No more posts here…

Alas and forsooth, my Sitemeter tells me that some are still stopping by at this blog due to my failure to report its true status on this site.  As the Romans would say, “Mea culpa.”  Or as expressed in more current vernacular, “My bad!”

As much as I like Blogger and the ability to use RefTagger here, as I explained on my final Townhall post, I was somewhat put out to discover that Google claims the copyright to the content on all blogs on Blogger.  Truly a minor point but one compelling enough at least for me to move, not back to Townhall, but to WordPress.  There the only disadvantage is the inability to use RefTagger, at least for now.  Otherwise, I have greater control of my sidebar and I own the copyright to my content.

So, without further ado, let me invite you to the new location of The Interface, where I hope to continue for quite some time.  Thank you.

But We're Still Gonna Kill You

Much has been written about the fecklessness of the current administration’s prosecution of the war on terror, and it never ceases to amaze me that the reality-challenged can maintain their position so stridently in the face of all the evidence against them. Mark Steyn shares the same incredulity as he expostulates:

…the notion that it doesn’t count as terrorism unless you’re a member of Local #437 of the Amalgamated Union of Isolated Extremists seems perverse and reductive. What did the Pantybomber have a membership card in? Well, he was president of the Islamic Society of University College, London. Kafeel Ahmed, who died after driving a burning jeep into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, had been president of the Islamic Society of Queen’s University, Belfast. Yassin Nassari, serving three years in jail for terrorism, was president of the Islamic Society of the University of Westminster. Waheed Arafat Khan, arrested in the 2006 Heathrow terror plots that led to Americans having to put their liquids and gels in those little plastic bags, was president of the Islamic Society of London Metropolitan University.
Doesn’t this sound like a bigger problem than “al-Qaeda” — whatever that is?

Oblivious to the obvious, our current “alleged” leadership continues to steer the ship of state towards the iceberg as they heed the siren call of a suicidal multiculturalism.

Aside from the highly localized Tamil terrorism of India and Sri Lanka, suicide bombing is a phenomenon entirely of Islam. The broader psychosis that manifested itself only the other day in an axe murderer breaking into a Danish cartoonist’s home to kill him because he objects to his cartoon is likewise a phenomenon of Islam. This is not to say (to go wearily through the motions) that all Muslims are potential suicide bombers and axe murderers, but it is to state the obvious — that this “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West, and its warriors are recruited in the large pool of young Muslim manpower, not in Yemen and Afghanistan so much as in Copenhagen and London.
But the president of the United States cannot say that because he is over-invested in a fantasy — that, if only that Texan moron Bush had read Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his Miranda rights and bowed as low as he did to the Saudi king, we wouldn’t have all these problems.

It is a fundamental principle that when opposing someone, knowledge of the enemy is essential. In this case, we don’t have to wonder about their goals; they tell us repeatedly, overtly and covertly. They don’t even have to bother with their doctrine of taqiyya. Our fearless leaders have blinded themselves and are slowly committing multicultural suicide, and have accepted the role of social and cultural suicide bomber, taking us all with them.

 

What to do? Pray, grab your bullhorn, aim it at your friendly neighborhood liberal, and repeat after me:

Oh, and one more thing. VOTE these idiots OUT of office so we can continue the debate without explosives!

The Peasants are Revolting

Technorati Tags: Government Liberalism

But not as revolting as the Democratic response to the Massachusetts election laden with enough liberal ideology so as to reveal in stunning clarity the putrefaction of the neural matter between their ears. Charles Krauthammer gave us a good summary commentary with an analysis of why these kinds of responses have been forthcoming (emphasis added):

Well, they understand it [Massachusetts election results] through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

[Editorial note: the definition of axiom: an accepted statement or proposition regarded as being self-evidently true; in other words, these liberals start with a priori assumptions held by faith and not based on fact or reality. Reality has a way of breaking such ill conceived bubbles.]

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.'"

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."

What it boils down to is a colossal superiority complex on the part of the current crop of Democrats in power. As Mr. Krauthammer explains (emphasis added):

Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.

Not!

This is the essence of the liberal leftist ideology. While Marxist theory says it wants to create a society in which everyone is equal, the fact of the matter is that this system still maintains a distinction between “the masses” and “the ruling class.” It’s just that, under this theory, the ruling class, the elite, are the Marxists rather than the evil capitalists because, in their minds, they are the only ones capable of leading.

Or as George Orwell so aptly put it on the final page of Animal Farm:

All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.

Put simply, the majority of the masses are, in fact, not so brain-dead as to continue to accept this drivel despite the indoctrination of the liberal education currently stock-in-trade in the public school system and the institutes of so-called higher education. As Victor Davis Hanson asks,

What's behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media and unease with experts in the Obama administration?

In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America's elites.

And after providing several recent concrete examples where liberal policy has crashed headlong into reality, he tells us clearly why (emphasis added):

There is an unfocused but growing anger in the country -- and it should come as no surprise. Nobody likes to be lectured by those claiming superior wisdom but often lacking common sense about everything from out-of-control spending and predicting the weather to dealing with enemies who are trying to kill us all.

Yeah, no kiddin’! When your theory gets destroyed by the facts, it’s time for a different theory, like maybe one that has worked in the past but was discarded as not being “progressive” enough?

Reality Strikes Again

Another liberal myth/talking point mugged by an ugly gang of facts.

From the Patriot Post:

A new study has many people eating their words, including a few journalists. Just days after The Washington Post's Rob Stein wrote a derogatory article about abstinence-only programs, a new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that such programs can in fact delay the onset of sexual activity in teens. Stein then scrambled to write a second article stating that these programs "may work."

The University of Pennsylvania studied 662 students from four public middle schools between 2001 and 2004. Students were randomly selected to attend one of the following eight-hour classes: a) abstinence only; b) safe-sex; c) a combination of the two, or d) a class with a concentration in general healthy living. The results were shocking to the liberal elites who had long disparaged abstinence. Only 33 percent of the students who had taken the abstinence-only class had engaged in sexual activity within the next two years, as opposed to the 52 percent who had attended the safe-sex class.

For its part, the Obama administration cut $170 million in abstinence education funding, while spending $114 million on other forms of pregnancy prevention education; he wants to increase that amount to $183 million. Of course, if the point is to prevent either pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, abstinence works every time it's tried.

Reference:

John B. Jemmott III, PhD; Loretta S. Jemmott, PhD, RN; Geoffrey T. Fong, PhD; Efficacy of a Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention Over 24 Months: A Randomized Controlled Trial With Young Adolescents, Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2010;164(2):152-159.

The question is, which is to be master-- that's all.

Communication relies on a certain amount of objectivity in the connection between language and reality, on the assumption of the truth of the laws of logic. Postmodern philosophy attempts to break that connection, but does so to its own detriment. Dr. Sanity provides us a good quote on this subject that confirms and clarifies (emphases added):

To the modernist, the "mask" metaphor is a recognition of the fact that words are not always to be taken literally or as directly stating a fact--that people largely use language elliptically, metaphorically, or to state falsehoods, that language can be textured with layers of meaning, and that it can be used to cover hypocrisies or to rationalize. Accordingly, unmasking means interpreting or investigating to a literal meaning or fact of the matter. The process of unmasking is cognitive, guided by objective standards, with the purpose of coming to an awareness of reality.

For the postmodernist, by contrast, interpretation and investigation never terminate with reality. Language connects only with more language, never with a non-linguistic reality....

For the postmodernist, language cannot be cognitive because it does not connect to reality, whether to an external nature or an underlying self. Language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. Accordingly, postmodernism recasts the nature of rhetoric. Rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition....

- Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism (Pgs 175-177)

Or as explained by Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-- that's all.”

– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Which explains this:

The “Deep Waters” of Modern Thought – Wind on the Brain!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted some Spurgeon here, and one of my favorite sources for such posted a good one a few months ago that is still applicable today. The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "Waters to Swim In," originally preached on a Thursday evening, 25 April 1872, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London. I’ve added some emphases to highlight some of the more apropos thoughts of this Prince of Preachers.

These are days of "modern thought;" as you are all aware men have become wondrously wise, and have outgrown the Scriptures. Certain unhappy children's heads are too big, and there is always a fear that it is not brain, but water on the brain; and this "modern thought" is simply a disease of wind on the brain, and likely to be a deadly one, if God does not cure the church of it.

Within the compass of the orthodox faith - within the range of the simple gospel - there is room enough for the development of every faculty, however largely gifted a man may be. No matter, though the man be a Milton in poetry, though he be a master in metaphysics, and a prince in science, if he be but pure in his poesy, accurate in his metaphysics, and honest in his science, he will find that the range of his thought needs no more space than Scripture gives him.

It has been thought by some that these persons who run off to heretical opinions are persons of great mind; believe me, brethren, it is a cheap way of making yourself to be thought so, but the men are nobodies. That is the sum of the matter.

We are satisfied with the theology of the Puritans; and we assert this day that, when we take down a volume of Puritanical theology we find in a solitary page more thinking and more learning, more Scripture, more real teaching, than in whole folios of the effusions of modern thought. Modern men would be rich if they possessed even the crumbs that fallen from the table of the Puritans. They have given us nothing new after all. A few variegated bladders they have blown, and they have burst while the blowers were admiring them; but, as for anything worth knowing, which has improved the heart, benefited the understanding, or fitted men for service in the battle of life, there have been no contributions made by this "modern thought" worth recording; whereas, the old thought of the Puritans and the Reformers, which I believe to be none other than the thought of God thought out again in man's brain and heart, is constantly giving consolation to the afflicted, furnishing strength to the weak, and guiding men's minds to behave themselves aright in the house of God and in the world at large.

There are "waters to swim in," in the Scriptures. You need not think there is no room for your imaginations there. Give the coursers their reins: you shall find enough within that book to exhaust them at their highest speed. You need not think that your memory shall have nothing to remember; if you had learnt the book through and through, and knew all its texts, you would have much to remember above that, to remember its inner meaning, and its conversations with your soul, and the mysterious power it has had over your spirit, when it has touched the strings of your nature as a master harper touches his harp strings, and has brought forth music which you knew not to be sleeping there. There is no faculty but what will find room enough in the word, if we will but obediently bring it to the service of the Lord.

A concise summary of what Spurgeon has stated with greater eloquence: “new” and “progressive” does not mean “better” and “advanced.” Truth is timeless and cross-cultural and to be found in God’s Word (John 17:17), and to the extent the “new” and “progressive” denies Truth, to that extent it is stupidity of the highest order to be disregarded. Such denial of Truth is what got us in our current mess relative to our relationship to God in the first place (Gen 3:1-5).

Religious Expression and Political Involvement – Can They Coexist?

A relatively recent post over at the Bookworm Room provides us with a good example of critical thinking and historical analysis dissecting out a leftist screed against people of faith, particularly the Christian faith, getting involved in politics and letting biblical considerations form and inform their values and thus their proposed policies. Oh the horror!


After a concise discussion of the First Amendment and the letter in which Thomas Jefferson actually coined the phrase “separation of church and state,” (which does not appear in the First Amendment despite you’re your history/sociology/leftist teacher may have told you) including giving the text of both so one can judge the validity of said discussion, the Bookworm succinctly observes (emphasis added):

It is manifestly clear from perusing both the Bill of Rights and Jefferson’s own letter that none of the Founders intended that religious people must be barred from civil participation. They can bring their values to bear in the civic arena, even if those values are religiously inspired. What they cannot do is hijack the government so that the government uses its coercive powers to force people to worship a specific faith, to interfere with a religion’s doctrine, or to punish or ostracize people for practicing a faith that the government does not sanction.

These subtleties — the difference between government controlled religion, which is bad, and a religious people whose religion informs their conduct, which is constitutionally neutral — completely eludes the anti-religious Left. They want people who enter government to check their religion at the door. They are incapable of understanding that the complete absence of religion is a religion in and of itself, with faith in government and its bureaucracy being substituted in place of faith in God and his morality.

In light of this history, i.e., the background facts and data, there follows an interesting critique of Secular Humanism from a former secular humanist, the blog author himself (herself?), using the vehicle of this hysterical (in both the senses of hyperventilating rhetoric and side slapping humor) letter from Barry Lynn, the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Instructive reading. Go take a look and arm yourself with some rationality and counterarguments should such drivel try to intrude into your sphere of influence.

Since truth is malleable to the point of nonexistence for the liberal, and feelings have been elevated to supremacy in what’s left of the liberal mind, the subtle distinctions on which such judgments are made do, indeed, elude the Leftist. And they hope you and I will be uninformed enough, and stupid enough, to believe them without challenge, especially if their “argument” amounts to emotional hyperventilation and expansive hyperbole.

Life Critical Differences – Ideology Matters

"Some expect Haiti's 7.0 earthquake death toll to reach over 200,000 lives. Why the high death toll? Northern California's 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was more violent, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, resulting in 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, about eight times more violent than Haiti's, and cost 3,000 lives.

"As tragic as the Haitian calamity is, it is merely symptomatic of a far deeper tragedy that's completely ignored, namely self-inflicted poverty. The reason why natural disasters take fewer lives in our country is because we have greater wealth. It's our wealth that permits us to build stronger homes and office buildings. When a natural disaster hits us, our wealth provides the emergency personnel, heavy machinery and medical services to reduce the death toll and suffering. Haitians cannot afford the life-saving tools that we Americans take for granted. President Barack Obama called the quake 'especially cruel and incomprehensible.' He would be closer to the truth if he had said that the Haitian political and economic climate that make Haitians helpless in the face of natural disasters are 'especially cruel and incomprehensible.'

"The biggest reason for Haiti being one of the world's poorest countries is its restrictions on economic liberty. ... Private property rights are vital to economic growth. ... Haiti's disaster demands immediate Western assistance, but it's only the Haitian people who can relieve themselves of the deeper tragedy of self-inflicted poverty."

--economist Walter E. Williams

(HT: Patriot Post, read the whole thing)

The Unlikely Hero Turning the Other Cheek

Much has been written and done regarding the current disaster in Haiti, but Melanie Phillips has made a key observation over on her blog that stimulates an interesting mixture of admiration and disgust, with different entities eliciting those responses.


After observing the fecklessness of the United Nations yet again and the lethargic response of the Obama administration (there’s the disgust part), she writes:

In Haiti, however, there has been one foreign nation that has conspicuously broken free of this paralysis and has had no difficulty in setting up emergency aid for the Haitian victims. That country is Israel. Within hours of the earthquake striking, the Israeli media was reporting that Israel was assembling a team of no fewer than 220 emergency aid personnel to fly to the stricken country. As this CNN report shows, the Israelis have set up a fully equipped field hospital in Port-au-Prince treating wounded and sick Haitian victims.

That’s right, Israel, that hated evil capitalistic Jewish state that refuses to die though bombarded with missiles on nearly a daily basis. The nation which, lambasted if ever it raises a hand in self defense, is the target for annihilation for every Arab state in the world. If ever there were an example of 1 Peter 2:12, this is most certainly one.

Ms. Phillips, herself an Englishwoman, continues:

A further Israel Foreign Ministry bulletin states that so far 200 patients have been treated. It would appear that it is only Israel which has managed to establish such advanced assistance this quickly. One desperate American aid worker tells CNN:

I’ve been here since Thursday; no-one except the Israeli hospital has taken any of our patients.

Another remarks of the Israeli field hospital:

It’s like another world here compared to the other hospitals. They have imaging... my God, they have machines here, operating theatres, ventilators, monitoring, it’s just amazing.

Of any American field hospital, there is apparently not yet any sign. The reporter observes that the Israelis have come from the other side of the world. Another aid worker says it makes them ashamed to be Americans.

Israel sent a team of 220 aid workers. Israel has a population of six million. The population of Britain is 60 million. I’d say that was a disproportionate Israeli response, wouldn’t you?

Disproportionate indeed! There’s the admiration part. Perhaps this is in part what God meant in Genesis 12:2-3?

Oh, yeah, that's gonna help...

Another Story You Won’t Hear in the MSM

First, a summary of the story as reported here (emphasis added):

In February 2003, Dr. Louise Brinton, the National Cancer Institute's chief of the Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, served as chairperson at an NCI workshop in Bethesda, Md., to assess whether abortion was implicated as a breast cancer risk.

In the opinion of "over 100 of the world's leading experts," said the subsequent NCI report, including Dr. Brinton, the answer was no.

One expert disallowed from participating was Dr. Joel Brind, a biology and endocrinology professor who had co-authored a meta-analysis demonstrating an abortion/breast cancer (ABC) link.

Brind protested that the outcome was predetermined by "experts" handpicked by Dr. Brinton who either were not really experts, were dependent on the NCI or other government agencies for grants, or were pro-abortion extremists, such as two who had previously provided paid "expert" court testimony on behalf of abortionists.

Studies concluding there was not an ABC link were included in the workshop analysis; studies concluding there was were not.

At the time, 29 out of 38 studies conducted worldwide over 40 years showed an increased ABC risk, but the NCI workshop nevertheless concluded it was "well established" that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk."

Brind went on to write a minority report NCI alludes to on its website without publishing or listing its author and did not even mention in its workshop summary report.

Life went on, except for post-abortive women inflicted with breast cancer anyway.

Yes, folks, we have another coverup by the scientific community, but this time the consequences are much more disastrous on a personal human level. One could call this Abortiongate if one were so inclined (I’m not particularly) because the similarities to the so-called Climategate and other such scandals is striking. Data contrary to the desired outcome are ignored and buried, while loudly touting the falsified picture as the truth.  So how do we know about this? The story continues:

But six years later something happened. Dr. Brinton either flipped her lid, flipped ideologies, restudied the evidence and decided to recant, or couldn't sleep at night – and she began righting her wrong.

In April 2009, Brinton co-authored a research paper published in the prestigious journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, which concluded that the risk of a particularly deadly form of breast cancer that attacks women under 40 raises 40 percent if a woman has had an abortion.

Curiously, the paper included as corroboration two studies Brinton's 2003 NCI "experts" had rejected. More curiously, it turns out Brinton co-authored one of those two studies.

For nine months, that little bombshell of a disaster for pro-abortion ideology was published without the NCI acknowledging it or changing its stance.

Then this month, Brind spotted and wrote about Brinton's concession and NCI's hypocrisy.

You can read the original for all the resulting machinations. The next critical question to ask is Why? Why this coverup if women’s health, indeed, their very lives, are at stake? Very succinctly put:

One can only hope someone will have the guts and the money to do just that. In the meantime, share this information with every young woman you know.

Pro-aborts are understandably mum about Brinton's concession. Confirmation of the ABC link would eviscerate public acceptance and participation in abortion. Exposure of a long-term cover-up would eviscerate the savings accounts of abortionists and the abortion industry following lawsuit losses of a magnitude as great as or greater than the class-action lawsuits against tobacco companies.

Someone Call 911 Before These People Hurt Themselves

In one of my favorite Bill Whittle passages, he notes:

Today, it seems that legions of people – growing legions – are falling victims to ideas and beliefs that on the face of it are patently false…things that are so clearly and obviously nuts that you really have to wonder what deep, mighty engine of emotional need could possibly drive a brain so deep into a hole. Seriously now, there are millions and millions of people on this planet who will torture logic and reason to mind-bending extremes in order to believe monumentally ridiculous “theories”… theories drawn from an emotional need so warped and debased that you are catapulted beyond anger and disbelief directly into pathos and the desire to call 911 before these people hurt themselves.

As the days progress and the sea level remains the same and polar bears cavort on the ice floes in increasing numbers, the major proponents of globaloney warming/climate change increasingly fall into this category of addle-patted induhviduals for whom a 911 call would, indeed, be appropriate. And repeatedly their impenetrable denial of reality demonstrates the truth of Proverbs 29:9,

If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest.

The stream of facts disproving the major claims (anti-data?) and revealing the true nature of this escapade of junk science continues unabated in recent days, not that you would know it from the MSM. (One may click on the Globaloney Warming tag at the bottom of this post for a review of some of the past data contradicting this hypothesis presented here at the Interface.) And so, with apologies for the length of this post, we present our case with the following additions to the already formidable set of contrarian observations.

 

EXHIBIT A

Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Levels in Satellite Era

The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.

Such was the finding reported by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:

A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt season.

 

Tedesco M., and A. J. Monaghan, 2009. An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability. Geophysical Research Letters , 36, L18502,  doi:10.1029/2009GL039186

Translation: No, Virginia, the polar ice caps are not going to flood the planet and kill us all.

EXHIBIT B

Sanity Strikes Der Speigel

There we read:

"Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years...

"...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."

Now, Der Speigel is not exactly known for being a right-wing conspiracy publication, so it would appear that at least enough scientists are either coming to their senses and/or being honest with the data that this major media outlet (note: not from USA!) is honest enough to report on it.

Translation: Yes, Virginia, James Hansen was wrong. Al Gore was wrong. (Shocking, I know.) It means the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change was wrong. It means the climate models on which the entire theory of Globaloney Warming was based were wrong. Above all? It means the science is not settled. There is no consensus.

EXHIBIT C

A Rational Response to Rising Sea Levels, If They Occur

Let me give you the key argument from this post:

Another grossly inaccurate claim which totally ignores our adaptive response involves sea level rise.  Al Gore likes to show maps of what coastal areas look like presently, and what they would look like assuming a multi-meter sea level rise.  A dramatic section of Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth showed some before and afters of coastal locations under Gore’s scenario of a 20 foot sea level rise that would happen “[i]f Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea—or half of Greenland and half of Antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea.”  For a dose of reality, a recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters pegged the current rate of sea level rise contributed by Antarctica and Greenland combined at 6 inches/century. How inconvenient.

No matter what, is that Gore’s pictures will never represent reality for the simple reason that we won’t let them.  Do you really think that the powers that be will let a large portions of Manhattan Island sink beneath the waves like Gore depicts?  Of course not.  Instead, appropriate responses will take place to protect the high-priced development there.  This will happen not only in Manhattan, but in most places where we have already invested a lot of time, effort, and money.

~~~

References:

Titus, J. G., et al., 2009. State and local governments plan for development of most land vulnerable to rising sea level along the US Atlantic coast. Environmental Research Letters, 4, 044008, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/044008, http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/4/4/044008/erl9_4_044008.pdf?request-id=058698c2-eac8-4b9f-add9-00653751c40a.

Velicogna, I., 2009. Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L19503, doi:10.1029/2009GL040222.

In other words, all the dramatic and emotional video nightmares of seas rushing in like tsunamis and drowning us all in a violent cataclysm are just so much emotional manipulation with no basis in reality even if the planet were warming more than usual. Most notably, many of the dire predictions of the Climate Changers are based on the assumption of stupidity and unresponsiveness of the appropriate community to actual changes should they occur. If you see a fist heading for your face, you duck. They assume you’ll lean into it!

The key here is not overreacting and trying to correct a situation that may never arise.

EXHIBIT D

Belief in Climate Change Officially Declared a Religion in the UK

Oddly enough, this was based on a case initiated by a Globaloney Warmer by the name of Mr. Nicholson, who believed he had been fired for…wait for it…his environmental beliefs! Quoting the report from the aforementioned link explains:

"Mr. Nicholson claims, for example, that other executives stymied his attempts to devise a carbon-management system for the firm by failing to give him the necessary data. He also accused Rupert Dickinson, the firm’s chief executive, of ‘contempt’ for his green views. Mr. Dickinson, for example, made an employee fly from London to Ireland to bring him a BlackBerry that he had left behind.

"The rules on which Mr. Nicholson’s case is built, namely the Equality and Employment (Religion or Belief) Regulations, were introduced in 2003 to protect employees from being sacked on the grounds of their religion.

“They ban ‘conduct which has the purpose or effect of creating an... offensive environment’ for the employee and have since been used in many high-profile employment-tribunal cases...

"At an earlier hearing on October 7th, Mr. Justice Burton had asserted that ‘if a person can establish that he holds a philosophical belief which is based on science as opposed, for example, to religion, then there is no reason to disqualify it from protection.’ He provided a five-pronged test to shore up the ruling: the belief must be genuinely held; it must be held for a long period of time; it must relate to something of grave importance to humanity; it must reach a certain level of cogency and seriousness; and it must not trample on existing ideas of human rights. By way of example, he said belief in the supremacy of the Jedi knights of ‘Star Wars’ fame would be excluded, but he conceded that allegiance to the doctrines of Marxism or communism might not."

But, you say, it was declared to be a “philosophical belief based on science,” not a religion. Sorry, but we are still talking about belief and faith, which is the language of religion, not science, and the boundaries between philosophy and theology are often nebulous at best (as many posts here at the Interface demonstrate; it is one of the premises of this whole blog). More importantly, the law under which this ruling resides has to do with religion, not science, and the ruling thus provides protection to the belief in Globaloney Warming afforded to a religion. So no, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Objection overruled!

 

EXHIBIT E

Record Snowfalls:  Climate Fails to Get Word on Globaloney Warming

How uncooperative of Mother Nature! As shown graphically here:

EXHIBIT F

Warming in Australia Due to Fudge Factor, Not Temperature

There is a city on the northern coast of Australia named Darwin, and data from five temperature recording stations from 1880 to the present demonstrate a tight fit. It was reported to be a womping 1.2 degree C increase per century since about 1940 (red line on graph). However, further digging shows that the raw data shows a 0.7 degree C cooling trend per century. Not to be confused by this fact, the data was helpfully “adjusted” by factors whose magnitude is shown on the black line to achieve the “proper” increase in temperature.

This post goes on to show data from 16 other stations across the entire country of Australia to determine whether or not Darwin was an anomaly. As you might imagine if you are thinking critically, the data do not support an increasing temperature trend. Rather inconvenient of the Aussies, I’d say.

EXHIBIT G

Medieval Warm Period Prior to Technology Warmer than Today

It’s clear that the world was warmer during medieval times. Marked on the map below are study after study (all peer-reviewed) from all around the world with results of temperatures from the medieval time compared to today. These use ice cores, stalagmites, sediments, and isotopes. They agree with 6,144 boreholes around the world which found that temperatures were about 0.5°C warmer world wide.

If globaloney warming were true and anthropogenic in nature due to man’s technology, then this increase prior to the industrial revolution is inexplicable by and contrary to globaloney warming doctrine. Also in the link is a discussion of how the data available has been dishonestly dealt with.

Translation: No, Virginia, globaloney warming is not even remotely associated with man’s activities.

EXHIBIT H

SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Global Temperatures are linked to…US POSTAL RATES!

Yes, as the graph below so vividly illustrates, the true culprit of Globaloney Warming has been finally found, and it’s not a pretty story!

 The story in the above link is a remarkably good piece of satire and highly recommended for further reading.

For the benefit of any Innumerati reading this, what is going on is an error usually covered in Statistics 101. Repeat after me: “correlation does not mean causation!” So, even if the hockey stick graph were true and CO₂ levels correlated to alleged temperature rise, that DOES NOT PROVE CO₂ IS THE CAUSE OF THE ALLEGED TEMPERATURE RISE! There, did I say it loud enough? For more links related to this story, see here.

EXHIBIT I

Climategate

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or listening to the MSM only, you know what this is about. The above link is only one of a multitude covering this story.

The emails reveal blatant efforts by the pro-globaloney warming scientists to falsify temperature data by "hiding the decline" in global temperatures, to apply pressure to scientific journals to exclude any studies that cast doubt upon the alleged hypothesis of global warming, and to illegally delete information requested under the Freedom of Information Act.  The Washington Times, in an editorial, states it bluntly:

The content of these e-mails raises extremely serious questions that could end the academic careers of many prominent professors. Academics who have purposely hidden data, destroyed information and doctored their results have committed scientific fraud.  We can only hope respected academic institutions such as Pennsylvania State University, the University of Arizona and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst conduct proper investigative inquiries. Most important, however, these revelations of fudged science should have a cooling effect on global-warming hysteria and the panicked policies that are being pushed forward to address the unproven theory.

Senator James Inhofe has rightly called for an investigation into the emails.  The President has, of course, ignored the story, and attended the U.N. meeting on Climate Change in Copenhagen with his usual chutzpah.

In a delightful bit of irony, however, the conference on globaloney warming was plagued by cold weather.

 

Here is a link to every single one of the emails.  For those who have better things to do with their time, this link highlights the most interesting of the emails. And of course, we have to include this video musical take on the story. Pajama Media goes one better, and gives us the "Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate."

Surprisingly, even the mainstream media, filled with Globaloney Warming sympathizers and Goracles, eventually caught on to the fact that they couldn’t ignore this huge story, albeit, they tried to spin it into insignificance.  Here's coverage from The Washington Post, the BBC (which apparently sat on the story for a month), and even (begrudgingly we're sure) The New York Times. Here's a link to a collection of mostly predictable (“Ignore the man behind the curtain! We are the Great Oz!”) responses from induhviduals of the Radical Green Agenda.

Of course, chief among those induhviduals is the Goreacle himself, who, not once, not twice, but three times in an interview with Slate, claimed that the hacked climate emails were more than ten years old, and as such not of particular interest to anyone currently following the debate. Ignoring the fact that there's been no global warming for the last ten years, Mr. Gore is wrong in his most basic claim (surprise!...?):  The most recent of the emails was sent November 12th of 2009.  Andrew Bolt highlights some other important emails that fall within the ten year window:

...The emails which have Tom Wigley seeming (to me) to choke on the deceit are all from this year.  Phil Jones’ infamous email urging other Climategate scientists to delete emails is from last year.

How closely did Gore read these emails?  Did he actually read any at all?  Was he lying or just terribly mistaken?  What else has he got wrong?

Typical liberal strategy: when caught with your hand in the cookie jar, deny it, ignore it, demonize those who found you out, and downplay its significance when they persist. Actually, what it really reveals aside from the blatant dishonesty and corruption in the whole agenda driven process is the cognitive dissonance required by these globaloney warming proponents. The change from “globaloney warming” to “climate change” is just one sign of their efforts to deal with the audacity of the climate’s failure to support their theory. They thus construct for themselves an asylum of ignorance in which data is irrelevant and their reality must conform to their beliefs. Too bad reality failed to get the memo.

EXHIBIT J

Arctic Ice Sheet Expanding, Not Contracting per the Goreacle

In Exhibit A above, we noted that the Antarctic ice was not melting away at the South Pole. Now we have a report that up at the North Pole, Santa’s activities have not been melting the ice up there either. In fact, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed globaloney warming activists can not dispute this.

Oopsie!

EXHIBIT K

German Scientists Show the Globaloney Warming Theory Runs Afoul of the Laws of Thermodynamics

Two German scientists, in a paper re-edited and republished earlier in 2009, have thoroughly debunked the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming with one of the basic foundations of physical chemistry. John O'Sullivan in the above link has an explanation in plain English for those who aren’t chemists and/or who went to public school.

In a recently revised and re-published paper, Dr Gerlich debunks AGW and shows that the IPCC “consensus” atmospheric physics model tying CO₂ to global warming is not only unverifiable, but actually violates basic laws of physics, i.e. the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics. The latest version of this momentous scientific paper appears in the March 2009 edition of the International Journal of Modern Physics.

The central claims of Dr. Gerlich and his colleague, Dr. Ralf Tscheuschner, include, but are not limited to:

1) The mechanism of warming in an actual greenhouse is different than the mechanism of warming in the atmosphere, therefore it is not a “greenhouse” effect and should be called something else.

2) The climate models that predict catastrophic global warming also result in a net heat flow from atmospheric greenhouse gasses to the warmer ground, which is in violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Essentially, any machine which transfers heat from a low temperature reservoir to a high temperature reservoir without external work applied cannot exist. If it did it would be a “perpetual motion machine” – the realm of pure sci-fi.

If you are interested, you can read the entire paper online at this link.

EXHIBIT L

It’s the Sun, Stupid!

Globaloney warming alleged scientists are fond of denying that the sun has anything to do with temperature fluctuations on planet earth. Nicola Scafetta is an atmospheric scientist with Duke University’s highly regarded Department of Physics who disagrees, and in a recent article in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, he notes (emphases added):

Estimating the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change is fundamental for evaluating the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. This is regarded as one of the most important issues of our time. While some theoretical climate model studies indicate that the solar variability has little effect on climate (these studies estimate that less than 10% of the global warming observed since 1900 is due to the sun), several empirical studies suggest that large climatic variations are well synchronized with solar variations and, therefore, climate is quite sensitive to solar changes.”

Please note the distinction between “theoretical” and “empirical.” Theoretical translates into computer models built upon assumptions that may or may not be correct. Those models are only as good as the predictions they allow you to make. To date, the predictions of said models have been soundly debunked by the actual, i.e., empirical, data. 

Translation: the models don’t work and are so much garbage.

~~~

Reference:

Scafetta, N. 2009. Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 71, 1916–1923.

EXHIBIT M

Brutally Cold Weather for Global Winter

(Cf. Exhibit E, which deals with snowfall quantities.) This winter, much of the world has been suffering through particularly brutal cold weather despite the claims of alleged globaloney warming, which accounts in part for calling this globaloney warming here at the Interface. From the European Union to China to the United Kingdom to Cuba to Florida to Georgia to Minnesota, much of the northern hemisphere (where it is currently winter) has seen temperatures plummet to (in certain cases) unprecedented lows.

 

The January 14^th, 2010, GreenWatchAmerica newsletter notes:

One of the tricks of the Radical Green Agenda when it comes to global warming has been to stress the issue in the summer, when the public would be more receptive (and fearful) of warnings of even hotter temperatures. This tactic has a long tradition. In fact, when NASA scientist and Global Warming advocate James Hansen first presented his dire global warming predictions, he did it in the middle of June, on the hottest day of the year. In the winter, the movement tends to bite its tongue, since the promise of warmer temperatures (and lower heating bills) is hardly frightening when it's 12 degrees outside.

Nevertheless, some members of the Radical Green Agenda are trying to use this cold-spell as a "lesson" about Climate Change. When asked how scientists might justify this bitterly cold winter with the theory of Global Warming, David Goldston, the Director of Government Affairs at the National Resources Defense Council said the following:

“I mean, I don’t think the big -- the biggest problem in the Senate at this point is people who don’t think that climate change is real, so I mean, I think, if the cold winter gives us another chance to explain that weather and climate aren’t the same thing, that’s good from an educational point of view.”

No, Mr. Goldston, the big problem is that 22 years James Hansen sat down before congress with charts showing that because of human activity temperatures were going to dramatically rise and continue to rise for the foreseeable future. For ten years or so, those predictions looked pretty good. Then, suddenly, they stopped looking good. Temperatures stopped rising. So, did you go back and re-examine your theory? No, instead you dumbed it down, rebranded it climate change, and said that any weather condition (and indeed, basically any condition) out of the ordinary could be attributed to this theory.

The truth is that most experts aren't sure what this cold winter means in terms of long term trends. However, a few experts have settled on a rather terrifying idea:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

…

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise. They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.

Read the whole article by clicking this link. We must say, given the choice between warming and an ice age, we'll take a warmer earth every time.

EXHIBIT N

Um, about those glaciers…

Caught once again with their hands in the cookie jar, the IPCC is forced to admit their “mistake,” but only as a last resort when more honest reporting has been going viral on the internet (one wonders whether or not Al Gore is having second thoughts about having created the internet!). Translation: “Poorly substantiated” really means wishful assertion based on willful ignorance in accordance with trying to force reality to be what one “knows” it to be.

~~~

Well, this post is getting to be rather long, and we are already past the middle of the alphabet, so we will rest our case here for now. Taken individually, the above “exhibits” would not herald the downfall of globaloney warming theory. But taken collectively, they form a formidable body of data inconsistent with catastrophic climate changers’ theories and say much more about the radical political agenda behind the scenes than anything about the empirical data drawn from the world in which we live. If you want to make any sense whatsoever, you cannot ignore the data that doesn’t fit your model. And what we have in the case of globaloney warming are examples of induhviduals who have failed to realize that Mark Twain was trying to be funny and not pronouncing an immutable scientific theorem when he said, “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable).”

 

 

For those who like lists, we will close with this link to a list of 100 reasons the changes we are seeing in climate are, in fact, natural, i.e., are within the boundaries of normal variation already observed and due totally to natural causes.

 

If nothing else, however, at least the globaloney warmers have provided excellent fodder for cartoonists!

 

~~~

The Interface would like to acknowledge the newsletters of GreenWatchAmerica for their helpful collection of links used in many of the above Exhibits.

 

Stupidity on Display - The Official Ft. Hood Report

With a HT to Laughing Wolf over at BlackFive, one of our favorite military sites (content warning: the third link below [I haven't checked the other two] contains mildly crude, but accurate, humor without vulgarity):

We've carried two pieces here at Blackfive on the DoD report on the terrorist attack at Ft. Hood: One by McQ and one by Crush (I so want to write that as Crash...). Meaning no disrespect to them, this morning brought to my eye the best analysis of that report I've seen.

What's more, I think you will agree that these 40 words (roughly) best sum up that report and those who issued it.

That is all.

LW

Couldn't agree more!

Now that's cold!