Climategate goes on

I have not mentioned the Minnesotans for Global Warming for a while. They have not been hibernating, however. Here's a new song to go with the new scandal.

Don Surber has this, with the original, and some other items.

At Hillbuzz, The Global Warming fraud is an excellent chance to drive a wedge between the MSM and American public. "We tend to view everything that happens in terms of how it could impact the 2010 and 2012 races, in which we want to see as many Liberals driven from office as possible. So, today we’re thinking less about the Cap & Tax measures (which were going to fail before these emails were released) and more about what needs to be done to convince regular, non-political Americans that they were victims of an enormous scam the MSM helped facilitate."

Lorrie Goldstein at the Toronto Sun: Why 'climategate' won't stop greens. "This was never about saving the planet. This is about money and power. Your money. Their power." (via Reynolds.)

Aj Strata has been on a roll with this, lots of posts, starting on Nov 20.

At the WSJ, How to Forge a Consensus. "The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start." Nice pun in the title. (via Reynolds.)

Climategate, continued

Still looking for mainstream media to notice that there is a scandal revealed here. In the NYT:

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change, says he believes the release of the CRU data will ultimately do little to influence public opinion.

"Based on what we have here, I don't believe it's going to affect public opinion at all," he said. "Most people will never hear about this. Within a month, probably within a couple of weeks, this story will have basically died as a mainstream media story, unless it turns out to be the beginning of some grander, bigger scandal."

Under the rug, or the bus, is where the Powers That Be would like this to go.

WSJ is better, in Global Warming With the Lid Off:

we do now have hundreds of emails that give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics. In the department of inconvenient truths, this one surely deserves a closer look by the media, the U.S. Congress and other investigative bodies.

Meanwhile, at PJ Media, Iain Murray offers Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate. "First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results.… Secondly, scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication.… Finally, the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom."

Also at PJ Media, Charlie Martin says that the Climategate Computer Codes Are the Real Story. This one is not just infuriating, but close to funny, as Charlie looks through a read_me file describing the frustration of a programmer trying to make sense of chaotic stuff that does not deserve to be called "data," and code that works just as well upside down — or was it the other way round?

Declan McCullagh says that Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails. Sen. Inhofe appears to see the problem.

Glenn Reynolds and a reader discuss the False Claims Act. Discovery would be interesting.

Singer killed by coyotes while hiking

Taylor Mitchell, 19, was attacked by two coyotes and fatally wounded while hiking in Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia.

News video here.

Autumn's come again

This, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, is about a hundred years old, and eternal.



Spring and Fall:
to a Young Child

Márgarét, áre you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's springs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
___________________________________
(Photo by Ann Althouse, used under Creative Commons licence.)

Climategate: AGW conspiracy exposed, or so it would appear

Updated and bumped.

This could be

Huge!

if it gets coverage.

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, has been keeping up with this. I'll post some links here, for reference.

ClimateDepot has a roundup post that's being updated.

Bishop Hill's concise list of summaries of emails is also available at Watts Up With That.

Slashdot: Climatic Research Unit Hacked, Files Leaked.

Searchable database of the emails. Does not appear to include code or data.

Another searchable database that does include documents other than mail.

James Delingpole at the Telegraph: Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

Andrew Bolt: Warmist conspiracy exposed? And: The warmist conspiracy: the emails that most damn Jones.

Andrew C. Revkin at NYT: Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics. (Revkin has changed the title since I posted this; I do not know if he has also changed the text.) No comments on this one. But Revkin has blogged it, and comments are there: Private Climate Conversations on Display. He seems more offended by the hacking than by the conspiracy. Whistleblowing is a great thing when one agrees with the whistleblower. If not, then not so much.

Watts Up With That: Breaking News Story: CRU has apparently been hacked – hundreds of files released

Follow-up at Watts Up With That (mirrored from ClimateAudit.org): Mike's Nature Trick

Luboš Motl: Hacked: Hadley CRU FOI2009 Files

John Hinderaker: a lawyer examines some evidence. The Alarmists Do "Science": A Case Study. Revkin is mentioned.

Richard Fernandez at PJ Media: The CRU Hack.

Big roundup and a nifty graphic (ad for "Al Gore's Corn Ethanol Based Global Warming Vodka: Preferred drink of progressive elites") at American Power: Global Warming Hoax Breaks Wide Open as Hackers Target East Anglia Climate Research Unit!

Gotta link Althouse, just because: Climategate. And: "Fellow scientists who disagreed with orthodox views on climate change were variously referred to as 'prats' and 'utter prats.'"

Charlie Martin, at PJ Media, lines out the big picture of three different scandals at the same time: Global WarmingGate: What Does It Mean?

Another piece at PJ Media, by Rand Simberg: Global WarmingGate: When Scientists Become Politicians, has a comment linking to someone looking at the code, who says, "This isn't science, it's gradeschool for people with big data sets."

Monckton weighs in: Viscount Monckton on Global WarmingGate: ‘They Are Criminals’

From way back in August, but related, Frank J. Tipler at PJ Media: Climate Data: Top Secret!

Here earlier: Climate Money.

More to come, no doubt.

Monckton speaks with Michael Coren

How did I miss this? Canadian TV, OK.

From a month ago, before the big leak.

Part 1:



Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Worrying about (A)GW wrecks real environmental concern

"Environmentalism" used to be called "conservationism." I wonder what happened to that? "Conservationist" sounds a little too much like "conservative." Liberals live and die by the labels in their heads, so the name had to be changed.

Warren Meyer says that global warming hysteria is "sucking the oxygen out of the environmental movement." Well, yeah. For instance, cyanide, used in gold mining, is definitely a poisonous pollutant. But carbon dioxide is an essential component of life. It's plant food. Yet we now have the EPA, the Supreme Court, and the President referring to carbon, meaning carbon dioxide, as a pollutant!

Washington (April 17, 2009) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Administrator Lisa Jackson made an historic announcement today to move forward with the ruling that the carbon pollution that causes global warming is a danger to public health and welfare. This action will finally enable the EPA to begin implementing the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that carbon pollution can be curbed under the Clean Air Act.

We are carbon-based life forms, here on Earth. Honest, we are! There's a reason why "organic" chemistry is all about the carbon compounds.

Meyer's post links to some pictures from China that show what real pollution is about. For those who have forgotten.

(A)GW and the response to it considered as a game matrix

One of the comments on the Slashdot item linked in the Climategate post is an elegant description of what I just said in the title, there: (A)GW and the response to it considered as a game matrix. It's the one that begins,

You can have billions of data points over several millenia and the only thing you can hope to prove is a strong correlation between A=CO2 levels and B=global temperature.

Go read it, it's not very long.

Enviros vs nukes

Ron Bailey takes a quick look back at an early round in the war of environmentalism against energy production: the breeder reactor.

I was recently at a conference on global warming where I had to read James Gustave Speth's environmentalist manifesto Red Sky at Morning: America and the Global Environmental Crisis. It's an amazingly reactionary and incoherent book. One passage that particularly irritated me dealt with fast breeder reactors. These are nuclear power plants that can produce more fuel (about 30 percent more) than they use. We would never have to mine a single pound more of uranium to produce electricity.…

in an alternative universe in which 200 reactors come online, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would be about 35 percent lower than they currently are. In other words, the reactors that Speth opposed could have been a huge part of the solution to what Speth claims is humanity's "biggest threat." Like I said, really annoying.

Read the whole thing, it's short. Comments are worthwhile also. I like what Oldcrow has to say about the true foundation of environmentalism.

Posh Nosh

Just the kind of British comedy based on word-play I like. A taste:

Another: Beautiful Food.

Thanks to Althouse commenter peter hoh, who recommended the paella^*. Look for David Tennant in this one, along with the giant prawns.

^* Should one attempt to pronounce foreign words with a feigned foreign accent? Always good for a mild dispute. Pie-yella or pie-eighya ("eigh" as in eight)? Simon Marchmont has his opinion, in that Posh Nosh episode. Toby Young has a paella episode to relate (via). It's not just Americans, Toby Young. Here previously: When in Roma …

Al Gore: pretty good with some numbers

Numbers with dollar signs attached.

With other numbers, not so good.



Millions of degrees at the Earth's core, indeed. John Derbyshire checks the numbers. He's a climate con artist, that's all. It would make sense to follow his lead on investments … just as it would to invest along with George Soros, they are the same, after all … provided that you took the Louis XV attitude towards the future: "Après moi, le déluge." Does he imagine that the millions that he is amassing from his climate con game will protect his grandchildren from the apocalypse that he predicts?

It's a good thing to be rich. It's not a good thing to get rich by scaring people about the ManBearPig that's coming to get you!

Van der Leun on Obama

Just a few.

The bow to Abdullah. The bow to Akihito.

A new General Theory of Obama, with emphasis on Afghanistan and chaos. W.B. Yeats and Steely Dan are mentioned. Follow-up to the General Theory, with zombies.

The Mao jacket and the crotch salute.

Klaus speaks on climate and Communism

Peter Robinson's five-part interview with Václav Klaus is now complete.

Part 1: on the events of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down.
Part 2: "Are there parallels to be drawn between a united Europe and the late, unlamented Warsaw Pact? Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus makes a case."
Part 3: "Al Gore is wrong about global warming."
Part 4: "Klaus describes how he became an advocate of free-market principles."
Part 5: "Have we drifted from the decisive victories for freedom achieved in 1989?"

Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court in NYC: Obama's worst idea yet?

He never seems to have any good ideas.

NY Times: 9/11 Trial Poses Unparalleled Legal Obstacles for Both Sides

Althouse: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the alleged 9/11 mastermind — and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — the alleged planner of the USS Cole bombing — will go to trial in federal court in NYC

Neo-neocon: The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: a 9/10 approach to 9/11 justice

Drew at Ace of Spades has video of Rudy Giuliani commenting on this: Rudy Goes Off Over Decision To Try KSM In Civilian Court In NYC. "It comes right from the top."

Allahpundit has video of Charles Krauthammer: "Mr. Holder has honored mass murder by treating it like any other crime."

Shannon Love: "How Obama is Bringing Martial Law to America."

Jerry Pournelle, passim: "Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide."

The sunny side of climate claptrap

There is always a sunny side.

Though "sunny" implies warmth. Warmth is necessary for life. So the 2009 Miss Earth competition, or pageant, is being held in the Philippines, where it's naturally warm.

The photos in the "Press Presentation" are better at the Telegraph.

I've heard nice things about Slovenia, as a place to live. Miss Greece looks like a character from the Iliad:

Penelope, perhaps; though the red hair would seem to imply Circe; one would hope, not Briseis or Iphigenia.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

More on Joe Romm: Climate McCarthyism

I have mentioned Joseph Romm here before, not favorably. Now at Breakthrough Blog, a series about this blowhard. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Possibly more to come?

Via Jonathan H. Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy, who also links to Ron Bailey at Reason, who also links to … and the Web goes on.

I did not actually plan to call Joe Romm a moron in the headline. That was sheer serendipitous felicity.

Law school pirate

This is illegible as seen here, so click it to get a better view.

That subtitle is likely to be going away pretty soon, but it seems worthy of preservation. It's a testimonial to Althouse's sense of humor.

Related: Pointed, pointless questions.
Sarah Palin is Dumb.
Ann Althouse Is Dumb
"Oh...did I mention Althouse is a dirty libtard pirate whore?"
"Sirs, the smiles will leave your faces when the walls come tumbling in..."
There may be more to come.

Laffer on taxes and monetary policy

In the WSJ.

The damage caused by high taxation during the Great Depression is the real lesson we should learn. A government simply cannot tax a country into prosperity. If there were one warning I'd give to all who will listen, it is that U.S. federal and state tax policies are on an economic crash trajectory today just as they were in the 1930s. Net legislated state-tax increases as a percentage of previous year tax receipts are at 3.1%, their highest level since 1991; the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2011; and additional taxes to pay for health-care and the proposed cap-and-trade scheme are on the horizon.…

My hope is that the people who are running our economy do look to the Great Depression as an object lesson. My fear is that they will misinterpret the evidence and attribute high unemployment and the initial decline in prices to tight money, while increasing taxes to combat budget deficits.

Depends on whether "the people who are running our economy" have prosperity as a goal.

The Columbia way

So the professor of community organizing at one of Obama's old schools (almae matres?) was discussing race relations with a woman in a bar. (It's not a joke.) His eloquence failed to persuade her to his point of view, so he gave her a poke in the eye.

The NY Post story calls McIntyre an "architecture professor." They jumped to a conclusion. He is "Nancy and George Rupp Associate Professor in the Practice of Community Development and the Founding Director of the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University." Not an architect or architecture professor, but a community organizer. Columbia, Chicago, they both start with "C" and Obama spent time in both places. I wonder if McIntyre was one of the President's teachers?

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds, who credits JammieWearingFool, whose post I should have read before writing this one, as it covers the same ground and a little more.

A little more on the Ft. Hood killer

Jim Hoft: Nidal Hasan’s Imam Praises Fort Hood Massacre

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer

Tyler Cowen on Obamacare

How to write about legislation that is not really there? The Democrats' health reform bills will not have a definite form until after they are passed in both houses and go through reconciliation. But one has to try.

How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off

AMERICANS seem to like the idea of broadening health insurance coverage, but they may not want to be forced to buy it. With health care costs high and rising, such government mandates would make many people worse off.

The proposals now before Congress would require just about everyone to buy health insurance or to get it through their employers — which would generally result in lower wages. In other words, millions of people would be compelled to spend lots of money on something they previously did not want, at least not at prevailing prices.

Estimates of this burden vary, but for a family of four it could range up to $14,000 a year over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Right now, many Americans take the gamble of going without insurance, just as many of us take our chances with how much we drive or how little we exercise.

The paradox is this: Reform advocates start with anecdotes about the underprivileged who are uninsured, then turn around and propose something that would hurt at least some members of that group.

The Times does not see fit to link to Prof. Cowen's blog, Marginal Revolution.

Sorry, you just said something that does not mean what you thought it did

8 Phrases That Don't Mean What You Think They Mean

Say what you mean, mean what you say. Be a truthful speaker.

"Truthful speakers" are characters in a novel. Don't look for them in Washington.

Duane on the Fort Hood killer

Here:

The BBC's Gavin Lee interviews 'Duane' at the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen the day after the killings at Fort Hood.

Duane : I'm not going to condemn him for what he did. I don't know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He's my brother in the end. I will never condemn him.

Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that.

Duane: Well, that's the way it is. I don't speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him.

Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?

Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It's just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they'll be shocked, after that they'll forget about them and go on their day.

How many more of these traitors are living here?

He sounds like a nice enough American young man. But he is a fifth columnist.

Isn't this Obama's secret for success? Speak nicely, while concealing horrors in the heart. It's another form of taqqiya.

Video: a few more Democrats lying about Fannie and Freddie

Because these people should get a lot of exposure.



Includes Barney Frank on "safety and soundness." What did Franklin Raines do to earn close to $90 million in bonus pay? If he's that good, he ought to be President now.

Krauthammer: "Decline is a choice"

We (who is that?) don't have to let everything go to heck. No, we (for limited values of "we") are choosing to slide down the slippery slope into the tar pit of socialism.

Krauthammer: Decline is a choice.

Sowell: Dismantling America.

Yeats: The Second Coming.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

Is Obama a diabolical entity?

Robin of Berkeley asks. Her argument seems persuasive. If we wipe away our memories of evil, in the name of political correctness, how will we recognize it? By the mustache?

Thanks to Morgan Freeberg, who has more to say, for the tip.

Richard Fernandez on global warming

"There are too many political careers and too much money riding on the Truth of Global Warming for that train to be canceled. We’ve got to get aboard whether we like it not."

The 2010 to Yuma.

Politics of fear, in parvo

I keep hearing Democrats saying that Republicans are engaging in "the politics of fear." Phooey. Democrats can't tell fear from vigilance. Rather than blow a thousand words, here is one of Zombie's pictures, that says a lot.


A puppy is not feared, but is not respected much, either. Obama's foreign policy = U.S. as puppy. The Cairo speech made me think of a puppy or kitten showing its belly in that "please don't hurt me" gesture. Not what I want to see from the President of the United States.

A lot of fun for the Tolkeinish nerd

Kate Nevpeu's re-reading of The Lord of the Rings. At the rate of a chapter a week, or fortnight, depending on Kate. I have read this many times, but never discussed it with such focus.