bad Andrew, I know! Wind and solar will still be diffuse and unreliable. Other renewables like tide and biomass will still be somewhere in the future, but will not be a better alternative than they are now, and in the case of biomass, much worse.

However, in 40 years nuclear will have moved from its infancy into adolescence, and will be providing over half of the power needs of China, India, and the United States. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will be doing most of the work, but other nuclear will be investigated and found very promising. Fusion will definitely be closer to becoming the renewable power source for all future needs.

People will laugh thinking of the foolishness of wind, solar, carbon sequestration, biomass, and there will be a special Hall of Shame for Al Gore and anyone involved in promoting ethanol. The world will be a better place because abundant, inexpensive energy will enable citizens of developing nations to achieve lives of comfort, well being, and promise for the future.

And at 108 years of age, I will be enjoying a long, active life, and regretting it won't last forever so I can witness all the miracles of mankind.

Rising Sea Levels Alarmism

2011-06-23T22:09:00.000-07:00

Mann et al are back at it; this time their alarmism is about sea levels rising.

Sea level has risen an average of 4 feet per century since the end of the Ice Age: 420 feet in 100 centuries. Fortunately, almost all of it occurred in a short period 10,000 years to 8,000 years ago. Since then sea level reached 10 to 20 feet higher than now during the 10 degrees warmer Holocene Optimum until reaching a peak about 3,000 years ago, then started falling. However, the Medieval Warm Period featured 12th Century sea levels eight inches higher than now, the Little Ice Age had sea levels 12 inches lower, and for the past four centuries sea levels have been increasing an average of six inches per century, and the rate of increase has been falling in the past half century.

It doesn't appear that alarmist studies reflect the sea level history going back 10,000 years when sea level was 420 feet lower, or the fluctuations in the six periods of warming in that period, of which the current period is the least. The only thing that makes the current warming seem remarkable is that it follows the Little Ice Age, which was the coldest period since the end of the Ice Age. We have actually been on a cooling trend since the end of the Holocene Optimum about 4,000 years ago; each succeeding warm period has been cooler than the preceding.

None of this is conjecture about atmospheric carbon dioxide; it was much lower than now even though average temperature was higher. None of this requires computer models; it's all been compiled in studies reported voluminously in books such as H H Lamb's "Climatic History and the Future" published in 1977. No trees had to be bored and cored, and analyzed for growth factors such as moisture, temperature, carbon dioxide fertilization, divergence from the instrumental record, and the like. Instead, such records as crops - vineyards in England 1,000 years ago - glacier retreat and advance, coral mounts that were 10 feet above current sea level 3,000 years ago, and sediments that indicated ocean temperature was 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer then.

These current studies seem detached from other science and climatic history. They exist in a land of make believe, where what you desire now changes the past to fit the present.

Soviet historians did this whenever present facts made an event in the past an inconvenient truth. I thought that all ended around 1984, but "science" seems to have picked it up as the Soviet Union collapsed. Perhaps science will be next...

It Ain't Necessarily So

2011-06-23T22:03:00.001-07:00

Columnist Amy Goodman criticized Sarah Palin for her Paul Revere statement, but then continued that recent bad weather was a sign we need to stop global warming. Since Goodman used Sarah Palin as an example of conservative ignorance, I did what I always do when confronted with liberal columnist climate change assertions: I looked at the science, and at what even “warmist” scientists were saying about the link between bad weather and climate change.

Not surprising to me, since I’d already read voluminous articles about it, scientist after scientist said that there is no demonstrated link between recent bad weather and man-caused warming. The New York Times: Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “(I)n the early part of the 20th century, there was also a tendency for more extreme events followed by a quiet couple of decades.”

In New Science: “Martin Hoerling at the US NOAA. ‘A lot of these extreme conditions are natural variations of the climate. Extremes happen, heat waves happen, heavy rains happen.’

“’Drought across the southern US - and heavy rains across the north of the country - are a result of La Niña,’ says Michael Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. An extended holding pattern in the jet stream, the same type of "blocking event" that caused last summer's heat wave in Russia, is responsible for this year's European droughts, says Michael Blackburn of the University of Reading, UK.”

“As for the apparent convergence of droughts worldwide, Mark Saunders of University College London says current conditions aren't that unusual. News media may simply be more tuned in to reporting extreme weather events.”

Sarah Palin erred on historical trivia, but Amy Goodman’s ignorance of science contributes to wasteful resource allocation. Goodman does harm.

Sober Reflections On Memorial Day

2011-05-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

The day after Memorial Day is a good time for reflection. On Memorial Day itself, the hordes of tourists packing up at the end of their three-day weekend, the lingering odor of burnt chicken, the flash of anger that Google couldn’t come up with a clever logo for Memorial Day like they do for even slightly significant events, these are among the things that sabotage the inner quiet that I need for reflection.

I also need time with Memorial Day. Time to find my own place in it, even after all these years. Primarily, I thank those who served, suffered, died, to keep us free. After serving over 21 years in the Air Force, am I one of them? Or am I always just one of the grateful, thankful that they did the hard work? Upon sober reflection – over fifteen years without drinking a drop of alcohol – I’m one of the grateful.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of the job I did in the Air Force. I often worked long hours, was tired, uncomfortable – day-long bus rides in Korea will do that to you – but I did that as a civilian, too. The month I worked stripping edgings at Bojock Lumber Company, Manchester, California, while I was on leave from the Air Force in 1963, was physically more dangerous than anything I encountered in my Air Force career.

However, I like to be thanked for my service, because it tells me something I like to know about the person thanking me. They treasure their freedom and liberty, and they know that it didn’t come free. They’re thanking me because I’m a symbol, a representative, of all who served with me, who are serving now, and who served before me. It’s a long line, and if it’s ever broken, mankind will be cursing their chains and slavery, perhaps for all time.

Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory (Amazon Reviews)

2011-05-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

I'm having a very enjoyable exchange on Amazon.com concerning reviews of "Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory."

One reviewer commented:
"you can transfer energy to the earth from a reflective green house layer even if the energy level of the earth is higher."

To which I replied: (The charts I show are not part of my Amazon reply because I could not load them on Amazon. I wish I could. They support my replies very well)
"This reviewer confuses insulation with reflection. He also confuses a greenhouse which prevents the air warmed by the heated earth from mixing with the outside air, with the insulating effect provided primarily by water vapor in the atmosphere. If he would look at the historical record he would find many periods when warming began long before CO2 increased, and when cooling began when CO2 was much higher. In both cases warming and cooling soon - in 800 years or so - caused the oceans to release or absorb CO2, respectively.

If CO2 has always been driven by climate change, and has never been the driver, how did it get behind the wheel now when even current levels of CO2 are historically very low? It is much easier to understand current warming of one degree F per century to be a rebound from the end of the Little Ice Age 300 years ago, than as a product of a very recently increase of an atmospheric trace gas.

Compare a night in an equatorial desert to a humid, summer night in Michigan - the atmosphere above each containing the same tiny concentration of CO2 - and then determine what you want to do with your coat. It goes on, in the desert, and stays off in Michigan. And water vapor does its balancing magic, just as it has for billions of years.

My reply generated the following from "Freedom Ride":
The commenter fails to understand radiative forcing, fails to recognize that this massive, geologically near-instantaneous increase in GHGs is unique in climate history, fails to recognize the fundamental difference between H2O and the other GHGs, and apparently does not know that the increasing absolute humidity is a feedback effect of increasing concentrations of the persistent GHGs, principally CO2.

In short, Mr. Combs does not know what he is talking about. He *is* skilled at repeating some rather old, shop-worn denier talking points, at least. No doubt he finds them reassuring, bless his heart.

Which inspired me to reply:
Freedom Ride makes many misstatements, none more egregious than that the increase in CO2 is unique, since for most of the Earth's history atmospheric CO2 has been multiples higher. The fundamental difference between H2O and other so-called greenhouse gases is that H2O comprises over 95% of the total, and that the increase of water vapor from warming provides a negative feedback through clouds and through heat transport in the atmosphere to increased warming.

Freedom Ride continues the alarmist method of making sweeping statements without providing any observational proof or support. As an example, the existence of six periods of greater warming since the end of the Ice Age just over 10,000 years ago are robustly supported by world-wide studies, as is the fact that these periods were characterised by stable atmospheric CO2.

Current sea level rise is unremarkable at eight inches per century and slowing, and can be compared to 420 feet of increase since the end of the Ice Age - an average of over four feet per century.

Also sea level studies have shown coral thrived about 6,000 years ago three to six feet above what is now sea level. Even an alarmist must concede that higher sea level then, evidenced by coral growth, proves greater warmth then.

My points are not old, shop-worn denier talking points. They have come from the reading of numerous compilations of historical facts by such climate greats as H. H. Lamb, and primarily are just repititions of what the Earth is telling us. Vineyards in England 1,000 years ago, where they fail today, is a fact that knows no politics.

Soon Freedom Ride replied:
Again, Combs reveals his ignorance. He apparently does not know (unsurprising, since apparently he gets his information from non-scientific sources) that in ancient times of much higher CO2 concentrations, insolation was much lower.

Combs posts a number of non sequiturs and moldy-oldie denialist assertions which may be disregarded. He's is an AGW denier, the intellectual equivalent of HIV/AIDS deniers, evolution deniers, moon landing deniers, etc. He employs the same tactics: anomaly hunting, cherry picking, Gish galloping and flat-out bs'ing. He is an ideologue--a Libertarian, perhaps?--oppressed by the irresistible march of science. Science is his enemy: he carefully ignores the unanimous, published affirmations of every major scientific professional association in the world. He searches the internet for comforting propaganda, which he presents here to insulate himself from cognitive dissonance. While it may satisfy him, it is transparently silly to anyone aware of the facts.

And I immediately countered:
"Combs reveals his ignorance. He apparently does not know (unsurprising, since apparently he gets his information from non-scientific sources) that in ancient times of much higher CO2 concentrations, insolation was much lower."

Freedom Ride, your ad hominem attacks far exceed your science. About insolation, "Earth's Climate: past and future," William F. Rudman:

"Insolation has varied around a constant long-term mean and has followed the same tilt and precession cycles for millions of years. Consequently, its fundamental character has stayed the same. As a result, we can use the same insolation curve throughour the full 3-Myr history of northern hemisphere glaciation illustrated by this conceptual model."

Mr. Ride. So far I have seen no science in any of your posts. Will any be forthcoming?

Has Mr. Ride gotten off the bus, or is he finally searching for some facts to throw back at me?

So far he is pitching a "no fact-er".

This Amazon exchange is very satisfying. If I presented similar comments on a website like Realclimate.com, they would never be posted.

Election 2012 - Republicans Have Choices, Democrats Are Stuck

2011-05-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

The media have all but announced Obama reelected. Not for any Obama accomplishments. In fact, the media are getting pretty good now at chronicling his lack thereof:

Obamacare is despised. Every Democrat-supporting group with any political pull - which pretty much is all groups that support Democrats - is getting waivers from Obamacare.
War in Libya without Congressional approval under the War Powers Act, while continuing in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Guantanamo still open, terrorists to be tried there by military tribunals.
Extended Bush tax cuts.
Reauthorized Patriot Act.
Set records for deporting illegal aliens.
Upset Israel and offended Jews with his ham-handed remarks about returning to 1967 borders, then alienated Muslims by trying to explain he didn't really mean what he said.

No, the media are conceding victory to Obama because they deem the Republican field of candidates weak.

If memory serves, the media said the same prior to Jimmy Carter standing for reelection. President Reagan defeated Jimmy easily. And for George H. W. Bush - the only real opposition were Republicans Perot and Buchanan, which let Bill Clinton slip right in. When Clinton ran for reelection he was so unpopular following the Hillarycare debacle and Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 that Republicans were sure any Republican could beat him, and ran the only one who couldn't.

But the Republican field is not weak. As Ramesh Ponnuru notes, the top Republican candidates all have extensive executive experience as governors. He contrasts this to the zero years of executive experience of the three Democrats in 2008, Obama, Hillary, and Edwards. Based on their records the past three years, none of them have improved their positions, although Hillary is looking much better to Democrats in comparisons to Obama.

Two things are obvious concerning Election 2012: Republicans will dominate election coverages, and from this crucible a powerful candidate will emerge stronger and sharper from enduring the white-hot forge of competition.

Enough mixing of blacksmithing metaphors.

But isn't that what competition achieves?

The good become better, and the best become unbeatable.

California Democrats and Teachers' Unions - Servant and Master

2011-05-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." So said the late Albert Shanker, founder and long-time president of the United Federation of Teachers, and later also president of the American Federation of Teachers. But he also said: "A lot of people who have been hired as teachers are basically not competent." Of course he still worked unceasingly to keep the incompetents paying union dues.

The fact that the California Democrat Party is a wholly owned union subsidiary was again demonstrated this past week. A bill to allow school districts to use performance rather than seniority as a criterion for laying off teachers didn’t get six votes and died in committee. Three Republicans voted for, two Democrats against, and five Democrats abstained.

California Teachers Association members left their classrooms to pack the hearing room to voice their opposition, but needn’t have bothered - campaign records show that Democrats on the committee received $176,200 from the two largest teachers’ unions since 2004. Republicans got zip.

Shanker would have applauded.

Global Warming - Much Ado About Nothing

2011-05-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the best proof can be found in the camp of the enemy, crafted by their hands.

When the discussion is of global warming, the first point to examine is: "Is it warming?"

The answer is "Yes, and it has been for about 200 years since the end of the Little Ice Age."

That should answer the next question: "Is the warming man-caused or natural."

Obviously, the answer is: "Natural, since the Little Ice Age (1350 - 1800 AD) was a period of natural cooling following the much warmer than present Medieval Warm Period (950 - 1350 AD)."

Since no studies of the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age have hypothesized let alone proven changes in atmospheric CO2 as causation, the inevitable conclusion is that natural climate change forces were at work.

Now, how much natural warming is there?

According to United States government statistics, and their NOAA Satellite and Information Service website, the United States has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per century for the past 116 years.

One degree Fahrenheit per century.

One degree Fahrenheit per century?

Is this a big deal?

If so, why?

Al Gore says catastrophes are coming because of this warming.

One degree Fahrenheit per century?

Al says glaciers are melting.

True. In fact at least one since 1760-1780 AD, at Glacier Bay, Alaska. From 1760 to 1912 it retreated over sixty miles.

Al, since mankind was not causing significant increased atmospheric CO2 during the period 1760 to 1912 AD, what made the dramatic glacier retreat then different from the much less dramatic glacier retreat now?

Al, inquiring minds want to know.

What's the big deal?

Hurricane Al Gore

2011-05-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

When Al Gore is faced with reports of numbing cold and record snow, he says "Weather is not climate."

However, when Katrina hit, or Australia suffered drought, or fires burned out of control in Russia, Al said these are signs of global warming.

Come to think of it, now Al claims that any unusual weather is proof of global warming.

In that regard, so does Dr. Kevin Trenberth.

Desperation is rampant in the camps of the true believers in anthropogenic global warming.

They are dying for Nature to throw them a crumb.

The latest direct hit they are taking is a study that shows warming reduces the strongest winds. That is part of the explanation of why hurricanes and tornados have been so quiet for several years. That plus normal cyclical variations that track well to a natural 30-year cycle of increasing and decreasing storm energy.

Of interest in the study was a photo of the cover of Gore's book "Our Choice - How We Can Solve The Climate Crisis (Young Reader's Edition)." In keeping with Al's hurricane obsession, it shows three northern hemisphere hurricanes. Two are rotating counter-clockwise, and one clockwise. That is definitely a first for northern hemisphere hurricanes. Prior to Al and his expertise, they all rotated the same direction.

Quick, Al! What's the right direction for northern hemisphere hurricanes?

That's right, Al, counter-clockwise.

Two out of three, or 67%, is about what one would expect from the mediocre student Al was in his collegiate days.

Having a U S Senator for a father really helps when your grades are too low to get you into Harvard, doesn't it Al?

Rendition Worked!

2011-05-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

Rendition worked! Water boarding in a secret overseas prison led to Osama Bin Laden’s last trip: a slide down a different sort of board into a watery grave. Thanks, President Bush. Mission accomplished.

Which is the Old, and which is the New? James Cameron shows Arnold "The Way"

2011-04-21T21:39:00.000-07:00

James Cameron Brings Arnold Schwarzenegger to Amazon to See Firsthand a Battle Between Old and New Energy

I guess Cameron thinks wind and solar are new, and hydro is old. Actually, wind, solar, and hydro are all old. Each has huge environmental and societal liabilities. Hydro floods useful land and displaces its inhabitants, and wind and solar use huge amounts of scarce resources - including useful land - degrade the environment, don't produce energy cost effectively, relaibly, or efficiently, and produce nothing at all without government subsidies at the beginning and throughout the life of the wind and solar installations. Among the three, hydro makes the most sense because it is reliable, dispatchable, and controllable, and is generally cost effective. It also provides what developing nations need most, abundant energy to fuel their economic growth.

What can the world learn from our former California Governor Schwarzenegger?

As a Californian, and a one-time supporter of his election to governor, I am well qualified to answer my own question.

Governor Schwarzenegger was a total failure as governor of California. Among many fundamental errors he made was his mindless pursuit of green-energy jobs. They weren't created, and California had one of the highest rates of unemployment at over 12% in the United States. When the number of job seekers who dropped out of seeking employment because of frustration are counted, the actual unemployment rate doubled.

California's wind and solar farms are expensive, taxpayer subsidized, inefficient, and ineffective. They show no sign of ever being better than their current level of abject failure.

I lived within view of the wind farm at Altamont Pass for nine years. Besides not producing enough energy, even at highly subsidized rates, to avoid bankruptcies of their owners, the only thing the wind turbines did on the rare occasions their blades were turning was to kill rare eagles, raptors, and bats. And to be a much too visible eyesore on what should have been pristine views of rolling hills.

Only desperate fools seek guidance from the "Governator," whose only claim to fame is how he made California even worse than he found it.

Putting the "Own" back in Homeowner

2011-04-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Jounal had an almost great article about home ownership, or how little most of own after years of making mortgage payments. Putting the "Own" back in Homeowner One of my pet peeves is the mortgage interest deduction, which encourages us to never pay off our mortgages.

The mortgage interest deduction makes no sense, and I'm in real estate. In fact, no incentives to home ownership make any sense. We need to have a mobile workforce to satisfy rapidly changing job market needs, not only in skills, but in geography. Right now the collapsed housing market in rural Northern California has many people trapped far away from the best job markets. If they leave they're forced to sell their home at a great loss, or rent it and suffer negative cash flow while trying to make rent or house payments at their new place of employment..

Home mortgage interest deduction makes as much sense as not taxing employer-provided health insurance as compensation. Where do we keep coming up with these dumb ideas? Oh, that's right, we don't. Politicians do, then buy our votes.

Global Warming Causes Earthquakes? Really?

2011-03-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

Several "scientists" have been quoted saying that the number and size of recent earthquakes is due to anthropogenic global warming. Click this link to go to one of them.

These studies and the articles about them are such consumate pieces of pseudoscience, it's impossible to pay them serious attention, but I'll force myself. Persons who pay any credence to them have no concept of plate tectonics, geological time frames, and the comparative masses of earth, air, and water (here is a link to a great site by a Czech physicist who explains it clearly and fully). Don't they know most of the Earth's ice melted away over 15,000 years ago as the last Ice Age ended?

Apparently coincidence is now causation. Since the last Ice Age ended 15,000 years ago, research such as of Greenland ice cores shows at least six periods of greater warming than present, with warming diminishing since the Holocene Optimum 8,000 years ago. As for the intervening periods, they have been getting cooler, with the Little Ice Age 1150 to 1850 AD the coldest so far.

Along comes a bit of warming, a natural rebound from Little Ice Age cooling, and it is matched with increasing atmospheric CO2. Suddenly coincidence becomes cause, and research is launched with the charter of showing a theory based on the non-existent greenhouse effect as being driven by change in the trace gas, CO2. Oddly enough, flawed research based on tree rings as proxy for temperature - ignoring water, nutrients, competition for sunlight, disease, and other components of tree growth - research that strains to look back 1,000 years, and portions of which today show cooling when they should reflect warming - high jacked UN IPCC climate science (and Al Gore) on a wild-climate change goose chase.

It appears now that the inherent weakness in the CO2 caused warming effect is becoming obvious, so every effect is now in search of an anthropogenic global warming cause. Science is turned on its head, and where there once was a head, other body parts prevail.

EPA and Science are Strangers

2011-03-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

The EPA is trying to regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide as a pollutant, which is sheer stupidity. It is essential for healthy plant growth, and humans can live in an environment breathing ten times the current level of atmospheric CO2 with no negative health consequences.

Ask any submariner.

I think the EPA only discovered science yesterday, about the day after Al Gore did. Serious students of climate know that there have been at least six periods of greater warming in the past 15,000 years since the end of the Ice Age, and that current warmng is the weakest of the six. The greatest warm period recently was 8,000 years ago in the Holocene Optimum, and the following warming periods have steadily decreased in amplitude.

The latest warming hardly registers, even when compared to the Medieval Warm Period only 1,000 years ago. The only thing that makes it seem significant is that it comes right at the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest period of the past 15,000 years.

Now we're in a state of lesser warming following greater cooling, which means that run-away warming is not what we need to worry about. Since warming didn't run away when atmospheric levels of CO2 were ten or more times the present, there is no reason to think it will in our current period of both low CO2 and temperature.

Unless your teacher of climate change was just born yesterday.

Will someone dry the wet behind Mr. Gore's ears?

Public Employee Union Thugs in Wisconsin

2011-03-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

Recently a news service headlined that as a result of their defeat in Wisconsin, unions vow to target Republicans. When did the news equivalent of “dog bites man” become headline worthy?

In Wisconsin some police, firefighter, and teacher union leaders sent a letter (click here) to local businesses that contributed to Governor Scott Walker, threatening that these businesses publicly support the unions or: “In the event that you cannot support this effort to save collective bargaining, please be advised that the undersigned will publicly and formally boycott the goods and services provided by your company.”

Translation: “We’re going to make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

FDR, who opposed public employee unions, is rolling over in his grave.

Is ending public employee collective bargaining that critical for getting budgets under control? Yes, and a liberal columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Chip Johnson, proved this point (in this article, Oakland police, firefighter pay devouring budger) using a database of local government salaries and compensation compiled by state Controller John Chiang's office. In Oakland, current pay and pension costs of police and firemen are pushing everything else out of Oakland's budget. Even the police budget: over 80 recently hired and trained policemen had to be laid off, still leaving Oakland with a $46 million budget deficit. One reason for police layoffs: the Oakland firefighters’ contract ensures no layoffs, minimum staff requirements aboard fire trucks, and no station closures. One union dog eats the other.

But the police aren’t complaining, although Oakland residents are; eight of the ten highest paid in Oakland are police, and 440 of the 500 highest paid are police and firemen.

Wisconsin taught a valuable lesson that should benefit both Democrats and Republicans. If you don’t like the way the game is going, and you grab the ball and run away, it only works if your opponents don’t have any to spare.

The Sixth Major Extinction

2011-03-15T18:43:00.000-07:00

According to an extremely poorly researched and presented article in Nature magazine, man-caused global warming will cause Earth's sixth great mass extinction. I won't go into the weaknesses of the article in a deep scientific manner, because I'm not a scientist. I'll leave that sort of thing to Al Gore.

But for the science, or lack of it, please go here.

I'll continue with observations of a more general nature which I have gleaned from reading and listening to experts, and briefly describe below.

In the Galapagos we watched finches adapting rapidly to natural cycles of change in their food stocks. In my brief (by geological measurement) lifetime thousands of previously unknown species have been identified, many of apparently recent vintage. An astute observer of Greenland would note dramatic natural changes in just the past 1,000 years involving fish, birds, mammals, and plants adapting to the cold and ice of the Little Ice Age following the much-warmer-than-today Medieval Warm Period. Through all the natural changes, nature has produced winners and losers, and then reversed the game. Now we are in a brief interglacial period characterised by unusal warmth, compared to the glacial periods just preceding and, most assuredly, soon following.

Button up your overcoats. We're going to be one of the challenged species when it gets cold.

California Democrats Say Financial Mess is Republicans' Fault

2011-03-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Governor Brown missing budget deadline! Republicans’ fault!

Brown isn’t getting the two Republican votes each in the Senate and the Assembly he needs to call a special June election for voters whether to extend taxes. It’s Déjà vu all over again. In May 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger got the votes and put tax-increase propositions on the ballot. The voters defeated them 2 votes to 1. Then, as now, Democrat politicians said that if the propositions didn’t pass then drastic cuts would be made to education and health services. Then, as now, none were.

Now the sorry state of California’s finances are the Republicans’ fault, even though Republicans for years haven’t had enough votes to raise or lower anyone’s taxes, or to either cut or raise spending. Blaming Republicans is like blaming the street sweeper after the horse parade for all the manure on the road. Believe me, he wishes it never got there in the first place.

Republicans are trying to use the only clout they have to get the majority Democrats to work on the problem. From what has been in the news recently, so far the Democrats haven’t found one program that could stand even the slightest cut. “Cut spending? We need to raise it!” they cry, as they fall in line behind “Economist” Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

Governor Brown talks some spending cuts, but he knows that even if he gets the tax extensions on the ballot, and by some miracle they pass, he still won’t be able to wring promised spending cuts from the Legislature. Even his seizure of redevelopment funds, which cities like Santa Rosa are working hard to circumvent, only moves spending from one account to another.

More smoke and mirrors.

A Ridiculous Budget Proposal

2011-02-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

Obama’s Defense budget request for fiscal year 2011 is $549 billion, plus $159 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. The federal deficit for 2011 will be $1.5 trillion, an increase of $200 billion. If all defense spending were eliminated, the deficit would still be $792 billion (almost twice any deficit 1946 through 2008). Defense cuts totaling $78 billion have already been proposed by the Pentagon, roughly equal to Social Security’s deficit for 2011 but not its ten-year $600 billion deficit.

We could eliminate defense R&D, $79 billion for 2011. However, liberals paradoxically remind conservatives of innovations from government expenditures, but overlook that almost all were military related: the Internet (sorry Al), GPS, cell phone, satellites, jet aircraft, space exploration, &etc.

We could save a large portion but not all of $138 billion by firing all defense department personnel. You would still be stuck with paying about $60 billion for retired military and Defense Department civilians. Of course that would save an additional $200 billion, because without people you don’t need to pay for operating and maintaining all of their bases and equipment.

This exercise is ridiculous, and only Liberals take it seriously. My point is that the defense budget-cutting Devil is in the details. Cutting waste and unnecessary expenditures is always a good idea, but I remember the political battle over closing unnecessary military bases 1988-1995. Dovish Senator Boxer became a Defense hawk trying to save over twenty unneeded California military bases.

Entitlements (Medicare and Social Security), bloated federal agencies (Commerce, Education, Transportation), and the upward-spiraling costs of ObamaCare are the real uncontrolled spending. The President and Democrats should stop trying to exploit these issues for political gain and work with Republicans to cut spending.

Democrat Double Standards

2011-02-20T22:50:00.000-08:00

Democrats applying double standards is nothing new, but events of the past week have made them starkly clear. Republicans trying to make a tiny 0.017% cut in the federal budget are assailed for bringing the country to its knees on one hand by Democrats, and on the other hand Democrats call Republicans cowards for not being true to their vows to cut even more. The tiny Republican minority in California is given full responsibility for not leading California out of its dreadful budget mess, even though the only thing Republicans can do is stop a tax increase. When California voters were last given the opportunity to raise taxes in May 2009:

“By a margin on nearly 2 to 1, Californians rejected a package of propositions that would have extended increases on the income, sales, and car taxes; shifted money from dedicated funds; and borrowed against lottery revenues. The taxes would have shaved $6 billion off a $21 billion budget shortfall stemming from a decade-long unwillingness to match desired spending and expected revenues.”

Minority Republicans, not the overwhelming majority Democrats, are the ones reflecting the will of Californians.

Republicans can’t cut spending – only Democrats can.

When Republicans are in the majority – Wisconsin for example – their courageous attempts to cut spending are met by Democrat desertion of the democratic process, aided and abetted by unethical behavior by Democrat doctors and teachers. According to the AP, Wisconsin doctors have passed out hundreds of notes to excuse public employee work absences without examination; “they seem to be suffering from stress.” Madison family physician Lou Sanner said his notes are “as valid as any other work note I’ve written for the last 30 years.”

Fraudulent doctors and teachers. Just the sort of leaders the youth of America can look up to.

An Interview with President Obama and Senator Obama on the Individual Mandate

2011-01-31T18:40:00.000-08:00

(My particular hero is Al Gore. I especially admire his ability to channel past events in a way that supports his current postions. I remember how we raptly listened as he told us how his mother used to sing "Look for the union label" to him when he was a boy - or at least a very youthful 27-year old. Now we find another has come along who shares Al's trait. The following is an interview I channeled with the new practitioner of the Gore art, drawn from the news of the day.)

President Obama, federal judge Roger Vinson said in his ruling that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, and compared it to congress compelling all Americans to eat broccoli (click here for this news item). A White House official speaking for you said that sort of “surpassingly curious reading” called into question Judge Vinson‘s entire ruling, and added “There’s something thoroughly odd and unconventional about (his) analysis.”

Mr. President, since this is a health matter we wanted a second opinion, so we wondered what Senator Obama thought of the individual mandate proposed by Senator Clinton. Senator Obama told us (2008): “If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.”

Mr. President, wouldn’t it be healthier to make everybody eat broccoli instead of buying a house?

The Oppressor and the Oppressed

2011-01-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

America supports freedom for all except...

Except what?

Except we know that "freedom" is a word not universally understood.

During the Cold War we supported dictators and despots if they opposed the USSR and/or China. We knew the dictators and despots of the USSR and China wanted to spread dictatorships and despotism over all the world, so the enemy of our enemy was our friend.

After the inevitable collapse of the fraud Communism, we continued to support some dictators and despots to protect the world against the next -ism, whatever it might turn out to be.

However, we had a pretty good idea what it would be, and we were right.

Islamism.

Islam. "Submission to God."

Who can argue with that?

How do we know what God wants us to do?

God told us. In the Koran.

Well God told Mohammad, and Mohammad told others to write it down, and thus the Koran.

Since all that happens is God's will, the Koran and before and since was and will be as God desires.

Insha'Allah. God willing.

So finally God wills the faithful to be free.

Free to do what?

Follow God's will.

But they have always done that.

All that has been and will be is as God willed.

Just like the Koran says.

So if each just follows the Koran, all is in accord with God's plan, right?

Not quite.

A lot has happened since Mohammad dictated the Koran.

In fact, most murdered Muslims were and are killed by other Muslims because of religious disagreements.

I know that's impossible.

God's will, you know.

However, as Mohammad criticized Judaism and Christianity because leaders and priests following Moses and Christ allowed error and corruption to befoul their teachings, so have the teachings of Mohammad, the Prophet of God, been befouled.

Islam is interpreted by religious leaders to guide the faithful, and they are as eager to direct the actions of their followers as ancient Judeo-Christian theologians were to debate how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. (As illustration, watch Egyptian Cleric Sa'd Arafat explain the do's and don't's of beating your wife - click here)

The oppressed of the Muslim world - such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - don't want to end all oppression. They just want to be on the side of the oppressors.

Look to Iran.

Out with the Shah, in with the Ayatollah.

The Iranian man-in-the-street was more free under the Shah than under the Ayatollahs.

Especially if the man-in-the-street was a woman.

What's The Problem?

2011-01-25T16:34:00.000-08:00

I read somewhere that when Dustin Hoffman heard an ad for pills to treat erectile disfunction that cautioned: "Seek medical attention for an erection lasting longer than four hours," he commented "What's the problem?"

That was my reaction when I read a Reuters news release about Republicans proposing legislation to allow states to seek bankruptcy protection because of enormous, unfunded, unsustainable public employee pension laibilities. Some govenment analysts "are concerned that opening up a bankruptcy option would spook the buyers of state debt, driving up interest rates and making borrowing more expensive."

What's the problem?

Not doing anything about these enourmous, unfunded, unsustainable public employee pension liabilities won't make them go away.

A federal bailout won't make them go away.

Slashing other state services to the bone - education, health care, road repairs, libraries, &etc. - won't make them go away.

Even eliminating them entirely won't make them go away.

In fact, the only effective treatment is the immediate termination of existing public employee pension contracts (defined benefits), and their replacement with defined contribution plans.

Anything else is like coitus interruptus - as ineffective for budget control as coitus interruptus is for birth control, and less satisfying.

How Many Global Warming Alarmists Can Dance On Al Gore?

2011-01-13T23:37:00.000-08:00

For several years I have immersed myself in books and articles, first about man-caused global warming, and then about climate change when the term “global warming” became problematic to Al Gore and His Acolytes. It didn’t take long for me to realize there was a pattern to most of the articles, and to the supporting and opposing comments they invoked from their audience. Simply, both sides were arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin before proving that angels exist.

Similarly, arguments about the effects of human activities on warming rage without establishing whether carbon dioxide significantly effects warming, or even if warming is good or bad.

So this discussion should begin at the beginning.

Is the Earth warming? Yes, at a rate of about 1º Fahrenheit (F) per century for the past two centuries, which coincidentally is the period since the end of the Little Ice Age.

Has there been similar warming in the past 1,000 years? Yes, in the Medieval Warm Period.

Has there been similar warming in the past 10,000 years? Yes, six or more, one of which – the Holocene Optimum – was much warmer.

Have there been periods of similar or greater warming in earlier periods? Yes, hundreds of them.

Were previous warming periods caused by increased atmospheric CO2? No, although Al Gore mistakenly said they were.

Is the current warming caused by increased atmospheric CO2? No, it’s just a continuation of the warming that began about four hundred years ago and ended the Little Ice Age.

Are sea levels rising? Yes, recently about six inches per century.

Have sea levels risen in the past? Yes, over 400 feet since the end of the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago.

Have sea levels ever been higher than they are now? Yes, hundreds of feet higher.

See how simple it is? We have already demonstrated that warming is not unusual. For that matter, cooling isn’t either. Neither are rising sea levels, or falling ones.

Does this surprise anyone? It shouldn’t, and you don’t have to be a climate expert, meteorologist, rocket scientist, mathematician, failed presidential candidate, or any other exalted personage to understand that climate change is natural, and has been for billions of years. The evidence is all around us.

However, historians and geologists are probably our best guides to past climate changes. Historians can tell us that the Thames would freeze over in the winter during The Little Ice Age, and that Ice Faires were held on it. Or that there were vineyards in England a thousand years ago where there aren’t now. Or that Vikings farmed parts of Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period that are in permafrost today, and that these farms and Viking settlement of Greenland failed as The Little Ice Age took hold.

Geologists can point out ancient beaches hundreds of feet above the current sea level, or channels once cut by rivers that are now under the sea.

Arrayed against these clear and simple facts, we find a so-called science that claims our current warming is caused by human activities that have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. Further, according to Al Gore, carbon dioxide is “the most important of the so-called greenhouse gases”, and greenhouse gases cause warming. Beside the easily proven scientific fact that the greenhouse effect is a myth, such arguments begin from a premise that is in itself in error. First, water vapor, not CO2, is obviously the most important since it comprises 95 percent of total so-called atmospheric greenhouse gases. CO2 is a piddling (meaning very small) part of the total – almost four percent.

Carbon dioxide is a trace gas and is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere (Dry air contains roughly [by volume] 78.09% nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases). Following this line of discovery, the next logical step would be to determine how much of the miniscule portion of air that is carbon dioxide results from human activity. Again, the word miniscule fits our needs, since natural sources (such as decaying vegetation) produce about 97%, and human activities produce only three percent. Therefore, human activity produces 0.001% of the volume of the atmosphere, or looking at just greenhouse gases, 0.12%. (click on this link)

Or, “Much ado about nothing.”

This chart illustrates that the green portion representing Kyoto mandated carbon dioxide reductions is about 1/20th of human-produced CO2, and that when taken in the context of the entire atmosphere achieves monumental insignificance, as does anthropogenic CO2.

“Nothing? Nothing, you say. Don’t you know that if it weren’t for the greenhouse effect, we’d all freeze?”

To which I succinctly reply, “male bovine excrement!”

Actually, opportunities to be frozen have appeared frequently in Earth’s history, although more often the Earth has been warmer and ice free. We’re now in a cool period, and have had polar ice for the past 35 million years, but for roughly 75% of its history the Earth has been ice free. This chart shows Earth’s most recent temperature history, beginning roughly 542 million years ago with the Cambrian period.

Our atmosphere does not operate as a greenhouse. A greenhouse has a cover which allows visible light to enter and to be absorbed as heat energy by the contents of the greenhouse. This heat energy then warms the air in the greenhouse through radiation, and the warm air is trapped inside the greenhouse and is prevented from mixing with the colder air outside.

Did Al get the science right?

In his introduction to “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore states: “I have learned that, beyond death and taxes, there is at least one absolutely indisputable fact. Not only does human-caused global warming exist, but it is also growing more and more dangerous and at a pace that has now made it a planetary emergency.”Later Gore quotes Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Al’s “absolutely indisputable fact” is just the sort of statement that Twain would have covered by his admonition.

By my count Gore listed at least three “facts”, none of which are indisputable. We’ve already demonstrated that warming can, and has, existed without human causation. We’ve shown the Earth has been warmer without producing catastrophic conditions. As we will later show, we can’t say the same about cooling.

Our world is filled with the unbelievable, yet Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” deserves a featured place in the “Great Hall of Unbelievables.” At the most basic level, Gore got the science wrong, yet some scientists praise him, even when these same scientists must concede that Al’s predictions are unrealistic – none believe sea levels could rise 20 feet by 2100 – they mute their criticism with remarks like “Gore got the science right.”

But did he get the science right? If so, then what has driven previous periods of climate change that have been equal or greater than the present? Are prominent scientists saying that CO2 is (and by implication has always been) the driving force in climate change?

Al Gore certainly did when he showed the chart of fluctuations of CO2 and temperatures derived from Vostok ice core samples, and said that rising atmospheric CO2 levels caused global temperatures to rise. However, and very inconveniently for Al, the Vostok studies actually show that temperatures rose before CO2, and furthermore, that temperatures fell while CO2 levels were still high. For the last almost half-a-million years covered by the Antarctic ice core samples taken at Vostok, temperature changes drive CO2 changes (not vice versa)with a lag time ranging 500 to 1,500 years.

Only briefly chastened by the Vostok revelations, anthropogenic (man-caused) global warmists concede that rising temperatures (resulting from orbital and solar variations) cause rising CO2, but then theorize that rising CO2 takes over and forces a much greater increase in temperature than possible without CO2’s contribution to the greenhouse effect.

Interestingly, while they weaseled out of the box they found themselves in when rising temperatures cause increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, they’re still stuck in the box because they can’t explain why temperatures fall before all-powerful CO2 does.

And temperatures have always fallen after rising, regardless of CO2 levels.

In fact, it’s happened many times in the last 10,000 years, after our most recent Ice Age ended 11,000 years ago. Since Al Gore has made much of Greenland, and what he sees as the potential for the Greenland ice cap to be dislodged dramatically by warming and cause sea levels to suddenly rise 20 feet, it behooves us to look at what Greenland ice cores tell us about the past 15,000 years. Talk about your warming! Only 15,000 years ago Greenland warmed 22º F (12.5º C) in only 1,000 years, plunged 29º F (16º C) back into cooling, then surged upwards over 30º F (17º C), all in only 4,000 years. Then, except for two very brief periods, Greenland temperatures remained significantly higher than the present for more than 10,000 years.

The following chart shows temperatures peaked almost 8,000 years ago and that succeeding peak temperatures have been steadily lower. The chart ends at Year 0 (2004), and clearly shows the warmer Medieval Warm Period roughly 1,000 years ago, and the recent very cold Little Ice Age (1200 to 1800 AD) that we are recovering from at a rate of about 0.5º Centigrade per century.

Unprecedented warming?

Al displayed the infamous “Hockey stick” graph (created by Dr. Michael Mann et al, famous in Climategate disclosures for his trick to “hide the decline”) in “An Inconvenient Truth” which wiped out both the Medieval Warm Period and The Little Ice Age. Al then trumpeted that current warming was “unprecedented”, leaving one to wonder what Al thinks “unprecedented” means. I think I know what it means, but to be sure I checked the dictionary and found I’m right and Al’s wrong. Unprecedented means “it ain’t happened before” (I’m paraphrasing). One dictionary showed: “without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled”.

Unprecedented warming does not mean in the past 100 years, 500 years, 1,000 years, &etc. I suppose you could say that something is unprecedented in your lifetime, or since instrumental temperature records began (Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer in 1724). However, if you say that the current warming is unprecedented, you had better include a qualifier like “since the end of the Medieval Warm Period approximately 1300 AD”.

In recent history (the past one-hundred million years – see the following chart), average global temperature was steady at about 21º C (a balmy 70º F) for most of the period while atmospheric CO2 fell 75%, from 1,500 parts per million (ppm) to the present 380 ppm. This chart also shows we now live in a low-atmospheric CO2 environment compared to over a half-billion years ago when CO2 was 7,000 ppm. Only for a brief period (in geologic terms) 315 to 270 million years ago has both CO2 and temperatures been as low as now. Obviously, for a long time temperature not only has had a low correlation with CO2, but has been insensitive to changes in CO2. That’s what you would expect, since the Greenhouse Effect is a myth, a now-and-again coincidence that does not even fit the past fifty-year period of intermittent warming.

The Greenhouse Effect myth - Or the power of coincidence

“One of the most important factors is the greenhouse effect; a simplified explanation of which is as follows. Short-wave solar radiation can pass through the clear atmosphere relatively unimpeded. But long-wave terrestrial radiation emitted by the warm surface of the Earth is partially absorbed and then re-emitted by a number of trace gases in the cooler atmosphere above. Since, on average, the outgoing long-wave radiation balances the incoming solar radiation, both the atmosphere and the surface will be warmer than they would be without the greenhouse gases … The greenhouse effect is real; it is a well understood effect, based on established scientific principles."

The above sounds very neat. It’s too bad it’s wrong.

The abstract below, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, Version 3.0 (September 9, 2007)” was authored by two German physicists, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner.

“The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33º C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.”

The authors concluded their study hopefully: “The authors express their hope that in the schools around the world the fundamentals of physics will be taught correctly and not by using award-winning "Al Gore" movies shocking every straight physicist by confusing absorption/emission with refection, by confusing the tropopause with the ionosphere, and by confusing microwaves with shortwaves.”

Once the anthropogenic global warmists have their greenhouse effects taken away, what remains?

California Voter Insanity

2011-01-13T22:13:00.000-08:00

This political cartoon nails it! California has the second highest unemployment, by far the largest unfunded public employee pension liability, close to the highest taxes, almost the worst public school performance, yet reelected every Democrat incumbent while electing Democrats to every state-wide office. Still, California wonders what’s wrong with the rest of the country that went Republican?

The rest of the country wised up. Forty-six percent favor repeal of Obamacare, and the 40% that don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and Democrat leaders who gamed Congressional Budget Office conventions to “prove” that Obamacare saves money. The Wall Street Journal found: “(Obamacare)uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies. Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion. A new program funding long-term care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, gradually going broke by design. The law pretends that Congress will spend less on Medicare than it really will, in particular through an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Democrats have already voted not to allow for this year.”

Repeal of Obamacare actually saves $540 billion in expenditures while stopping the government from collecting $770 billion in new taxes over ten years. Even fools (but not Democrat leaders) know you can’t insure 32 million more people and save money. Or count cutting Medicare as savings when you know the cuts will never happen. Or have huge increases to Medicaid (MediCal) when the states can’t afford to cover their increased share.

The total federal, state, and municipal unfunded liabilities are staggering: public employee pensions, $5 trillion; Medicare/Medicaid, $74 trillion; Social Security, $16 trillion.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging!

The Educated Stupid at the University of California, Berkeley

2011-01-13T22:07:00.000-08:00

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau forcefully demonstrated that higher education did not stop him from making a public display of stupidity (Chronicle, Matier & Ross, Cal chancellor outspoken about Arizona, January 12, 2011). His conclusion that the killing in Tucson was caused by “discrimination against undocumented persons” and a “climate in which demonization and hateful speech is tolerated” was unsupported by facts or reason.

Mr. Birgeneau said: “It is not a coincidence that this calamity has occurred in a state which has legislated discrimination against undocumented persons.” Since Mr. Birgeneau claims insight into the causes of calamities, I’m sure he knows why these spree killings occurred in other states: Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 in Virginia (2007); Jiverly Wong, 14 in New York (2009); Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, 12 in Colorado (1999); John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, 10 in Maryland and Virginia (2002); Michael McClendon, 10 in Alabama (2009); Jeff Weise, 10 in Minnesota (2005); and Christopher Speight, 8 in Virginia (2010).

At least Mr. Birgeneau displayed originality by not joining the army of Liberals blaming Sarah Palin and talk radio with no resort to facts or reason.

A Solution Seeking a Problem

2011-01-13T22:04:00.000-08:00

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Blood was still flowing as Democrats turned their faces northward and raved, “Sarah Palin pulled this trigger!” Then, as passions cooled, Democrats seized the opportunity this serious crisis presented: It’s right-wing rhetoric, it’s Rush Limbaugh, it’s Fox News, &etc. At Cal Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau claims it’s discrimination against undocumented immigrants. In the UK it’s “climate-change skeptics!” Here in Gualala Democrat leader Kenny Jowers blames Conservatives.

To the Left, the solution to “The Problem” was obvious: “Shut up the Right Wing.”

But what was “The Problem”?

Obviously, when right wingers are critical of the Left they incite others to violence, even if the others aren’t right wingers, and even if they are unaware of what the Right is saying.

Was Loughner a Tea Party supporter? Some former classmates remember him as being ‘Left-wing’ and ‘liberal’.

Has any evidence been produced that Loughner was even aware of Sarah Palin’s website, or of anything she said? No.

When you Google “Bush Hitler” how many websites are linked? 55,200.

How many innocents were gunned down when ultra-liberal Democrat Markos Moulitsas (aka Kos) said he put a “bull’s eye” on Gabrielle Giffords and other “Blue Dog” Democrats for selling out progressive principles? (following Democrat reasoning, 20) Or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee website which featured targets on a map and still instructs Democrats to “Click on a red bullseye to view a Republican targeted for opposing economic recovery.” (following Democrat reasoning, it’s just a matter of time) Unlike Palin’s map, which targeted districts, the DCCC and Kos maps targeted INDIVIDUALS.

Apparently Democrats don’t need gyms for exercise. They get theirs jumping to conclusions.

Do Angels Dance on Pins? Yes, just like humans cause global warming

2010-12-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

An article came to my attention showing that during a recent period (in geologic time), atmospheric CO2 fell over 1,000 ppm (its about 350 ppm now) while temperatures rose 7 degrees Centigrade (12.6 degrees Fahrneheit). Many questions came to mind. One, how much higher was global temperature then than now? Answer: about 12 degrees F. As the chart below shows, the Earth is usually warmer, and as expected, atmospheric CO2 was much higher because of the warmer seas and the higher rate of plant growth and subsequent decay. All natural, of course.

Now we are in a period of relatively low temperatures and atmospheric CO2. Atmospheric CO2 has increased about 80 ppm in the past 200 years, and warming increased a modest 0.6 degrees Centigrade (1 degree F) since the end of the Little Ice Age about 160 years ago.

Only Al Gore and his Acolytes would think that any of this is remarkable, or not natural. What is an icrease of 80 ppm for CO2 when previous fluctuations have been in thousands? What is an increase of 0.6 degrees C when geological records show rapid swings of 7 degrees C?

I have seen hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles that establish such phenomena as a global Medieval Warm Period, a much warmer than present Holocene Optimum, and at least four other periods of equal or greater warming in the past 11,000 years. Arrayed against that is the discredited "hockey stick" of Mann et al, which among many shortcomings attempts to hide the divergence between what the trees are supposedly telling us compared to modern instument records. Can you have it both ways? Tree rings prove there was no Medieval Warm Period, but can't show current warming?

Concerning CO2 levels, 3% is produced by human activity, and 97% by the natural carbon cycle, which includes decaying plant material and the oceans. In terms of the nonexistent "greenhouse effect", water vapor contributes roughly 95% of atmospheric warming as the atmosphere acts as an air conditioner cooling and warming the Earth by a combination of thermodynamics and radiation.

CO2 is an insignificant trace gas, incapable of aborbing heat energy and reradiating it towards an area of greater energy concentration, the Earth. Simply, a cooler body cannot warm a warmer one.

All of the Warmist arguements are like speculating about the number of Angels who can dance on the head of a pin, without first proving the existence of Angels.

To Obscurity, Whoever You Are

2010-12-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

I just posted this on Dr. Roy Spencer's blog as a comment to a post by "Obscurity", who accused skeptics of making fun of man-caused global warming by noting the current record lows in Cancun, the UK, and Europe.

Skeptics are not alone in sometimes citing weather (cold snaps, record low temperatures) as climate trend. Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Prize for that very thing. When or where did Al Gore mention that current warming started around 1850, at the end of the Little Ice Age? Or that there have been at least six periods of greater or equal natural warming in the Holocene, including most recently the Medieval Warm Period?

"An Inconvenient Truth" is replete with examples of weather (Katrina, floods, a strong storm drowning three polar bears, etc.) that Al Gore cites as proof of AGW (or climate change). Kilimanjaro is prominently featured, even though its glacier retreat occured predominantly prior to 1900 and had nothing to do with warming (the glacier field never warms above freezing - Al never heard of sublimation?). Then there's the 20 feet of sea rise by 2100 compared to about six inches in the past century (and 420 feet in the past 11,000 years, an average of four feet per century).

What explains that cooling always beginnings when atmospheric CO2 is relatively high? If increasing CO2 causes warming, why can't high levels of CO2 prevent cooling?

I'm glad Al Gore brought the Vostok ice cores to our attention, showing that changes in CO2 follow, not precede, changes in temperature. Thanks, Al.

Swept Away and Sinking Fast - Democrat "Leadership"

2010-11-15T11:48:00.000-08:00

Nancy Pelosi and Democrat leadership permanently reside in “Fools’ Paradise.” The chairmen of President Obama’s fiscal commission just released a report proposing sweeping changes to Social Security, Medicare and the tax code. The plan would reduce the deficit by nearly $4 trillion over the next decade by making dramatic spending cuts and overhauling the tax code by lowering tax rates while wiping out some deductions, such as for mortgage interest. Pelosi and union leaders called it “simply unacceptable.”

What is acceptable? Drowning in our current raging, rising deficits? At the Federal level, unfunded liabilities for Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security total over $80 trillion, roughly six trillion more than the world’s gross annual product. For state and municipalities, indebtedness plus unfunded public employee pension liabilities exceed four trillion dollars, or $41,000 per household. Very soon every tax dollar will be consumed by entitlement programs. You want to increase funding for education by cutting the military budget? No problem; military spending will have to be cut – to zero! But so too will funding for education, parks, transportation, police, fire, libraries; everything but entitlements will have to be eliminated.

Is there a way out? Yes, states and municipalities can default on their debt payments. “Experts” who say this won’t happen consider only bonded indebtedness but ignore the unfunded pension liabilities tsunami. These experts suggest the Feds should rescue states and municipalities, yet they ignore the super-tsunami of unfunded Federal entitlement liabilities. Who rescues the rescuer?

Public employee pensions, “negotiated” between public employee unions and politicians (who are also public employees) seeking their contributions and votes, will be swept away by waves of municipal bankruptcies. In California pension costs rose 2,000% from 1999 to 2009, while state funding for higher education declined. That’s unsustainable.

Piloting the “Ship of Fools,” Nancy Pelosi calls that simply acceptable.

E. J. Dionne Jr. doesn’t get it (and never will)

2010-11-03T20:32:00.001-07:00

According to liberal columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr., Obama and the Democrats did the right things, they just didn’t “sell them” well, and now Republicans should do what Democrats would if they continued to control Congress. Dionne pointed to revenue sharing with the states, especially now that most will have Republican governors.

That’s a dumb idea. The states – and counties, and cities – have unleashed a tsunami of unsupportable spending for public employee pensions. Soon the only funds available to governmental units that can’t print money will be totally consumed by government employee pensions.

If Republicans cooperate with Democrats and governors through revenue sharing they will be enablers of this spending addiction. Simple mathematical analysis illustrates that current and projected tax revenues, even given the most optimistic scenarios, are insufficient in light of unfunded public employee pension liabilities. If private businesses had such unfunded liabilities, the government would immediately shut them down.

It’s inevitable that there will be massive public sector bankruptcies – cities, counties and states – and that the Federal government does not have the will or the means to rescue them from themselves.

The best thing Republicans can do is to practice “tough love” and resist vain rescue attempts, because in fifty years unfunded entitlement liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will squeeze out all “discretionary” Federal spending programs. Right now would-be rescuers would best serve their country by avoiding being part of long-running government incompetence that sees the problems facing later generations and doesn’t do a thing to prevent them.

So, Mr. Dionne, Mr. Obama, and all you “progressives” – give me proof that I am wrong.

Obviously you must believe I am, or else you would be doing something about it.

Wouldn’t you?

The Election is Over!

2010-11-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

The election is over, and Republicans did quite well. Let the analyses begin!

First, there will be near universal agreement by the main stream media with Senator Kerry that the American public are “know-nothings” because if they were “know-somethings” they would have voted for Democrats. Another point of agreement is that Republicans are divisive – in fact, Obama considers anyone who disagrees with Democrats not only divisive, but “enemies.” Obama told Latinos that instead of sitting out the election, they should be saying, “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

More agreement – it’s all the fault of Republicans and George W. Bush. This one’s easy, since the Republicans only lost the House and Senate four years ago, and the presidency two years ago. If the Republicans would have just gone along with Democrats, unemployment wouldn’t have doubled in two years to 9.6% and neither would the public debt.

Of course, with total Democrat control of government since 2009, the Democrats didn’t need even one Republican vote to pass anything they wanted. That didn’t change until the voters of heavily Democrat Massachusetts, the only state suffering universal healthcare, elected Scott Brown to fill the Senate seat of Mr. Universal Healthcare, Ted Kennedy, thereby giving Republicans a filibuster option – if no Republican defected. In order to claim “victory,” Democrats then hastily passed the health care bill no one (except the health insurance companies) likes, including almost all Democrats running for House and Senate seats.

Interestingly, the most important issues: enormous unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security will soon prevent politicians from spending for anything else. Until these unsustainable entitlement programs are fixed, all else is just “grandstanding on the Maginot Line.”

Temperatures Fall During The Past Five Years

2010-10-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

North American temperatures have fallen during the past five years.

So much for global warming.

Can continents opt out of global warming?

That's what this NASA global temperature chart covering the past five years would seem to indicate. (You can click on it to get a much larger image - however, even this small image makes the point.)

Not to be entirely frivolous - continents probably can't vote - but these temperature trends also challenge a primary tenant of man-made global warming (aka climate change): warming is greatest at higher latitudes near the poles.

If cooling, not warming, is now greatest at higher latitudes near the poles, isn't that the opposite of what the alarmists have said?

Doesn't it look like they are totally wrong?

I think so.

It's Too Late, Democrats - Save Your Money!

2010-10-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

I mailed in my absentee ballot today, October 13, 2010. I could have mailed it in a week ago when I received it - I had already made all my selections among the candidates and propositions before it arrived, so I should have filled it out and dropped it in the mail immediately.

Why the rush?

No rush. Unlike many other citizens, I've been studying the candidates and issues for months while never watching a political ad on TV. Since the only thing we use our TV for is watching videos and football games, at the start of each game I put the DirecTV unit on record and pause, go off and do some chores, then start watching. When the game goes to commercials, I fast forward to the resumption of play, paying little attention to the fast flickering images of the commercials I zip through. The past weekend I noticed one ad repeated constantly. It featured a picture of Republican candidate for California Governor Meg Whitman with a Pinnochio-growing nose. "How clever," I mused sarcastically, and congratulated myself for not wasting any time watching such sophomoric programming.

The Pinnochio nose was tired and old political advertising when we Republicans ran it repeatedly over 16 years ago about Bill Clinton.

Maybe its use now is a tribute to the Green movement - recycling of old political ads to save the time and energy of creating any that are new, clever, and pertinent.

At any rate, all televised political ads are wasted on me - my ballot's in the mail, just in time as the avalanche of expensive Democrat ads hits the airwaves. I think that interested California voters have already done as I have, and mailed their ballots. The ones who haven't voted yet should get so turned off by the barrage of political advertising that they skip the election in disgust. Since most who lay around watching TV all day are Democrats, Republicans win!

The Pelosi-Reid Deficit

2010-10-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

When Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected a $379 billion surplus over the next decade. Now, after four years under Pelosi and Reid, and two years of Obama, the 2007-2016 projection is a deficit of $7.16 trillion. Obama blamed Bush for the nation's fiscal condition. "When I walked in, wrapped in a nice bow was a $1.3 trillion deficit sitting right there on my doorstep." Earlier this year he asserted that "we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade." However, according to the CBO neither statement is true.

Obama also overlooks the inconvenient truth that Democrats controlled Congress for two years before he began his presidency. While Democrats credit the minority Republicans with blocking Obama’s agenda, vast credit should be given to the majority Democrats for extraordinary spending and dubious achievement. Remember the promise Pelosi made on the day she became speaker? "Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt." After four years of Democrat rule, national unemployment rose to 9.5% from 4.4% (California unemployment went from 4.9% to 12.4%) while the Democrat budget will add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.

So much for unburdened opportunities. Like a weather report: “According to CBO projections covering the next several years, expect high and rising deficits with persistent unemployment, and no relief in sight.”

As a typical Democrat, Barbara Boxer spent two days talking about jobs and the previous 28 years supporting tax increases and job-killing regulations. Since she, Obama, Pelosi, and Jerry Brown have no experience working in the private-sector, it is no wonder they are clueless about employment and economics. To Democrats, ignorance is bliss.

(I borrowed heavily from an article in the Wall Street Journal for inspiration for this post)

Global Warming - Still Dead, Al Gore

2010-10-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

Five years ago Al Gore convinced the World that hurricanes like Katrina were due to anthropogenic global warming, and that the worst was yet to come, and on its way.

Since Al set the standard, what has happened since Katrina is fair game for global warming skeptics.

This chart shows (click on it for a larger image) that world-wide tropical cyclone activity increased in the early 1990's, dipped for a few years then increased again in the late 1990's, fell rapidly in the early 2000's, rose for four years but not as high as in the 1990's, then fell steadily for the last four years to the lowest point in the past 33 years.
Are these fluctuations normal or anomalous?

To answer that question we need to look at a longer time period. How about since 1950, which the global warming alarmists have identified as the beginning since atmospheric CO2 according to their numbers began its steady increase then, corresponding with the rapid industrialisation after World War II.

What do you think? (again, click the chart to get a larger image)

Among many obvious conclusions that can be drawn from this chart, the most important is that for about 24 years strarting in 1970, tropical cyclone activity was very low, even as CO2 increased steadily.

Would you like to comment at this time, Mr. Gore?

Notice 1950 and 1961 had stonger activity than any of the years since.

Mr. Gore, doesn't it look like the steadily higher levels of atmospheric CO2 aren't reflected in the trend of tropical cyclone activity since 1950, and doesn't that mean that there is no evidence that increasing CO2 is causing stronger, thereby more dangerous, hurricane activity?

You showed us Katrina, and said it does.

Florida State University (click on this link - their name - to read Florida State's full report) is showing us sixty years of tropical cyclone activity that says it doesn't.

CO2 goes up, hurricane activity doesn't.

That's not the way you said it happens, Al.

Talk about an incovenient truth.

Democrats' Ignorance is Bliss

2010-10-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

Obamacare - Arbitary and Capricious, A Liberal Dream

2010-08-31T16:43:00.000-07:00

Commerce Clause abuse is a Liberal mainstay. Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, simply states: “[The Congress shall have power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” Thus, the original purpose of the Commerce Clause was primarily to eliminate trade barriers among the states.

Nowhere in the Commerce Clause does it provide the power to regulate commerce within a state. This is in keeping with the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

In a 1942 Supreme Court ruling against Filburn, a small farmer was fined for growing 12 acres of wheat above his government allotment on his own land for his own use.

More recently and closer to home, the Court decided that the Commerce Clause permits Congress to prohibit the medicinal use of cannabis (Gonzales vs Raich), even though two California women following doctors’ recommendations only grew six cannabis plants on their own property for their own use .

However, as our new local marijuana dispensary illustrates, enforcement of the federal Controlled Substances Act is arbitrary and capricious. For example, Congress has permitted all fifty states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down, the barring of insurers from selling policies to people in another state.

Which brings us to the mandated healthcare so lavishly praised by Liberals. In the words of Ben Stein, "(It’s hypocritical) that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but people don't have to prove they are citizens."

It can’t get any more arbitrary and capricious than that.

Obama Immigration Hypocrisy

2010-08-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

Federal authorities arrested 596 illegal immigrants with prior criminal convictions, according to John Morton, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Most of them will be deported, though 22 may be prosecuted for illegal entry after previous deportation. He said the Obama administration is focused on deporting immigrants who break the law.

The sweep exposed holes in the U.S. immigration enforcement system, since 572 of the criminals, some previously convicted of murder, sex crimes, assault and fraud, had been released from jail or prison without being turned over to immigration authorities as the law requires, Morton acknowledged.

There are as many as a million such criminal illegal immigrants in the U.S., Morton said.

The sweep illustrates the hypocrisy of the Obama administration towards immigration enforcement as it opposes Arizona’s law.

Obama officials say they are focusing their efforts on people convicted of crimes, but acknowledge that they continue to remove noncriminals.

Meanwhile, the administration is also facing criticism from Congress that it is not aggressively enforcing immigration laws. In response, officials say they are removing a record number of immigrants, about 400,000 per year. A majority of those have not been convicted of crimes.

Arizona proposes doing what the federal government does poorly – enforce immigration laws. Under the legal doctrine of "concurrent enforcement," states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

If I were stopped for a driving violation, the officer would ask to see my driver’s license. If an illegal immigrant were stopped for the same violation and asked to show a driver’s license, that’s not racial profiling, unless illegal immigrants have more civil rights than citizens.

Perfect Financial Mismanagement Storm

2010-08-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

Who said? “Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone, gains won by marshalling resources that would otherwise stand idle—workers without jobs and farm and factory capacity without markets. Yet many taxpayers seemed prepared to deny the nation the fruits of tax reduction because they question the financial soundness of reducing taxes when the federal budget is already in deficit. Let me make clear why, in today's economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarged the federal deficit—why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

John F. Kennedy, January 1963. And it worked. Lower tax rates produced higher tax revenues. Interestingly, the greatest increase in tax revenues came from the wealthiest taxpayers. In the past forty-seven years, as a percentage of GDP, the top one percent of taxpayers now pay 3.3 percent, compared to 1.3 percent in 1963. In fact, they are now paying the same in total as the bottom 95 percent, who are only paying at half the rate they were prior to the Reagan tax cuts.

That’s right. Since the Reagan tax cuts, the rich are paying at twice the rate, and the bottom 95 percent are paying at half the rate. So much for the Democrat mantra that Reagan gave tax cuts to the rich on the backs of the poor (and middle class).

That won’t stop Democrats from playing to the same old class envy and demanding more taxes on the rich so they “pay their fair share.” However, as always, if the taxes on the rich go up, total tax revenues (and employment, and investment, and job creation) will go down, and the deficit will go up.

It’s a “Perfect Financial Mismanagement Storm.”

Obama and FDR's Ant

2010-08-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

About a matter of profound insignificance, FDR once said, "Did you ever hear an ant break wind in a hurricane."

Obama's proposal to cut $100,000,000 (that's one hundred million dollars) from a $3,5 trillion budget (that's $3,500,000,000,000 - I don't know if I have enough electrons in this computer for that many zeros!) has the same effect as the ant in the hurricane.

Since it's easier to show than tell, click on this link (Illustration of the Federal Budget) for a short (one minute 38 seconds) video that puts Obama's proposed budget cut in perspective.

A Job is a Right?

2010-08-12T11:47:00.001-07:00

With an attitude like that, it's no wonder she won't get a job!

If having a job is a right, then someone is obligated to provide that job.

Usually, someone is hired based upon skills, education, experience, appearance, intelligence - usually a combination of these, and more. If each person has a right to a job, then the use of such discriminators would not be allowed, except...

There are jobs that are so menial that the qualifications for them don't go much past being upright and breathing. However, since the value of the work done is low, the pay is low. The only ones who will take such jobs are illegal aliens.

Any person who has a right to a job wouldn't be caught dead accepting such employment.

So we have citizens with very low value as employees demanding high-value jobs as their right.

What good is it to have the right to a job if the only jobs you are offered because of your lack of employment skills are the ones you wouldn't accept anyway?

So how do you exercise your right to a job you would accept, if no one will offer you such a job?

It's simple. The government has to hire you. And pay you what you think you're worth.

So the government hires you into a good paying job - one you're not qualified to do.

The stress and frustration of not being able to do the work cause you to have health problems and spend a lot of time on sick leave.

However, the job still needs to be done, so the government hires another employee who can do the work, keeps you on the job too, and lowers your stress level by not requiring you to do anything.

You celebrate your good fortune by producing many children, secure in the knowledge that, no matter their lack of skills and education, they will have guaranteed good paying jobs for life, just like you.

You congratulate yourself for being such a responsible citizen, and adding many more to the workforce just like you.

Life is good!

Obama's "Mission Accomplished" Moment

2010-08-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today everyone is a spin doctor. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy F. Geithner does his part for Obama in the New York Times (of course), in his Op-Ed piece "Welcome to the Recovery." For being tone-deaf and clueless, this is a prize winner.

It's a "blame it on Bush" piece, conveniently overlooking that Democrats controlled Congress for two years before the recession bit, and that Barney Frank, the Congressional Black Caucus, Franklin Delano Raines, and the clowns at Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac sowed the seeds and nurtured the crop of mortgage malpractice activities, then attempted to "wash their hands" of any and all responsibility.

Hitting with great backspin, Newt Gingrich has an article with superb charts (click on the links) chronicling the "Indisputable Failure" of Obamanomics. There's the Obama Jobs Gap, the Obama Jobs Deficit, and a comparison with past recessions and recoveries.

Democrats suffer from schizophrenia about government stimulus. They say Bush's was bad, but about half of Democrats think Obama passed TARP instead of Bush, and think that was good.

From one of the least likely sources, an article by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, "Obama's CEO Problem," we find that the major problem is not government inaction, but the threat of government action. Zakaria admits that government cannot do what business can to end the recession, and that what is holding business back is uncertainty concerning taxes and regulation.

"The key to a sustainable recovery and robust economic growth," wrote Zakaria, "is to get companies to start investing in America." And why won't they? One CEO told Zakaria about uncertainty about government actions, “Almost every agency we deal with has announced some expansion of its authority, which naturally makes me concerned about what’s in store for us for the future.”

We don't need the government to take our money, then give it back to its chosen winners. That's the path to making us all losers.

Arthur's War

2010-08-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

I remember Arthur in war
Now that Arthur’s gone
His memories are mine

I remember a man just eighteen
On the quiet North Africa morning
Standing by his shining gun
Its master and its servant
Their war began and ended
Before their gun was fired
Destroyed by a bigger and more powerful German gun
Death arrived before its sounds were heard
Of gun and friends only Arthur lived

I remember Arthur in a Yank hospital
Where his good luck and youth
And the skills and labors of doctors and nurses
Granted him sixty more years of precious life
Months later back in England
In a Suffolk hospital he met
Then married Nurse Molly
Then soon was back among the friendly Yanks
Working in Supply at RAF Bentwaters

I remember RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge
Were birthed by war in 1944
Spitfires and Mustangs fluttered like butterflies
Rising from wheat stalk-paved runways
Then circling in droning swarms
Until a sputtering flare arcing high
Signaled formations in great V’s
Eastward across the English Channel

I remember Suffolk, an immobile aircraft carrier
Sending fighters and bombers over German factories
And farms, and cathedrals, and villages
Aircrews never seeing the frightened German faces
Scanning leaden skies for raining death
Or the faces of the prayerful Jews
In abandonment of hope for life
Wishing death equally on captive and captor

I remember Arthur
Serving in the Home Guard
Old men and boys and the wounded
Patrolling the Suffolk beaches
Scanning the North Sea horizon
Searching the leaden skies
Waiting and watching
For the ones that never came

I remember borne in war in 1942
With all the world’s mad pain and suffering
I was softly pulled from Mom’s belly
A triumph over her crippled hip and leg
My most precious gift from Mom and Pop
Brother Ron arrived less than a year later
Against long odds our little family grew
As other families perished all together

I remember when I arrived at Bentwaters
And met Arthur my first day on the job
The Cold War raged, and our 72 Phantom jets
Were in England to fly a deadly mission
A one-way trip to the Fulda Gap
Ending in a high-speed dive
A sudden pull up and release
A nuclear bomb powered by inertia and gravity
Flashing above the Eastern Army tanks and trains
Bringing death before sound announces its arrival

I remember fighting a thermo-nuclear war
Every month for over five years
Strangely war always arrived quietly
Dilly and I would be in the field
Dilly chasing a hare as I approved
Then on the dirt farm road
Our old Ford Anglia bouncing
Marilynn waving, shouting “Alert”
I changed to my uniform and raced to the Command Post

I remember plotting nuclear detonations
Of differing megatonage and how the winds
Distributed the nuclear fallout pattern downwind
Soon the first nukes would fall
London would be gone
The millions of people and the thousands of years
Living and building gone in a flash
Next Manchester, deadly for us
Prevailing winds would soon bring fallout
And we rushed to launch our flights of death
Before its silent and invisible shroud
Covered us

I remember, I remember
Another exercise is over
Released into the cold English night
From the bustling Command Post
The quiet, the silence, the peace

I remember telling Arthur
“Mate, I can’t imagine war,
What was it like?”
“Mike, I don’t know
It was over before I knew it”

The Public Option - We're Going There When England is Coming Back

2010-07-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

My recurring healthcare theme has been that our demographics are lagging Europe's, and that we can learn from their mistakes and not mess things up.

One of the liberal's guiding lights to lead us all to the public option has been the British National Health Service (NHS). It gives universal coverage for free, so the liberals say, and is a model of what our healthcare should be.

I've begged to differ, since I observed the NHS on a first-hand basis for five years living in England (1970-1975). A bloke who worked for me then was one of my best friends, the late Arthur Sharman. Arthur suffered under the NHS for a decade until he died waiting vainly for a hip replacement. Each year he would be scheduled for the operation, and each year higher priorities and budget crunches would cause his hip replacement to be rescheduled for the following year.

For several years before his death, it became obvious that the damage done by not having the hip replacement earlier had gone too far for the operation to restore his quality of life.

The new British government, the conservative party named Tories, have now made clear what has been known for decades: the NHS will have to severely reduce and ration healthcare, and in particular such procedures as hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, services for the terminally ill, and long-term care. (click here for the article on the massive cuts proposed for the NHS)

The slang name for the English healthcare screening units could easily be "Death" panels. That's obviously what must be part of a publically funded universal healthcare system. The "free" systems, like the NHS, depend on government taxing half or more of income away from its citizens, and healthcare has to compete for a share against education, transportation, welfare, and all the other government programs.

Also, to an extent greater than the other government programs, healthcare must serve a rapidly aging population and at the same time intergrate inceasingly expensive improvements in medical detection and treatment of illness.

We're lucky in the United States. We can watch Europe go blindly where we're headed, and learn from their mistakes.

Unless our leaders persist in following Europe blindly.

Experience is a great teacher, and teaches best when we can learn from the mistakes of others rather than our own.

Democrats Bail Out on Cap and Tax

2010-07-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

A farmer once told me he had a donkey that would do anything he said. When I asked for a demonstration, he walked up to the donkey and hit its head a hard blow with an ax handle.

"I thought you said the donkey would do whatever, you asked," I said. "If so, why did you hit it with the ax handle?"

"Well," said the farmer, "first you have to get his attention."

Just like the farmer's donkey, the first thing you have to do with Democrats is get their attention. Unfortunately, that means you have to wait for an election year to roll around before they will listen. The Democrats passed their so-called health care reform even though roughly sixty percent of American voters oppose it, because the Democrats thought the voters would forget about it by election time.

However, while they were trying for a radical makeover of health care, and then settling for a mishmash that no one liked, their ominous Cap and Trade legislation passed by the House just sat there mouldering in the Senate while the bloom was coming off the Obama rose.

Now Democrats are blaming Republicans for the death of Cap and Trade, but truth be known, many Democrats vainly praying for re-election want nothing to do with passing it in the face of high unemployment and persistent recession. Obama is looking ahead to 2012 and wants Congressional Democrats to "win one for the Capper," but those Democrats know a vote for Cap and Trade is their sure ticket out of Congress.

With a Congressional approval rating of 11 percent, many of them are on the way out anyway. Their only hope is a sudden economic turnaround, and that is sure not to happen if they mess up energy and make it more expensive. The recent modest economic improvements we see are rooted in the markets' certainty that Cap and Trade won't happen.

Democrats know that public attention is focused on jobs, jobs, jobs, and that messing up the economy now will prove that they have been ignoring the voters.

Time to get out the ax handle.

The Left's Census, Post Office, and Healthcare Follies

2010-07-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

The Left here in northern California has an incredible faith in government, quite unlike the Left of thirty or thereabouts years ago. For example, they want a single payer system for healthcare, the total abolishment of private insurance companies; in other words, a government monopoly.

Not long ago Alice and one of our leading leftists were comparing notes about another government program, the Census. Every ten years the Census lays an egg in our area, since the Post Office will not do home delivery in our rural area, and the Census will not allow post office box delivery of the mailed Census forms. Therefore, all the Census forms mailed to our area are returned to the Census office as undeliverable, since they are addressed to our property addresses instead of our Post Office boxes.

Knowing this to be the case, we do a variety of things to comply with Census requirements, such as getting forms from a local non-government social services office and mailing them in.

However, even after we do that the Census hires and sends in an army of Census workers hired outside of our area and therefore paid wages plus transportation, lodging, and meals expenses to come here and go house to house to complete the census. The landlady of one of the downtown inns said June was her best month in years because she was full of Census workers. At the same time, we had an abnormally high rate of unemployed in our area who, if hired by the Census, could have worked from their homes and saved the government the expenses of the out-of-towners, plus cut down on unemployment and welfare benefits paid to locals.

After I filled out and sent in our census form ahead of the deadline, Alice and I went on an African safari vacation. When we came back we found notices from three different census workers, two pinned on our front door and one on a side gate we rarely use. They had made their calls over two weeks after we sent in the completed form.

(The Census chief says that their shaky computer system won't be a problem in getting an accurate census. For more about this, click here.)

We called one of the numbers and answered the same questions that we had previously provided via mail almost a month before.

When Alice and the prominent local lefty discussed this, Alice asked: "Is there anything the government runs well?" and the Lefty replied: "The Post Office."

At this point, we need to recap that the root of our Census problem every ten years is that the Post Office will not deliver mail to our home addresses, and will not put mail addressed to our homes into our post office boxes - even though the Post Office employees know our names and our box numbers from memory.

Meanwhile, every week day United Parcel, Federal Express, and other delivery companies drive throughout our lightly populated rural area delivering to our home addresses. Frequently their service is amazing. I'll buy an item over the internet in the evening, and often the next day it will be delivered to my door, even though I haven't paid extra for expedited delivery.

And concerning healthcare, the very low Medicaid (called MediCal in California) reimbursement rate drains so much money from our small local medical center that evening and weekend services have had to be reduced severely. In Texas many doctors are dropping Medicaid patient service completely because they can't afford to provide it.

Yet the Left wants the government to run more things.

I know what the Left is smoking, because this area is one of the leading sources of marijuana, but its users say that it's supposed to be harmless.

Not if it makes the Democrats think that the government should run everything, it isn't!

Boxer Proud of Jobs Record

2010-07-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

Barbara Boxer claims California voters should reelect her because of her record on jobs for Californians (click here for the San Francisco Chronicle report). I think this illustrates Barbara's most outstanding trait: low intelligence. Who else would be proud of California's worst in the nation unemployment of 12.5%?

Californians are catching on. The bad news for Barbara is in the latest Fields poll, which shows her unfavorable rating is higher than her favorable (click here for this news items).

I must admit Barbara didn't do it all herself, although with three terms in the Senate, she deserves some of the credit for the total mess that is California government. If she had been a more effective Senator, she would have accomplished more of her leftist agenda, and then we could give her more credit for the mess.

California has been governed by Democrats for decades, and California's Democrats are a wholly owned subsidiary of California's powerful public employee unions. However, Barbara is on a two-day "jobs for California" tour, seemingly clueless about how this is calling attention to California Democrats' greatest failing. If the Democrats hadn't messed up California business and education so completely for so long, then our vast, intractable budget deficit wouldn't be blocking all attempts to get back on track.

Of course, California's Democrats got a lot of help from Washington Democrats like Barney Frank and Franklin Delano Raines, who badgered Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac into insolvency by forcing them to make mortgage loans to home buyers who had no chance in Hell of making the payments.

Californians are hurting enough now to finally notice that "Dim Bulb" Barbara hasn't accomplished anything of note, and that her loud-mouthed exhortations for government to spend more and be more like Europeans look odd now that the Europeans are trying to put an end to such foolishness.

Barbara's only hope is that the Californian electorate has been dumbed down so much by the destruction Democrats inflicted on California's once great educational system that they won't realize what a useless Senator she has been.

Actually, betting on the stupidity of the California electorate is usually a sure thing.

Barbara might not be so dumb after all.

Germany Shows Us How, Just Like They Showed Argentina

2010-07-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

Which of the major industrialized nations has the healthiest economy?

Germany. (for more interesting facts and analyisis of Germany's success story, click here)

Why?

Because Germany is cutting spending, not raising taxes or increasing government spending.

Why does that work to make their economy strong?

Simply, because it increases confidence in their economy. Businesses know they are not going to get hit with ruinous tax increases. Inefficient government and socialized businesses realize that they aren’t going to be bailed out by the German government.

On the one hand businesses can confidently go ahead with improved products and expansion, and government-supported organizations know they must become more effective or fail.

As usual, the Liberals are crying that the poor will suffer.

Why?

Isn’t it better to be able to find work in a growing economy, than to hope for a welfare miracle from a failing one?

The Medieval Warm Period in China

2010-07-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

The belief system that is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) has had a rallying cry for years: “Do away with the Medieval Warm Period!” It’s understandable why they would want to – indeed have to – eliminate the Medieval Warm Period. If let stand, the Medieval Warm Period provides two crushing blows to CAGW: first, that current warming is unprecedented, and second, that the rate of warming is unprecedented.

Of course, if increased levels of the trace atmospheric gas, carbon dioxide, must be the driver of warming, the current warming and its rate must be unprecedented. Otherwise, previous periods of rapid warming would have to be due to something other than rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Therefore, there cannot be any previous periods of rapid warming, meaning there cannot be a Medieval Warm Period.

Or a Roman Warming.

Or the even warmer Holocene Climate Optimum.

While we’re at it, there can’t be a Little Ice Age, either.

Why not?

Because a Little Ice Age would just set the stage for the current warming to be properly considered a natural change back to warming from a cold period.

Or another way to look at the Little Ice Age: If increased carbon dioxide causes warming, then reduced carbon dioxide must cause cooling.

That’s absurd?

Why? If the increased carbon dioxide causes warming, then to cool things the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere must go down, right? Or do you think that cooling is caused by something else?

If you do, doesn’t that open the possibility that warming is caused by something else, too?

However, the warmists have a way out. They contend that the Medieval Warm Period was just a local – a European – phenomenon.

Hundreds of studies prove otherwise, but the warmists then contend that the studies are all bought and paid for by Big Oil. BP, for instance.

BP, of course, was spending great piles of money promoting itself as the greenest of green energy companies, and having nothing to do with CAGW skeptics.

However, we’ll let the warmists have their mythologies, because another very important source has recently been heard from, China (for this eye-opening study, click here).

Chinese scientists reconstructed temperatures from a variety of proxies covering the past 2,000 years, and found periods when warming was greater and more rapid than the present.

As previously mentioned, there are hundreds of studies that find the same, it’s just that these Chinese studies are conveniently separated from Europe and from Western culture Big Energy influences.

There are not many places left for the CAGW to find cover. At the moment they are as exposed as Al Gore in Portland.

Let them try to massage this!

Al Gore in Heat While Earth Cools

2010-06-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

Al Gore is on fire

It takes a lot to heat things up in Portland, but Al Gore came there in 2006 with a burning desire. Henceforth, whenever I hear a catastrophic global warming alarmist intoning imminent disaster, I'll have a mental picture of Al as an overweight poodle humping a red-headed masseuse's leg.

I'll see it as a metaphor for the way he and his acolytes have been trying to screw the world to satisfy their lust for power.

Fifty Year Reunion, Point Arena Class of 1960 and Friends

2010-06-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in every man's life when he does something he feels just has to be done.

In my case, it's putting together a 50th year reunion of my high school graduating class of 1960, Point Arena, California.

I started thinking small, just invite our class and their families - including, of course, my younger brother Ron, Class of 1961. There were only 27 in our graduating class, and sadly, at least four have passed away. Then there are about half-a-dozen that drifted through, children whose parents moved to wherever the next sawmill was hiring, or wherever the Air Force decreed their next job. California was a foot-loose state, people coming here for the California life, then searching all over California to find it.

Some did, many didn't, and many moved on.

That's why a reunion of just my class and close friends and family would be very small.

Immediately I was reproached (very nicely and politely) by classmates and other younger and older Point Arena graduates who wanted a grander reunion. To cut to the chase, I quickly caved in and invited everyone from the Class of 1964 back to the dawn of time to attend.

That brought me to look at Classmates.com to help me spread the word. The good news was that Classmates.com membership already included quite a few Point Arena High alumni, and that there is a "reunions" section to provide details and spread the word. The bad news is that the "reunions" section of Classmates.com is as hard headed and inflexible as many spouses are (wrongfully) accused of being.

When I set up the reunion announcement I screwed up and omitted classes 1962 and 1964. To correct the error I had to set up an almost identical reunion announcement because I couldn't just go back and correct the erroneous one.

Then I started using the Classmates.com system to send out reunion reminders. Unfortunately, their reminders go out to everyone, including those who have RSVP'd and need no further reminders. These unnecessary reminders, as would be expected, only serve to create confusion and anxiety amongst those who have already responded.

My attempts to get out information and explanations through the Classmates.com system proved to be frustrating and cumbersome. I couldn't send out a semi-mass mailing to selected addressees - I had to send the information out one address at a time. The Classmates.com mass messaging system doesn't allow including web sites or e-mail addresses in the messages, which makes it very difficult for me to publicize the web site I've set up to disseminate information and to post (auto) biographies: Point Arena High, Class of 1960. (Please click on the preceding blue and gold link to go to our reunion web site)

Or if that's too cutesy, just click here.

At any rate, be advised (as we would say in the Air Force) that I have unilaterally decided to extend the reunion hours by starting earlier - 4 PM instead of 6 PM at the Gualala Community Center, September 18, 2010, with a two-hour socializing period augmented by cheese and crackers, veggies and dip, and vino. Then we have dinner at 6 PM, followed by alumni introducing themselves and sharing what they've been up to for the past half-century or more.

Then music, dancing, socializing, moderate drinking, &etc. until we all realize we're up past our bed times.

Don't miss it!

e-mail me at mcombs@pacific.net

call me at 707-884-3741

Write me and send checks to Mike Combs, P O Box 1639, Gualala, CA 95445.

Don't procrastinate!

Do it!

Now!

Please.

Pacific Islands Cope with Sea-Level Rise

2010-06-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

Sea levels have risen a lot in the past 12,000 years since the end of the most recent Ice Age - over 400 feet, or an average of over three feet per century. In recent centuries the rate of sea-level rise has been much lower, about six inches per century. The reasons for sea level rise and the changing rates are obvious: we're currently in an inter-glacial, the period between Ice Ages, so the melting since the last Ice Age continues; and sea-levels rose the fastest just after the end of the Ice Age because there was a lot of terrestrial ice to melt.

Now the good news about drowning islands in the South Pacific: they're not.

Readers of this and other skeptic blogs already knew (1) the rate of sea-level rise was natural and moderate, and (2) coral islands have been keeping up with rising sea levels for millions of years.

Now even New Scientist acknowledges the obvious, which you can avail by clicking the following link to New Scientist article.

I wonder what anthropogenic global warming alarmists think about fluctuating sea levels and coral? Are they aware that large changes in sea levels in a short time period - over 400 feet in 12,000 years - are natural? What do they think corals were doing when the sea levels were 420 feet lower? Or what corals did as levels rose over 400 feet? Do they think that today's Pacific atolls were just sitting there waiting for sea levels to come up and inundate them?

Do the alarmists know that coral growth kept pace with rapid sea-level rise during those thousands of years? Do they know that corals grow faster in warmer water than in colder, and have thrived for millions of years in a variety of warmer and colder sea temperatures, and in an environment when CO2 levels were 20 or more times higher?

These things are all voluminously documented and available to even a layman researcher, such as myself.

It's not brain surgery or rocket science.

Obamacare – Bad and Badder

2010-06-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration and Democrats placed their bets on passing any health reform bill they could, and then selling it to voters before the November elections. They felt they could do this because little if anything would change before the election, so all they would have to do is tell the voters how wonderful things will be.

The problem is that evidence is piling up that Obamacare will be far from wonderful. Estimated costs have been steadily revised upwards as unrealistic assumptions are examined and rejected. The most obvious assumption was that payments to doctors and hospitals would be cut to finance the expansion. The truth is that planned cuts are always rescinded, and the only cutting has been doctors and hospitals dropping coverage of Medicare and Medicaid patients because the low reimbursement rates don’t cover costs. Simply, they cause losses.

The whole scheme will soon collapse like a house of cards when compelling all citizens to buy a product – health insurance – is ruled unconstitutional. It’s one thing to say you can’t drive without a license, or get a mortgage without home insurance, but to say that the mere fact that you are an American is cause to be compelled to buy health insurance will not be considered a legitimate use of government power.

We have a Constitution, you know.

Karl Rove in an excellent Wall Street Journal article provides cogent analysis of the problems of Obamacare, which you can access by merely clicking here.

Arizona Adopted California and Oklahoma Immigration Laws

2010-05-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

All the liberal anxiety aimed at Arizona's new tough illegal immigration law is surprising, since I don't remember any of it when California passed a law years ago almost the same as Arizona's.

the California Penal Code actually requires that every law enforcement agency in the state shall "fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws."

Below is a copy of section 834b of the California Penal Code that deals with immigration law enforcement at the local level.

(a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws. (b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following: (1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status. (2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or leave the United States. (3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal status and provide any additional information that may be requested by any other public entity. (c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city, county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly prohibited.

The last sentence prohibits such abominations as San Francisco's "sanctuary" law.

Three years ago Oklahoma passed a similar law:

House Bill 1804 was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate of the Oklahoma Legislature. The measure’s sponsor, State Representative
Randy Terrill, says the bill has four main topical areas: it deals with identity theft; it terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

So what makes Arizona's law special? In fact, what would make any state law special in light of federal law?

President Obama was a spokesperson for those of you ignorant of federal law (apparently all Liberals fall in this category), when he said in Iowa:

"One of the things that the law says is that local officials are allowed to ask somebody who they have a suspicion might be an illegal immigrant for their papers."

If the President believes that is wrong, his complaint is with federal law, not Arizona's.

It is already federal law that an alien in the United States must register and carry certain documents with him while he's in the United States. In fact it's been federal law for 70 years.

Nor is it news to local law officers. They check the immigration status of those they stop on suspicion of a crime.

The federal government has a 24-7 hotline that's been in place for about 15 years for exactly that purpose. And it's being used more than a thousand times a day all over the country.

The defenders of the immigration law say it's essentially the same as federal law -- which the president is bound to uphold.

(The above information was provided by Kris Kobach, a lawyer who is an expert in immigration and who helped construct the Arizona bill.)

So there you have it -- grandstanding by ignoramuses, which seems to be our leaders' most highly developed talent.

Making the Army of Reconquista

2010-05-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

“Maria, it is your patriotic Mexicana duty to make a baby with me tonight.”

“Jose, you already have esposa y ocho niños in Mexico. You send them all your dinero except for what you spend on yourself y los prostitutas. I know why you want to go to bed with me. But why do you want to make a bebé?”

“Maria, you think I am just a peón, but I am a Reconquistadore, a gallant soldier in the Army of Reconquista. And tonight I want to enlist you in this noble cause”

“Last night Juan wanted me to go to his room too, but he didn’t say he wanted to ‘enlist’ me. He used a different word.”

“Juan is a selfish pig. He told you he would use a condom, so no bebé, verdad, is that not so? He wanted you for his pleasure only, I want you to show my patriotism.”

“Jose, last night I think Juan showed me a bigger patriotism than yours.”

“Maria, la Reconquista must have babies, mucho bebés. Very soon, maybe 15 years, the babies will be big, and they will have mucho bebés. Then, in 15 more years, mucho, mucho bebés! Comprende, Maria? In 50 years California will be just like Mexico!”

“Jose, are you loco? We came to California to get away from Mexico. What will we do when California is just as bad?”

“Maria, then we will go to New York. You will like it. For now, show me your patriotism.”

Damn! I Want Global Warming!

2010-05-19T14:25:00.001-07:00

Alice and I moved to the northern California coast in 1998, when we were each 56 years old. We knew the weather on the coast was cool, but with expectations of global warming, as promised by Al Gore, we thought it would warm as we aged.

Old people need warmer, you know.

If you don't believe me, go to Florida and Arizona.

Anyway, each year we look for the warming signs.

Last summer it was so cool on the coast that the blackberries we pass on our daily walks to the beach never ripened. We watched them hungrily, day after day, and they never made it past "too bitter to swallow."

They were at their best twelve year ago just after we moved here from hot and sunny Livermore. That also happened to be the last real warm year we've had here, thanks to the strongest El Nino in the past hundred years.

Now a very respected scientist finds that we're in for more cooling until around 2030.

Whoa just a ding dong dang minute! In 2030 Alice and I will be 88 years old, and in need of all the warming we can get!

No one seems to like cooling, least of all our elders. If you look at a map of population trends in the United States, you will see massive movement from the colder regions to the warmer. In effect, we've been voting for global warming with our feet for the past century.

However, Alice and I love our home, and we don't want to move south, particularly to the idiocy and stupidity of Los Angeles, where I was born and Alice grew up. Alice and I are looking forward to the lights going off in Los Angeles when LA votes to boycott Arizona. We're already boycotting San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley because of their fatuous boycotts. Now we've added LA to the list. So far our boycotts have resulted in almost $1,000 of our funds not being spent in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We're doing our part to cool them off.

Don’t Shit in Your Mess Kit – Protecting Against Terrorists

2010-05-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

The would-be Times Square terrorist almost escaped. The Obama administration says that it’s the job of the airlines to check passengers against the no-fly list, and that Emirates Airlines dropped the ball. Luckily Customs spotted Faisal Shahzad on the passenger list before his flight left, but after he had already boarded.

The Obama administration may claim a victory here, but it seems more like dumb luck. The anti-terrorist system is no good if you trust that the airlines will do all the right things at the right time. In this case, Emirate Airlines followed their usual procedure of updating their no-fly list infrequently, and we didn’t have a clue that they probably wouldn’t have a current list available to check against less than 24 hours after Faisal Shahzad was put on it.

Trusting in dumb luck is no way to run an airline, and even less an anti-terrorist system.

Illegal Immigrants Have More Rights Than Citizens

2010-05-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

Federal authorities just arrested 596 illegal immigrants with prior criminal convictions (LA Times), according to John Morton, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Most of them will be deported, though 22 may be prosecuted for illegal entry after previous deportation. He said the Obama administration is focused on deporting immigrants who break the law.

The sweep exposed holes in the U.S. immigration enforcement system, since 572 of the criminals, some previously convicted of murder, sex crimes, assault and fraud, had been released from jail or prison without being turned over to immigration authorities as the law requires, Morton acknowledged.

There are as many as a million such criminal illegal immigrants in the U.S., Morton said.

The sweep illustrates the hypocrisy of the Obama administration towards immigration enforcement as it dithers over responding to Arizona’s law. Obama officials say they are focusing their efforts on people convicted of crimes, but acknowledge that they continue to remove noncriminals.

Meanwhile, the administration is also facing criticism from Congress that it is not aggressively enforcing immigration laws. In response, officials say they are removing a record number of immigrants, about 400,000 per year. A majority of those have not been convicted of crimes.

Arizona proposes doing what the federal government does poorly – enforce immigration laws. Under the legal doctrine of "concurrent enforcement," states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

If I were stopped for a driving violation, the officer would ask to see my driver’s license. If an illegal immigrant were stopped for the same violation and asked to show a driver’s license, that’s not racial profiling, unless illegal immigrants now have more civil rights than U. S. citizens.

Hide The Decline

2010-05-01T20:53:00.001-07:00

It Is The Government, Stupid!

2010-05-01T20:05:00.001-07:00

It is the government, Mr. Obama. What we're seeing in Greece is a foreshadow of what's in store for us if you, the government, and the public employees unions continue to grow the public sector on the back of the private.

Here's the money quote about Greece and its problems:

Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country’s resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.

In California, the counties and cities have lived far beyond their means by expanding public employment much faster than the general population growth, and demanding more and better government services. Looming over all the public sector employment - which, the public seems to have forgotten is paid for by taxes out of someone's pockets - is the spector of generous pension plans that begin with the illogic of very early retirements.

Of course, much of this is not recognized by the voters, because many of them are net recipients of tax monies rather than payers. Add to these beneficiaries of government generosity the members of the fastest growing voting block in California, the public employees themselves, and you have a perfect system for increasing taxes and spending.

In Europe they have been working at this longer than we have, so are much further down the path to economic ruin. We could learn from their mistakes, but instead we emulate them because we don't recogize that their security, which we envy, is only illusory.

Look to Greece for an example of what's soon to come for Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Iceland - and they're only tips of the iceberg.

Bureaucrats will raise their fists at the barricades in a general strike and protests on Wednesday to protect their considerable perks from the IMF.

They and other public sector workers are virtually unsackable, can retire as early as 45 and get bonuses for using a computer, speaking a foreign language and arriving at work on time.

Obama denies it, but even a fool should realize that what happened in Greece happened because government employees became too strong.

California's public employment is up significantly during the past four years, even as California as a whole has its highest rate of unemployment of modern times.

California public service unions are so strong, that even though the only answer to California's ruinous budget deficits is drastic cuts to the public payroll, California politicians will not bite that bullet. The unions are too powerful.

You Can't Get There From Here

2010-05-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

Global warming alarmists base their scenarios of doom on the contemplation of a doubling of atmospheric CO2. However, responsible scientists realize the impossibility of doubling atmospheric CO2. Simply, we will not have enough hydrocarbons available to burn in the time frames the alarmists envision. Both fossil fuel emmissions and atmospheric CO2 will peak before 2100, and atospheric CO2 will only reach about 500 ppm, a 32% increase over the present 380 ppm.

As the farmer in the field replied when the city slicker asked directions to New York City, "You can't get there from here."

Al Gore - Can He Have It Both Ways?

2010-05-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

A graph of Northern Hemisphere snowfall by decade for the past fifty years shows the past decade was the smowiest. Click link here for eye-opening information Al Gore denies exists.

According to Al:

"Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,” Gore wrote in a wonky Op-Ed for The New York Times.

"The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth,” he acknowledged.

“Yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans,” he wrote. And that puts “significantly more moisture into the atmosphere – thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow.”

Al, look at the graph. Notice the high levels of snow in the relatively cool 1960's and 1970's, and the diminishing levels in the warming 1980's and 1990's.

Then the record-breaking (for the fifty-year period, that is) snow for the 2000's.

Al, you say the increased snow in the 2000's is proof of warming. Then what did the much lower levels of snow in the warming 80's and 90's prove? And the higher levels in the 60's and 70's?

Al, you just don't make sense.

"Porndogs" or Watchdogs?

2010-04-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

Some posts write themselves.

According to an Associated Press news story, "Securities and Exchange Commission ... senior agency staffers spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were supposed to be policing the nation's financial system."

Phrased another way, Who watches the watchers?

Since a very high percentage of government workers are Democrats, what are the odds that these government workers, seventeen of whom were "at a senior level" earning salaries up to $222,418 per year, were predominantly Democrats?

The "senior attorney" among them undoubtedly was.

Clearly these Securities and Exchange officials "'were preoccupied with other distractions' when they should have been overseeing the growing problems in the financial system."

But have no worries.

The Democrats are minding the store, and have been since the mid-term election of 2008.

Barney Frank, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Franklin Delano Raines were on top of everything.

If you doubt me, check out what the SEC staffers were watching.

"Unprecedented" Warming for 160 Years

2010-04-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

Like the dollar, "unprecedented" just doesn't go as far as it used to.

Believers in anthropogenic global warming argue that current warming is unprecedented. The gist of my counter-argument is that numerous studies show warming was greater during the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300AD), and that it was even warmer during the Holocene Climate Optimum 9,000 to 5,000 years ago. These studies will show that warming during those periods was global and persistent, was reflected in ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, in the distribution of plants by latitude and elevations, and evidence from human settlements and historical records.

Arrayed against this record of natural climate changes going back over 11,000 years to the end of the Ice Age, the alleged evidence of man-caused global warming spans 60 years when global temperatures both rose and fell while atmospheric carbon dioxide increased. Now the “Climategate” e-mails show that alarmist scientists had to “hide the decline,” admit that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm or warmer, and that it is a “travesty” that their computer models can’t explain recent cooling.

Earth Day Blows It

2010-04-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

On Earth Day the “Windies” gusted, and John Muir spun. The marriage of convenience between environmentalists – the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, the American Bird Conservancy, Greenpeace, and the Audubon Society – and industrial wind power projects offends the principles of both science and conservation.

Wind power is retrograde, a technological dinosaur. It only generates within a narrow range of wind speeds, is intermittent, produces best when needed least (nighttime), doesn’t play well with others (see “intermittent”), destroys scenic vistas, remorselessly kills birds (endangered or otherwise), and is and will continue to be prohibitively expensive. Although wind power has a very low capacity factor (25%) compared to nuclear (over 90%), coal (around 80%), natural gas (used primarily for load following, 60%), or hydro (50%), it is much better than solar (under 20%).

For example, between Maryland and West Virginia there is potential for around 2000 wind turbines, each nearly 500-feet tall; they would be placed atop 400 miles of the Allegheny Mountain ridges. About 20 acres of forest must be clear cut to support each turbine—4-6 acres to allow free flow of wind per turbine; one or more large staging areas for each wind project; access road construction; and a variety of substations and transmission lines. Cumulatively, about 40,000 acres of CO² sequestering woodlands containing rare habitat and many vulnerable wildlife species would be destroyed.

Local environmentalists used the California Coastal Commission to annihilate my home-town Gualala’s modest fireworks display by demonstrating that a few nesting pairs of seabirds were disturbed. I doubt any of these environmentalists have voiced objections to the thousands of eagles and raptors killed, not just disturbed, by the Altamont Pass wind farm, or the thousands of migratory birds and sea birds killed annually worldwide. On the contrary, most “environmentalists” turn a blind eye to such carnage.

Congress F's Up Their Own Health Care

2010-04-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports that Congress screwed itself out of its own health care program by mistake.

This is poetic justice - the comment was made over and over that Congress didn't know what was in the Health Care Bill, but still Democrats rushed to pass it to save their political asses. They knew if they took their time that their constituents would be all over them on their Spring break.

"Pass anything, then hope something will work out before November elections."

Well "anything" was passed, and it's hard to criticize because no one understands it - particularly the Democrats.

When the New York Times gives Democrats a hard time, you know they really messed up.

Iowa Method Proves Global Warming

2010-04-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

Scientists' use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack

The following is an excerpt from the above Washington Post article:

But scientists say that, during this time, they have only become more certain that their models work.

Put in the conditions on Earth more than 20,000 years ago: they produce an Ice Age, NASA's Schmidt said. Put in the conditions from 1991, when a volcanic eruption filled the earth's atmosphere with a sun-shade of dust. The models produce cooling temperatures and shifts in wind patterns, Schmidt said, just like the real world did.

If the models are as flawed as critics say, Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said, "You have to ask yourself, 'How come they work?' "

“The Iowa Method, that’s why they work,” would have answered my late friend, Senior Master Sergeant Robert Kenneth Clough, US Air Force. According to Sgt. Clough, the Iowa Method is a brilliant model of simplicity and accuracy: you start with the desired conclusion, and then figure how you got there.

In short, the Iowa Method is infallible.

Apparently that’s the way climate scientists like Gavin Schmidt feel about their computer models.

Do you want an Ice Age? Take the one that occurred, and build a model that you declare replicates it. The model will always create the Ice Age that occurred, although it may not create the one that’s coming.

Does the computer model of the last Ice Age begin with a precipitous drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide? It should, if the computer model predicting current rapid warming based on rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is also the Ice Age model.

The same is true for a volcanic eruption in 1991. It may seemingly explain the subsequent cooling, but what explains the past decade of cooling without volcanic eruptions? Kevin Trenberth in a Climategate e-mail says it’s a "travesty" that our climate science (based on computer models) doesn’t explain the current lack of warming.

A major segment of climate models is based on paleoclimate reconstructions by Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, Phillip Jones, et al. In essence their studies, heavily weighted to analyses of tree rings, show very little variation in global temperatures for the past thousand years, then a rapid warming in the last half century corresponding to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Inconveniently, their tree-ring reconstructions show cooling after 1960 instead of warming, so researchers conveniently discarded that portion of their research and replaced it by grafting on instrumental records to “hide the decline.”

Doing this obviated the need to explain why the tree-ring proxies for temperatures were good until 1960, then not good thereafter.

While ethically problematical, their approach satisfied the dictates of the Iowa Method: show that global warming did not begin until atmospheric carbon dioxide increased.

Non-scientists like Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. grabbed hold of this “correlation” by first stating that current warming was “unprecedented” for the past thousand years, then by doubling this claim to the time of Jesus Christ.

Again inconveniently, Über-climate alarmist Phil Jones recently admitted that the Medieval Warm Period (900 to 1400 AD) may have been warmer than present, and that global climate had cooled recently.

However, Jones ended by proclaiming what can only be regarded as inconsequential, that January 2010 was the warmest on record, the record having begun in 1979. I doubt any reputable scientists would regard one month in a 31-year record as proof of anything, up to and including considering it to be just cause for reordering energy production and the economies of all nations.

Although the Iowa Method would approve.

Cargo Cult Science - Anthropogenic Global Warming

2010-03-31T21:59:00.000-07:00

CARGO CULT SCIENCE, by Richard Feynman, was presented at Caltech commencement in 1974. In it he defined Cargo Cult Sciences as theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.

What are Cargo Cult Sciences missing? Scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to utter honesty; leaning over backwards. For example, in an experiment you should report everything that you think might make it invalid; not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

AGW has become – probably always has been – a Cargo Cult Science. Examples of past warmer periods have been ignored or dismissed. Recent periods of cooling during heightened levels of atmospheric CO2 have been mated to strained explanations involving aerosols, etc. Recent low levels of Arctic ice create panic even though lower Arctic ice was previously reported – 1922 for just one example. AGW links were forged to Katrina, Midwestern tornados, Himalayan glaciers, Amazon rain forests, African agriculture, Mount Kilimanjaro ice cap, Bangladesh sea level, without mention that there were sounder scientific explanations for these anomalies.

And these are anomalies only in light of ignorance of climate history.

Like the true Cargo Cult believers, the AGW true believers gather in worshipful expectancy of catastrophes that will never come, while practicing rituals that do nothing to alter the direction of natural climate change.

Bill Mauldin - Tribute

2010-03-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

For many of my Air Force years, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes was my local paper. I looked forward to it every day, in Turkey, the United Kingdom, and in other lands where duty ocassionally called me - Germany, Japan, Korea, The Phillipines. By then World War II was already almost two decades past, but the Stars and Stripes was still there as our link to "home."

Bill Mauldin famously cartooned for Stars and Stripes during the war, and published a book Up Front of "Willie and Joe" cartoons in 1945. Pop read Up Front to me - explaining the cartoons while giving me history lessons - sometime around 1950 when we were living in the old abandoned Point Arena High School building.

The following tribute to Bill Mauldin was written by Bob Greene, author and award-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.

And with the renewed push to get rid of Saturday mail delivery, expect complaints to intensify. But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that's going to happen this month. Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp.

Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for himself after the scalding, he became a resident of a California nursing home, his health and spirits in rapid decline.

He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin and his work meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper. Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen, Willie and Joe, were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.

Beautiful view. Is there one for the enlisted men?
Mauldin was an enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for; his gripes were their gripes, his laughs were their laughs, his heartaches were their heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.

Radio th' ol' man we'll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour.
He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close for comfort, his superior officers tried to tone him down. In one memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, and Patton informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons -- celebrating the fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking officers -- to stop. Now.The news passed from soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.

Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe. Ike put out the word: Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants. Mauldin won. Patton lost.

If in your line of work you've ever considered yourself a young hotshot, or if you've ever known anyone who has felt that way about himself or herself, the story of Mauldin's young manhood will humble you. Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had accomplished:

He won the Pulitzer Prize. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine. His book "Up Front" was the No. 1 best-seller in the United States.

All of that at 23. Yet when he returned to civilian life and he grew older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin grin, he never outgrew his excitement about doing his job, he never big-shotted or high-hatted the people with whom he worked every day. I was lucky enough to be one of them; Mauldin roamed the hallways of the Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with no more officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a copyboy. That impish look on his face remained.

He had achieved so much. He had won a second Pulitzer Prize, and he should have won a third for what may be the single greatest editorial cartoon in the history of the craft, his deadline rendering on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated of the statue at the Lincoln Memorial slumped in grief, its head cradled in its hands. But he never acted as if he was better than the people he met. He was still Mauldin, the enlisted man.

During the late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay in that California nursing home, some of the old World War II infantry guys caught wind of it. They didn't want Mauldin to go out that way. They thought he should know that he was still their hero.

Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County Register, put out the call in Southern California for people in the area to send their best wishes to Mauldin. I joined Dillow in the effort, helping to spread the appeal nationally so that Bill would not feel so alone. Soon more than 10,000 letters and cards had arrived at Mauldin's bedside.

Even better than that, the old soldiers began to show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him know that they were there for him, as he, long ago, had been there for them. So many volunteered to visit Bill that there was a waiting list. Here is how Todd DePastino, in the first paragraph of his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described it:"Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002 they came to Park Superior nursing home in Newport Beach, California, to honor Army Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill Mauldin. They came bearing relics of their youth: medals, insignia, photographs, and carefully folded newspaper clippings. Some wore old garrison caps. Others arrived resplendent in uniforms over a half century old. Almost all of them wept as they filed down the corridor like pilgrims fulfilling some long-neglected obligation.

"One of the veterans explained to me why it was so important: "You would have to be part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of relief Bill gave us. You had to be reading a soaking wet Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then see one of his cartoons.

"Mauldin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This month, the kid cartoonist makes it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's an honor that most generals and admirals never receive.

What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of the two guys who are keeping him company on that stamp.

Take a look at it. There's Willie. There's Joe.

And there, to the side, drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant smile, is Mauldin, himself, with his buddies, right where he belongs. Forever.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene. And me. And a lot of other guys.

CO2 Can't Cause Global Warming

2010-03-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

Increasing CO2 can't cause global warming - the Vostok ice cores show warming precedes rising CO2, not vice versa. Since water vapor is by far the predominant greenhouse gas (95%), and can increase quickly and in huge quantities - just add heat from the sun to the 40% of the earth's surface not shielded by clouds - increased CO2 adds no net increase to warming.

Climate scientist and Hungarian, Dr. Miklos Zagoni in his paper “CO2 Cannot Cause any more “Global Warming”” dated December 2009 describes this discovery and its meaning. Dr. Zagoni beautifully sums it all up: “Since the Earth’s atmosphere is not lacking in greenhouse gases [water vapor], if the system could have increased its surface temperature it would have done so long before our emissions. It need not have waited for us to add CO2: another greenhouse gas, H2O, was already to hand in practically unlimited reservoirs in the oceans.”

Dr. Zagoni explains: “Earth type planetary atmospheres, having partial cloud cover and sufficient reservoir of water; maintain an energetically uniquely determined, constant, maximized greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by emissions. The greenhouse temperature must fluctuate around this theoretical equilibrium constant; [change] is possible only if the incoming available energy changes.”

For further explanation of natural climate change, the Pacific decadal oscillation and other periodic fluctuations (see the Maunder Minimum and sun spot activity) complete the picture. How the simple and simplistic coincidence of 150 years of warming (following the Little Ice Age) with 50 years of rising CO2 (during which temperatures fell almost as often as they rose) could be considered proof of the need to drastically and expensively (and vainly) change all aspects of human existence is ludicrous. The genius of humanity is in adapting to, not denying, the natural forces of change. It is preposterous to think that the current climate is the optimum when we have indisputible proof that climate has and will constantly change.Read more:

Sea Levels Rising Six Inches per Century - French Space Agency

2010-03-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

Using GPS methodology, a team of French, Spanish, and UK scientists funded by the French Space Agency found that sea level rise is approximately 1.6 millimeters per year, or six inches per century. That's about nineteen and a half feet short of Al Gore's apocalyptic prognostication.

Since the rate of sea level rise has been steady at about six inches per century since the end of the Little Ice Age (about 1850), this latest finding comes as no surprise to anyone but the alarmists. However, I doubt it will get front-page coverage complete with color-coded maps in the San Francisco Chronicle like the earlier, totally scientifically unsupported, predictions of Bay Area sea level rise of three to four feet by 2100.

Global Warming - Natural or Man Made?

2010-03-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

It really is very simple. If the believers in anthropogenic global warming can demonstrate that the two statements below are true, they would shut up their critics fast. Of course, we know both statements are false and that forms the basis for our disbelief in man-caused global warming.

(1.) There is no evidence of historic temperature increases or temperature levels similar to what we have observed in the past 40 years that could arise from natural causes.

(2.) The climate models upon which the IPCC reports rely fully incorporate the influences of water vapor, the El Nino southern, the Pacific decadal oscillation, the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation, the Arctic oscillation, and the causes of long-term (1,500, 5,000 and 20,000 year) climate variation, thus eliminating the potential to mistake a natural cause in climate variation with a man-made cause of variation.

Why are we required to prove that the 150 years of sporadic warming following the end of the Little Ice Age (1850) is not caused by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide from human activities when the eight periods of similar (often greater) warming during the past 20,000 years obviously were not?

What perverse logic demands that we declare the oscillating warming and cooling of the past 60 years to be proof that mankind is causing warming, and further that this warming is imminently catastrophic? Was the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1300 AD) catastrophic? Was the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD) beneficial?

For the historically challenged, the answers to both questions are "No!"

Climategate Survey

2010-02-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

Click here to take the survey.

The Answer is not Blowing in the Wind - The Futility of Wind Power

2010-01-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

For nine years Alice and I lived on a small ranch east of Livermore, California. Two of my closest neighbors were the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and the Altamont Pass wind farm. I could only see a hint of the sprawling Livermore Lab campus, but from my backyard I could watch many of the wind turbines at Altamont not doing much.

On two occasions recently I drove through the Altamont Pass on Highway 580 and both times did not see even one wind turbine turning. The first time was understandable; it was just after noon on a desultory summer day. The second time, however, was during a driving rain storm.

Aside from their demonic ability to kill Eagles and raptors during their rare periods of operation, Altamont Pass should be viewed as a living laboratory of the futility of wind power. (For a very clear exposition of this point, click on this link to an excellent Master Resource blog post)

Its near neighbor, the Livermore Lab, is another matter. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle reported: "Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported Thursday they have taken a major step toward harnessing the forces that power the sun in an effort to create unlimited energy on Earth."

There it is in a nutshell. On the one hand, the supposed scientifically enlightened pursue a very limited, costly, and as common sense demonstrates, futile method of meeting burgeoning energy needs. On the other hand, science is just taking baby steps to develop nuclear power production, which assuredly will one day become the means of satisfying mankind's ever increasing energy needs. One direction leads nowhere while fueling the cry that what must be done is for mankind to stop economic progress. The other direction unleashes the potential for mankind to achieve economic security for all, thereby reducing the need for politicians and their acolytes to preside over the division of shrinking resources.

We know which road politicians will choose, so common sense (and science) will lead us to choose the other.

Global Warming – Last Place and Falling Fast

2010-01-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press published its annual assessment of the public’s – our – priorities for 2010. Unlike the Obama Administration, we the people seem to have arranged our priorities by common sense rather than liberal ideology. The economy, jobs, terrorism – makes sense to me.

Last and falling steadily, global warming.

Interestingly, this steady decline in our concern about global warming preceded the disclosures of the chicanery and incompetence practiced by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). After recent disclosures (slowly gaining traction in the news against the main stream media’s attempts to ignore them) concerning misrepresenting and suppressing skeptical studies of global warming, making unsupported alarmist claims of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 and of ocean acidification in a decade, and using articles from advocacy organizations like the World Wildlife Fund as if they were peer-reviewed science studies, the next Pew review shouldn’t even include global warming on its list of public priorities.

Wikipedia - The Heavy Hand of William M. Connolley Distorts Global Warming

2010-01-25T18:20:00.000-08:00

Every article concerning climate change in Wikipedia seems to have been edited by William M. Connolley to the detriment of neutrality and balance. Mr. Connolley has edited 5,428 Wikipedia articles, and controlled the editing process of many of them (his editing privileges may have been rescinded. Now how will the damage he's done be undone?). Until recently (circa 2007) He was a member of RealClimate and contributed to their unabashed promotion of anthropogenic global warming.

For instance, Wikipedia has a page: Description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports .

The opening paragraphs of this page are below:

The description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports has changed since the first report in 1990 as scientific understanding of the temperature record of the past 1000 years has improved. The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) are the best-known temperature fluctuations in the last millennium.

Critics of the "hockey stick graph" of later reports have claimed that the record of the MWP and LIA were suppressed in the IPCC Third Assessment Report, although every report has discussed the phenomena.

When the various links above are followed, what is found are one-sided expositions of the Mann et all “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction of the past 1,000 years – which wrote off the Medieval Warm Period – and dismissal of the criticism by Steve McIntyre and the total ignoring of Soon et al finding that the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon and was warmer than the present period. It also has no mention that the tree-ring proxy reconstructions of temperatures do not show warming after 1960, casting doubt on their ability to show prior warming (i.e., Medieval Warm Period warming).

The assertion that the "scientific understanding of the temperature record of the past 1,000 years has improved" is unsupported by any by any reference to what caused the improvement, and in what way it was improved.

The statement concerning suppression of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, that "every report has addressed the phenomena" can only be considered accurate to the extent that some contained a brief mention without discussion, and others contained brief, broad dismissals of them.

From the first progress report of the IPCC from 1990 on page 202, the above is graphics 7c [12], in which the Medieval Warm Period was portrayed as clearly warmer than the present.

Any claim by Wikipedia of fairness and neutrality in their pages concerning climate change are therefore subverted by the heavy-handed editing of William M. Connolley, who selectively includes or omits information and sources on the basis of whether they are in accord with anthropogenic global warming.

Apparently Mr. Connolley thinks he can simulate fairness by adhering to the strict title of this Wikipedia page, that it is about the description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports without going into the criticisms of the IPCC description.

I could do the same by making a post describing how God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, and only allowing items in the post concerning God’s creative accomplishments. I could dismiss criticisms by noting that many theologians are on board with my post, and have been for thousands of years.

I don’t understand why Wikipedia allows the pursuit of knowledge to be hijacked by an advocate of a point of view. Then again, the Church did the same with Galileo, lost credibility, and opened the way for the Reformation.

Wikipedia, reform thyself!

“Robust” is the Global Warmists Favorite Word

2010-01-25T00:15:00.000-08:00

What is it with the Warmists and “robust”?

Dr. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), admitted that they had wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035, but then defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalize based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.

“Was ist das “robust”? I sputter in German (confronted with such arrogance, my English failed me.)

What is robust about a review methodology that (1) includes a 1999 news report on Himalayan glaciers that was never reviewed by glacier science experts? (2) that then was lifted from and cited as a source a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report that contained a basic arithmetic error (the rate of average annual glacier retreat for 121 years was determined by dividing the total distance by 21 instead of 121)? and (2) ignored critical comments generated in the course of the IPCC “robust” review process?

Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.

An authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: “Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.”

Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced the Indian government report as “voodoo science”.

However, it is apparently robust voodoo science.

Next we consider Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame, immortalized by Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” Inconveniently for both Gore and Mann, the hockey stick has been totally broken and discarded by serious climatologists, thanks primarily to the outstanding work and persistence of Stephen McIntyre. Suffice it to say, “trees don’t make good thermometers,” since they grow well with more rain, more CO2, logging which removes their neighbors, farming that does the same and adds fertilizers, and sometimes grow poorly when it gets really hot. Mann et al compounded their tree-ring proxy scam by using small, carefully selected samples, and by using algorithms that produced hockey sticks even when fed random, spurious data.

But with all these problems, a global warming enthusiast pronounced historical temperature determination through Mann’s tree-ring proxies to be robust. I think what “robust” means in this context is that a lot of global warming alarmists – Mann, Briffa, Jones – are complicit in the fraud.

Two Interesting Points Debunking Global Warming

2010-01-21T14:03:00.000-08:00

It seems we notice what interests us. I’m very interested in seat belt goodies - and debunking the Warmists.

Some recent writers to our weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, called me a global warming denier and claimed that science by consensus supports their view of anthropogenic global warming. However, we have to thank Al Gore for inadvertently teaching us that 600,000 years of Vostok (Antarctica) ice core samples show CO² lags rather than precedes warming. If further studies are needed to prove that CO² is not the primary driver of global warming, we only have to look at the past seventy years to see that in over half of those years we had cooling as CO² rose.

In fact, the claim that recent warming is unprecedented was disproven by the observed warming of 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300 AD), and other periods of the past 10,000 years such as the Roman and the Holocene Climate Optimum.

Adding to the chaos of Climategate –leaked emails revealed how UN IPCC scientists tried to withhold data from public scrutiny – other recent disclosures shed light on the dubious science of anthropogenic warming. The first concerns melting Himalayan glaciers.

During our vacation in India, Alice and I read an article by an Indian scientist that contradicted claims by the UN IPCC that Indian glaciers were melting rapidly. Then we learned that the Indian skeptic was right. The UN claim in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was based on a news story generated by a brief telephone interview with a little-known Indian scientist in 1999. The scientist’s research was never peer-reviewed and does not support what he purportedly said – and he now denies what was reported in his name - in the interview. A UN official now says he will recommend that the glacier assertions be eliminated from the IPCC assessment.

The fallacious Indian glacier melting ties in with apocalyptic predictions by Al Gore and the IPCC of sea level increases of six feet or more by 2100.

Jason Lowe, a leading climate researcher: "(W)e think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory."

The consensus may be frozen, but its science is melting away.

Really Dumb Football - San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys

2010-01-17T23:21:00.000-08:00

A friend watched the NFL playoff between the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings with a Cowboys fan and his pet monkey. The Cowboys started off strongly, and as they gained one first down after another, with each first down the monkey went giddy with excitement, leaping, screeching, and jumping excitedly from chair to chair, from wall to wall. Each celebration was wilder than the preceding. My friend had never seen anything like it.

“That’s incredible!” my friend exclaimed. “What does your monkey do when the Cowboys do something really special?”

“I don’t know,” the Cowboy supporter replied, “I’ve only had him for ten years.”

If Wade Phillips continues as the Dallas coach, the monkey probably won’t live long enough to give us the answer.

Wade Phillips was a strong contender, but Norv Turner can’t be beat for NFL playoff stupidity. In the first instance, his players didn’t show poise or composure. It’s one thing to miss a tackle, or drop some passes – the players are human, and their opponents are trying to make them miss, or make mistakes. However, losing 15 yards for taunting after doing a great job of covering a kickoff, or kicking the challenge flag when instant replay was going to confirm that the player made a good sideline catch are the sort of undisciplined acts that a coach should have indoctrinated his players against.

But what can you expect from a coach like Norv Turner who can’t even discipline himself against making stupid decisions? Turner’s decision to on-side kick was criticized by announcer Phil Simms in detail before the kick was made, and Simms gave all the logical reasons why an on-side kick was a bad idea with over two minutes to play and a timeout and two-minute warning to stop the clock. First, on-side kicks usually don’t work, especially if one is expected. Second, with a normal kick-off, the Jets would probably start deep in their own territory, particularly since they were prepared to defend against the on-side kick and had their “hands” team in with only one kick returner and no blockers deep to receive a normal kickoff. Third, if the Jets started on or about their own 20-yard line, they would probably only call conservative running plays, and if faced with a fourth down and a yard to go, would punt instead of going for it on fourth down.

Not so strangely, after many years of watching NFL football (and playing high school eight-man football half-a-century ago), I had already arrived at the same position concerning an on-side kick as Phil Simms. It’s too bad for the Chargers that Norv Turner didn’t tap his football knowledge to arrive at the same conclusion.

Having the Jets think you were going to on-side kick was a good idea. Actually doing it wasn’t.

Global Cooling - Al Gore Shows the Way

2010-01-09T22:06:00.000-08:00

I declare that this recent prolonged cold period is the beginning of global cooling - and of course is also the end of global warming.

"Wait," I hear the cry of Al Gore and His Acolytes. "How can you declare global cooling after just a month of some of the worst cold weather in the past 100 years?"

That's the easy part. Al Gore and The Warming Gurus declared a piddling Category 3 hurricane, Katrina, proof of global warming just because it got a lot of headlines for its unlucky strike ("lucky" for the Warmists) on New Orleans. So after 15 years of no appreciable warming, and almost ten years of modest cooling, I feel it's time to declare the coming of Global Cooling.

It's not like it's unprecedented. For over a million years we have had long glacial periods broken by shorter interglacial periods. The last Ice Age ended just over 10,000 years ago, and since then we have had warmer periods than today interspersed with cooler periods. In fact, during the past 11,400 years about 7,500 of those years were warmer than the present. However, the warming has been diminishing and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD) was colder than recent preceding cold periods.

It looks like we're on the verge of another cold period, probably one similar to the Ice Age. Unlike Al Gore and His Panic Mongers, I don't think it will happen fast. The mile-thick ice sheets over Chicago won't be there for another 20,000 years. By then the sea levels will be over 400 feet lower than today.

You wouldn't need a Channel Tunnel to go from Europe to the United Kingdom, just a snowmobile or skis.

More on this

Senator Baucus not Drunk?

2009-12-30T10:03:00.000-08:00

If Democrat Senator Max Baucus was not drunk while giving this speech, he's in really bad shape.

If he is this rambling and incoherent when sober, maybe he should drink more so he could have an excuse for sounding like a drunken idiot for over five minutes on the Senate floor.

Send Democrats to Greenland

2009-12-24T21:43:00.000-08:00

It seems just yesterday that Al Gore directed our attention to Greenland, for which we should all be grateful. Greenland artifacts of Viking habitation demonstrate that the Medieval Warm Period was, indeed, warmer than the present.

However, Al Gore and his Acolytes are nothing if not history challenged. To them "unprecedented" warming means the end of the inconvenient cooling in 1975. For awhile they tried to say that present warming was the most in the past 1,000 years, but then Mann's "hockey stick" was shattered and they had to concede the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1350 AD, well within the past 1,000 years).

Then it was unprecented warming for the past 400 years, which conveniently begins during the Little Ice Age. There sure wasn't much warming then.

Unfortunately for Al, science marches on and recent climate records for Greenland show that it was warmer, and got warmer faster, in the 1930's than our current period. (Click here for the report)

This chart of Greenland climate change for the past 170 years show that the 1930's warming was greater and faster than now.

What's a warming alarmist to do?

Wind Power is Stupid

2009-12-18T22:45:00.000-08:00

There is a book out that for me is a must read: "The Wind Farm Scam" by John Etherington.

The following is my comment on wind farms:

Wind power is such a stupid idea it is no wonder it is so popular with the left. It is expensive, unreliable, requires 100% conventional generation backup, kills endangered species birds, visually pollutes scenic vistas, and must be located far away from population centers.

To “solve” this last objection, the most ludicrous plan I’ve seen for wind power was first for New York city, and recently for San Francisco, to install urban wind turbines – with no apparent appreciation to their noise and vibration characteristics, loss of generating capacity because of wind drag from buildings and the necessity to use relatively small wind turbines, and the unsafe conditions caused by mechanical stresses on the buildings upon which they are erected.

In farcical attempts to design ways to overcome the intermittent power generation factor – it is an exceptional wind farm that produces at 25% of rated capacity – there are proposals to use excess energy generated during the night to compress air (or to store energy in some other mechanical way) to generate power when the wind doesn’t. Of course these alternative power schemes will be very expensive and, as yet, have not been created to operate in the real world.

I lived nine years within sight (but thankfully not sound) of the wind farm at the Altamont Pass, California, and observed that most of the time none of the turbines were turning, and when some were, a lot were not because they were down for maintenance. About the only thing they did well was kill eagles and hawks – thousands each year. I would hazard a guess that more energy went into creating the Altamont Pass wind farm than was generated by it, and that its operation never made, and never will, make economic sense.