Copenhagen Cool-Aid

I think grape was the flavor served by Jim Jones.

The analogy is apt bacasue any veneer of science on the subject of anthropogenic global warming (AGM) has been stripped away by the fraud scandal over massaged data and cooked books at East Anglia’s CRU.  It was further heightened by the fact that the raw data of a compilation of 150 years of climate data was discarded with only the ‘enhanced’ data, derived from this raw data, now remaining.

So, as the jets of the worlds leaders, prime ministers, presidents, strongmen and potentates darken the skies over Copenhagen next week, we find we have a meeting that will discuss all sorts of new extra-national governmental bodies mandating economy and job killing mandates.  The convenient excuse of global warming, now ‘climate change’ since the earth has been cooling for the last ten years, is now gone.  Gone because any basis in scientific research, by the admission of some of the ‘scientists’ at CRU, have been cooked.  Gone because the raw data to support this bogus research has long since been placed in the dumpster behind the CRU.

By the way, notice, despite the fact that ‘climate change’ is a tacit acknowledgment that the earth has been cooling, not warming, the proposed solution remains unchanged; the regulation of carbon dioxide.  A good liar needs a good memory.

And, another aside.  I read that when then vice-President Al Gore flew to Kyoto in Air Force One, he burned up some 69,000 gallons of gas.  Moreover, every time Air Force One flies the President or vice-President, another two or three Air Force cargo planes accompany Air Force One to carry extra security gear and personnel, the presidential limo, other security vehicles and, of course, the TelePrompter.  Carbon footprint anyone?

So, we come to a utterly pointless meeting, to discuss an alleged environmental problem, that has no basis in fact.  Those facts are now moldering in some anonymous landfill.  So, we now have to believe made up facts based on our trust of ‘scientists’ who destroyed data and fabricated research.  Take it on faith.  We go from the realm of science to religion.  Faith to drink the UN Cool-Aid and spend trillions of dollars for a problem that doesn’t exist.

First, you don’t throw out raw data.  And, the excuse that there wasn’t room when moving the CRU from one building to another simply doesn’t hold water.  Universities have vast libraries to archive millions of books and other matter.  For heaven’s sake, my alma mater, Northwestern University, had room to hold a comic book library.  Seriously, if the space problem was so bad, you could have rented a space in some local U-Store-It facility near the campus.  Yet, somehow, 150 years worth of climate data, acquired at the cost of billions of dollars–tax dollars I might add–was just thrown out.  Real scientists do not throw out raw data.  Period.

Something else is going on.  I think the real Cool-Aid is the fact that this whole crisis was ginned up to create an excuse to create a regime of further taxation and governmental control.  Carbon dioxide is the perfect vehicle for the ultimate VAT tax.  Tax and regulate our breath.

Moreover, the fix was in even a decade or more ago.  This massaging and destruction of data was done by climate experts who knew the weaknesses of their assertions.  These people knew and had to be prepared to explain away periodic warming and cooling periods for the last two millennia; the Roman and Medieval warming.  The cooling that started in 400 A.D. (and coincided with the fall of Rome and the ushering in of the dark ages) and the Little Ice Age that just ended in the 1850’s.  They had to anticipate the fact that these warmings and coolings would not have the convenient explanations of the industrial revolution and the internal combustion engine.  In order to nail down carbon dioxide as the culprit, these ‘researchers’ had to conjure up data that downplayed or ignored two millennia of warming and cooling.  And, simultaneously play up this latest warming as particularly exceptional.  The ‘hockey stick’ graph is the most egregious example of this systematic fraud.

The whole field of climate research is suspect.  None of its researchers any longer deserve a presumption of innocence or the benefit of the doubt.  Every piece of research needs to be carefully re-inspected.  The stuff out of East Anglia’s CRU is categorically useless.  Without the raw data and the clear dishonesty of its key researchers these is no way you can go through the archives of ‘enhanced’ data and back track to the raw data.  How can you?  How can you know how each data point was massaged?  Did one data point have some value added to it?  Another, some value subtracted?  Perhaps yet another data point was divided by the square root of the sum of Raquel Welch’s vital measurements from her 1967 movie One Million Years B.C.

And, since similar climate data sets at NASA and NOAA are under the care of the same cabal of climate groupies, this data and research is suspect as well.  Hopefully, the raw data is preserved and not being cared for by your local Browning-Ferris guys.  If this data has been destroyed, I hope some enterprising DA will be asking our ‘scientists,’ under oath, before grand juries, pointed questions as to how it came to pass that government property was systematically destroyed.

East Anglia; Who Knew What and When

Powerline brings up a good point that the most damning e-mail from the hacked East Anglia climate files was written in 1999.  But, this no where near exonerates the pack of rogues of who have been pushing the anthropogenic global warming (AGM) fraud.

The authors of these e-mail, as the putative experts in the field of global climate changes would have had the most detailed knowledge of the weaknesses of their AGM arguments.  They, for example would have known about the Roman warming (about 300 BC to 400 AD) and the Medieval warming (about 900 AD to 1300 AD) periods.  They would have also know about the bad effects of the global cooling following those warming periods.  Little events, like, the fall of Rome and the ushering in the dark ages; literally and figuratively.  Or, with the onset of the little ice age, in 1300, the black plague.

Could it be, that maybe the books were being cooked, even back in 1999, because these researchers needed to make this latest bout of global warming look really bad?  Did they need a little extra to explain away the fact that the internal combustion engine wasn’t around for the Roman or Medieval warmings?

We know from the asides and the chatter that these ‘scientists’ were engaged in a political agenda.  They’re entitled to their opinions, political and otherwise.  But, the tenor of these e-mails demonstrate that these guys didn’t check their personal opinions at the door when they punched the clock going to work at East Anglia.

And, if they did have an agenda, what was it?  Were they out to ride the hobby horse of AGM with the goal of pinning the blame on carbon dioxide?  Was the goal of making carbon dioxide the ‘fall guy’ the creation of rationalizations to further agendas of global governance in the name of cutting green house gas emissions?  Or, to create a case for the regulatory monstrosity that is the cap and trade bill voted out of the House earlier this year?  Or, an excuse to create a economy and job killing tax regime that is integral to this House bill?

Did these researchers know that there were serious shortcomings to their AGM theories that would eventually see the light of day?  Did they, even in 1999, have to manufacture data to create air tight case that there is global warming, show that it was worse than any other such on record and then create the inference that carbon dioxide  is the culprit to segue into the the above agendas?

Okay.  This makes me a right-wing conspiracy nut-job.  But, the raw data that these ‘researchers’ and ‘scientists’ are sitting on are courtesy public money and government grants.  Likewise, these guys are getting paid to write these e-mails via grants that come from public monies.  My money.  My tax dollars.

But, there’s a simple solution to this problem.  It involves taking a page from the campaign promises of our el maximo leader, Obama.  Transparency.  I simply propose that the raw climate data, in large part paid with my taxes, be completely and with reservation, placed in the public domain.  No hacking necessary.  Put all the raw data on the internet.  All of it.

Why Not The Worst?

With Senator Spector jumping to the Democratic brand, we will have the legislative and executive branch firmly in the hands of the Democrats.  Unless, the Democratic leadership cannot trust it’s rank and file, the trillion dollar agenda that will beggar our grandchildren can not proceed unobstructed.  Won’t even be a need for the charade of “reconciliation” to push this agenda through.  And, most of all, Obama can shed the pretense that he is president and revert to this true calling as prime minister (or secretary general).  

Have it all!  Canadian-style single payer health care.  Cap and trade.  And, the next time Obama meets the king of Saudi Arabia, he needs not stop at a bow; go on, go all the way, the royal crotch was only another six inches away.  Chavez, Castro, Kim, Ahmadinejad, your reservation at the Lincoln Bedrooms awaits.

Spread the wealth?  Spread away.  Why stop at 90% AIG-style tax rates?  If you making $250K per year, you’re rich enough.  Everything above that belongs to the feds (and by extension ACORN).

And, we can all be greener than Kermit.  The folks out in Pennsylvania will now really have a reason to be bitter when our carbon-free future throws them all out into the unemployment line when their coal mines are shut down.  All they will have, then, is their guns and religion to cling to.

Torture “truth” commissions?  Why stop there?  Call up Robespierre and the Committee for Public Safety.  Why stop with some DOJ lawyers who nobody can remember?  How about Rove?  Heck, why not Cheney or even W?

Hyperbole?  Hopefully no, but stripping away some of the sarcasm, everything in this post has happened.  Obama did bow to a king.  Obama talked about more than cap and trade.  He talked about bankrupting new coal fired generation plants.  He talked about checking your tire pressure as an alternative to drilling for more oil.Pelosi is pushing for a “truth” commission.  

Ninty percent tax rate?  Such a thing existed from the 1930’s until the 1960’s.  The top marginal rate then remained at 70 percent until the Reagan tax cut of 1981.  The Obama, Reid, Pelosi trioka are just testing the waters.  They’re getting us used to the word “trillion.”  And, to banana republic economics; the ones that issue paper money that has the feel of Monopoly money.  First it was taxing away the AIG bonuses.  Again testing the waters to see if we’re ready for settling for the mediocracy of “free” health care in exchange for having everything over $250,000 taxed away since that’s rich enough.

But, there is a silver lining to all of this.  Now, Obama and the Democrats will be in complete, and I mean complete, ownership of this mess.  The high taxes, prolonged recession (?depression) and the hyperinflation.

 

 

Pelosi Motors, Inc. II

Here we wait, with baited breath, as to whether the Detroit auto makers will be bailed out or will have to file chapter 11.  If GM has any sense, it’ll take chapter 11.  Because if it doesn’t, it will become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party.  

As things stand now, GM (I use GM as shorthand for GM, and Chrysler) is a welfare agency funded by the manufacture of expensive luxury cars, large SUV’s and trucks.  And, as a bone to be tossed to the environmentalists, also manufactures small cars at a loss.  It provides lavish health care benefits and pensions for a retired workforce that outnumbers the number of UAW workers actually on the production line.  Through the “job bank” it runs a de facto unemployment agency.  Essentially, GM runs a social security agency, a medicare agency and unemployment agency.  Car manufacturing is just a side line activity.

The whole shell game worked as long as there was cheap gas.  But, the environmentalists over-reached, when their nirvana of four-plus dollar gasoline hit last summer.  Then the whole game of selling large cars to subsidize small cars and a welfare agency fell apart when the environmental wing of the Democratic party decided, in the name of global warming, to declare a jihad on the internal combustion engine.

And, “bankruptcy is not an option” Pelosi is trying to have her cake and eat it.  She wants to prop up GM Welfare, Inc. as payback to Big Labor.  And, she wants to appease the green crowd with “fuel efficient” cars.  What this bailout will do, especially with a “car czar” in Obama’s administration will result in is subsidization of UAW membership, working and retired, and diktats for econoboxes that you’re going to have to give away.  The Trabant comes to America!  Maybe each should have a bust of Nancy as a hood ornament.  We could augment the Pelosi car lineup with the Lada and the Skoda.  Back in 1992, I drove around in a Skoda in Iceland; it had a manual choke.  Manual choke, like the one on your lawn mower.  Never saw one in a car?  I thought so.

And, all the assumptions that drive the green agenda are suspect to say the least.  Global warming is in the process of being debunked.  And, Dr. Chu, our new Energy Secretary, doesn’t impress even waving his gold bauble he got in Stockholm.  Also, with economic growth, jobs and a recession, possibly a depression, this green agenda is going to be a real loser at the polls come 2010.  

It’s not that GM makes bad cars.  They make good trucks, SUV’s and large cars.  These big cars are more comfortable, have greater utility and are safer.  You’re going to make ten trips in a smart car if you’re going to get enough groceries home to feed your family; I’ll pass on that fuel economy.  While you may use said car as a single passenger for a good deal of the time; there comes many a time when you indeed need the extra space for, say, the hockey team and their attendant massive duffles of equipment.  And, yes, I know.  Your not supposed to have a family because of each child’s massive carbon footprint.  “Enlightened” Americans realize that abortion is so much more environmentally sensitive.  

Big cars are safer, because mass is greater structural rigidity.  You can put all the airbags in you want; add one hundred pounds of structural steel and it’s just safer.

And, given a choice most people prefer them to any tin bucket with pie-pan wheels. Start with Obama; he’s got an SUV for his family.  His new presidential limo is based on a Chevy 2500 chassis.  Also, watch, all of his Hollywood celebrity friends pulling up for the inauguration in their 10 mph limos (after arriving in their private jets).  You’ll see the typical elitist conceit that all of this “sacrifice” and “save the earth claptrap” is for other, lesser people.

Over in Europe, manufactures such as BMW and Mercedes Benz make very substantial cars for rich customer who can afford and otherwise don’t care about $9 per gallon gas.  Somehow, when given a choice, this claptrap of global warming, carbon footprints seem to go down the drain.

Any bankruptcy court will immediately see the value of GM and its American counterparts.  All three of these American manufacturers make light trucks and SUV’s that are very much desired.  Stripped of its money-losing domestic small car operations all three of these companies can make motor vehicles that will attract customers.  Also, there will still be a vast market for spare parts and service.

If Pelosi has any smarts, she’d best dump her green crowd since $4 per gallon gas is going to lose more elections than win them.  She’d also be well served to abolish CAFE standards and drill, drill, drill. 

Blagojevich and Chu

Blagojevich and Chu.  An unlikely pair, but the bookends that will define the Obama presidency.  For a while, I was impressed with some of Obama’s appointments.  Though unwilling, I was actually impressed that Obama may actually rule from the standpoint of a center-left coalition; that governing stance being forced by circumstances.  I very much believe, had the Democrats managed to rack up 60 senators, that Obama would have gone wild with his fondest left-left wet dreams.  

But, Obama’s real affiliations, proclivities and associations keep coming back; like Banquo’s ghost.  And, so we have the two sides of the true Obama represented in Blagojevich and Chu.  In the former, we have Obama, the loyal Chicago machine hack.  And, in the latter, we have the utterly disconnected academic; governance by midnight dorm room bull session. 

Blagojevich will define the seamy and corrupt side of Obama.  Obama isn’t clean; just cleaner than the average Chicago politician.  He has been a faithful foot soldier; and has been rewarded for that faithfulness.  He started as a ward heeler; er, community organizer.  His big test was the distribution of tens of millions of graft as a co-chair (the other was Bill Ayers) of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  And, spread graft he did with not an iota of academic improvement.  Perfect for Chicago.  Get money to your friends but don’t solve a problem that might risk having dependent constituencies actually having the means to improve themselves.

He then moved to the Illinois State House.  And, courtesy king making from the president of the Illinois State Senate, Emil Jones, Obama was elevated to the US Senate.  All along, Obama has toed the line.  Toed the line in supporting Blagojevich for election in 2002, then again in 2006.  And, when corruption shook the Cook County Board, a word from Obama might have been instrumental in electing a reform candidate to Cook County President.  But, Obama held firm in supporting machine candidate, Todd Stroger.

And, so, like Paul Henreid, Obama is shocked, shocked to discover his Senate seat up for sale to the highest bidder.  But, don’t be shocked, scocked to see scandal after scandal rising up from his past in the fevered swamps of Chicago politics.

Now we get to the other bookend.  Dr. Chu just appointed as the Secretary of Energy.  (And, by the way, just why do we have a department of pumping gas?  Can’t the Department of the Interior handle that?  All you have to do is hand out drilling leases.  There, problem solved and it didn’t even require me to fly to Stockholm to get a gold medal.) He’s got accomplishments, smart, a real multi-cultural Camelot best-and-brightest.  

But.  But, what does he know about our aging nuclear arsenal.  What’s he willing to do to maintain it, upgrade it and test it to see if it remains functional?  What’s he going to do to maintain our disappearing nuclear weapon infrastructure?  Freedom in the world rests on the America’s military and the cornerstone of our military is our nuclear arsenal.  This  is a guy who’s going to lecture us on preferring to spend $1000 on a granite kitchen counter top than on improving our home’s energy efficiency.  This is a guy who protested global warming by  climbing up a tree at the University of California at Berkeley for Vanity Fair Magazine .   Iran can give up it’s nuclear program because ours is going to rust away into complete non-functionality.

While this guy is brilliant in the laboratory, what experience does he have in taking these lab findings off the lab bench and out into the world.  Because, if he’s so set on freeing us from burning hydrocarbons, he going to have to do more than pose in a tree for a magazine.  

Because, making policy and issuing “environmentally friendly” diktats from Washington are going to run head long into the real world of economics and thermodynamics.  Realities that solar panels and wind power will not begin to address energy needs that hydrocarbons and nuclear power now handle so well.  Realities like $4 gasoline really matters to a lot of people who don’t have a six-figure sinecure in the California University system.  Realities that global warming is simply a humbug.  

Realities that we’ve had steam cars and electric cars from the day the horseless carriage came forth.  Railroad locomotives, for the last half century are powered by a diesel engine powering an electrical generator that then powers motors that make the locomotive move–a diesel Prius without batteries that runs on tracks.  There’s nothing new under the sun; it just a lot of engineers just as smart as Chu have already worked through all of these ideas.  Burning a cheap, plentiful commodity, oil, is the best way to get around.  

Back in the cold snows of Iowa, Obama commiserated over the cost of arugula at Whole Foods.  Now, we have a whole cabinet socked full the arugula-at-Whole-Foods crowd.  And, some of them, especially from Chicago, fund their arugula cravings by selling Senate seats.