Way too busy this week, and way too cold. Four mornings below zero. High all week was in the low 20’s. Brrrr! So it’s good to just spend a Saturday morning on the couch with a pot of coffee, a sleepy dog, and a list of links.
As the blog header tag says “mmmmm, climate change”. Here’s an article from Pajamas Media about ignoring 200 years of observations that the global warming cult doesn’t want you to look at.
Just this year, the data behind Michael Mann’s hockey stick was finally released. Mann had used only 12 carefully selected tree ring sequences to prepare his story — omitting 34 that didn’t suit his purpose. This is surely one of the most scandalous examples of cherry picking on record, a blatant attempt to keep the world scared of carbon dioxide, and to keep reputations and research budgets safe. A gravy train, of jet-set travel to conferences in choice locations around the globe, each well-laced with top cuisine for the top tables and adulation from a regular caravansary of hangers-on, swelling a spurious and unscientific consensus.
By the way, if you want more on the manipulation of climate data to fit the cult’s belief system, get over to WUWT. Multiple posts. My degree is in Biology, so I am not totally ignorant of the scientific method, and what I see in Climategate is unbelieveable. I remember the first “Earth Day”, and was a committed convert then, going so far as to man the table in the Student Union building getting the word out about the dangers of single hulled tankers in Puget Sound. For that matter, I remember SDS and the Weathermen… so I’m not ignorant of radicals and radical Marxist politics either. What is going on now in our country and the world, both in politics and in science is so frustrating and so frightening. For heaven’s sake folks, wake up, because this country is in dire peril.
Sorry about the rant. We’re supposed to be enjoying coffee this morning aren’t we… Let’s see now. Oh look, here’s Rich Lowrey at NRO.
Much of what was new and different about Obama didn’t survive its first contact with reality. His core supporters on the left suffer from what Woodrow Wilson called, in a different context, the “tragedy of disappointment.” They expected a glorious new dispensation.
Instead, they got the most boring man in the world. That’s gotta hurt. Especially when, as so many have pointed out by snarkily counting how many times he says “I” in his speeches (average is about 35 times apparently), he truly believes he was sent here to save us. He is, after all, the one we’ve been waiting for, right?
Many of the people in the Obama administration, the president included, enjoy all the credentials we associate with the best and the brightest: the right schools, the good grades, the successful careers. Alas, whether it be allocating health care or defining the kind of jobs the economy ought to create, the policies they favor suggest a strong belief that they know what’s best not just for themselves, but for everyone else too.
Of course, the kind of people who are apt to push for government-imposed solutions are those who are also apt to believe they will be the ones imposing decisions, not the ones who have to live with decisions imposed by others. Sometimes that’s because they enjoy the wealth that gives them escape hatches unavailable to the less affluent, such as their ability to ensure that their own children never have to set foot in a public school. Mostly, however, their trust in government reflects their confidence that they have all the answers and that it’s government’s job to enforce them.
Speaking of wielding government power, there is some talk that the Obama administration’s EPA “takeover” of the whole carbon-in-the-environment issue this past week may turn out to be a case of shooting themselves in the foot. There is little doubt that the announcement by the EPA that carbon dioxide is a poison and the agency was taking over its regulation was also a showboat for Obama to take to Copenhagen. Oh yeah, the cap and tax bill is widely thought to be dead (for now) and The Won has been threatening to just do it himself, but this might turn out to be an instance of “oh crap, I didn’t think about that”. The EPS’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles
Industry groups are gearing up for a legal onslaught; and don’t underestimate their prospects. The leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit in England alone are a gold mine for those who want to challenge the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming.
But the EPA’s legal vulnerabilities go beyond that. The agency derives its authority to regulate pollutants from the Clean Air Act. To use that law to regulate greenhouse gases, the EPA has to prove those gases are harmful to human health (thus, the endangerment finding). Put another way, it must provide “science” showing that a slightly warmer earth will cause Americans injury or death. Given that most climate scientists admit that a warmer earth could provide “net benefits” to the West, this is a tall order.
All this stuff is depressing sometimes, so perhaps it’s time to stop. This past week my business took me all over the SW corner of Idaho. You folks who aren’t familiar with the real West don’t know what you lack. My Sweetie went to the big Left Coast cities to see the kids while I stayed here and she again brought back tales of the city that make me grateful that we live here in Idaho. Over this past week I’ve seen pheasants and quail, deer and elk, a wolf, and more flocks of turkeys than even Washington D.C. can boast. Towns so small they only have four buildings, a garage, a general store, a cafe, and a church. I watched a young dad helping his boy into the cab of a tractor to take a load of hay out to the cattle. I saw real cowboys on horseback rounding up range cattle, and a young woman on a horse pushing a dozen cows through town, helped only by three cowdogs. I saw rafts of geese and ducks in the middle of a near frozen river, rafts so large you couldn’t begin to count them. I drove by ranch houses so far out you’d wonder how they got a powerline out there, and I was touched that they had a wreath on their door and their Christmas lights on. And some of the most beautiful country anywhere on earth. We are so blessed! I thank God we live here, and that at least this little part of America still resembles what we all dream of, and long for.
Well, time to go shovel snow. Y’all have a great day. Be thankful too.
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