Wednesday, January 6. 2010
This graph is making the rounds today so we might as well pile on. It's from Clusterstock. I think the problems this represents are obvious:
Tuesday, January 5. 2010
It's about the Conspiracy to Keep Them Poor and Stupid. One of our favorite guys writes a piece in City Journal about another one of our favorite fellows. One quote:
Like A Nation at Risk, Cultural Literacy came under fierce attack by education progressives, partly for its theory of reading comprehension but even more for its supposedly elitist presumption that a white male college professor should decide what American children learn. Critics derided Hirsch’s lists of names, events, and dates as arbitrary, even racist. The progressives often lumped him in with the three “killer Bs”—Bennett, (Allan) Bloom, and (Saul) Bellow—whom they loved to hate at the height of the 1980s culture wars. Because Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind appeared just above Cultural Literacy on the bestseller lists for most of 1987, many liberal commentators paired the two writers, calling them conservatives agitating for a return to a more traditional, elitist education.
In fact, Hirsch is and always has been a liberal Democrat. Far from being elitist, he insists, cultural literacy is the path to educational equality and full citizenship for the nation’s minority groups. “Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children,” Hirsch writes, and “the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents.
H/t to Vanderleun for Spengler's essay, A Commedia for our times. One quote:
The most onerous expression of idolatry in the modern era was the communist conceit that the scientific ordering of society can eliminate uncertainty. Scientific socialism was supposed to eliminate economic crises and war; instead, it brought about 100 million deaths and reduced once-prosperous countries to penury. Seventy years after its founding, the entire value of the industrial plant of the Soviet Union and its satellites was less than its scrap value, taking into account the costs of environmental cleanup. The life expectancy of Russian men has fallen to only 55 years, and the most frequent cause of death is alcoholism. Russia and its former satellites have such low fertility that their populations will fall by between one-third and one-half by mid-century. Europe's nanny-state version of social democracy is a low-grade version of the same infection.
Monday, January 4. 2010
 You will recall that the despicable race-monger and hate-monger Al Sharpton made his name with the Tawana Brawley case. It was, of course, a hoax, the victims of which were the then-15 year old Tawana herself - and police officer Steven Pagones.
Our link this morning to Powerline's The radical feminist empire strikes back at Duke got me to thinking about one of our perennial themes here at Maggie's (namely the bullsh-t people and the MSM feed us) which we specifically touched upon three years ago in a random post on Truthiness, from which I borrow these quotes:
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
Aldous Huxley
A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.
Mark Twain
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.
Bob Dylan
One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.
Dr. Karl Menninger
What is Truth?
Pontius Pilate
There is no doubt in my mind that many careerists, opportunists, cranks with an axe to grind, neurotic cause-seekers, victim addicts, grievance-seekers, and folks with passionate political agendas use Tawana Brawley Case methods to advance their causes. These people need problems to justify their work, their income, or their very raison d'etre. If they have a sociopathic streak, they are not above inventing or exaggerating those problems:
Those Duke profs want more rape.
The warmists want more warming.
The race-mongers want more racism.
The transfat haters want more heart attacks.
The capitalism-phobics want more poverty.
Educators want more ignorance.
The race-mongers want more black kids to fail in school.
The Moslems want to be insulted.
And so on. Yes, I always want more legal cases too.
Photo is Al Sharpton with Tawana Brawley, 1988.
Saturday, January 2. 2010
From a piece by Lazarowitz at Am Thinker:
With our inalienable rights to life and liberty, one might assume that among our unenumerated rights would also rest the rights of voluntary association and contract (such as the relationship between a doctor and patient) and the right to not buy insurance if one doesn't want it, as well as the right to opt out of a government health scheme. One might also assume that individuals have an inalienable, natural right to not report their medical status to the government.
The Founders were clear that such unenumerated rights would be recognized by natural law -- that is why they wrote and unanimously approved the Declaration of Independence -- but our natural rights may not be protected by constitutional law. Barnett has also wondered whether "mandatory insurance" is unconstitutional. However, given that our natural rights are inalienable, meaning that government may not take them away for any reason, it really should not matter if any of the health care proposals in Congress are unconstitutional.
Monday, December 28. 2009
 Re John Adams and freedom, a quote from Serfdom vs. liberty in 2010 in the Pittsburgh Trib:
Mr. Adams, of course, would have been labeled a "right-wing extremist" or a "militia maniac" by today's "progressives" in Congress who have been working so assiduously to soil the fabric of America. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would dismiss Adams' sentiment as "un-American" and tap dance around its implications of unconstitutional freelancing.
But on the cusp of a new year and the second decade of the 21st century, this is where America finds itself: Constitutional perverts and rule of law scofflaws are in charge, the once-creeping crud of socialism has broken into a trot and an increasing number of good and decent people really are mad as hell and not willing to take another centimeter of the shaft.
Image: John Adams, right-wing nutjob
With half the world either on vacation, spaced out, "enjoying" family, skiing, lounging in the Caribbean over Mohitos and Rum Punches, or too busy digesting cookies to spare time for the intertubes, it seems like a good time to mix in some daily Dr. B. re-runs from our archives.
This one, "A Good Spanking," is from 2007.
 The proposed anti-spanking law in California has been much discussed, as here at Education Wonks. Also, Raven.The story has also been much mocked: Blame Bush notes that spanking can lead to things which are considered "disorders" in California, such as respect for authority, consideration of rules, self-discipline, and awareness of consequences.
There may be some shrinks who are opposed to corporal punishment, but I do not think that I know any. There are many situations for which I would recommend corporal punishment (eg ignoring a rule about playing in the street, or accidentally pointing a BB gun at somebody, or being sadistic with a sibling or a pet - for a few examples) and, in general, I think it is preferable to withdrawal of love or attention (ie, "time-outs," which I think are usually applied when the adult needs the break from the kid. That is, a "time-out" is a cop-out.).
In fact, I think schools ought to be able to administer corporal punishment too. I received my share, and not only did it not harm me - I think it helped me (in retrospect!). It "concentrates the mind," assists the memory, sets a firm limit, and demonstrates "tough love." A reasonable degree of anger is an essential accompaniment.
What I observe more than anything else is that defiant, obnoxious, or even "conduct disordered" kids - and sometimes just naughty kids, get sent to psychiatrists and social workers before anyone tries forceful discipline - as if growing up respectful and obedient were automatic. For many it is, but for many it is not.
Never forget that when a young adult messes with a drill sargent, watch out. When an adult messes with a cop, that adult will be taught a very firm physical lesson. When an adult breaks a serious rule, men without smiles with loaded guns will come and point them at your chest, throw you to the floor, cuff you, and lock you away in a small room with Bubba-With-No-Teeth who is big and strong and feeling lonely.
So a good whuppin', when needed, isn't really so bad. It beats humiliation by a long shot. When the rules of life are not internalized, they need to be enforced externally until they are - which for some people means never. Some fear is very useful in life to keep us out of trouble. We can be their friends later, after they grow up a bit.
Spare the rod and spoil the child. Do not listen to those who deliberately and sneakily try to conflate punishment with child abuse, and never let the government tell you how to raise your kids. In case you haven't noticed yet, the government is an idiot.
Related: Dr. Helen on kids who kill
Image: Boy being birched by teacher, no doubt deservedly, while other students observe. 1375.
Sunday, December 27. 2009
Blogcritics: The Government is Too Damn Big, Slow, Inefficient, and Intrusive. One quote:
During FDR's New Deal, numerous “alphabet agencies” were created to pull the country out of a depression. Many of those agencies still exist, although their efforts to end the depression were largely ineffective. World War II was mainly responsible for ending the depression. The agencies not only continue to exist, they have “growed like Topsy” during the more than half century since their creation; they continue to do so, and it is at least questionable whether they do more to help the country than to harm it.
Most of the actual work done by the government is done by its Administrative Agencies. Let's look at how a typical agency works. I practiced communications law in Washington, D.C. for twenty years, and all of my clients had dealings with the Federal Communication Commission. That is the agency with which I am most familiar, and even though it was not created to end the Great Depression, it is typical in many respects of the other alphabet agencies. I should add that I retired twelve years ago, and so some of my observations may be dated; still, I think that not much has changed or ever will.
Monday, December 21. 2009
The Senate vote for cloture on the Reid-negotiated and bought version of ObamaCare will shape the coming decades’ politics as surely as the Congressional votes to virtually abandon South Vietnam shaped its’ following decades.
For the past three and a half decades, the clearest dividing line and predictor of how we and our leaders would approach issues, ranging from the social to the geopolitical, is the position – contemporaneous or in retrospect -- held about the US Congress’ votes to not meet US pledges to supply and aid South Vietnam in the face of North Vietnam’s heavily Soviet and Chinese supplied continued armed and logistical build-up and massive invasion.
In the reaction to President Nixon’s deserved fall, an overwhelmingly Democrat and anti-Vietnam war Congress was elected in 1974, determined to overturn US foreign policy. Polls were equivocal, at least providing some cover or excuse. In the wake of President Obama’s undeserved credence to govern from the center, an overwhelmingly Democrat and liberal Congress was elected in 2008, determined to instead legislate from the left and overturn US domestic policy. This time, polls are decisively opposed, but ignored, and there’s no cover or excuse.
Basically, in both cases, we went from a nation following a course – as befuddled as it may be – of determination to pursue freedoms to a nation that waffles freedoms away. Basically, our “conservative”, “liberal” and “moderate” postures toward most issues over the past decades have been in line with how we view the causes and outcomes of our Vietnam involvement. So, too, will our future divides and postures be determined by how we now or come to view the causes and outcomes of reshaping almost a fifth of the US economy and almost 100% of our personal and fiscal health.
The divides over Vietnam were partisan but, also, crossed political party lines. The results, however, increased later realignments and partisanship. The straight party-line vote in the Senate on ObamaCare is a consequence, and will lead to an even sharper divide in how the political parties are and will be viewed.
There are no Profiles In Courage to be found in the tactical refusal to propose a fleshed-out free market Republican alternative to the statist approach by the Democrats. There are no Profiles In Courage to be found in the refusal by the controlling Democrats to allow anything but capitulation or purchased whoredom from critics.
At this point, there’s been so much damage to our faith in Washington, regardless of our dispositions on health care or political affiliation, that there’s cause for all who would be honest about it – or will come to be -- to be in despair.
However, there’s real reason to not be in despair, indeed to be quite hopeful.
Whatever version of ObamaCare emerges from conference between the Senate and the House, the core deceptive tactic by the Democrats to hide true costs creates the means of their ultimate defeat. With added reflection on what the Democrats have steamrolled, and various new taxes that kick in before most of the statist “benefits”, the reaction of voters in 2010 will likely be an increased Republican membership in the Congress. At that time, Republicans in Congress will be – and should be – held fully accountable to stop ObamaCare cold in its tracks, and to really fight for free-market reforms that actually increase choice while reducing costs. If not, look for the emergence of a new political party actually representing the majority of Americans. Either way, Americans who believe in personal freedom will win.
Saturday, December 19. 2009
 A piece via Memorandum launched my brief rant about the noisy, Leftist segment of the women's movement.
Regardless of the moral issues around abortion, I have no interest in paying for your abortion. None. Nor for your IVF, your tummy tuck, your massages, aromatherapy, chiropractic adjustments, your birth control pills, or your nose jobs. If an insurance plan doesn't cover such things, too bad. The claim that insurance which does not pay for non-therapeutic abortions "harms women" is insane.
Grow up and pay for your own damn abortions, ladies - and for anything else medically-related that you elect to do which is therefore "elective."
Equating "liberation from oppression" with "wanting free stuff" is pathetic and retrogressive, replacing the good husband ideal of the past with a new sort of husband in government. Next thing you know, these women will be demanding that we buy them cars so they can drive to work.
That's not pride and confidence. That is infantile, and consistent with the worst stereotype of the weak, ditzy, incompetent female.
I believe that a man needs his good woman just as a woman needs her good man.
The moral of the story is that "movements," like non-profits - having acomplished their major goals, need to keep finding new things to do to maintain and justify their existence - and their paychecks. It is not grown-up for women - or anyone of any of the 5 or 10 or whatever "genders" - to want things on my nickel.
My apologies for bothering our readers with this on a cheery and snowy Christmas weekend. Now that I have that off my chest, we are getting ready to dress up fancy to head off to make the rounds of some Christmas parties and open houses.
Bring on the mountains of snow and the gallons of eggnog and the groaning boards! Modern women enjoy trying to meet life's challenges of all sorts, including those of excess snow and excess eggnog and excess calorie-filled goodies, as did the women of my Mom's generation. Strong women, never victimized, oppressed, or asking for pity.
And God bless our lonely military wives and Moms during Christmas. A tough job, but they can do it and need no pity and ask for none. Same thing goes for the guys whose wives are in the service.
Friday, December 11. 2009
Interview with Andrew Klavan: My Way Into and Out of the Left.
How many of us have similar stories?
Thursday, December 10. 2009
From Frank Tipler: Orwellian Nightmare: Science Is Whatever ‘the Party’ Says It Is. ( Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University. He is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press) and the author of The Physics of Immortality and The Physics of Christianity both published by Doubleday.)
Friday, December 4. 2009
House votes to make death tax permanent.
I recently posted on the subject of Death, taxes, and death taxes in view of upcoming legislative considerations of current death taxes, and I see a post by Patten at NRO which echoes my views. He explains:
Often referred to as the death tax, the estate tax was established under the guise of ensuring “fairness.” Progressive reformers of the early 20th century thought a tax on lifetime earnings and savings would prevent “gross inequalities of wealth.” Instead, the estate tax destroys capital, the fuel that keeps the economy growing. When capital is difficult to acquire, some people are unable to start businesses, and some of those who already have businesses can’t expand them — resulting in fewer jobs for others.
Read his whole brief and to-the-point post. Estate taxes are wealth and asset destroyers. I want more wealthy people and wealthy families, not fewer.
Sunday, November 29. 2009
Modern anti-Semitism has developed a seductive and deceptive newspeak etiquette to mask its linkages to discredited precursors and to disreputable objectives. To penetrate the smokescreens put up by modern anti-Semitism, it is necessary to blow away the semantic clouds it hides behind.
A fair-minded person, especially if not well-informed, may get tangled up in a web of confusing definitions when trying to identify some speech, someone or some organization as anti-Semitic.
It is easy to refer to actual Nazis, a settled matter. However, there is a carefully sown confusion today when deliberating distinctions about hard to sift through criticisms made of Israel or of Jews in the US or elsewhere in the world.
This blurring of the lines owes itself to the detachment of most, Jew and non-Jew, from the actual scenes of anti-Semitic behaviors and from actually feeling oneself at risk. This detachment from harsh realities is eased by the moral relativism that pervades much of Western intellectual culture, where the existence of right and wrong is increasingly a mere notion to be dismissed in almost all cases. Common-sense morality is replaced with a casualness toward insult and attack when perpetrated by some group favored due to its purported grievances. Minor factoids are blown into generalizations, while more important information is ignored, in order to fabricate misleading and erroneous condemnations.
In effect, modern anti-Semitism is a construct built upon and a part of modern moral effeteness. Those with ulterior ambitions exploit Westerners’ moral relativism by creating an etiquette to deceive them and shield themselves from exposure. Perhaps most dangerously, modern anti-Semitism is a primary front and tool of today’s dedicated left, to weaken and isolate the US via Israel.
Those of firmer minds and character, although sympathetic to the left or antagonistic toward fascism, avoided or exited from the communist fronts of the 1930’s. So should those today with actual empathy for transcendent justice be careful not to be drawn into the gingerbread house built by current enemies of the West. It is unnecessary to allow ones ideals to be contaminated, manipulated or perverted, particularly when that serves the ends of those most dangerous to those ideals.
Here are the Rules of Etiquette for Modern Anti-Semitism:
1. Generalize: Treat Jews as a race engaged in racial behavior. Treat the behavior of all Jews as innate, common and similarly driven. The behaviors exhibited by any or attributed to any (whether the specific instance is true or not) can then be ascribed to all Jews. It ignores that Jews come from many differing bloodstock heritages, nations and cultures, exhibiting all the variations of most others in the world (except for a few isolated small tribes in jungles). The purpose of anti-Semitic etiquette is to clothe the critic in anti-racism while, indeed, being a racist in practice or trying to hide it.
2. Empathize: Claim universalist empathy for purported victims of Jews. Credit with credence all the claims of those deemed downtrodden (again regardless of facts). Those deemed downtrodden are, inevitably, hostile to the West and to modernity. Others, for example, like the Montagnards or Hmong who are persecuted worse, are virtually ignored, because they are contaminated by their history of alignment with the US. Just assert, despite evidence, that one cares about all equally. The hypocrisy is ignored that similar criticisms are not levied against others’ far worse actions. The hypocrisy is evident in the feeble defense, if any, that is mounted of those suffering ethnic cleansing by states or ideologies that are part of the alliance against the West.
3. Hyperbolize: Use rhetorical exaggerations to cloud actual meaning and facts. By repetition and osmosis, flaming misrepresentations transit into common discourse. One can, then, feel better about the rightness of claims and delegitimize the target. Take words, like “apartheid”, “fascism”, “racism”, “atrocity”, and such, entirely out of context and reality to manufacture a new reality in the minds of the gullible or ignorant. One needn’t even use the old libels and gross lies (e.g., “Christ-killer,” “Shylock,” “Kike,” “Devil race,” "Jews haven't been in Jerusalem for milleniums and are alien colonizers," "the Holocaust is a fiction") to accomplish the same characterizations of heartless, manipulative, invasive evils by Jews. It is too easily recognized for what it is.
4. Patriotize: Claim to have the national interests of the US at heart. Use the natural isolationism of some, or old-fashioned religious anti-Semitism of some (raised on Christ-killer theology), to cause loyal Americans, or Europeans, to ally with those on the radical fringes and left in denying aid to Israel and to undermining it.
5. Camouflage: Use some Jews to front for the anti-Semitism. Among any people, there are a few who will seek notoriety, position or payment to provide cover for others with more malignant ambitions. The miniscule but vocal “peace” movement within Israel is largely funded from European leftists and from speaking tours and book sales among Western leftists. The Arab financed Middle East centers in US universities provide plump stipends to those who criticize Israel. Secular Jews who haven’t been affiliated in decades clothe their religion of extreme liberalism by trotting out their parents or grandparents’ affiliation.
6. Idolize: Treat all heads of states with respect. No matter how outrageous their statements or actions, or how hostile toward Israel their appointments to high positions, give deference to high government leaders and give credence and respectable platforms to their excuses and mendacious rationales. Their associates, who would be ordinarily be ostracized as extremists, are also given protective coloration. Excuses usually take the approaches of “he really couldn’t mean that,” “it’s too outrageous to take seriously,” “there’s really a secret plan for nirvana hidden somewhere that no one else can find, it’s so clever,” or “…but there’s another appointee or action that somehow counterbalances or restrains the sheer nuttery or malevolence” although there’s no real evidence of that. When such a state leader excuses himself by saying “I wasn’t listening closely although I chose his church and sat there for 20-years,” he is playing that same duplicitous card.
7.Enoble: Claim that the focus is expanding justice. The fruits of the labor, education and courage of those who accomplish are seen as proper targets for redistribution or expropriation to feed the demands of those whose own failures to advance themselves is really at fault. Leveling in this way is presented as justice. Rather, it is another front of anti-capitalism/anti-Western civilization, focusing on gaps in possession of life’s comforts instead of focusing on who creates them and how they earned them, or focusing on how some lack due to their own choices. It eliminates the talents that create wealth for more, and holds down those whose efforts would lift themselves. It entrenches the despot, while suppressing popular challenges and aspirations for freedoms.
The modern anti-Semitism is as pernicious and widespread as the older varieties, the older varieties finding comfort within its fuzzier facades. Due to its purposely confusing “newspeak” of demonization and excuses, it is even more dangerous. It wraps up old canards in purposely cute circumlocutions, to deceive and forward its deadly goal, the death of the civilized West so that backwardness, tyranny and barbarities can continue or prevail in greater safety from exposure, comparison or challenge.
P.S.: Related, you might read "Trapped By The Axis Of Anti-Semitism: Left, Right And Islam"
Friday, November 27. 2009
Europe has felt the temptation, for sure. We Americans do not - or should not. We are supposed to be better and stronger than that. Prof. Paul Rahe via NRO
Friday, November 20. 2009
Re the earlier post, see Tim Blair for the actual emails. h/t, reader. Quote:
...the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science.
Piltdown Man, move over. Sample:
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich
Is this what they call "research"? These science frauds need to be fired - and/or indicted. They are government employees.
At Wizbang and Moonbattery.
It is worse than I thought - and I thought it was bad.
Tuesday, November 17. 2009
Readers know that I am opposed to death taxes - estate taxes. The wealthy find ways around them (how long has it been since a Kennedy or a Rockefeller held a real job as opposed to an optional job?), but merchants, the middle class, and farmers get screwed by them.
My friend in southern CT recently told me about a third-generation (the grandpa was an Italian immigrant) family-owned flower shop in their town which had to close up shop last month when Mom died. Why? They had to sell their small building to pay the estate taxes. Like a family farm, that is generations of dedication, good will, hard work, and a long-established part of a community down the drain.
Furthermore, I like the idea of middle-class families being able to build wealth over generations - and most people who work hard like that too. People like to feel that they are building something for the family's future, and for their family's independence from the kindness of strangers - and the government.
I do advise everyone, even if not wealthy, to do the best that they can to avoid the crushing effects of death taxes by getting the best estate-planning advice you can afford.
Brit Ted Dalrymple takes on the Fabians on the topic, in Let Them Inherit Debt. One quote:
There are many unfairnesses in life that we must learn to put up with, if we are to have any chance of happiness or even of tolerable contentment. For example, I should like to be taller, better-looking and more intelligent and gifted than I am. Every time I meet someone better-looking than I, taller than I, or more talented than I, which I do very regularly, I experience a brief spark of envy. What did they do to be as they are, my superiors? Why did providence, or chance, endow them with characteristics so much more attractive than my own? Needless to say, I never stop to think that, just possibly, some people might ask the same of me when they meet me.
But the differential endowments of nature are unfair, not unjust, because (at least as yet) no human intervention can prevent them. The inheritance of wealth is not like this: it is a human arrangement that could be abrogated if not easily, for political reasons, at least with some effort. And if injustice is unfairness brought about by human means, then inheritance of wealth is unjust. Ergo, inheritance of wealth ought to be forbidden because it is unjust, and we must always seek justice.
The question, then, is whether we should always seek justice to the exclusion of other desiderata. Is it true that justice always and everywhere trumps other considerations? I think the answer is no.
Monday, November 16. 2009
Via Protein's Progressive utopia — enemy of Liberty:
If liberals are so disturbed by Congress dictating whether abortion is
a legitimate health care issue or not, it only makes sense that they
should be equally troubled by government management of other health
care decisions.
Undoubtedly, this is zealously naive thinking on my part. Reaching
such a conclusion demands a modicum of consistency. And as we’ve seen,
health care “reform” is an ideological crusade immune from logic.
Sunday, November 15. 2009
 Erl Happ, via Icecap:
What follows is a general theory of natural climate variation supported by observation of the changing temperature of the atmosphere and the sea between 1948 and September 2009. This work suggests that strong warming after 1978 is an entirely natural phenomenon.
“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. The sun is much too sultry and one must avoid its ultry violet rays”. Noel Coward 1932.
Perhaps Noel Coward’s observation is particularly pertinent in the southern hemisphere where there is less ozone to absorb UVB. During the warming mode, protective ice crystals evaporate, allowing the surface to warm. Most of the warming activity post 1978 has been in the southern hemisphere in late winter and spring. This warming activity is plainly driven by shifts in atmospheric pressure affecting vortex activity. There are two climate modes:
The Warming Mode:
There is a shift of the atmosphere from the poles towards mid and low latitudes under electromagnetic forcing of ionized air.
Weakening of the polar vortexes curtails the flow of ionized nitrogen into the upper stratosphere allowing the survival of oxygen ions and increased ozone formation.
Intermixing of ozone into the upper troposphere raises temperature in the ice cloud zone. Ice crystals evaporate.
More solar radiation reaches the surface which warms.
In the southern hemisphere 200hpa temperature rises much more than in the northern hemisphere exhibiting strong equinoctial maxima.
Peak anomalies in stratospheric temperature occur in September-October rather than March.
A southern spring deficit in ice cloud density promotes warming across all southern latitudes which promotes the El Nino pattern of sea surface temperature at the equator.
The Cooling Mode
Surface atmospheric pressure increases at the poles as the electromagnetic force in the ionosphere/thermosphere relaxes. This happens at solar minimum as the quantum of ionizing radiation falls to its lowest levels. It also tends to happen at solar maximum as the suns magnetic polarity reverses and magnetic fields emanating from the sun tend to be self cancelling. The manifestation in the Pacific Ocean is La Nina cooling.
Strengthening of the polar vortexes introduces ionized nitrogen into the stratosphere reducing the population of oxygen ions and ozone.
A loss of ozone in the ice cloud zone reduces temperature enhancing the formation of reflective ice crystals.
Less solar radiation reaches the surface which cools.
A generally low ozone level in the stratosphere results in high amplitude change in stratospheric temperature during the ENSO cycle. This is expressed in high amplitude variation in 20hpa temperature at the equator. At the surface the swing from El Nino warming to La Nina cooling is more violent and extreme.
Change is more extreme in the southern hemisphere where the polar vortex is generally cooler especially at the highest altitudes. In the cool mode stratospheric temperature exhibits a March maximum probably in line with enhancement of orbital rather than geomagnetic influences on stratospheric temperature. The earth is closest to the sun in January.
A cooler stratosphere and upper troposphere in southern spring promotes ice cloud formation reducing the flux of solar radiation to the surface establishing a La Nina dominant regime in the Pacific Ocean.
The pattern of change from the cool to the warm mode and back again is well expressed in figure 22 showing the pattern of change of the (Darwin ?Tahiti) Southern Oscillation Index when compartmentalized according to solar cycle time intervals. A fall in this index represents warming. A dramatic fall in the index occurred about 1978. With the end of solar cycle 23 the globe is emerging from the strongest period of warming in the period of the instrumental record. The Southern Oscillation Index, based on barometric pressure, is not affected by the distortions present in the temperature record.
The smoking gun for natural climate variation is an increase in the temperature of the southern stratosphere and troposphere increasing with latitude all the way to the southern pole with a marked variation in southern hemisphere temperature in winter/spring between cool and warm episodes. This determines the strength of El Nino warming events across the tropics.
The smoking gun for greenhouse effects should be a generalized warming at all latitudes without any marked seasonal bias. If there were to be a seasonal bias it should be present as an increase in temperature above the norm when outgoing long wave radiation is maximal in the summer season. There should be no great difference between the hemispheres. That is far from what is actually observed. The evidence suggests that natural variation rather than anthropogenic influences drives climate change.
Continue reading "The real climate engine"
Friday, November 13. 2009
From Legal Insurrection, via Tiger: 100% Plus Taxation Key To Permanent Dem Majority.
One quote:
To say that antipoverty programs in the United States are perverted may
be an understatement. When you take into account the loss of
means-tested benefits (e.g., cash assistance, food stamps, housing
subsidies, and health insurance), and the taxes that people pay on
earned income, the return to working is essentially zero for those in
the lower two quintiles of the income distribution.
For many of
the working poor, the implicit marginal tax rate is greater than 100
percent. The long-run consequence of undermining the positive incentive
to work is, of course, the creation of an underclass acclimated to not
working...
From Ace's excellent (and serious) essay Pelosi: It's Very Fair That We Jail You If You Don't Buy Health Insurance:
I'm paranoid? Really? I am not fretting here about some remote and
unlikely possibility. We are not speaking here of "slippery slopes" or
in terms of "what comes next?"
We are instead objecting to a black-letter law spelled out for all to see in the very first piece of legislation you're proposing.
Right out of the box. The state here -- Pelosi, Reid, Obama -- are
claiming that they can imprison people for behavior that has never
before even been hinted as being a crime, on the theory that such
behavior constitutes unpatriotic economic behavior which is detrimental to the state's balance sheets.
Think about what a broad, all-encompassing term "economics" is. 80%
of our waking hours are spent in economic activity of one sort or
another. The state here is asserting the right to imprison people
for behavior they consider not actually morally reprehensible or
harmful as other crimes are, but instead merely detrimental to the
Great Push Forward, the state's master plan of economic health and
well-being.
Right out of the box they propose sending people to jail for acting as economic subversives and economic traitors and yet I am, somehow, paranoid if I point out that the first step here is to reduce human freedom and increase state power. And this is just a down-payment, remember. This is merely the first
of many freedoms you previously believed sacrosanct to be lost.
Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, November 11. 2009
The legal costs to individuals and businesses are destroying the American economy. America, the most litigious nation and the most-lawyered nation (per capita) in the world is burdened by a broken, and crushingly expensive system of legal care.
Few Americans can afford high-quality legal care at $500-$2000/hour when needed, and end up in legal clinics or representing themselves. Few, if any, have legal coverage. Legal costs sap profits from business in ways that are entirely unproductive. The poor, minorities, and women are, of course, most hard hit by the difficulty finding justice in a money-driven legal system, while the Mafia, politicians, and Wall Streeters skate and the lawyers drive Lexi and Mercedes in their Valentino and Armani suits.
It costs more to contest a speeding ticket or a routine Maggie's Farm disorderly conduct ticket than to pay it. And when you die - forget it: You are forced to pay lawyers all over the place.
There is no affordable justice in America today, and God knows how many bankruptcies, heartaches, and ruined lives result. It's unfair, unjust and un-American. 10% of American African-American youth rot in jail for lack of legal care while rich white guys like Bill Ayers are walking the street and hosting cocktail parties for politicians.
Meanwhile, hordes of tort lawyers are watching for every time you fail to clear your driveway, and checking the lead levels in the toys and books you produce. Hungry divorce lawyers prowl around your home at night, waiting to hear an argument. They are everywhere, looking to either defend you or to prosecute you.
There are more laws up against you than there are diseases in this world.
Furthermore, unlike medical care, the US Constitution does concern itself with justice more than a little bit.
Just think about your annual direct and indirect legal care costs: they are included in your auto liability insurance, your homeowner's insurance, your tax guy, the guy you paid to get your kid reduced from a DWI to a DUI, the guy who managed the refinancing of your house, the indirect costs to your employer and in your town taxes for having to maintain a legal department, and the legal costs built into everything you buy in America - including doctors' malpractice insurance - which is basically legal insurance. Create a pension: you need a lawyer. Even your lawyer has to buy legal insurance, inflating his charges. And even your investments - every mutual fund has a legal team paid for with your fees. The list goes on and on.
Something must be done immediately to correct this drag on the American economy and on the American spirit. Short of killing all the lawyers (I am quite fond of a number of them), I suggest a government take-over of this broken, unjust system by 111 Federal bureaucracies, and with the help of our politicians, to solve this crisis.
And a 5% Federal tax increase to pay for it all.
We did a post on Mad or Bad last week, and I am happy to see David Brooks is willing to see evil, in his The Rush to Therapy:
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.
Toon via NYM on the same topic.
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