The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Quote of the Day – Global Warming Edition
They clearly have some history of massaging the data — hell, practically water-boarding the data — to get it to fit their other results. Results they can no longer even replicate on their own systems.
— Charlie Martin, Pajamas Media: Climategate Computer Codes Are the Real Story
I Wonder What Dr. Richard Lindzen Thinks of the CRU Hack?
Ben of Carnaby Fudge linked to an EXCELLENT six-part YouTube series, the Competitive Enterprise Institute seminar on Global Warming alarmism. It was recorded recently, but before the hacked emails, data, and models were released on the web. Dr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and has held that chair since 1983. In most circles that would make him a “primary source.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmGiiNQ0yHQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&&w=640&h=385]
Watch all six parts.
The Christian Science Monitor Piles On
Senate health care bill: the five paragraphs you must read
1. Mandatory insurance
Bill text: “Sec. 1501. Requirement to Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage…. An applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage for such month.”
Translation: Uncle Sam will now serve as your national insurance agent and force you to buy “minimum essential coverage” – or else you’ll have to pay an annual fine.
However, what Congress considers “minimum essential coverage” and “essential health benefits requirements” includes comprehensive coverage that many neither need nor want. Plus, those who prefer to carry catastrophic-only coverage won’t have a free range of options for such coverage.
Bottom line: In a free society, the government should not force citizens to buy any product nor should the government mandate citizens’ level of health-insurance coverage.
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2. Electronic data exchanges
Bill text: “Sec. 1104. Administrative Simplification…. (h) Compliance. – (1) Health Plan Certification. – (A) Eligibility for a Health Plan, Health Claim Status, Electronic Funds Transfers, Health Care Payment and Remittance Advice. – Not later than December 31, 2013, a health plan shall file a statement with the Secretary, in such form as the Secretary may require, certifying that the data and information systems for such plan are in compliance with any applicable standards (as described under paragraph (7) of section 1171) and associated operating rules (as described under paragraph (9) of such section) for electronic funds transfers, eligibility for a health plan, health claim status, and health care payment and remittance advice, respectively.”
Translation: Requiring everyone to buy federally sanctioned health insurance, and then forcing qualified plans to comply with Administrative Simplification requirements, provides the government and health industry with power they would not be able to exercise in a free market.
Administrative Simplification rules are a product of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. They lay the foundation for a nationally linked database of personal health information.
Read the rest. Call your Congresscritters. Tell them you’re not kidding. Feathers, tar, rail – some assembly required.
Thanks to reader juris_imprudent for the pointer.
You Have GOT to be Fv*%ing Kidding Me
Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
By Rowan ScarboroughNavy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.
The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.
Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.
Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.
Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.
Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.
The three SEALs will be arraigned separately on Dec. 7. Another three SEALs — two officers and an enlisted sailor — have been identified by investigators as witnesses but have not been charged.
There’s more, but these guys are being charged because this asshole had a boo-boo on his lip?
So it Wasn‘t Government-hatin,’ Inbred, Redneck, Gun-clinging Bible-Thumping Meth-heads?
Investigators: Ky. census worker committed suicide
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Authorities are saying a Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with “fed” scrawled on his chest committed suicide and staged his death to look like a homicide.
A news release from Kentucky State Police said Tuesday that Bill Sparkman died at the same location where his body was found Sept. 12 near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Kentucky.
A man who found the body in the Daniel Boone National Forest said the 51-year-old was bound with duct tape, gagged and had an identification badge taped to his neck.
Investigators say Sparkman acted alone in manipulating the scene to conceal the suicide.
The news release says Sparkman had recently taken out two life insurance policies that would not pay out for suicide.
Damn, the Lefties must be so disappointed.
My condolences to his family, though. Losing a loved one sucks. To find out that he committed suicide in an effort to try to leave them something must hurt worse.
Congressional Legerdemain
Michael Barone points out an article in the New York Post by Jefferey H. Anderson that illustrates just how much the Senate’s proposed Health Care bill will really cost, as opposed to what they’re trying to sell us.
It’s like they think the Great Unwashed can’t understand mortgages with variable interest rates and balloon payments, or something.
They tell us that the first ten years of this wonderful plan will cost only (only!) $849 billion over the first ten years.
Nazzo fast, Guido.
Here’s a chart that shows how they get that number (click to embiggen):
Anderson says in his piece:
As the CBO analysis indicates, the bill’s real 10-year costs would start in 2014. And in its true first decade (2014 to 2023), the CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion — double the price Reid is advertising.
And that’s even though the CBO optimistically assumes the government-run “public option” wouldn’t cost a cent.
Over this same 10-year span, the bill would hike taxes and fines by $892 billion — more than the alleged price of the bill.
On top of this, Anderson expands:
Just as problematic are the bill’s effects on entitlement spending and deficits. Medicare is already teetering on the edge of insolvency. This year’s Medicare Trustees Report (signed by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius) warns that the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund — the main funding channel for the largest part of Medicare — will become insolvent in 2017.
Worse, nearly four people are now paying into Medicare for every beneficiary. But with the baby boomers’ retirement fast approaching, that number will drop over the next 20 years to about 2½. Fewer and fewer people will be paying higher and higher costs.
Yet, as the CBO notes, in its real first decade, the bill would siphon $802 billion from Medicare to spend elsewhere. With its financial outlook already beyond bleak, Medicare is the last place to look to for “free” money.
Among the $802 billion that Reid would divert from Medicare is $431 billion in cuts in doctors’ pay (far more than the misleading figure for 2010-19). The bill says it would cut payments to doctors for services to Medicare patients by 23 percent in 2011 — and never raise them back up, ever.
No one who’s been in Washington for more than five minutes actually expects this reduction to occur — and if it doesn’t, then the Senate health bill would increase our deficits by $286 billion in its true first decade, according to CBO projections.
Read the whole thing.
In comments yesterday, Markadelphia asked:
(W)hy does the government want to get into health care? Several answers suggest themselves. With Medicare, Medicaid, S-Chip and state run health care, they already are fairly involved. But what is their motivation for this current push for historic legislation?
“Historic.” Yeah, there’s an appropriate adjective. “Little Boy” was an historic bomb in the same way this legislation is “historic.” I want to attribute good intentions to our elected overseers, I really do. But if you wanted to destroy the American health care system and the American economy, I find it difficult to believe that you wouldn’t see this bill as a means to that end. Same for Cap and Trade.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
Quote of the Day – Green Edition
Today, there is a name for the political doctrine that rejoices in scarcity of everything except government. The name is environmentalism. – George F. Will, Awash in Fossil Fuels, 11/22/09
S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, a distinguished research professor at George Mason University, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, gave a speech at Hillsdale College in August of 2007. Printed in their periodical Imprimus (with some rather irritating misplaced hypens in the on-line version), I strongly recommend it to you. It’s on the topic of Anthropogenic Global Warming, or the lack thereof, and entitled Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural? Excerpt:
What about the fact—as cited by, among others, those who produced the IPCC report—that every major greenhouse computer model (there are two dozen or so) shows a large temperature increase due to human burning of fossil fuels? Fortunately, there is a scientific way of testing these models to see whether current warming is due to a man-made greenhouse effect. It involves comparing the actual or observed pattern of warming with the warming pattern predicted by or calculated from the models. Essentially, we try to see if the “fingerprints” match—”fingerprints” meaning the rates of warming at different latitudes and altitudes.
For instance, theoretically, greenhouse warming in the tropics should register at increasingly high rates as one moves from the surface of the earth up into the atmosphere, peaking at about six miles above the earth’s surface. At that point, the level should be greater than at the surface by about a factor of three and quite pronounced, according to all the computer models. In reality, however, there is no increase at all. In fact, the data from balloon-borne radiosondes show the very opposite: a slight decrease in warming over the equator.
The fact that the observed and predicted patterns of warming don’t match indicates that the man-made greenhouse contribution to current temperature change is insignificant. This fact emerges from data and graphs collected in the Climate Change Science Program Re-port 1.1, published by the federal government in April 2006 (see www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm). It is remarkable and puzzling that few have noticed this disparity between observed and predicted patterns of warming and drawn the obvious scientific conclusion.
And this:
You will note that this has been a rational discussion. We asked the important question of whether there is appreciable man-made warming today. We presented evidence that indicates there is not, thereby suggesting that attempts by governments to control green-house-gas emissions are pointless and unwise. Nevertheless, we have state governors calling for CO2 emissions limits on cars; we have city mayors calling for mandatory CO2 controls; we have the Supreme Court declaring CO2 a pollutant that may have to be regulated; we have every industrialized nation (with the exception of the U.S. and Australia) signed on to the Kyoto Protocol; and we have ongoing international demands for even more stringent controls when Kyoto expires in 2012. What’s going on here?
What, indeed?
Read the whole thing, and the piece where I found the link in comments.
Wait, What? (Redux)
Warming’s impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto
Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.
As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.
And it’s not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen:
_The world’s oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.
_Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.
_Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.
_Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.
Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn’t forecast results quite this bad so fast.
However, just last week:
Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, 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.
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The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”
And from the emails and files hacked from the Warmistas, they acknowledge the lack of warming over the last decade and one despairs: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
So Seth Borenstein of the AP cranks up the OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! rhetoric? I think you’re seeing the beginnings of media pushback against the release of that 100+MB of hacked data. So long as the majority of the population never hears about the “how do we hide the data” emails, they’ll keep believing in the AGW story.
Michael Crichton’s Last Novel
Like most, I was shocked when the news broke that author Michael Crichton had died of cancer just over a year ago. I’ve read all of his novels and quite a bit of his other writing (essays, speeches, etc.) I was glad to hear that there would be one more novel published after his death, and it is out now: Pirate Latitudes.
My current “to read” stack is a teetering tower, but I think I’m going to have to add that one to it.