And when can we expect to see the Chocolate Mohammed?

The Chocolate Jesus was released just in time for Easter.

I assume next Ramadan we'll see the Chocolate Mohammed?

Incidentally, it would be instructive to take note of how many riots, deaths, and death threats are issued over this.

Lack of Moral Authority, or Backbone?

Max Hastings of the Guardian says that Global reaction to the seizure of British marines on the Shatt-al-Arab is a measure of our loss of moral authority over Iraq.

The Iranians seem to have planned this operation for days. They wanted western hostages, probably to exchange for their own people held by the Americans, and would have been untroubled by a firefight.

Their own people being people we caught in Iraq fighting the Iranian's war in Iraq. But to the Guardian, they are morally equivalent.

More than that, because of Iraq (almost every twist of western foreign policy is influenced by those fatal words) the British position is nowhere near as strong as it should be in haggling to get its people back.

Never mind the fact that past successes exploiting that very willingness to haggle is precisely what triggered the event in the first place. Right before the UN was to vote on sanctions against Iran for ignoring the U.N.'s worthless resolutions.

Here we go again:

Here is a new manifestation of the loss of moral authority resulting from the Iraq policies of George Bush and Tony Blair. Iran is controlled by one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Its cruelties fall not merely on its opponents, but upon its entire female population. It is a proponent of international terrorism, committed to the illegal acquisition of nuclear weapons. Its president is a Holocaust denier.

In western progressive's eyes, this is true. In Amadinnerjacket's eyes, it's got nothing to do with moral authority (although he'll gladly use the disdain of western useful idiots to his advantage). No, in Amadinnerjacket's eyes, the West, or just about all that's left of what was once the West -- just gave a big signal that they are about to cut and run from Iraq like they did from Somalia. They are about to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory like they did in Vietnam. The west is the weak horse like the Islamists believe -- not in strength but in will. He knows that he can nab 15 Brits and get something out of it. It has nothing to do with moral authority. It has everything to do with moral backbone, and the West's lack of it -- which they've shown over and over again. The west believes in nothing anymore, except for its belief in nothing.

Opinion polls show many people around the world are more fearful of President Bush launching strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities than of the consequences of President Ahmadinejad acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Which just goes to show how successful western progressives have been in demonizing nobility and nobilizing demons.

Despite the strong line towards Iran's nuclear defiance adopted by the UN security council, now with unexpected Russian support, it is generally assumed that the country will achieve its aim of making nuclear weapons.

Strong line? You mean the UN Security Council said that they were really really unhappy about it? That's a strong line? It's generally assumed that the country will achieve its aim because a) that's what it wants to do, and b) it knows that nobody in the UN will ever approve of any concrete action to stop it. What are they going to do, taunt them a third time? Amadinnerjacket is laughing.

Don't kid yourself. Do you really think if we never went to Iraq, after watching the actions of the UN leading up to the 2003 invasion -- that the UN Security Council would authorize any action to stop Tehran?

The victim culture, the belief that Iran is a beleaguered nation, oppressed economically, culturally, politically and militarily by the US and its allies, is deeply rooted. It has been intensified by President Bush's pronouncements and actions over the past six years.

How so?

The European nations have always believed that engagement with Iran is the most plausible policy, for lack of any other.

Like Chamberlain engaged Nazi Germany?

It will be a rash coalition commander in Iraq who again exposes British or American troops to Iranian arms.

I don't hear anybody saying that is going to happen.

Iran is a tormented society, flailing and thrashing in a quest for international respect and influence. So long as its only claim to these things rests upon its capacity for violence and destruction, much more grief lies ahead for its own people and the rest of the world.

I am quite sure the US and British Administrations are aware of this.

So to sum up your article, nobody should do anything concrete to stop Iran's nuclear program, because the Mullahcracy is about to crumble from within. Bush is unable to do what we shouldn't do anyway because we've lost the "moral high ground" because Bush is evil and stupid. The Brits can't negotiate for their hostages because Blair and Bush are evil - and presumably negotiating with Tehran over hostages they took specifically to bring about negotiations is ... a good thing, somehow. Child screams. Child gets ice cream. Child screams. Child gets ice cream. Child wants ice cream, child screams.

Hope you like screaming children.

Chickens coming home to roost

Can't put it any better than Sowell did.

Anti-war protesters in Washington and outside her home in San Francisco are denouncing Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats for not cutting off the money to fight the war in Iraq.

If the war in Iraq is such an unnecessary and futile expenditure of blood and treasure as Pelosi et al. have been saying, why not put an end to it?

But to do that would mean taking responsibility for the consequences -- and those consequences would be disastrous and lasting. They would probably still be lasting when the 2008 elections come around.

The Democrats cannot risk that. They have taken over Congress by a very clever and very disciplined strategy of constantly criticizing the Republicans, without taking the risk of presenting an alternative for whose results they can be held responsible.

There is no sign that they want to change that politically winning strategy now. Their non-binding resolutions against the war are a perfect expression of that strategy.

These resolutions put them on record as being against the war without taking the responsibility for ending it.

Regurgitating the Apple

An odd title for this piece, but one well worth your while. And it's about a 45 minute while, so I'd recommend putting it on an MP3 player or burning it to CD to listern to -- say on your commute.

There's also streaming video if you have more time.

At any rate, it's comedian Evan Sayet -- another former Liberal who has woken up to where Progressive™ thought has gotten us as a culture. His talk is more about culture than politics, but it does cross the line into politics when he talks about how that culture affects our politics.

Now you may not agree with every little thing the man says here, and he's got a few trivial facts wrong (I don't think civilization's been around for 50,000 years -- I think it's more like maybe 6,000 -- it doesn't affect the argument), and I know all conservatives don't agree on every issue, but if you listen to what he's saying and where he's gone with it, I think you'll recognize that he's on to something.

Evan started as a standup comic, wrote for Arsenio Hall, went to Politically Incorrect, wrote and produced TDC/Learning Channel's documentary "The 1970's - From Bell Bottoms to Boogie Shoes". Wrote a musical comedy, and was the original writer of the game show "Win Ben Stein's Money".

Go. Listen.

ht: Misha

What's the price point for Kyoto Gas?

Apparently $6.00 a gallon isn't enough for Europeans.

Support Our Iraqi Supporters

By supporting our troops and their mission.

Must reading from Mohammed at Iraq the Model.

French Immigrants from Africa

The best description for the young, angry, militant, Muslim population of France in an NPR story this morning was "the French-born children and grandchildren of immigrants from Africa."

It went on to say that "they came from the same suburban areas that erupted in riots a year and a half ago in France."

Just a coincidence, I'm sure. I mean, these put-upon people, having to deal with riots that ... well, just "erupted". The riots were like natural disasters. They just erupted and these poor youths were caught in the middle.

They listen to hip-hop. It's like being in New York.

At least they were talking about some sort of integration with mainstream French culture. Don't know which way that'll go, though.

Traditionally, immigrants assimilate into the culture to which they migrated. I worry that in this case, as the 30% of French youths that are Muslim -- may, over time with their increasing voting power -- insist with their votes that the assimilation go the other way.

Strong evidence that policy is driving the science

Correction: Editors of Junkscience.com WorkGroup 1 of the UN's IPPC 4th Assessment Team is are throwing out the yellow flag.

Make that the red flag.

Despite the exhortation: "PLEASE DO NOT CITE, QUOTE, OR DISTRIBUTE THE DRAFT REPORT"we feel we have been left with no choice by the bizarre actions of the IPCC. What kind of "science" distributes a summary and then withholds the underlying report for a further three months editing to make it concur with the already distributed summary? Don't believe it? Neither did we but the plain language statement of intent is here (search for "grammatical" -- it's on page 4 of 15) and the original IPCC procedures document is (was) here -- in their words:

"Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter."

Surely science has not degenerated to the point that research must now conform to pre-released summaries, even in the purely political IPCC.

That's right. We, the politicians have made the statement we wanted to make. We will spend the next three months editing what the scientists wrote to make sure it is consistent with what we said. That way we can say "The worlds top scientists agree. We have consensus."

Hello, people!!!!

---

So it wasn't the scientists on the assessment team that made the statement -- it doesn't make the point any less valid.

My Antropogenic Global Warming Skeptic's Guide

This is a link to my previous - not very well titled post.

Things I Know #3 & 4, and things we don't know

My Skeptic's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming

Things I know #3: Models are not fact. Models are expressions of belief. Model output is what we think should happen based on the beliefs encapsulated in the model.

If the beliefs are close to reality, model output can be quite useful. If they are not close to reality, they are garbage.

"Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty." (Poincaré 1902).

Real evidence is in observation. Models (in physics) are our way of mathematically "explaining" what we think might be true. Models we create produce imaginary results based on what we believe happens. Another way to put it is that models are expressions of belief.

With that in mind, Let's talk about things we know, and things we don't know.

First, we'll throw up a chart of "Global Temperature" change, as best we can determine "it", for about the past 120 years.

This is based on taking average temperature readings all over the world various methods and averaging them. We won't go into any of the nuances of the validity of that. Let's just accept it for our purposes here. Looks like temperature has gone generally up since about 1920, with a bit of a flattening from about 1940 to about 1977-ish, followed by a surge leading up to about now (2000-ish).

Alarmists tend to point especially to the second part of the curve and say "look, it's increasing faster and it's higher than "ever".

I want us to note two things here (the temperature scale here is fahrenheit as opposed to celsius on most of the other charts... a one degree fahrenheit change is 1.8 times a one degree celsius change). Seriously, how many lay-alarmists even know how much the earth has warmed so far in the last 150 years? Those two things are the scale we're talking about, and the fact that the rate of increase from 1920 to 1940 doesn't look a whole lot different from the rate of increase from 1977 to now. So the increase in the last 30 years is not an unusual rate of increase. As a matter of fact one of the things we know from long term data is that these global temperature increases tend to happen rapidly, while global temperature decreases happen a bit more slowly.

Now we're going to look at Mann's famous "hockey stick" chart.

This is the main chart that has caused a good chunk of the hubub about our sudden, rapid temperature increase from "normal". Note that "normal" for this chart is defined as the average from 1961-1990. Further understand that that is an arbitrary choice as far as climate history is concerned. But that's ok, just make sure you keep that in mind. We have to put a deviation line somewhere.

The "proxy data" is data gathered from tree rings, ice cores, and possibly sediment analysis. Note the large (grey) margin of error in the proxy data. It gets smaller around the time some records started being kept around 1600, and yet smaller during the 1900's when world populating grew rapidly and more and more observations were available in more places.

But we're kind of comparing apples to oranges here. We've increasingly grafted more and more actual, real observational to the right side of the graph as time goes on, until at the end there's virtually no proxy data and very little margin of error. But note that despite all this, the temperature today is still very close to the margin of error estimated for the proxy data. Also understand that the smooth line you see down the middle of the margin of error has been artificially smoothed up to the 1990's, and the shocking end of the chart is real data. What this means is that all throughout the chart from the left to the right, the actual "global temperature" may have been anywhere within the grey area. Anywhere, any given year. The smooth line is very misleading.

On top of that, climatologists and statisticians have long since trashed this chart, yet it is still being trotted out by Al Gore et. al. today. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.

From Friends of Science: (and noted by many others -- this is easily verifiable)

Over the years, the graph has been subject to many criticisms from other scientists, for a number of reasons. Some complained that the well-documented Medieval Warm Period (approx. 1000-1400) and the even better known Little Ice Age (approx. 1450-1850) do not register on Mann’s chart. Others took issue with the tree ring proxy methods being used for the time span before thermometer readings were available, or with the inaccuracy of the temperature readings themselves. They maintain that instrument errors are often larger than the anomalies measured, or that the urban heat island issue skews surface data badly.

In this article in Energy & Environment (Vol 14/6, 2003) Canadians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick reject Mann’s methodology, point to numerous errors, unjustifiably truncated data and extrapolations, and other defects. They then use Mann’s original data and recognized methodology to prove that Mann’s graph shape is an artifact and that a proper interpretation finds that temperatures around 1400 were warmer than anything in the 20th century. The widely read work by McIntyre and McKitrick has elicited much discussion in scientific circles. A more definitive version was later published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Now let's take a look at how the public is being manipulated by selecting what you see and blurring the line in the public mind between what we know and what we don't know.

First of all notice that this chart now goes back far enough to see the end of the last ice age, the halocene warm period, and Mann's obliteration of the midieval warm period is gone. We can now see that temperatures are, as far as we can tell, about as warm as they've ever been since the end of the last ice age -- and it's really not much higher, as far as climate history goes, than the lowest low since the last ice age. The difference has been less than 2 degrees celcius for about the last 10,000 years (and look how fast we came out of that ice age. Now that's a dramatic temperature increase!) But look at the right side of the chart. There's that worrisome model forecast, and it dwarfs any changes in the last 10,000 years.

But it's an illusion. It's a "thing we don't know". For the record, here's what we do know:

Well, that's not so alarming now, is it? And remember that "0" line and how I mentioned its arbitrariness? It is useful for looking at small changes, but still arbitrary. It doesn't mean, as our brains are likely to infer, that that's what the temperature "should" be. It's just what it's been for the past 10,000 years. We could put it anywhere. How about halfway in between the modern mean and the Ice Age mean? Just for fun.

Does that change our perspective any? It does, doesn't it? Looks even less alarming.

But we do have that pesky model output to address. Where did that come from? Have we figured climate out? Do we know how to forecast general average global temperature years, even decades into the future?

Well we do have blackbody equations -- which are, by the way, theoretical models of theoretical bodies. They have proved quite useful. However, they are theoretical models of very theoretical, very homogenious "systems" if you will, and of course the earth and it's atmosphere and chemistry are anything but. So we have taken these model equations and created a crude sun/earth/atmosphere model to try to describe what we believe should explain why the earth is warmer than the earth would be if it were a simple black body. And not surprisingly, those equations work out, roughly.

I majored in Meteorology, and I know how we come up with these models and equations. We have these little "constants" we throw in to adjust the equations so that they match our observations. This is often helpful when modeling. But it's still a model. Our weather forecasts are computer models. Much is made of how often they're wrong -- although they actually are amazingly accurate for what they are and the data we have over a period of a few days.

Well then we took THAT sun/earth/atmosphere model, paying special attention to CO2 as a greenhouse gas -- and plugged them into and integrated them with our climate models in an attempt to predict what might happen if we increased CO2.

Al's famous "did those two ever fit together?" graph in his slideshow/movie does show an amazing correlation between Co2 levels and mean global temperature.

Which brings us to Things I Know #4: Correlation does not mean causation.

Does more CO2 in the atmosphere cause mean global temperature to rise? Simple black body equations say it should to some extent. However, there are a zillion other factors that they don't take into account. We simply don't know what many of those factors even are. One of the ones we do know is that even in the equations (including the IR absorbtion windows in which CO2 absorbs IR radiation) the increase would not be linear. It's inverse logarithmic. At some point on an inverse logarithimic curve, large increases in CO2 means negligible increases in temperature. Eventually they become infinitesimal. And it looks as though we're getting to the high end of that curve.

At any rate, that is why we're inclined to believe that the correlation is evidence that CO2 is the driving factor. But is it? What if the models are wrong? Remember, models are not reality. They are expressions of belief.

One of the assumptions we had for a long time was that solar output was constant. Look in the models, and you will find the "solar constant". But it turns out it is not constant. Solar output varies over time, and solar output, as one might expect, affects earth's climate. In more ways than one, as it turns out -- one by delivering varying amounts of energy to the earth's position in space, and another by "blowing" on the magnetosphere, altering how much gamma radiation gets into the earth's atmosphere. That second one affects cloud formation. And it turns out that clouds have a significant role in how much of the sun's energy is kept in earth's system. They can act as a blanket, keeping some in. They can act as reflectors, keeping some out.

So, as I mentioned in an earlier, counter-snark post, let's take a look at sun activity and temperatures in the last 300 years.

Did ... those two ever ... fit together?

Seriously now, we have another correlation here. And, using Al's logic, we've got to believe that since CO2 levels correlate to temperature, and temperature correlates to sun cycle length.... that CO2 levels correlate to sun cycle length. So does more CO2 in the earth's atmosphere affect sun cycle length? I don't think even Al Gore would go that far.

So what other explanation might there be? Well let's try this one on for size. Sun cycles affect earth's temperatures. And earth's temperatures .... affect how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. So let's look at another chart which lays CO2 over these two.

That's a pretty tight correlation. Now go back up and look at Gore's Temp/CO2 chart.

Water can hold more of an atmospheric gas at colder temperatures, and less of it at warmer temperatures. Sun heats the earth, ocean gets warmer, releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Sun delivers less input to the earth, earth cools, oceans cool... absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, CO2 levels fall. Notice that the shape of these cycles is almost always abrupt (how alarming!) on the warming side, and more gradual on the cooling side. The warming forces CO2 out of solution fairly quickly, and it comes out of solution wherever the water is warmer -- not just at the surface. Once it comes out of solution the CO2 becomes a gas and rises quickly to the surface and is expelled into the atmosphere - whereas absorbtion can only occur at the surface, thus slowing down re-absorbtion into the ocean.

What does Occam's razor tell you?

Now back to the model, which, as you may recall is an expression of belief. If you believe that CO2 level is a significant forcing factor for temperature, you are going to express that in your model. If you express it in your model, then your model is going to end up "confirming" that belief. How can it not? It's programmed right in there!

What we have shown here is that the evidence strongly suggests that CO2 is not a significant forcing factor in temperature. Even if we ignore ice core evidence (and I'm not saying we should) that warming cycles actually lead CO2 fluctuations, and guess that CO2 enhances the effect as the warming starts and helps the rapid temperature increases we see at the beginning of the cycles -- there is clearly a limit to this phenomena. The CO2 IR window is effectively closed, and as temperatures fall on the down side of the cycle, with the cooling oceans drag CO2 levels behind them as they absorb it out of the atmosphere.

There is also ice core data that shows that temperatures start to go up before CO2 levels rise, further corroborating the idea that CO2 is not a major forcing factor -- at least not past about 300ppm. Before we started burning fossil fuels at any sort of high rate, something besides us drove those CO2 levels up.

In the end, we have observation that says that climate fluctuates, and recent fluctuations are not anything extraordinary. We do have extraordinarily high CO2 levels as far as we can tell (remember comparing inferred proxy data to actual data, which we've only recently been able to obtain -- has it's problems), and we have a theory that says more CO2 should trap more heat in the earth's atmosphere. We're missing anything that says this is actually happening, especially once we account for solar output and the associated processes. Observations to date are not alarming. All we have past today is model output. Model output is the logical conclusion of an expression of belief - it is not an observation. And so when you see a chart like this, keep that in mind.

and remember the extrapolated curve would fit just as easily to the curve if you cut it off at 1940, and at various other points in history.

The Debate is Over?

How did I miss this at the end of Sowell's latest Random Thoughts post?

At a recent debate over global warming sponsored by National Public Radio, the audience was polled beforehand and was solidly on the side of the hysterical predictions. Afterwards, they switched to a slight majority against those predictions. Don't look for the global warming crusaders to risk doing any more debates.

Why should they, when they have virtually a monopoly in the media, in schools and colleges, and among politicians?

Mmmm-heh!

Wrong Turn

Researchers Question Validity Of A "Global Temperature"

I read this, too. I understand what they're saying, but I think they're overstating the case -- or at least making it sound more simple than it is.

For one thing, phone numbers are not a measure of anything, and exchange rates is a bad example because we're talking about conversion rates between multiple arbitrary measures of productivity or wealth. Temperature doesn't measure a rate, it measures a state.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge AGW skeptic -- but this argument really goes nowhere on its own.

I agree that it is difficult to nearly impossible to take some definitive measurement -- but that's true of any system - like say your car engine. Does your car engine have an "engine" temperature? Even when it's running, your engine has cooler parts and warmer parts. The same argument "no global temperature" would apply to the engine, but nobody would seriously argue that the engine doesn't heat up when you start it in the morning.

That being said, it does touch on something that most lay people don't get, and that's that when we are talking about "Global Temperature" we are talking about an estimated average, and we're also talking about, over tens of thousands of years, a few degrees difference. This few degrees difference often means that the margin of error overwhelms the changes we do see, and there's the whole apples to oranges argument on top of that.

Different estimation methods will yield different estimates. Tree ring analysis is one method. Ice core analysis is another. Sediment analyisis is yet another. And, of course, there's the good ole "average your thermometer readings" method.

Using these methods, we can get a pretty good idea of periods the relative amplitude of long-term temperature and climate variability, but to say that we can tell you excactly what the "global temperature" was at any given time given any combination of these is a bit of a stretch.

If we had thermometers in fixed places at a fixed height all over the world in areas unmolested by artificial local effects (such as shade trees growing over them or urban heat island encroachment) and all agreed that the average reading of those thermometers gave us an average surface temperature -- and that average went up over time, we could say that the surface is warming.

We do have satellites that can figure an average temperature in a column of air -- we're better equipped today to estimate the earth's thermal energy balance with more observations in some sort of meaningful fashion. But we've only been able to do that for maybe the past 30 or so years. To tack data like that side by side with ice core analyses can be very misleading. Analyses such as this (along with extra smoothing of the proxy data to get rid of the midieval warm period) is what gave us the famous, purposely alarming "hockey stick" graph in the 1990's.

If we defined what we want to call "global temperature" and everyone agreed that what they are talking about when they use the term is in terms of that definition -- we'd have something meaningful. We would still have to be careful about just what it is that we can or can't infer from it.

Mostly what I'm cautioning against here is skeptics arguing that we can't say the earth is warming because there's no "global temperature". When you dig into the argument, you do start to see some of the traps in saying that "we know what it is" and especially in saying "we know what it was" -- when "it" (global mean temperature) probably doesn't have an official, narrow definition. But on its face it's like saying that we can't say our car engine is heating up because there's no "engine temperature".

On the other hand, because the problems involved in defining and/or taking that temperature, especially with the small amplitude of the changes and the large margin of error, we should take people's so-called measurements with a sustantial amount of salt.

Another "Random Thoughts" post by Sowell

As usual, worth a perusal. And even those with short attention spans will enjoy this one.

a few of them as a teaser:

• Whenever I see the kinds of expressions on the faces of people in high-fashion ads, I feel lucky that I never met them.
• When the University of California system and the California State University system raised their tuitions, the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle read: "UC, CSU Reach Again for Students' Wallets." Apparently you are only supposed to reach for the taxpayers' wallets.
• A reader says that he had a T-shirt made that said: "Stop Continental Drift!" It made as much sense as "Stop Global Warming."
• When the Constitution's protection of private property was disregarded, so that politicians could rob from the rich to give to the poor, that also gave politicians the power to rob from the poor and give to the rich -- such as seizing homes in low-income neighborhoods and turning that property over to developers.

The big US Attorney 'Scandal'

It looks to me like, after it was pointed out that Clinton fired all 93 US Attorneys at once -- that the big flap boils down to this:

• Everyone agrees that the administration is free to hire and fire appointees at will
• Gonzalez said in front of the Senate back in January that he would never fire a US attorney for political reasons (even though everyone agrees it would be the administration's perogative to do just that)
• 8 US attorneys -- well at least 7 of them (one says his firing was fair) were fired for what it would be fair to call political reasons (it would also be fair to call them performance reasons, depending on the context)

And they want Gonzalez to resign over this.

Actually, they don't really care about Gonzalez. They care about keeping the illusion of a scandalously power-crazy White House driven by Evil Genius™ Rove and his War-Mongering™, Corporate-Corporate-Haliburton™ Facist™ Blood-For-Oil™ Rove-bots, Chimpy McBushHitler™ and that mean old Corporate-Corporate-Haliburton™ Cheney.

Did we mention "facist"? You have to say 'facist' or the Lefty cops'll come get ya.

Whew, ok, I worked it in.

They're salivating over Rove. They're hoping beyond hope that they can ensnare him as they did Libby in some sort of perjury trap. Since everyone agrees that there was no crime comitted, that they just don't like "the way it was handled", that's the only other reason I can think of that the Pitbulls of Peace™ (that'd be the Democrats) can already taste the blood.

This is why Senate Democrats want them to testify under oath. So that they can foster another Create-a-Crime™ to "bring down" another political enemy... this time the one they've been gunning for hard all along.

If I were Rove/Gonzalez/Bush/Cheney, I'd be like -- "yeah? So?" and not even try to spin it.

ps... did I mention Haliburton? 'Cause... you know you gotta mention Haliburton, or the lefty...

corporate

Hey Al Gore! Did those ever fit together?

Every time the sea surface temperatures on Earth goes up, the number of sunspots goes up. Huh. I suppose humans are causing sunspots, too. We're runing the solar system!!!!

Note that rises and falls in sunspot activity slightly leads Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs).

For those who aren't aware, sunspot activity is proportional to solar output. Higher sea temperatures release more C02 into the atmosphere from the ocean.

Turns out cold water can hold more C02 than warm water.

Also note that, as usual, the critics in the comments do a lot of attacking of who is in the documentary (or rather, who they think who was in the documentary is associated with. Stooges! Stooges!), who aired the documentary, etc rather than what the documentary contains. The only attack on the science is "correlation does not mean causation". Yup. Good first step. Now go watch Bigfoot Al's movie again keeping that in mind.

Incidentally, WAGTV, which produced the documentary, produces documentaries for BBC, Channel4, Channel 5, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Company). They're not some "out there" whack job group.

Ok. I admit I haven't verified that chart yet. Update: I have now. Check the similar chart on this NOAA research page. What I've said here holds, though. And there are myriad papers that support it. I'll hand you one here for now while I go look for others.

Seriously, there's way more to the case against AGW than this. The documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" covers the highlights. Fred Singer & Dennis Avery's new book (Unstoppable global warming every 1500 years) is more in depth.

You lefties out there should at least watch the film and hear the other side of the argument. I watched yours.

The latest assault on the Bush Administration

Well, we are in the middle of March Madness, and the Democrats continue their full court press against the Bush administration.

They just finished icing the cake on Scooter Libby, the man who is being sent to prison for cooperating with an investigation into who may have committed a non-crime that was alleged against the Bush Administration in an earlier strategic point in the full-court press, for not consistently recalling excactly when he said what to whom over the course of a week or so on a matter, at the time, he didn't consider particularly important. They finished the icing on that cake by saying, yeah, it may not be fair, but it's all BushCheneyRove-iburton's fault, and they should be going to jail. For the non-crime. That ... um ... nobody comitted.

So now we have another "scandal" since that one is out of the headlines. As a matter of fact, this strikes me as very similar to the Al Queda strategy. Stay in the headlines. Wear the enemy down. Put doubt in the minds of their supporters. Kill a few here, kill a few there. Headlines. Drip, drip, drip. Slow bleed. Their unsettling alliance makes even more sense now.

The latest "scandal" is that the Justice department fired 8 U.S. Attorneys... and they talked to Bush, Meiers, and Rove .... ROVE .... mmmmm.... R-o-v-e .... about it before hand.

I don't remember who was doing the NPR interview the other day ... toward the end of the interview with someone involved in the investigation of this horrible scandal, she kept asking so will you be calling ROVE to the stand? Will ROVE have to testify? Are you going to call ROVE? and the guy finally said yeah, if we need to. What is this fixation the left has with Rove? It almost sounded as if she were salivating. (see this Cox & Forkum post)

I'd also heard a day or two earlier somewhere that the Clinton administration fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys once, but I couldn't remember where.

Thanks to Misha, I was pointed to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal article that confirms it covers the double-standard quite well.

Changing Semantics

Osama Bin Laden, 2004:

"The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation. It is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world's millstone and pillar is in Baghdad."

Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama's right-hand man), 2006:

"The jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals. The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or emirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate - over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq. The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. The fourth stage:... the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity."

Democrats, 2006/2007

Withdraw from re-deploy from disengage from end participation in the war in Iraq.

A rose by any other name.... of course, when Cheney pointed out that this all means "being expelled from Iraq", Pelosi quickly changed the subject by accusing Cheney of questioning her patriotism.

One thing I like about Cheney is he doesn't mince words. He responded "I'm not questioning her patriotism. I'm questioning her judgement."

Looks to me like he has a very good point.

Dennis Miller on Bush

Dennis says he has a lot more in common with Guiliani, but still:

"I just admire Bush's stance at this time in history against radical Islamic fundamentalism. I think he knows it's going to make him hated for the rest of his time on this planet. And I look at that and I go 'wow, I don't see that in a politician', that makes me respect him."

That statement pretty much sums up my view as well.

Review: An Inconvenient Truth

I have now seen "An Inconvenient Truth" -- I was wrong. I take everything I've said back.

Just kidding.

I have seen the movie, a few things struck me right off. One of them was the church-like atmosphere, a clergy-congregation look, Gore, of course, being the former, and the devout, respectful, somber -- dare I say sanctified looks on the congregation's faces. Then there were shots of adoring fans snapping pictures. Early in the movie, there is a Katrina footage -- the later suggestion made that "the choices we make" having huge impact cut right into Gore losing the 2000 election... clever. There's also a lot of snarkiness in this film, where the basic joke is always "duh! obviously! Why don't all those other stupid people get it?" -- all of the fans laugh in self-congratulatory knowingness.

Very interestingly, near the beginning of the movie, he uses the following Mark Twain quote:

"What gets us into trouble is now what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

He would do well to apply this to his own beliefs.

"But there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature gets warmer. Because it traps more heat from the sun inside." - Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth"

This is something Al Gore "knows for sure". He sets up a snarky little "a sixth grader could figure this out" scenario, referring to an earlier anecdote by saying "did these two ever fit together?"

Well, here's another interesting fact: When people spend more time outside, the temperature gets warmer. However, as you might suspect, the cause-effect relationship is the other way around. (Now my sunbathing analogy might not be true in the tropics, but it certainly is in the subtropical zones and in the arctic, just stick with me here.) When the temperature gets warmer, people spend more time outside. Because it's warmer.

It's not quite as intuitive, especially looking at the chart Al presents, but the very ice core studies he cites showing the relationship between CO2 and temperature suggest quite strongly that Al's got it backward. If you look at the sentence Al tacked on to the end of the quote above, "Because it traps more heat from the sun inside" -- you can see the predisposition to interpret the data as a cause-effect, CO2 to Temperature, respectively -- relationship. And there is a good reason for this. There is a theory that it would hold true based on radiation/blackbody theory and relative transparency of the atmosphere to different wavelengths (visible vs infared). However, the theory applies to a highly simplified earth/atmosphere system with all kinds of assumptions.

An actual close look at the ice core data shows that increases in earth's mean temperature precede increases in CO2 by hundreds of years. In other words, when we juxtopose the two lines Al separates spatially on his graph we see that first the temperature goes up, the the CO2 levels follow. Presented with this information, I imagine even our sixth grader might come to the conclusion that it is mean global temperature increases that cause increases in CO2 content in the atmosphere.

When the earth's mean surface temperature increases, sea surface temperatures increase. Cold water holds more CO2 than does warm water, so the oceans release vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere when it warms up. Similarly, as the ocean cools, it absorbs more CO2 from the atmosphere, causing CO2 concentrations to go down.

Is the earth warming? Well it sure has been for the past 150 years or so. Is it hotter than ever? Probalby not. The "hockey stick" graph Al shows you in the film is tree ring data up to 1900 or so, then actual measured surface temperature data grafted to the end of it. You can't create a graph like this and draw meaningful conclusions when your measurement methods changed so radically.

Is there more CO2 in the atmosphere than ever? Again, we're talking about comparing actual, precise measurements with data inferred from gasses trapped in ice. The ice data is meaningful, but only when compared to data obtained by similar means. Our modern data, which starts to show a stark contrast to that proxy record is what is so alarming. But as Dr. Lindzen (who was on the IPCC) once said, it's like kids sitting in a closet in the dark with flashlights scaring each other to death with "what if" stories.

Later Al laments the alleged treatment of scientists who believe AGW is a fact. He says:

"I've seen scientists who were persecuted, ridculed, deprived of ... jobs, income -- simply because the facts they discovered led them to an inconvenient truth ... that they insisted on telling."

Never mind that scientists come to conclusions, not "truths". But would any of that ridiculing include calling them corporate stooges, as the Progressive movement is fond of calling skeptics? Or perhaps have people call for the pulling of their credentials as the Weather Channel's Dr. Heidi Cullen did recently? Or to compare them to Holocaust deniers as Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman recently did? Stuff like that?

Dr. Lindzen (MIT & IPCC):

... In 1992, [Al Gore] ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry. ...

In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions. ...

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest.

Even further on, Al goes through a little "Secret Agent Al" bit where he shows that some (Evil, of course) Bush administration official edited something out of an EPA report, claiming it was speculation. I paused the movie and transcribed what he showed on the screen.

Warming will also cause reductions in mountain glaciers and advance the timing of the melt of mountain snow peaks in polar regions. In turn, runoff rates will change and flood potential will be altered in ways that are currently not well understood. There will be significant shifts in the seasonality of runoff that will have serious impacts on native populations that rely on fishing and hunting for their livlihood. These Changes will be further complicated by shifts in precipitation regimes and possible intensification and increased frequency of extreme hydrologic events. Reducing the uncertainties in current understanding of the relationship between climate change and Arctic hydrology is critical.

I don't know. Unless you hold that all of it is true, I think he is justified in calling a lot of it speculation. Note the sentence he did leave in, though. Doesn't look like a sinister edit. Maybe it should, and maybe it shouldn't have been made. It certainly doesn't change the meaning of the document.

Now, how about these points that the IPCC Scientists made in 1995 that the UN's political editors deleted?

"Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced."

"No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes."

They were replaced with the following statement:

"The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate."

Where is the horror and outrage of AGW activists on this editing? On top of that, it completely changed the meaning of what was being said.

Since then, the pressure for stronger and stronger language has only grown, and there has been a concerted effort to silence skeptics.

He goes to a Winston Churchill quote:

The Era of Procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to it's close. In its place we are entering a Period of Consequences.- Sir Winston Churchill, Nov 12, 1936

Of course, Winston was talking about the rise and spread of Facism and Nazism and the need to go to war against it.

Oddly, this could easily be applied to the Clinton Administration's treatment of Al Queda, one consequence being 9/11... and of allowing Saddam Hussein to ignore his cease fire agreements from 1991, and resolution after resolution .... 17 of them, in the 11 years that followed. But... I do digress, don't I?

Next Al says:

Making mistakes, in centuries and generations past would have consequences that we could overcome. We don't have that luxury ... anymore.

And then cuts to a gratuitous montage recalling his Election 2000 loss in the Electoral College. Subtle, eh? With the time in this film spent on the 2000 election and Gore's "fighting the good fight" -- that's GORE fighting the good fight, lest we lose the importance of that.... then showing Bush getting out of his car at the White House and Gore staring out the window of ... somewhere, apparently looking down on it all. The implication being "opportunity lost. Y'all coulda had me." Is this a campaign movie?

Imamgate is apparently not over

Heard on NPR that the flying Imams are filing a discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Airways.

The story makes it sound like there was nothing to be suspicious about but some pre-boarding praying, "they'd knelt and prayed on their prayer rugs" and were "allegedly overheard making anti-American statements". Full context below:

"The religious leaders were returning to Pheonix after attending a conference in Minneapolis when they were taken off the the plane. They'd knelt and prayed on their prayer rugs before boarding the plane in the airport, and then allegedly overheard by passengers making anti-American statements once on board. The passenger passed a note to a flight attendent, the pilot authorities, and the men were removed. When they returned to the airport the next day, U.S. Airways refunded their fare and refused to sell them another ticket. Officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations say the Imams did not do anything on the plane that should have been considered suspicious, and say that the Imams will sue on the basis of discrimination."

Nothing about the passenger who overheard them talking in Arabic understood Arabic well. Nothing about the fact that the Imams refused to sit in their assigned seats, and fanned out to positions in the plane consistent with the 9/11 hijackings. Nothing about the fact that several of them asked for seat belt extensions while appearing not to need them, and while confirming that by stashing them unused under their seats. Nothing about CAIR's ties to Islamist extremists. No statements from any of the passengers. Nothing about other Muslims on the plane who agreed with the action the airline took. Just "well, the Imams said this, and CAIR 'officials' back them". Makes it sound all neat and tidy. Them damned "racist" midwesterners in Flyover Country are just a bunch of KKK'ers lookin' for a lynchin', just like we thought. No reason to suspect these goodly men of God just for praying and expressing their political opinions.

Well NPR, that's the impression your story leaves. Like there's no other side of the story to tell. And you wonder what people mean when they talk about biased reporting.