posted by runreason at 8:57 AM
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Jobs, jobs, jobs. Meet the new mantra, same as the old mantra.
No longer will President Barack Obama be content to cite specious numbers about “jobs saved or created” as a result of last year’s $787 billion fiscal stimulus. Now he’s proposing $100 billion of new spending to “jumpstart job creation,” according to White House Budget Director Peter Orszag. It’s part of a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011, unveiled Monday, that projects a $1.3 trillion deficit next year, following a $1.6 trillion deficit this year.
Spend money to save money. Spending dressed up as a jump- starter is still spending by another name.
The only thing missing from the energy-cleansing, rural- community-assisting, climate-change-mitigating, health-food- promoting blueprint is money for pyramid building. In Chapter 10, Section VI of “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” John Maynard Keynes advocated building pyramids as a cure for unemployment.
posted by runreason at 10:57 AM
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From EnergyTribune.com by Art Horn:
The story of manmade global warming is over. In reality it never existed except in the minds and hearts of grant-seeking scientists and academics, ratings-obsessed television networks and their misinformed viewers and opportunistic eco-activists.
That said, climate change is real. The earth has been coming out of a 450-year cold era known as the “Little Ice Age” since it bottomed out in the late 1600s. Hundreds of studies have verified the existence of this cold period. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tried to erase the climate history of the last 1,000 years in its 2001 report. They replaced all the peer-reviewed studies of past climate with one that fit their needs. The now-discredited “hockey stick” graph showed virtually no significant change in temperature of the world over the last 1,000 years. Conveniently, the graph then showed a rapid and abrupt increase in global temperature during the last 100 years. This is, of course, due to our sin of burning fossil fuels and stoking the fires of global warming.
The only evidence that human activity is causing global warming comes from computer models. These models take what the people who develop them know about how the earth’s climate system works and attempt to predict the future. Computer models are not evidence. Evidence is something real, something concrete that is not subject to change. Computer models can be changed by their creator. In fact the creator of the model can make it say whatever the creator wants it to say by adjusting parameters. That is not evidence.
In 2007, a study showed the failings of computer model forecasts. The models showed that there exists a global warming “fingerprint” in the air. This fingerprint is a dramatic warming of the atmosphere, not on the ground, but 20,000 to 50,000 feet in the air above the tropics. The 2007 study revealed that real-world temperature observations by weather balloons over a 50-year period showed no global warming fingerprint at all, none. The computer models had grossly overestimated the warming over the tropics. Real world observations trump computer models. Despite this revelation the climate alarmists continued to trumpet the coming doom if we don’t change our sinful ways. To do otherwise would threaten government grants to colleges and universities, research facilities and government agencies. Large corporations are developing eco-friendly technologies to replace fossil fuels and brokerage houses are looking to cash in big time on the evolving carbon trading markets. The United Nations is looking to use climate treaties to wrestle control of carbon emissions from independent nations. This will elevate the United Nations and its leaders to the role of effectively ruling the world’s energy consumption through one world-government authority.
The greenhouse/global warming theory states that as more carbon dioxide is pumped into the air, the atmosphere’s ability to vent excess heat to space will diminish. This is the mantra of global warming alarmism. More carbon dioxide means more heat gets clogged up in the climate system and the earth gets warmer and warmer. From this we have conjured up all the various climate disasters, movies, concerts, fixes, and swindles, with their varied political and economic benefactors and victims.
Enter 2009 and a new study by Dr. Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi from MIT that uses temperature data from satellites. As background we start with the predictions. The climate models say that as the oceans warmed by one degree Celsius from the 1980s into the 1990s, the amount of heat escaping to space would decrease. More heat would be trapped in the atmosphere, ultimately due to the burning of fossil fuels. The warming of the oceans was natural and part of the large multi-decadal temperature changes that have been known for years. Now if only we had a way to measure the amount of heat going out to space, then we could get some answers. We do, it’s called the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment Satellite (ERBE). It was in orbit above the earth measuring outgoing long wave radiation (heat) for 16 years from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. This is very significant. Now we had a tool, and real world data, that we could compare to the computer model predictions. It is the ultimate climate system umpire.
The results from the Lindzen and Choi study were stunning. The computer models, all 11 of them, predicted that as the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the amount of heat escaping to space should decrease by 3 watts per square meter. If this were true, then the theory of manmade global warming would have a strong footing. But the satellite data used by the Lindzen and Choi inflicted a bone crushing blow to this assumption. As the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the measurements showed that the amount of heat escaping to space increased by 4 watts per square meter from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. All the computer models were wrong. If the atmosphere is not trapping heat generated by warming oceans then there is no manmade global warming taking place.
The atmosphere compensated for the additional heat by opening the window a little more. The theory of global warming is lying on the canvas bloodied and dying. Alarmists will attempt to revive the carcass with even louder cries of impending doom and calls to repent. But this clamoring will fall on deaf ears. Science will ultimately prove the winner and the world will bury global warming in an icy grave where it belongs.
Art Horn is a meteorologist who has worked for CBS, NBC and ABC
posted by runreason at 5:11 PM
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Read on . . .At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
posted by runreason at 12:32 PM
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My next four stories deal with one subject... the global warming hoax. I never believed in it for a second and denounced Al Gore's movie even before I saw it. In my younger years, I spent seven years in the meteorological service of Canada... surface weather, upper air, solar radiation, ice thickness, snow depth... and one year in rocket meteorology when I worked for NASA... with all of it occurring in Canada's arctic back in the late 60s and early 70s. There's not a lot about the last thousand years of the world's climate that I'm not familiar with.
The global warming world came crashing down about ten days ago after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit [in Norwich, England] and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the Internet... including 1,079 emails and 72 documents. This is a huge scandal. I have four stories relating to this, and I urge you to take the time to run through each and every one of them. The second-last story was written before this scandal broke... and the last item is a 75-minute video that was released 8 months ago... denouncing, in no uncertain terms, the whole global warming scam.
1. Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?.
2. Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama's Cap and Trade laws.
3. Stagnating Temperatures: Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out.
4. The Great Global Warming Swindle.
posted by runreason at 11:49 AM
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posted by runreason at 9:04 AM
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I'm embarrassed that my representatives think that government can subsidize the consumption of medical care without increasing the budget deficit or interfering with free choice.
It's a triumph of mindless wishful thinking over logic and experience.
The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by "experts" means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many tradeoffs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.
Government cannot do simple things efficiently. The bureaucrats struggle to count votes correctly. They give subsidized loans to "homeowners" who turn out to be 4-year-olds (http://tinyurl.com/yzov923). Yet congressmen want government to manage our medicine and insurance.
Read on . .
posted by runreason at 6:38 PM
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posted by runreason at 9:27 PM
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posted by runreason at 5:01 PM
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“In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”
posted by runreason at 10:36 AM
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As many as one million people
flooded into Washington for a massive rally organised by conservatives
claiming that President Obama is driving America towards socialism.
The size of the crowd - by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January - shocked the White House.
Read more . . .
posted by runreason at 10:32 AM
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"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.
posted by runreason at 3:51 PM
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From Casey's Daily Dispatch:
Did you hear that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has asked that the EPA put anthropogenic global warming (AGW) on trial?
It comes as no surprise that this request is being firmly resisted by the many groups that make their daily bread by reaching into the pockets of taxpayers for their share of the tens of billions in government grants doled out in the insane effort to save the world from a non-existent global warming threat.
Dr. Brian Valentine of the U.S. Department of Energy wrote a letter, posted on the ClimateWatch website, that challenges the intellectually indefensible resistance of the AGW crowd to ascertaining the truth in a public forum. And I quote…
[Guest Essay by Chemical Scientist Dr. Brian G. Valentine of the U.S. Department of Energy and professor at University of Maryland, who has studied computational fluid dynamics and modeling of complex systems. Dr. Valentine is featured on page 188 of the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of More Than 700 Dissenting Scientists on Global Warming. Below is a August 25, 2009, note Dr. Valentine sent to Brenda Ekwurzel of the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists.]
Dear Dr Ekwurzel,
According to the American Bar Association, the purpose of any “trial by legal authority” is to “establish the truth.”
I note with interest your skepticism over US Chamber of Commerce's petition of the EPA to carry out a “trial” to examine the facts behind EPA's interest in regulation of greenhouse gases as “a danger to the public.”
What, if anything, do you and your organization have to fear about Chamber of Commerce's proposed trial idea?
Do you fear exposure of the idea of “man-made” global warming for the abject fraud that the idea is?
You know yourself – exactly none of the predictions related to AGW made over the past 20 years by AGW advocates have actualized. You also know there is exactly zero evidence to support any claims that “humans” have influenced the natural global climate in the least – and that means, since the dawn of Human Civilization.
If the US Public were to be made aware of these facts – at the testimony of a trial involving the EPA – then only those with religious convictions of the idea would continue to hold any support for AGW. That is in fact a very small number of people.
Falsehood cannot be sustained indefinitely – and the EPA might as well get it over with and let the facts come to light before all eyes.
I'd be interested in your response to me.
As well as quite surprised. In general, people seem to find themselves “too good” to bother to respond to me when I call AGW the fraud that it is.
Brian G Valentine PhD PE
US Department of Energy
Washington, DCRelated Link:
posted by runreason at 6:25 PM
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posted by runreason at 6:04 PM
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Mom Feeds Family For Under $10 A Week
posted by runreason at 2:31 PM
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posted by runreason at 11:36 AM
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July 3, 2009
Global warming is based 100% on junk science. The most vocal promoters are not interested in the details of physical science. They are interested in two things: political control over the general public and the establishment of international socialism.
Junk Science vs. Real Science
For a detailed, footnoted, 12-page article, written by three scientists, two with Ph.D's from CalTech, click here.
This paper was sent to tens of thousands of natural scientists in the United States.
Over 31,000 scientists have put their reputations on the line and signed a politically incorrect petition opposing the 1997 Kyoto agreement or protocol. Here is a letter from a former president of the National Academy of Sciences. He asks recipients of the petition to sign it.
Back in the 1970's, the bugaboo was the coming ice age, as this Time Magazine article promoted. Not to be outdone, Newsweek got on board. The article warned: "Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects." Want more examples? Click here.
It, too, was based on junk science. It, too, had the same solution: government control over the economy. The goal never changes: government management over the economy. The justification has changed. If the voters won't accept control over their lives on the basis of one brand of junk science, maybe they will accept another. As they used to say in the Nixon Administration: "Let's run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes."
Socialism's Last Stand
The global warming movement is not about global warming. It is about the creation of an international political control arrangement by which bureaucrats who favor socialism can gain control over the international economy.
This strategy was stated boldly by economist Robert Heilbroner in 1990. Heilbroner, the multi-millionaire socialist and author of the best-selling history of economic thought, The Worldly Philosophers, wrote the manifesto for these bureaucrats. He did this in an article, "Reflections: After Communism," published by The New Yorker (Sept. 10, 1990).
In this article, he made an astounding admission. He said that Ludwig von Mises had been right in 1920 in his article, "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth." Mises argued that without private ownership, central planners could not know what any resource is worth to consumers. With no capital market, the planners would be flying blind.
Heilbroner said that for 70 years, academic economists had either ignored this article or dismissed it without answering it. Then Heilbroner wrote these words: "Mises was right."
Heilbroner was one of these people. There is no reference to Mises in The Worldly Philosophers.
This admission was the preliminary section of Heilbroner's manifesto. He was cutting off all hope by socialists that there is a theoretically plausible response to Mises. The free market economy will always outproduce a socialist economy. Get used to it, he said.
Then, in the second section, he called on his socialist peers to get behind the ecology movement. Here, he said, is the best political means for promoting central planning, despite its inefficiency. In the name of ecology, he said, socialists can get a hearing from politicians and voters.
The article is not online. An abstract is. Here is the concluding thought of the abstract.
The direction in which things are headed is some version of capitalism, whatever its title. In Eastern Europe, the new system is referred to as Not Socialism. Socialism may not continue as an important force now that Communism is finished. But another way of looking at socialism is as the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment. From this perspective, the long vista after Communism leads through capitalism into a still unexplored world that roust [must?] be safely attained and settled before it can be named.
Heilbroner did not care that a worldwide government-run economic planning system would not be called called socialism. He just wanted to see the system set up.
Heilbroner's peers got the message. That was what Kyoto was all about.
Conclusion
If you like poverty, inefficiency, and bureaucratic controls over the economy, and therefore control over your choices, the "climate change" movement is ideal.
If you want to subsidize China and India, neither of which will enforce the rules laid down by unelected international bureaucrats, this movement is for you.
If you want to pay more for less energy, there is no better way than to pass the cap and tax bill which the House has passed. It will be sent to the U.S. Senate next week.
The rest of us should oppose it.
I hereby authorize anyone to reprint this article or post it on any website, just so long as the text is not changed.
posted by runreason at 5:36 PM
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From Yahoo Sports:
PARIS (AP)—Pete Sampras already figured Roger Federer would go down as the greatest tennis player in history.
That Federer tied Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slam titles by winning the French Open on Sunday only reinforced that opinion.
“What he’s done over the past five years has never, ever been done—and probably will never, ever happen again,” Sampras said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “Regardless if he won there or not, he goes down as the greatest ever. This just confirms it.”
posted by runreason at 6:41 PM
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If you'll take the time to read the Communist Manifesto, you'll find that nearly every single article has been adopted by the government of the United States, including state-owned schools, paper money, social security, progressive taxation, etc. Most people don't understand communism and democracy aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, history seems to prove when people are given the chance to vote, they tend to vote for communist ideas. Biden is clearly a communist. And a majority of people in the U.S. seem to like it that way. I'm not one of them, as you noted, which makes me a "libertarian." Funny, we used to just call those people "Americans."
posted by runreason at 6:36 PM
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