Thursday, February 18. 2010
Sea levels have been slowly rising since the end of the Little Ice Age. Some people seem to imagine that the world never changes, and never should change. Yet it always has changed.
From The Madness of Prince Charles, this basic inter-glacial temperature graph is always worth bearing in mind:
We tend to feel, here on the Farm, that AGW is a hyped-up, trumped-up carnival designed by people with their own economic, political, pagan-religious, or etc. agendas. Real science-minded people are always skeptics about the science du jour, and know full well that all speculative theories fail in time. The tell, with the Warmists, is how ardently they desire to believe in the projective computer models, regardless of the facts.
We believe that good stewardship of the earth means humbly respecting nature and its power, and preserving natural land as best we can during our brief time here.
Here's what we think, specifically:
1. Warming would be net a good thing for humanity. It always has been, in the past.
2. It's certainly not happening in any catastrophic way - if it is in any way that makes much difference. Climates always change, and the one thing we know for certain is that another Ice Age is coming down the pike eventually. Now that will be a real challenge to humanity. We are due another, and the last Ice Age did no favors for the human species.
3. Even if warming were, somehow, a bad thing (I would need a lot of convincing), nothing meaningful can or will be done about it.
4. Any futile or symbolic effort to do "something" about it will only enrich certain scam-artists, rent-seekers, and grant-seekers, and be exploited by governments to increase their domination of regular people and their tax receipts. Even the big oil companies are hedged and poised to make huge bucks on government legislation internationally in case it ever happens - which I doubt.
Addenda:
- I doubt that the frequently-misguided Tom Friedman has seen the above chart. For stunning Friedman hypocrisy, see here. He won't change his life, but he wants all you little people to change yours. Typical. Just like Al Gore with his private jets and his half-billion he's made on carbon credits, etc.
- If you cannot predict, it isn't science. The non-droughts in the US Southwest. Name one Warmist prediction which has proven accurate over the past 10 years. (Indeed, the Coolists in the Global Cooling frenzy back in the 70's have been better predictors.)
- From Dr. Sanity's Environmental Fantasies:
If the radical environmentalists really wanted to "do something" about global warming, then they would be calling for funding projects that explore countermeasures and methods to adapt to it. What we see instead is the same kind of religious fanaticism and holy fervor that the left so despises in the fundamental right. What they really want is power over people.
Theirs is basically a totalitarian agenda in which they, the "elites", will dictate how people should live on this earth.
- Pajamas: Noble Corruption. I see nothing noble about refusing to be skeptical about scientific theories and computer models. Just ask any hedgie how Nobel-laureate computer models work out as long-term predictors of complex systems.
- Also, How Climate-Change Dance Theory spells the end of a movement. Good grief. All Bozos on that wacky bus.
We know that a Scottie won the Westminster Show, and everybody loves Scotties. I was partial to the Coonhound. My cuz emailed me that he had a show favorite: The Kuvasz. Never heard of them. Big dogs, bred in Hungary to protect livestock. Look kinda like a wolf in sheep's clothing:
December 7, 1941. The Pacific Clipper, Queen of Pan American Airways fleet of flying boats is 6 days out of San Francisco, bound for Auckland, New Zealand. Captain Robert Ford receives a coded message: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor...Implement War Plan A...Proceed to Auckland, NZ...Maintain radio silence...Wait for instructions...Your aircraft is a strategic resource-it must not fall into enemy hands under any circumstances
Pan American Airways bases all across the Pacific were captured. Returning to the US west coast by the Pacific Clipper did not seem possible. A week of waiting, then another coded message:
DEC 14, 1941: Do not return to Hawaii. Do not return to US west coast...Strip aircraft of all markings and identification...proceed west...maintain radio silence...deliver aircraft to Marine Terminal, LaGuardia, NY. Good luck.
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
At Commentary. One quote:
Today’s New York Times reports that people are increasingly fed up with the high costs and high-handed ways of American colleges. It’s about time. As the Times reports: “‘One of the really disturbing things about this, for those of us who work in higher education,’ said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, ‘is the vote of no confidence we’re getting from the public. They think college is important, but they’re really losing trust in the management and leadership.’”
College tuition has risen far faster than inflation. In the 1960s, I paid $2,200 a year to attend a first-rate university. From the month I graduated to December 2009, there was an inflation of slightly over 550 percent. So tuition today, net of inflation, should be on the order of $12,500. It’s $37,005, almost three times higher. Why?
 Global Cooling kid's book via Vanderleun - who links today's climate scandal: Antarctic sea ice increasing rapidly
They offered us $100 million for Maggie's, but we said no, on principle. Thus this blog deal.
Raccoons in Central Park? Who knew? How did they get there?
If you were a Conservative on the fiscal commission, what would you say?
Rubio rocks
Harsanyi: Who Doesn't Trust Science Now?
Related: Climategate and the NASA Files
Via Surber:
From the New York Times: “The state of Texas and a coalition of free-market and global warming skeptic groups are asking a federal appeals court today to review U.S. EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare… The state argues that EPA’s finding is legally unsupported because it relies heavily on reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
Sow it, reap it, liars.
Hewitt: Meme Of The Left: "Gridlock" iS The Problem, Not Obama's Policies. Quote:
When the GOP lost control of the House and Senate, the annual budget deficit was $161 billion. President Obama's budget for next year --with no stimulus and no TARP-- calls for $1.6 trillion in red ink.
Thus in three years of democratic control the deficit has swell from 161 billion to 1,600 billion.
That's the opposite of gridlock --that is one party rule by the party of massive spending and unlimited pork.
Sowell: Politicians Taking Away Your Freedom
Barack Obama Mocked at This Year’s Mardi Gras Parade
Insty:
HAYEK’S THE ROAD TO SERFDOM continues to rack up stellar sales. Well, if ever there were a time. . . .
Trial lawyers: Democrats' other money machine
Wednesday, February 17. 2010
Hope and change...Economists Predict Cutbacks, Tax Increases That 'Aren't Even Imaginable'.
VDH has it right: What a Difference a Year Makes. A quote:
...what changed? The Obama administration offered a statist agenda of massive deficits, and it blamed Bush for America's current problems. The people revolted, and even the combined power of large Democratic congressional majorities, a ministry-of-truth media, and an Ivy League technocracy could not push through hope and change — largely due to Democratic legislators' worries that they were walking out on a plank that would soon be sawed off by the next election.
The implosion of the Obama administration is newsworthy, but not as astonishing as this petulant liberal reappraisal of both popular political participation and the structure of American government...
Remember this from Nov., 2008? Republicans still in denial as wilderness years stretch ahead
Over the transom:
My raft has a 15,000 lb capacity. The deck is 18ft x 18ft with 12 plastic foam filled dock floats that are 4ft x 4ft by 18 inches high and the gazebo is 10 ft. Hexagon with a table and chairs.
Inside, under the table is my trolling motor so I can take it out to my favorite fishing hole. The trolling motor is remote controlled wireless so I can be fishing outside and operate the motor.
On the top of the table I have a LOWRANCE Fish-Finder with depth sounding sonar's and temp gauge. I have 2 electric winches with 40 lb. anchors. I have also built in a water pump so I can clean the fish right on the spot.
Now I can relax and fish while my wife can sit and relax.
From today's WSJ: Another failure of liberal governance:
For the fourth time since the 1960s, American voters in 2008 gave Democrats overwhelming control of both Congress and the White House. Republicans haven't had such large majorities since the 1920s. Yet once again, Democratic leaders have tried to govern the country from the left, only to find that their policies have hit a wall of practical and popular resistance.
Democrats failed in the latter half of the 1960s, as the twin burdens of the Great Society and Vietnam ended the Kennedy boom and split their party. They failed again after Watergate, as Congress dragged Jimmy Carter to the left and liberals had no answer for stagflation. They failed a third time in the first two Bill Clinton years, as tax increases and HillaryCare led to the Gingrich Congress before Mr. Clinton salvaged his Presidency by tacking to the center.
A fourth crackup is already well underway and is even more remarkable considering how Democrats were set up for success.
and
The central contradiction in modern liberal politics is that Otto von Bismarck's entitlement state for cradle to grave financial security is no longer affordable. The model has reached the limit of its ability to tax private income and still allow enough economic growth to finance its transfer payments.
You can see this in bankrupt Greece, where government spends 52% of GDP; or in California and New York, where the government-employee unions have pushed tax rates to punishing levels and the states still can't pay their bills. Americans can see that this is where Mr. Obama's agenda is also taking Washington, and this is why they are rejecting it.
Few Americans, outside the universities, wish to end up like Europe.
Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Democratic party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country — that’s not going to work too well.
Sen. Evan Bayh
 Just the usual old winter friends lately: SC Junco, WT Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Blue Jay, RB Woodpecker, Carolina Wren, Cardinal, Chickadee, some dang House Sparrows, Tufted Titmouse, Mourning Dove.
I need my Sharpie back to eat those overfed House Sparrows.
(It's interesting to see how just some of the Juncoes - ground-feeders - figure out how to use a hanging feeder, but most do not. Have yet to see a WT Sparrow on the hanger. I throw handfuls of seed on the ground each morning for the ground-feeders, figuring it will all be gone by late afternoon so as not to encourage rats.)
Also, a flock of Robins stopped by yesterday to finish off the Holly berries. Not a single berry left, now. I had a few early blackbirds last week - Grackles - but they are probably back in Georgia by now. I do usually see some Blackbird species around by Feb 15, trying to push the envelope.
The lack of Pelicans at my feeders would appear to disprove global warming catastrophe models. I'd write it up for a peer-reviewed journal, if the gummint or the EU would give me a generous grant: Effects of Global Warming on Pelican Occurrance at New England Bird-Feeders. $1.3 million would cover my research just fine, or at least help me get it underway. I will guarantee a research product which will help "the cause," and the $ will help me hire a handy research assistant/pelican-counter like one of Theo's so we don't lose all of our critical data:
 In Brookhaven Collider, Scientists Briefly Break a Law of Nature. It's about anti-matter, in part, and the mystery of baryogenesis: Why does matter exist?
The evil 60s: The Night They Burned Ranum's Papers
Red wine and dark chocolate are cancer killers (h/t Tiger)
Democrats Reeling Under Losses of Veteran Lawmakers, Declining Poll Numbers
Free Conrad Black!
From Gordon's Milksop Nation (h/t, Boing Boing via I Forget)
For two decades and counting, we citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave have happily traded freedom for every scrap of bogus safety dangled before us. Indeed, we have devoted prodigious energy to inventing threats that demand the sacrifice of liberty, privacy and even basic human dignity.
Blowing threats out of proportion is, of course, the stock in trade of TV news, whether the menace in question is a summer rainstorm or the distressing stains revealed when an investigative reporter shines ultraviolet light on a freshly laundered bed sheet at an upscale hotel. But television reflects its viewers' attitudes as well as shaping them, and clearly there exists a very large audience receptive to the never-ending theme: Life is meant, ever and always, to be safe--and you're not safe.
Nigerian activist and Nobel laureate for Literature Wole Soyinka:
England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there."
Go figger: 2009- Global Warming Causes Foggy Days in San Francisco… 2010- Global Warming Causes Fog-less Days in San Francisco. At best, we are talking one degree per century since the Little Ice Age. As they say, "Is there anything global warming can't do?"
Prof Plimer:
Since Copenhagen there have been weekly revelations that the IPCC used non-valid sources for some of its exaggerated claims. If such activities took place in the corporate world, the courts would be full. All the poster displays of a forthcoming climate catastrophe such as Himalayan glaciers, Amazonian forests, inexorable rise in global temperature, Arctic ice, polar bears, retreating Kilimanjaro ice, etc., have been shown to be implausible, wrong, or fraudulent.
And at Am Thinker, The experiment that disproves AGW:
...the results of three different peer-reviewed papers show that over a period of 36 years, there is no reduction of OLR emissions in wavelengths that CO2 absorb. Therefore, the AGW hypothesis is disproven.
From today's Lectionary, Psalm 51:1-17: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart."
 1:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
1:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
1:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
1:4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
1:5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
1:6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
1:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
1:8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
1:9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
1:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
1:11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
1:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
1:13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
1:14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
1:15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
1:16 For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
1:17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Tuesday, February 16. 2010
You probably already knew that the so-called Sphinx had been deeply eroded by rain from when the Sahara was wet, that the Sphinx has been buried under sand through most of its lifetime, and that the face is likely not the original. What I did not know is that the body of the sculpture was not constructed, but rather carved out of a single piece of limestone in the middle of a quarry.
Good update at Smithsonian.
...when liberal wring their hands because the U.S. seems to be ungovernable, we conservatives chuckle. That's not a bug, liberals; that's a feature.
From Chantrill at Am Thinker
 From the post:
The Nazi propaganda poster says: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too."
We visited the New Britain Museum of American Art this weekend, known as one of America’s most welcoming, distinguished, dynamic, and educationally ambitious art museums. They have a current exhibit (through April 11, 2010) entitled Inspired Innovations: A Celebration of Shaker Ingenuity.
The exhibition, organized into 12 Zones of Innovation and with three rooms resembling traditional Shaker quarters, will showcase some 350 objects spanning over 200 years from 1800 to 2000. A testament to the durability, practicality, and simplicity of Shaker ingenuity, with a focus on functionality, each piece is gracefully formed with a genuine devotion to ones craft that reflects the words of Shaker founder, Mother Ann: "labor to make the way of God your own; let it be your inheritance, your treasure, your occupation, your daily calling."
Maggie's readers will like this quote from Shaker Martha J. Anderson of Mt. Lebanon, NY: "The lamp of genius burns as it is supplied by the oil of enthusiasm."
The New Britain Museum of American Art's founding in 1903 entitles the institution to be designated the first museum of strictly American art in the country. That year, a $20,000 gift of gold bonds to the museum's former parent, the New Britain Institute, from industrialist John Butler Talcott, created funds to purchase "modern oil paintings." Subsequent purchases, with advice from New York museums and galleries, further defined "modern" to mean American works of art, now numbering more than 10,236. With particular strengths in colonial portraiture, the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, and the Ash Can School, not to mention the important mural series The Arts of Life in America by Thomas Hart Benton, the museum relies heavily on its permanent collection for exhibitions and programming, yet also displays a significant number of borrowed shows and work by emerging artists. The singular focus on American art and its panoramic view of American artistic achievement make the New Britain Museum of American Art a significant teaching resource available to the local, regional, and national public.
As the Guide Michelin might say, "worth a detour".
A bit of a rant, Get Rid of the Holy Crap, From Mead. One quote:
...let me post a provocative thesis on the wall: If virtually the entire regional and national staff of every mainline denomination were to be called home to heaven overnight in a mainline version of the Rapture, leaving only the equivalent of Bishop Baker and his secretary in their place, I am sure that someone somewhere would notice a difference, but the effect on either the spiritual state of American Christians or the health and well being of local congregations throughout the United States would be hard to detect with the naked eye.
Just the sort of thing our friend Sippican loves: Spray-on glass.
Is glass really technically a liquid? No, it's best classified as an amorphous solid, but Nature doesn't always follow our human categories very well. Why would it?
Dead at 89. h/t, Jungleman. The guy provided me many hours of delight by the pool and on the beach.
The Fable of Market Meritocracy
"Markets don't reward smart people. They reward value." Yes, that is what markets are for. Markets are ultimately about human psychology; the only way to determine value and price, given human nature, fiat currency, and the annoying limitations of reality.
Grad school in the humanities is a big lie
Soda = Big Tobacco, According to No-Fun NYT Food Writer
Was there any actual warming to begin with?. Well, don't tell Cambridge, MA because they are going to save the planet!
WSJ: The continuing climate meltdown. And WaTimes: The Scam Unravels. One quote:
Not everybody is on to the global-warming scam, not yet, but all the people — or enough of them — are getting there. "Global warming," or even "climate change" as Al's marketing men now insist that it be called, is becoming the stuff of jests and jokes. Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican, built an igloo of that hot stuff that buried Washington last week on the Capitol lawn and dubbed it "Al Gore's new home."
It has been a topic of jest at Maggie's Farm for years.
Glenn says the Climategate story reminds him of the Bellesisles story
The skeletons of wind energy. Meanwhile China is buying Canadian oil sites
Race and fairness:
A few years ago, however, when I worked as a reader for Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, it became immediately clear to me that Asians - who constitute 5 percent of the US population - faced an uphill slog. They tended to get excellent scores, take advantage of AP offerings, and shine in extracurricular activities. Frequently, they also had hard-knock stories: families that had immigrated to America under difficult circumstances, parents working as kitchen assistants and store clerks, and households in which no English was spoken.
But would Yale be willing to make 50 percent of its freshman class Asian? Probably not.
Why not?
Somin on political ignorance
Amy Bishop Is A Far-Left Extremist "Obsessed" with the President
Obama's chance to be next FDR or Reagan fading fast. The fellow is a classic Legend in His Own Mind.
Why the Russkis still see the US as an enemy
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