Dog Catching

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com Surely the tragically uninformed among us could use some perspective on these innocuous comments by Trenberth: "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't"; "we are (not) close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter." Trenberth, lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 assessments of climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtains approximately 95 percent of his funding through the federal government, via the National Science Foundation. Well, soon after my request was fired off, I was informed by NCAR's counsel that the organization is, in fact, not a federal agency -- because its budget is laundered through the National Science Foundation -- and thus is under no obligation to provide information to the public. taxpayers should be able to hold government-funded scientific institutions to the same level of accountability to which they hold their local dog pounds.

The SGS View

clipped from www.shadowstats.com Have you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences?  The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting. The SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.

Faith Based

clipped from feministlawprofessors.com The contempt laden Op-Ed is here. Below is the first paragraph: In his inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to restore science to its “rightful place.” This has partly occurred, as evidenced by this month’s release of 13 new human embryonic stem-cell lines. The recent brouhaha over the guidelines put forth by the government task force on breast-cancer screening, however, illustrates how tricky it can be to deliver on this promise. So right out of the box author John Allen Paulos rhetorically links the G.W. Bush era right wing “Christianity” driven opposition to stem cell research with concerns about the new mammogram guidelines. But that noxious opener is completely unfair. Women did not start scheduling mammograms for dubious religious reasons. We did it because SCIENTISTS CONVINCED US IT WOULD BE BENEFICIAL – scientists at places like the Centers For Disease Control. So did organizations like the American Cancer Society, which last time I checked was not “faith based.”

DiHydrogen Monoxide Reprise

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Charge!, Not Change

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Understanding

clipped from cafehayek.com Former Miami Herald employee Robert Steinback, pleading for greater government control of health-care markets, writes: “I don’t understand people who fear government bureaucrats – who have no profit motive and ultimately must answer to the people – yet feel fully at ease with corporate bureaucrats whose sole interest is the bottom line and answer only to shareholders” (”Matter of life, death,” Dec. 9). I wonder how Mr. Steinback would reply to a proposal that newspapers be run, not by profit-seeking owners, but by government bureaucrats.

Interesting Features

clipped from statpad.wordpress.com In his blog post, Giorgio Gilestro claims to show that the adjustments made by GHCN to temperature data do not induce  artificial trends into the data based mainly on this histogram of adjustments. Finally, these averages were again averaged over the stations to calculate an average for each year.: The graph has some interesting features.  First of all, there is a fairly linear trend from about 1900 to the present.  The increase is about  0.25o.  A second unexpected feature was the fact that there seems to be a fairly constant reduction of 0.10o C from about 1990 to 2006!  The expression “hiding the decline” comes to mind and I believe this would need some sort of explanation. Since posting this yesterday, I have become aware of a post doing a similar analysis   by blogger hpx83.  His results are basically the same as the ones I have posted.  However, using further information about  the stations, he has also included a graph of the number of stations available in a given year:

The Highest Level

clipped from pajamasmedia.com CONFLICTS OF INTEREST at the IPCC? “Seek and ye will find. Our friendly part-time chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, is quite a remarkable man. As well as his onerous post with the UN’s IPCC, it seems he has a considerable number of other interests. . . . Intriguingly, for such an upstanding public servant though, he is also a strategic advisor to the private equity investment firm Pegasus Capital Advisors LP In December 2007, be became a member of the Senior Advisory Board of Siderian ventures based in San Francisco. It acquired a minority interest in January 2009 in order to ‘explore new business opportunities in the area of sustainability.’ As a member of the Senior Advisory Board of Siderian, Dr Pachauri is expected to provide the Fund and its portfolio companies ‘with access, standing and industry exposure at the highest level.’” Access at the highest level, indeed.

Octopods

clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com Octopuses have been discovered tip-toeing with coconut-shell halves suctioned to their undersides, then reassembling the halves and disappearing inside for protection or deception, a new study says. "We were blown away," said biologist Mark Norman of discovering the octopus behavior off Indonesia. "It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask." "An octopus without shells can swim away much faster by jet propulsion," he said. "But on endless mud seafloor, where are you fleeing to?" In other words, a coconut-carrying octopus may be slow, but it's always got somewhere to hide. That the octopuses weren't using their tools to rustle up dinner only added to Stanford's surprise. "Even chimps," he added, "do not use natural materials to create shelters over their heads."

Another Lie

clipped from www.nytimes.com President Obama’s “60 Minutes” interview Sunday night eviscerating Wall Street laid down the not-so-welcome mat. “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers,” he said.

55 And Bust

clipped from www.rushlimbaugh.com The Lieberman story: "Senate Democrats who thought they had found a workable compromise learned otherwise from [Joe] Lieberman over the weekend.  Lieberman threatened Sunday to join Republicans in opposing health care legislation if it permits uninsured individuals as young as 55 to purchase Medicare coverage."  We've played you audio sound bites of Obama saying throughout his career of words that expanding Medicare and lowering the mandatory age at which you can qualify... Remember, Medicare and broke, and just a year ago people were talking about raising the eligibility age in order to save money.  Now everybody's talking about -- Obama and others -- lowering it to 55. OBAMA APRIL 2007:  Let's say that we -- L-l-let's say that I proposed a plan that, uh, moved to a single-payer system... L-l-let's say Medicare plus. It would be, essentially, everybody can buy into Medicare, for example. OBAMA FEBRUARY 2004: would allow 55 to 64-year-olds to buy into the Medicare system.

500

clipped from www.populartechnology.net The following papers support skepticism of "man-made" global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Replies, Responses and Submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. There are many more listings than just the 500 papers. The inclusion of a paper in this list does not imply a specific position to any of the authors. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies (PDF) (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1049-1058, December 2007) - Craig Loehle - Reply To: Comments on Loehle, "correction To: A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Tree Ring Proxies" (Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 5, pp. 775-776, September 2008) - Craig Loehle A Climate of Doubt about Global Warming (Environmental Geosciences, Volume 7, Issue 4, pp. 213, December 2000) - Robert C. Balling Jr.

Terrorists

clipped from www.moonbattery.com PBO's corrupt thug of an Attorney General is laying the groundwork for national gun registration --- which is the necessary precursor to de facto and/or de jure outlawing the private ownership of firearms (as has happened in Britain, Austalia, New York City, Washington DC and elsewhere) --- and wants the Justice Department to be able to deny anyone the Government designates as a potential terrorist the right to possess firearms. IOW, under his scheme, the Justice Department will be able to deny selected individuals the right to own firearms, based on whom they decide is a "terror threat." We already know that this administration defines pro-lifers, anti-tax activists, supporters of immigration enforcement, and critics of Obama generally as potential terrorists.

How Inconvenient

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday. The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row. Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.” However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Who Could Resist?

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com Well, Pete, they had another today from Christina Romer, who seems to be, like Robert Gates, one of the few in this administration who really can’t lie. For months and months, Democrats have been pushing the notion that we’re going to save money by enacting health-care “reform.” This is balderdash, of course. Today Romer agreed: We are going to be expanding coverage to some 30 million Americans. And, of course, that’s going to up the level of health-care spending. You can’t do that and not spend more. But eventually, she says, there will be “a dramatic impact on where we are relative to where we might otherwise have been.” Sort of sounds like those millions of jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus plan that saw us go from 8 percent unemployment to double digits. So by slashing payments to doctors and hospitals, we’ll save money. Maybe. In 10 years. Who could resist such a plan?

"Collapse"

clipped from www.weeklystandard.com It turns out that insurgent, populist Conservatives are scoring victories Down Under as well as in America -- and Tea Partiers and Palinistas here in the States would do well to watch conservative Aussie leader Tony Abbott very closely. Abbott became leader of the right-wing Liberal party two weeks ago after the party's parliamentary representatives turfed ex-leader Malcolm Turnbull in the wake of Climategate. Turnbull had announced that the party would support Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's cap-and-trade legislation, causing a rebellion in his caucus, and he was tossed in favor of Abbott -- a right winger and climate change skeptic. These Joe Six Pack voters were once known as "Howard's battlers", and as of today their new leader has re-christened them "Abbott's Army". In a way -- it's like watching the Tea Party movement swallow the GOP from the inside, and the polls are going up rather than down as a result. If this is a collapse, then parties should collapse more often.

Do Tell

clipped from www.knoxnews.com And that brings us to a troubling topic - jobs. Even though Obama took out a second mortgage on America to stimulate the economy, organic, sustainable private-sector growth just ain't happening. Sevier County's unemployment rate rose to 9.3 percent in October. The $48 million to $54 million stimulus package has yielded only 91.38 jobs created or saved in Sevier, according to recovery.gov. Of those jobs, 76.23 are connected to the Highway 66 work. Oaks said the contractor on that job had just finished the SmartFix project in Knoxville and those 76.23 employees would have been laid off. A little math, though, revives my sarcasm and reignites my cynicism. Using recovery.gov figures, Obama borrowed $54 million to save or create 91.38 jobs in Sevier, a cost of $590,938.94 per job. That, my friend, explains why so many of us cling to conservatism. And, please, do tell that to Washington.

$3 II

clipped from taxprof.typepad.com My Harvard colleagues Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna have recently conducted a comprehensive analysis of the issue. In an October study, they looked at large changes in fiscal policy in 21 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They identified 91 episodes since 1970 in which policy moved to stimulate the economy. They then compared the policy interventions that succeeded — that is, those that were actually followed by robust growth — with those that failed. The results are striking. Successful stimulus relies almost entirely on cuts in business and income taxes. Failed stimulus relies mostly on increases in government spending. ... These studies point toward tax policy as the best fiscal tool to combat recession, particularly tax changes that influence incentives to invest, like an investment tax credit.

$3

clipped from taxprof.typepad.com When devising its fiscal package, the Obama administration relied on conventional economic models based in part on ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian theory says that government spending is more potent than tax policy for jump-starting a stalled economy. The report in January put numbers to this conclusion. It says that an extra dollar of government spending raises GDP by $1.57, while a dollar of tax cuts raises GDP by only 99 cents. But various recent studies suggest that conventional wisdom is backward. One piece of evidence comes from Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. In work with her husband, David H. Romer, written at the University of California, Berkeley, just months before she took her current job, Ms. Romer found that tax policy has a powerful influence on economic activity. According to the Romers, each dollar of tax cuts has historically raised G.D.P. by about $3

Revisions

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com A reader points out a remarkable bit of revisionist history in Barack Obama's Nobel Prize speech. Here is the excerpt from Obama's speech: Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait - a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression. Really? "The world" "recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein"? Well, not all of the world did. Our reader comments: It strikes me that this is real news. His Oneness endorsing Gulf War I as a just war!!!...So NOW He tells us???!!!.....did He talk to Slow Joe Biden about that?..John Kerry?...ALL the many, many Dems who opposed that.....and in the FACE of U.N. endorsement!!!....the entire left opposed Bush I on this.... Furthermore, the Iraq War Resolution was based in part, and certainly as a legal matter, on the Gulf War I post-war settlement...the armistice....REPEATEDLY violated by Saddam Hussein in every respect....including inspections for illegal WMD....

Lock Out

clipped from pajamasmedia.com TIM CAVANAUGH: Artificial Housing Respiration: Government-sponsored housing inflation is locking the next generation out of homeownership. “It’s easy to see why interested parties such as the National Association of Realtors would support interventions such as those above and the $8,000 Home Buyer Tax Credit. . . . Imagine a yard sale outside the biggest, fanciest house in town. You get there early, eager to buy cool stuff cheap. But every time you see something you like, a police officer comes along with a Sharpie, crosses out the price, and writes in another number that’s two or three times higher. Scale that up a bit, and you have the Obama housing plan.”

CLOUD Update

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For Thee

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Professor Hamburger drily notices that the unjust wartime internment of the Nisei is often used to argue for the extension of rights to noncitizens when it should demonstrate the opposite. The internment of the Nisei was reprehensible precisely because they were citizens. As Americans, the Nisei had rights. Captured members of the Imperial Japanese Army did not have the same protection, at least not then. He takes pains to explain that tiered rights do not necessarily mean an open season even on terrorists. They still have some rights, just not all the rights of citizens. “It does not relieve the government of other, more restraining mechanisms … it does not excuse the government from its obligation to act in accord with the law.” It’s interesting to consider whether the necessity of convicting Khalid Sheik Mohammed will lead to developments which may have unfortunate consequences for the rights of citizens or fortunate consequences for the rights of terrorists. It tolls for thee.

From The "Sun Doesn't Influence The Earth's Climate" File

clipped from theautopsy.wordpress.com AHEAD recently recorded a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that was absolutely stunning, so I wanted to share this with you.

Hockey Stick Context: Take Advantage Of The Warm Temperatures While They Last

clipped from theautopsy.wordpress.com The new and improved hockey stick.  Drudged up from ice core data in Greenland, it turns out that there has been incredible warming lately, but it’s not nearly what it’s been in the past.  I invite you to see my video of the images compiled.

Vanished

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Shahram Amiri briefed United Nations nuclear monitors in a clandestine meeting at Frankfurt airport just hours before they flew to Iran to inspect a hidden uranium enrichment plant, according to French intelligence sources. An award-winning atomic physicist, Mr Amiri had worked at the heavily-guarded underground site at Qom. He was attached to a Tehran university named by the EU last year as part of the regime's nuclear-proliferation operations. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was told of the existence of the Qom facility by the US and its European allies in September. But the meeting with Mr Amiri in October would have provided inspectors with key insider knowledge before they made the sensitive trip. The scientist is the focus of an extraordinary international row stretching from the Gulf to Washington after Iran last week accused Saudi Arabia and the US of "terrorist behaviour" for allegedly colluding in his abduction.

Tottering?

clipped from thehill.com Two key senators criticized the most recent healthcare compromise Sunday, saying the policies replacing the public option are still unacceptable. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) both said a Medicare "buy-in" option for those aged 55-64 was a deal breaker. "I'm concerned that it's the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option," Nelson said on CBS's "Face the Nation." Lieberman said Democrats should stop looking for a public option "compromise" and simply scrap the idea altogether. "You've got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You've got to forget about the public option," he said.

Real Astroturf

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Earlier today, thousands of protesters turned out in Copenhagen to demonstrate in favor of an economy-wrecking climate deal. This is how they looked: Note the identical, professionally printed, color-coordinated yellow and black signs. This is what Astroturf--fake grass roots--looks like. The signs use the same colors as the International ANSWER signs that are ubiquitous at far-left rallies here in the U.S., but carry no identifier. It would be interesting to know who paid for the signs, and whether the same organization that bought the signs also paid for the demonstrators.

Open It Up

clipped from jerrypournelle.com So: 5% of the Earth's temperature is determined by 50 (actually it's more like 30, but call it 50) thermometers reporting daily. .05X = 50 so we have about 1,000 thermometers to determine the Earth's land temperature. Since the land is 30% of the earth's surface, .30X = 1000 and we have 3,333 thermometers to determine the entire temperature of the earth. (I doubt we have that many, but it'll do for this.) That means 3,333 data points ever hour, or 29,200,000 data points a year. At 8 bytes per data point we're talking about 2 gigabytes of data per year; meaning that everyone reading this has the capacity to store that much data, and probably the computing power to do daily averages and print out trend curves. That's publishing a few gigabytes of data per year, or some 10 megabytes a day. Let everyone on earth look at the data, and do things like calculate differences between raw and corrected data. We can all look at the trends and differences.

Still Smoking

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com On Dec 11th, the Economist published an unsigned article attacking both me and my work. This open letter is my reply. TO: The Person Unwilling to Sign Their Economist Article Dear Sir or Madam; Recently, you wrote a scathing article about me in the Economist discussing my post called  The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero. Some of it was deserved, but most was undeserved and false. The URL for your unprinicpled attack is http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/trust_scientists … trust_scientists? Trust_scientists?? Have you read the CRU emails? So, to sum up your first arguments, changes in the Stevenson Screens and other local conditions cannot be the explanation for any of the GHCN adjustments because 1) the GHCN doesn’t use local conditions to make adjustments and 2) the timing of the screen change is wrong. In addition, there was no “dramatic change in 1941″. Finally, the Economist did not contact me before publishing an article full of false accusations

If It Lasts

clipped from www.foresight.org One thing that Climategate does is give us an opportunity to step back from the details of the AGW argument and say, maybe these are heat-of-the-moment stuff, and in the long run will look as silly as the Durants’ allergy to Eisenhower. And perhaps, if we can put climate arguments in perspective, it will allow us to put the much smaller nano arguments (pun intended) into perspective too. So let’s look at some ice. I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. So what does it tell us about, say, the past 500 years? Well, whaddaya know — a hockey stick.  In fact, the “blade” continues up in the 20th century at least another half a degree.  But how long is the handle? How unprecedented is the current warming trend? Yes, Virginia, there was a Medieval Warm Period But was the MWP itself unusual? Well, no the trend over the past 4000 years is a marked decline. the current warming trend simply represents a return to the mean.  If it lasts.

The Big Cutoff Redux

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Last week, Michael Schlesinger, Professor of Atmospheric Studies at the University of Illinois, sent a still cruder threat to Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, accusing him of ‘gutter reportage’, and warning: ‘The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists ... I sense that you are about to experience the “Big Cutoff” from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included.’ But in the wake of Warmergate, such threats - and the readiness to bow to them - may become rarer. ‘A year ago, if a reporter called me, all I got was questions about why I’m trying to deny climate change and am threatening the future of the planet,’ said Professor Ross McKitrick of Guelph University near Toronto, a long-time collaborator with McIntyre. ‘Now, I’m getting questions about how they did the hockey stick and the problems with the data. ‘Maybe the emails have started to open people’s eyes.’

Absolutely Priceless

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Here’s a recent story from the Associated Press: By Seth Borenstein, Raphael Satter and Malcolm Ritter, Dec 12, 2009 “E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.” Look in the mirror, fools. It’s right there in the CRU emails: On Jul 23, 2009, at 11:54 AM, Borenstein, Seth wrote: Kevin, Gavin, Mike, It’s Seth again. Attached is a paper in JGR today that Marc Morano is hyping wildly. It’s in a legit journal. Whatchya think? Seth Seth Borenstein Associated Press Science Writer [7]sborenstein@xxxxxxxxx.xxx The Associated Press, 1100 13th St. NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005-4076 202-641-9454 Now, I’m going to bring to your attention, this entry from THE ASSOCIATED PRESS STATEMENT OF NEWS VALUES AND PRINCIPLES It means we avoid behavior or activities that create a conflict of interest

Perspective

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com