Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Well Looky Here

The IPCC is finally getting the message (emphasis throughout mine):

IPCC 'must avoid playing politics'
"The UN's climate change body has been told to stick to the science and avoid playing politics in a landmark review of how it operates."
[---]
"In March the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (IAC) was called in after a number of errors were found in the IPCC's landmark 2007 Fourth Assessment Report into man-made climate change.

Key among those was the unsubstantiated claim - based on an article in New Scientist magazine - that most of the Himalayas' glaciers would have melted by 2035.

Its inclusion gave ammunition to those sceptical about the climate change science, who dug for further evidence that the IPCC's report was flawed and the organisation biased."
[---]
"The report also recommended that a "rigorous conflict-of-interest policy" should be drawn up for senior IPCC leadership and authors of its reports. In the future no individual should chair the IPCC for more than one six-year term, it stated.

Additionally, "formal qualifications for the chair and all other Bureau members need to be developed", the IAC said."
Report recommends UN Climate Panel Shakeup
"An enquiry into the UN's climate panel, the IPCC, has recommended administrative changes, including a full-time chief executive. It found the IPCC had "assigned high confidence to statements for which there is very little evidence", had failed to acknowledge criticism, or follow its own guidelines."
[---]
"The investigation was prompted by criticisms of the IPCC's fourth assessment report (AR4) published in 2007 - specifically the output of Working Group 2 (WGII), set up to examine the "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" and which produced a report ran (sic) to almost 1,000 pages. This was found to lean heavily on "grey literature", including activist reports and even travel brochures. A prediction that that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 was traced to a casual remark by an Indian scientist. Here and elsewhere, the IPCC excluded work that suggested that the impacts of global warming were overstated, or which were critical of the costs of the policy favoured by the UN and activist groups of mitigation, rather than adaptation."
U.N. Climate Panel Looking at 'Second-Best Scenarios'
"Most of the costs are billions of dollars to shift from fossil fuels to clean energies such as wind or solar power. In some renewable energies, Edenhofer said there had been more technological progress than expected in the 2007 report.

He also said that new report would look at possible side-effects of combating global warming. Even harmless-sounding strategies, such as planting trees that soak up greenhouse gases, might have side-effects by displacing cropland."
Reforms urged for U.N. Climate Panel
"Scientists reviewing the acclaimed, but beleaguered, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommended major changes Monday in the way it is run but stopped short of calling for the ouster of its leader, Rajendra Pachauri. He has been criticized for possible conflicts of interest but shows no sign of preparing to step down."
Stick to the science, UN Climate body urged
"Panel must avoid predictions, policy advocacy"
[---]
"Senior officials at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have also been ordered to disclose their outside financial interests to avert any allegations they may have profited from policies to tackle global warming."
[---]
"Critics of the idea of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions have said the IPCC errors show the science behind global warming is questionable."
[---]
...there was concern about the UN climate panel's lack of a conflict-of-interest policy, as is standard in most government departments and international bodies.

The report called for development of a "rigorous conflict of interest policy" and made detailed suggestions on what should be disclosed. Mr. Pachauri has acted as an advisor to green energy companies.

Mr. Pachauri said the IPCC "will be strengthened by the [scientists'] review and others of its kind this year."

But Mr. Shapiro made clear the scientists' review did not assess the validity of the science behind the IPCC's reports, leaving open the possibility the panel could face a new wave of attacks from critics."
Time for a change in climate research
"Now it is time to implement fundamental reforms that would reduce the risk of bias and errors appearing in future IPCC assessments, increase transparency and open up the whole field of climate research to the widest possible range of scientific views.

Restoring public confidence in the IPCC is essential, because it is the main intermediary between scientists and politicians who have to decide on climate policies that could cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars. Given that most scientists believe in the need to tackle global warming, the IPCC cannot hope to satisfy the most extreme “climate sceptics”. But it must never again undermine its own credibility by sloppily repeating unsubstantiated statements that exaggerate the risk of climate change, such as the notorious claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035."
[---]
"A rejuvenated IPCC leadership could tackle the deficiencies in its review process. This should become more inclusive, welcoming alternative views where these are scientifically valid, and at the same time more exclusive, rejecting unsubstantiated claims of dramatic change."

And, lo and behold, the CBC actually reported this, getting right down to the nitty-gritty:
"It also suggested stronger enforcement of how it reviews its research and adoption of conflict of interest rules. The conflict of interest issue was raised because of criticism last year of chairman Pachauri's work as adviser and board member of green energy companies."
Yes, indeedy, that's where the big money is. Now, lets see some solid CBC investigative journalism tackling that angle.

...waiting...waiting...waiting

Perhaps the first step for CBC would be to fire Dr. Fruitfly and reprimand  Bob MacDonald, and perhaps develop a policy of its own on consistency with respect to "illegal" release of private emails:
"Conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers were in full force this week over the illegal release of thousands of private emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England".
If the leak is contrary to the CBC's narrative, it's gotta be the work of an "illegal" hacker, you see. On the other hand, if it feeds nicely into the narrative, why it's the work of a courageous whistle-blower.

Once again, CBC. How can you claim with a straight face that there is no bias at Grandmother's Corpse?

PS: Wouldn't it be nice to know what Dr. Fruitfly's investment portfolio includes? We know that one CBCer, George Stroumboulopoulos, sits on the Dr. Fruitfly Foundation's Board of Directors, not to mention the Fruitfly's own wife, Tara Cullis, and his daughter, Severn. I wonder if CBC has even heard of the concept of "conflict of interest", let alone understands it.

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Anybody Ever Hear CBC Refer to a Group of People...

...as far left?

Well, here's a challenge for ya', CBC. Describe this:



This is what was going on while Glenn Beck's "far right" rally was taking place. Just look at all those white faces at Sharpton's rally, listen to his inclusive rhetoric, then take a look at the person being interviewed at the 2:30 mark of the Reason TV's vid (at the "far left" link). I know you'll be ideologically challenged, but come on. You're supposed to be "balanced", aren't you? Let's see you rise to the challenge.

And by the way, you've supposedly had a third party looking into bias at the CBC. As I've said before, over and over again, it's not your coverage of the politics in Ottawa which is where the bias seeps in. It's in EVERYTHING that you choose to cover and EVERYTHING you choose to ignore.

ht for the vid to Flopping Aces

And speaking of Flopping Aces, take a look at this poll. CBC will be totally apoplectic.

And from the Democrat heartland: "Miss me yet?" Bush T-Shirts Outselling "I Vacationed With Obama" Ones

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The Skewering of CBC

I posted this more than a month ago, and I'm still getting hits - daily - from all over North America on that particular entry. It must be making the rounds. Either everybody loves to see Ayaan Hirsi Ali skewer a leftie or everybody loves seeing the CBC get its ass handed to it on a platter. Either way, as Martha Stewart would say, that's good thing.

I'd love to know who has been a participant on the chain of links.

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Monday, August 30, 2010

"Islamosophia"

Here's a better word for us to use. It means: "wise to the ways of Islam and no longer taken in by the pretty-sounding deceits."

We need to make this as common as Islamophobe.

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Playing the Numbers Game

UPDATED AGAIN AND BUMPED: Atlas Shrugs has dealt with the crowd size issue, too.  
 =============================
UPDATE: ABC says "hundreds of thousands".   So, CBC, are you ready to issue a correction now?
----------------------------------
CBC says "Beck's conservative rally" draws tens of thousands. CBS's estimate is about the same.
"Crowd estimates used to be provided by the National Park Service, but the agency stopped counting crowds in 1997 after being accused of underestimating the size of the Million Man March in 1995."
But Weazel Zippers provides evidence to the contrary.

To give credit where credit is due, though, NBC does a better job.

Of course, it is only natural (read: politically correct) to over estimate the numbers attending a rally of Black people and deprecate those attended primarily by pesky White people who use the word God enough times to make a leftard squirm. Don't you just love it when they shriek in horror and keep putting their feet in their mouths.

MSM, you are sooooo dead. You should take up something less risky, like Old Maid or Go Fish, or Solitaire.

Related, courtesy of Weazel Zippers:

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Sunday, August 29, 2010

The North West Passage Rises Again

Just a few days ago, I posted a vid of Stan Rogers singing The Northwest Passage.

Then today we have news of a passenger ship grounded on some rocks in the Northwest Passage, and low and behold, Stan Rogers' son is one of those passengers.

'To seek a Northwest Passage': Son of iconic folk singer Stan Rogers aboard grounded Arctic ship

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Friends of Canadian Broadcasting Needs Our Help

Over at Small Dead Animals, Kate has posted a screen shot of a portion of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (a CBC advocacy group) webpage in which the FCB is asking for suggestions on how to improve the CBC now that it's in search of a new manager. Naturally, I have things to say about CBC, so I clicked and found they had a form to fill out, with a place to type in all your contact information and a box to write your suggestions. All fields in the contact information were "required". They are promising to send the suggestions on the Hubert LaCroix, CBC's President, and to Stephen Harper. Here is what I suggested:
"There are only two ways CBC can be improved:

1) Dismantle it. Lay off the employees and sell off the assets.

2) Failing that, privatize it.

The thing is beyond redemption and has been for years. Acting as a propaganda agent for left wing causes is not an appropriate role for an organization funded by tax dollars.

Oh. And a note to Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. I'm rather curious why you ask for full name and contact information without the assurance that such information will not be shared with anyone else. Seeing as how I am not "friendly" to the idea of a public broadcaster, I have to wonder, will my information go into a special file, to be used at some future date? Seriously, folks. If you want to be considered a serious organization, why don't you act like one?"

I intend to send this to Stephen Harper myself, because I DO NOT believe for one minute, FCB will forward messages that are contrary to their goal.

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God, I Hope So!

Is Harper set to move against the CRTC?

I've never understood how a supposed democracy could survive with an agency that decides for us what we get to watch on TV.

Of course, the leftards of the world are always afraid of competing ideas. After all, if all you've ever been exposed to is rabid anti-Americanism from the CBC, and years of libtard policy development, you might not realize how Canadians got the reputation we have with some Americans. How many of you remember Chretien's infamous remarks in the days following 9/11, asshole that he was. Chretien's words did not go unnoticed, not even by many Canucks.

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Yup. The Arabs are Afraid of Iran

Jordon sees speed to Mideast talks
"'I don't think we should put a one-year target date,' Abdullah said in an interview with Israel's TV1 late on Saturday ahead of the direct talks being relaunched in Washington this week.

'I believe words coming out of the United States is within one year (for a two-state settlement). Why wait for one year? The longer we wait, the more we give people a chance to create violence,' he said."
[---]
"Abdullah warned the military dynamics in the Middle East had changed, with the Jewish state waging short wars on average every two years in the absence of a settlement with the Palestinians.

'Today the dynamics have changed. Conflict with Israel today is not necessarily to win against Israel but to survive. Therefore that opens the dynamics to a completely different threat towards Israel,' he said." [Ed: read Iran]
I always liked this guy, and his father, too. But I think Israel is going to have to make some very big concessions, and considering the history of these efforts, a blind leap of faith. I don't see that happening. It will take generations to erase the rabid anti-Semitism from the Muslim world's mindset, let alone the Arab psyche. A lot of heads could roll if their governments no longer have Israel to blame, whipping up excuses and promulgating hatred of the Joooooos for every ill and failure of their own making. And, what, pray tell, will all the world's leftards do? Rally 'round Iran, I suppose. What else is new?

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Don't Worry About Global Warming

...or global cooling, especially before you go to bed. It could take a few years...but that's all:

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Saturday, August 28, 2010

Back to the Long Form Census

Perhaps this is the real reason the Cons want to can it. After all, there seems to be a government grant for every silly cause in the country:



And for all those organizations dependent on government grant, well buck up:

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CBC Says...

...it's the "far right", but Reason TV has a different take, after actually talking to some of the people who were there:



"Reason" versus CBC. Is there any contest?

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Hey. It's Just the Mainstream Media

What'd ya expect?

Read the stuff at the bottom of the screenshot and the commentary below it.

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A Lesson for Janet Napolitano

Looks like our "system works and it works well."







Perhaps the RCMP can help you out with that Mexican border thingy you've got going down there. That's on your southern border, you know. In your home State.

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Waiting for the Peace Talks to Conclude...

...I presume.

190 antiaircraft missiles found in Sinai
"Egypt has prevented a shipment of antiaircraft missiles and explosives from entering Gaza. Security forces uncovered stores of ammunition in the northern Sinai Peninsula, probably intended to be smuggled into the Strip."
[---]
"The storage contained 100 antiaircraft missiles, which were meant to be smuggled into the Strip through a network of tunnels. Egyptian authorities also seized 90 antiaircraft rockets in another arms cache in the central city of al-Hasna.

Egyptian forces raided Rafah on its Egyptian side, as well as the town of Sheikh Zuwayid, where additional arsenals with explosives and automatic weapons were uncovered.

According to the report, one of the weapons cache contained 10 antitank demolition charges, which were also designated for the Gaza Strip."
Oh, those Gazans. Flotillas. Weapons arsenals. Everybody loves them. Even children and the UN.

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AGW Scaremongering Now More Thinly Veiled

Here's a new story just out today from the Vancouver Sun.

After thousands of years, Canada's 'majestic' ice shelves disintegrating

Note the heart tugging statements at the top of the story.
"disintegrating"

"Today the shelves are a tenth that size and could soon be erased completely from Canadian maps and relegated to a footnote in the history books."

"They're really unique, intriguing aspects of our Canadian landscape..."

"And they are disappearing."

"But once his expedition made it across the "long prairie-like swells" Peary marvelled in his journals at the size and uniqueness of shelves"

"Today only four small shelf remnants are left - covering less than 900 square kilometres. And the largest of the remaining ice shelves is cracking"

"It's looking really precarious..."

""The worst case scenario from the cracks that we can see is that we would lose the entire eastern part of the ice shelf."

"Scientists say the demise of the shelves is accelerating, but they have been shrinking for decades"
Then we start to see some inconvenient truths:
"In the 1940s and '60s, huge ice islands snapped off the Ellesmere's shelves - some hundreds of square kilometres in size. And an ice island that calved off in the early 1980s, dubbed "Hobson's Choice" was used as a floating research platform by scientists as it sailed around the Arctic."

"England and his colleagues say loss of Ward Hunt ice shelf would be 'without precedent in the last 5,500 years.'"
Hmmmm. What happened before 5,500 years ago? Would that be earlier in the inter-glacial era, as in closer to the time when almost all of North America was covered with ice? Nah, we don't need to go into that, do we?
"They dated driftwood on Ellesmere that come ashore before the western half of the Ward Hunt ice shelf formed, and found it's been there 5,500 years. Another team has pegged the age of other parts of the shelves at 3,000 years."
Well, I'll be darned. But don't let that stop you:
"All of which makes the shelves as old, if not older - and in England's mind, as much as a treasure - as the Egyptian pyramids."
Oh, the humanity.
"'They're old friends,' England says of the shelves.

And the demise of the shelves is yet more evidence that the Arctic and planet is warming. "And it behooves us to listen," he says."

Look, England, the pyramids are remarkable as a testament to human ingenuity. Five thousands years later, we still don't know for sure how they did it, but we do know that ancient Egypt was one of only a small handful of locations where human civilization developed independently of one another, marking the transition from our hunter-gatherer life to one of settlement and agriculture. But this is human time scales and humans have only been around a short time compared to the longevity of the earth.

If you want to talk ice sheets, and the waxing and waning thereof, human time scales won't do. Try talking in terms of billions of years. And as far as ice caps are concerned, remember that the Earth's poles have been covered with ice for only 20% of the time our planet has been whizzing around in space. This comparison to the Pyramids is just plain silly.

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Friday, August 27, 2010

Holy Pigs and Dogs

It's now up to eight of them.

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"The Fruits of True Piety...

...are souls of forbearance and loving kindness; the sort of souls that do not trample on their neighbour's broken hearts"

Does Islam suck?

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Thursday, August 26, 2010

A Rambling Post I'll Call "Ode to an Irishman and the North"

I once knew an Irishman who personified the best of the best Irish stereotypes. No one could drink like he could.

We once snuck in to the Irish Pavilion at Saskatoon's Folkfest - through the back door, of course. No need to pay to get in. After all, we were intent on drinking enough to more than pay for our night's entertainment. Unlike the rest of the pavilions, the place was invariably packed with barely standing room only. If you got in early enough in the evening you stayed. If you came too late, you were outta luck. Oddly enough, Folkfest's Irish Pavilion had it's liquor license rescinded only a few years later. Pity that.

A staunch defender of the Irish Republican Army, Mr. Burke spent his Canadian life teaching in schools in Northern Canada, stirring up revolutionary zeal amongst his charges. Amazingly, being of English extraction myself, we got along famously. Both being party animals, perhaps we were kindred souls. Must have been our common Celtic roots. Or at least, I like to think I have Celtic roots, although it may be Saxon.

Anyway, here's to you Lord Burke, wherever you are:





And while we're in to things Canadian and Celtic and in honour of Harper's Arctic sovereignty tour, here's a goody from Canada's most famous Celt, Stan Rogers:



Which is the segue to the rambling part.

It's ours, Yanks. We were there first. Look at the names of some of those islands, villages, rivers and straits: Victoria, Prince of Wales, Prince Patrick, Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth Islands, Somerset, King William, Baffin, Hudson (we even have a huge salt-water bay named after him and the voyage from which he never returned), Beaufort, Mackenzie, named after one of Canada's most famous explorers, Parry, Melville, and, although political correctness has erased the name from our atlases, alas, even Frobisher. These were Brits and they were there long before the Americans. Even the Russians beat you to Alaska, as I'm sure y'all know. I mean, haven't you noticed all those places on the map are pink. Canadian pink. Not to be confused with commie pink. Rather, it's the standard colour for lands belonging to the former British Commonwealth. We've been planting our flags there forever.

I mean we even very nearly came to blows with Denmark a few years back over a lonely, cold pile of rocks in the sea, but about the only thing that ensued was much hilarity. But as far as the Russians are concerned, that's a different matter. And we thought the Cold War was over.

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In Light of...

...this, perhaps it's time to dust off this old entry from American Thinker.

Canada's New Attitude
"One of the first things Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper did after the weekend arrests of 17 suspected Islamic terrorists in Ontario was to pick up the phone and thank President George W. Bush for American assistance in tying the alleged plot together.

That was most assuredly unlike the attitude of former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who tried to sooth and smooth Canadians fears after 9/11 by telling them since Canada was a 'multicultural society' they were safe from the threats of a terrorist attack. Or from the stance of Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin — Chretien's succesor and Harper's predecessor — who ignored Royal Canadian Mounted Police and security service urgings that the Tamil Tigers organization should be put on Canada's list of banned terrorist groups and instead attended at least one of their fundraising banquets in the hope of winning Tamil votes.

Since the Jan. 23 federal election in which Harper's Conservatives won a minority government there's a new attitude in Ottawa, Canada's capital, and it's simply not because one of the revelations from the round—up of the suspects by some 400 police and security officers was of a plot to storm the Parliament Buildings, capture the prime minister, and behead him.

That grisly revelation surely shook average Canadians — and politically may enhance Harper's standing — but the Conservatives had already started moving in far, far different directions than the previous Liberal administrations. The Tamil Tigers — involved in a civil war in Sri Lanka — are now on Canada's list of banned terrorist groups. Canada was one of the first, if not the first, nation to halt funding to the Palestinian Authority when it was taken over by the Hamas terrorist group. And, after more than a decade of either supporting anti—Israeli resolutions put forward in the United Nations by Arab sheikdoms and Third World nations or simply abstaining from voting, the Harper government has made it clear it regards Israel as an ally.

As for the U.S.A., Harper and his team signaled from Day One that the era when Chretien and Martin snubbed Washington at every touch and turn is over. The U.S. is, in Harper's words, Canada's closest and most important friend and trading partner. Coincidentally, Harper now ends his speeches with an American—like, 'God bless Canada.'

It's fair to say that after 13 years of Liberal rule under both Chretien and Martin a great many Canadians had become not only complacent, but smug, after being repeatedly informed by Chretien and Martin their nation from safe from terrorism."
Sheds some light on this, too.

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Barbarians

Aaahh, Poor Baby

Poor Julian.
""As a result of the case mishandling and the smear, there are currently millions of web pages with my name and 'raped' or 'rape' and over six million with 'sexual,'" Assange wrote to CNN.

"The damage they have caused me and WikiLeaks is enormous," Assange told the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet in an article published Thursday."
You forgot asshole.

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All I Can Say

...is we better be ready for a real war, when and if this happens.

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A Spoof is Usually Better

...than the real thing. And this one is actually kinda funny.
"Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq was first to her feet, joining a growing crowd preparing to the gentle beat of a drum.

Seconds later, Harper rose.

He accepted a pair of traditional cowhide and beaver fur gloves, and as the drumbeats picked up he shyly swayed and bounced."
Traditional cowhide gloves? Cowhide? In the Arctic????

Just think, it could be better than scrambling fighter jets, too.

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My Only Question Is

...if it's not survival of the fittest, what do we do with the Darwin Awards?

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Canada's Arctic and Harper's "Hidden Agenda"

Harper's tour of the Arctic continues today. Yesterday, they used a stopover in Churchill to announce the creation of an Arctic Research facility for the North. Weather permitting, the entourage will be in Resolute Bay and Inuvik today. It's been interesting to speculate on why this tour is taking place, aside, that is, from the reasons given in media reports.

First of all, although a rather wicked storm was blowing through Churchill when they were there, preventing them from making the most important announcement of the trip, so far, for me anyway, at the most logical place for said announcement to be made, Cambridge Bay. Harper and his entourage used the Churchill stop to announce the creation of an Arctic Climate Research Centre for Cambridge Bay, a community several hundreds of miles further north, on Victoria Island. Churchill is located just slightly below the 60th parallel, just slightly above 58 degrees North and slightly West of 94 degrees, while Cambridge Bay much further north, at 69 degrees North and 105 degrees West, and is solidly within the true Arctic Region, and there's not much in between other than the cold Arctic landscape, mostly tundra, permafrost and the Arctic Ocean.

The storm, however, became the most important part of the news, for some, being the subject of the very first paragraph. Note the reporter speaks to a Churchill resident of some 15 years who claims to have never seen a storm like this. Fifteen years??!! OOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo. Climate change.

Having been in Churchill myself many times during the early 1990s, I can attest to the fact that it's location on the shores of Hudson's Bay makes for some mighty fierce winds coming off that mighty large body of water. Try walking in town during a winter storm!!! I remember during one visit, a particularly vicious one was blowing through. I was killing time hanging out in a large community centre in the middle of town and decided to walk down to the Eskimo Museum, a walk of no more than three or four minutes. Holy Toledo!! IT. WAS. COLD!

But getting on to the issues at hand, what to make of Harper's hidden messages during this trip. About the Arctic Research Centre, it's going to focus on a range of issues, an important one being climate. So that leads us to conclude that he has a hidden agenda to actually find out what's changing and what's not changing. Oh, that dirty bastard.

And according to one report, the scientists won't be arriving until 2017, though. The facility has to be built first. Obviously, Harper hasn't heard the news that global warming is imminent and the science is settled and he obviously hasn't bought into the hysteria. But, but, but....we can't wait that long! Whatever are we to do???!!! Avast!! Throw him in jail!!!

The second big angle to the story is the military one. Harper announced the building of a new icebreaker to ply the Arctic waters and keep the shipping lanes open and the Coast Guard afloat. This is surely both a military and a sovereignty issue as much as it's a story about trade across the Northern Route. Indeed, during his stopover in Resolute today, he will be observing military operations. This may have been why the Ruskies chose to test the Arctic sovereignty thing and signal a hidden agenda of their own. I mean, come on! They only wanted to be part of the welcoming committee that meets Harper when he gets to Inuvik.
"Two CF-18 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept Russian bombers that came within 55 kilometres of Canada’s Arctic territory, just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepares to make a high-profile visit to the region.

The drama unfolded on Tuesday when two TU-95 Bear bombers, a massive four-engined aircraft, were detected approaching from the north.

Two CF-18 fighters were scrambled from their base in Cold Lake and visually identified the two aircraft about 222 km north of Inuvik, N.W.T. The two aircraft came within 55 kilometres of Canadian soil before turning around, shadowed by the fighter jets."
[---]
"In February, 2009, four Canadian and U.S. fighter jets were scrambled to meet a pair of Russian bomber planes flying on the edge of Canada’s Arctic airspace hours before President Barack Obama arrived in Ottawa for his first foreign visit

After that incident, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the Canadian fighters sent a strong signal to the Russians “that they should back off and stay out of our airspace.”

Harper said that incident was a real cause for concern that will not intimidate Canada but vowed to respond, saying, “We will defend our airspace.”

Russian officials however accused the Canadians of overreacting.

In July, CF-18s from Bagotville, Que., were scrambled to intercept a Russian patrol flying off the east coast.

This latest incident could be seen as provocative as well, with Harper due to arrive in the far north and almost 900 Canadian soldiers already in Resolute for their annual sovereignty exercise.

NORAD fighters intercept Russian bombers between 12 and 18 times a year."
I don't know about you, but I'm a bit disturbed that the Canadian jets had to travel all the way from Cold Lake, Alberta. That's nearly 2000 kilometres or 1,200 miles.

In any case, Harper's hidden agenda here is.....oh, I don't know. Maybe he's a war monger and he only wanted to set up a staged confrontation in order to scare Canadians into approving more expenditures on our military. Yes. That's it. Must be.

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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Canada's Last Best Hope

...for the continuing reign of political correctness may be about to just fizzle and wash away into the St. Lawrence River. The most politically incorrect mayoral candidate this country has seen in eons, maybe ever, is waaaaaay ahead in the polls. Not even Mel Lastman was so much of a rube. I'm not sure when the election is slated to take place, but OMG, being the centre of the universe and all that, would that ever send shock waves oscillating back and forth across this country for a long time to come. BRING. IT. ON!!

AAAANNNDDD, it might just be what Harper's crew in Ottawa needs to turn the corner and start leading like a conservative. Can you imagine the impact a Toronto sweep by a politically incorrect mayoral candidate will do to Iggy and Taliban Jack, both of whom represent Toronto ridings. And considering the politically incorrect stirrings coming out the La Belle Provence, with its recent stands against the forces of Islamofacism, a new day for this country may be dawning.

Oh, the prospects are delicious. Is it too much to be wished for that the long dark night of PC oppression in this country is about to have the ground beneath them washed away. Toronto, I may just love you once again. Please do the right thing.

PS: Do you think Harper's decision to hold the G20 meeting in downtown liberal effete-ville with the chaos that anyone could have predicted ensuing, may have been a deliberate calculation. After all, he does have a hidden agenda, doesn't he? Well, doesn't he!!

PPS: How, pray tell, is the CBC supposed to dig up dirt on this guy when it's all right out in the open? They must be shitting bricks, too, 'cause Lord knows, they've tried and tried and tried.

I mean, fer chris' sake. He's a football coach (at a Catholic high school for young men that emphases athletics) who allegedly had a physical confrontation with one of his players. What right does he have to run the city of the annointed! [Ed. Note: I don't know much about that particular school, but I do know that there are institutions across the country, indeed, across the world, with the name Bosco attached to them and their primary mission seems to be working with "troubled" youth.]

Any way, he reminds me a bit of this guy:



Take a stroll through the podcasts listed on CBC Toronto's website and tell me how much political correctness you find reflected there.

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Thank God Hitch Can Still Write

A test of tolerance
"As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational."
[---]
"From my window, I can see the beautiful minaret of the Washington, D.C., mosque on Massachusetts Avenue. It is situated at the heart of the capital city's diplomatic quarter, and it is where President Bush went immediately after 9/11 to make his gesture toward the "religion of peace." A short while ago, the wife of a new ambassador told me that she had been taking her dog for a walk when a bearded man accosted her and brusquely warned her not to take the animal so close to the sacred precincts."
[---]
"Another feature of my local mosque that I don't entirely like is the display of flags outside, purportedly showing all those nations that are already Muslim. Some of these flags are of countries like Malaysia, where Islam barely has a majority, or of Turkey, which still has a secular constitution. At the United Nations, the voting bloc of the Organization of the Islamic Conference nations is already proposing a resolution that would circumscribe any criticism of religion in general and of Islam in particular. So, before he is used by our State Department on any more goodwill missions overseas, I would like to see Imam Rauf asked a few searching questions about his support for clerical dictatorship in, just for now, Iran. Let us by all means make the "Ground Zero" debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well."
And what on earth is this Jewish Rabbi (a woman yet!!) doing getting all mushy and smiley about it?!?!



h/t Pelalusa

Related.

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Thinking About the Current State of Politics in This Country

...I am waxing nostalgically for the days of the Rhinoceros Party. They had some "honest" to goodness platforms in their policies.  I mean, what party promises to keep none of their promises?  Then there was the proposal to provide higher education by building taller schools, which was undoubtedly related to the promise to make illiteracy our third official language, and the one to replace the gold standard with the "snow" standard.

They were obviously out of touch with the more touchy-feely do gooders of the day, as they promised to abolish the environment because it was "too hard to keep clean and it took up so much space".  They would also have repealed the law of gravity. I mean, who needs that, anyway. They proposed annexing the United States in order to eliminate foreign control of Canada's natural resources, but not before counting the Thousand Islands to determine whether the Americans had stolen any.

They also proposed to turn Montreal's Saint Catherine Street into the world's longest bowling alley; to make the Canadian climate more temperate by tapping into the natural resource of hot air in Ottawa (but I think that has happened anyway). Indeed, some enterprising climate scientist should be applying for a grant to study its effects. It could be that elusive hot spot. I'm not sure if they thought that one through, though, as it seems to conflict with the idea of the "snow" standard.

They wanted to change Canada's currency to bubble gum, so it could be inflated or deflated at will and adopt the British system of driving on the left, phased in, of course, with large trucks and tractors first and small cars and bicycles last.

A splinter group in British Columbia proposed running a professional dominatrix for the position of party whip, renaming "British Columbia" to "La La Land", a euphemism which appears to have stuck, making it one of their more successful policy proposals.  They advocated merging with the Progressive Conservative Party so as "not to split the silly vote".  It seems that might have been one of their better ideas, though, as it is now being pursued by the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc.  My, how things change. Or maybe not. Politicos on the left side of the aisle are always stealing the best ideas from the Cons.

There was even an attempt by a Saskatoon member of the party to nominate his dog, but alas, Elections Canada would not allow it. They did, however, manage to nominate a professional clown/comedian named Sonia "chatouille" Cote in the Laurier riding in Montreal and she came in second in the subsequent election.

As recently as 2007, a Rhinoceros Party member using the fictitious name of  Sa Tan, filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the election rules that led to the disbanding of the Rhinoceros party, demanding $50 million in compensation. The lawsuit was filed under the name "Satan versus Her Majesty The Queen". According to news reports, it was a last-ditch effort to save the party from extinction. But alas and a "lack", there is no fun left in Canadian politics any more. (Heavy sigh.) Unless, of course, you take the Green Party at its face value.

Bring back the Rhinos!!!  As Peter O'Donnell says over at Jay Currie's blog: The tusk if before us.

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Can Another Hostage Taking Incident Be Far Behind?

Another Gitmo Detainee

...who returned to his old life has been nabbed.

How's that "misguided experiment" working out for you, Obama.

And another "how's that working out for you" in Spain. And Zapatero thought all he had to do was reverse Aznar's decision to go to war in Iraq.

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Monday, August 23, 2010

Doom and Gloom Predictions

A la 1970.

Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Stanford's Paul Ehrlich announces that the sky is falling."
More at the link. But I especially like this one:

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

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And Now, More For the "Sky is Falling"...

...Chicken Littles of the AGW religion:

12 More Glaciers That Haven't Heard the News About Global Warming
"The glaciers are melting! The glaciers are melting! The glaciers are…uhhhhh…never mind."
Let me see, now. Does this qualify as climate or is it just weather.

And another AGW scientist backs off.
"It's been an interesting year for climate scientist Judith Curry, who after Climategate split with most of her peers and called for reform in the climate science community. She did this most publicly via a letter published by Climate Audit, a noted skeptic web site. Curry called for more transparency in climate research.

Since that time progressive climate sites have begun to increasingly attack Curry."
That's right. Attack the messenger when you haven't got the science.
"Finally, a weather person has mentioned the word “blocking” when talking about the heat and fires in Moscow. It’s a natural event as the world shifts from the warming trend of the 1990s to a cooling trend since 2000. Distortion of reality about global temperatures continues with warming claims while Western North America, most of Eurasia and large areas of the southern hemisphere report below normal temperatures. It’s been the coldest summer on record north of 80°N latitude and rate of sea ice melt continues to decrease.

Recently the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency as hundreds of people died from the coldest temperatures in 50 years.

Fifty years ago there was a cooling trend as global temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980. It troubled promoters of human CO2 as the cause of global warming. During the cooling period, CO2 from human activity increased the most in human history. They tried to solve the problem by plugging variables into the models until results equaled what was happening. It has nothing to do with reality, but allows them to claim their models work because they recreate past conditions. It’s even better if the cause has a human source. In the 1940–80 cooling, they added sulfates. Trouble is sulfate additions continued but global temperatures began to rise.

Obsession with finding human causes means they ignore what we know about natural mechanisms. Failure to include natural mechanisms is complicated by lack of knowledge or understanding of weather and climate mechanisms by most involved in the politics of climate science."
And trust the Greens to keep flogging a failed strategy while stepping ever so closer to the multi-culti abyss.

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What to Do About the CBC - Part II

Earlier.

Now, from a comment of mine at Inside the CBC:

In another not so humble opinion of mine, the crux of the issue is that a publicly funded institution which is mandated to appeal to all its funders (taxpayers/citizens) is  trapped by a structural contradiction (pardon the commie speak).

Either you offer something throughout the day/week/year that will appeal to each and every demographic of every political persuasion, and in doing so only capture a small segment of the taxpaying citizenship at any hour/day of the week - or you pander to a selected portion of the demography.

Either way, you lose the support a significant portion of the population.

I think CBC has chosen the later - consciously or otherwise - perhaps through a steady but imperceptible drift to the left courtesy of Liberal Party appointees to the Board - with the occasional bone thrown at the rest of us.

The problem is magnified in this day and age by the exponential growth of alternatives now delivered globally across the Internet.

It's debatable whether CBC, as it's presently structured and oriented, can survive much longer living on the public teat. This is not 1936, the year CBC first went live on air. It's not even 1996 anymore.

A technological revolution has occurred in the past fifteen years akin to the revolutionary impact of Gutenberg's printing press. Such revolutions have far reaching, often unexpected consequences.

In Europe, the invention of the printing press led to the Reformation and ultimately to the Enlightenment. In today's world the consequences of such revolutionary technologies unfold very, very quickly. That's why we are witnessing a government in Washington trying to regulate and control the Internet. They don't like bloggers who criticize them or might blow the lid off another Dan Rathergate.

Whatever CBC's weekly "reach" is, the question of its value and viability in today's world is something we need to have a healthy debate about. CBC's Board and staff should be available to answer questions raised during such a debate, but it would be a clear violation of ethics and a conflict of interest it they were to attempt, openly or surreptitiously, to sway the debate.

And as far as contracting with a third party to examine the issue, only if that third party consults widely and openly with the Canadian public will it's conclusions be considered valid.

Oh, and about this:

"but the raw data is there. it’s not a Mann graph."

...may I remind you, Mann used raw data to produce the hockey stick graph.  The problem was not so much in the data, but in the statistical computer program used to produce the graph. As Steve McIntyre proved, one can feed any old random bunch of numbers into the program and it comes up with a hockey stick.

Consequently, Mann's interpretation of the meaning of the graph was erroneous, although it took several years for the IPCC to quietly dispose of it to the back pages in their annual reports and eventually drop it altogether.

So, Paul, in answer to your question:

" Would it help if I conducted a real analysis over several months, pieced apart hundreds if not thousands of news stories, compared them to the CTV and Global and then backed that all up with some rigorous professional integrity and legitimacy in doing that sort of analysis?"

...and without meaning to be personally disrespectful in any way to you, the answer is a loud unqualified NO! And as I've already said on one of these threads, it's not just CBC's news function that is biased.

Any by the way, did any of your science guys report on the fallacy perpetrated by Mann's hockey stick graph?

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Sunday, August 22, 2010

Al Jazeera Helps Us Out

...with a decidedly negative spin about our immigration and refugee issues, particularly the recent arrival of a boatload of Tamils. I'm reasonably certain former CBCer, Tony Burman, who is now with Al Jazeera, approves of this message:

A hardening of the Canadian heart

The author, one George Abraham, is very likely a Canadian and from the capital "L" Liberal-left side of the aisle, at that. Who else would refer to his fellow countrymen as "more than happy to toe the piper's (Stephen Harper) line", when it is in fact Harper who is responding to long-standing concerns of rank and file Canadians.

He says "But, Canada - which has a reputation for taking in more of the persecuted and oppressed than almost any other refugee-accepting nation - has not so far chosen to abandon its humanitarian impulse", which can be read to mean we've "not yet abandoned the Liberal Party legacy, thank God!" However, it's obvious Abraham betrays a fear that "Trudeau Liberalism" is being eroded.

He engages in flights of fancy, for instance: "There resides in the minds of many Canadians the rather far-fetched idea that the Tamils may set up a government-in-exile in Toronto, which is already home to most of the 400,000-strong diaspora living in Canada" and dismisses one Canadian's opinion - "We do not want our country to become a patsy for those want (sic) to 'jump the queue' to become landed immigrants" as "ignorant".

All told, it is classic bleeding heart capital "L" Liberal perspective and it's good to see it on a website published in a news organ that reaches a large Asian and Middle Eastern audience. It signals to the world, that Canada is not the bastion of politically correct liberalism the left likes to present it as.  Thank you Mr. Abraham.

PS: Another article whose author detects the same thing, the end of Trudeaupeanism in Canada:
"As a public policy, "compassion" is nearly always a fraud; and I have inserted the word "nearly" only in case I think of an exception after filing this column. I can't think of one now."
[---]
"For the Liberals, the sham of "compassion" extended to fundraising events with their goons, and the settled party understanding that any large, fairly desperate, and culturally exotic pool of welfare-propending immigrants will make reliable Liberal voting fodder. Hence side-splitting expostulations of compassion."
And another:
"First, it’s important not to paint all immigrants with the same brush. Second, we have to recognize that we have an immigration system that penalizes the honest applicants and favours the crooks. Third, we need to address the fact that the entire immigration sector has become a huge business where compassion and fairness have been replaced by greed and expediency.

Canadians want to help, but they don’t want to be used and abused by unscrupulous international pirates and local gutless politicians." (emphasis added)
[---]
"The problem is not with thousands of honest and hard-working people who want to come to this country to create a new life for themselves and their families, and it’s not even with hundreds of criminals who cheat the system by hiding behind real refugees. The real abusers are our politicians whose only interest is to take advantage of the patience and good hearts of Canadians to advance their political ambitions, and some unscrupulous lawyers and consultants whose only aim is to make money by exploiting the misery of people around the world.


I’m surprised that only 63 per cent of Canadians are saying they’ve had enough of this." (emphasis added)
Who would have thought, eh? Those poor Tamils huddled in detainment centres out on the British Columbian coast, have sparked a debate that strengthens the Conservative side of the aisle and emits signals that capital "L" liberalism in Canada, at least as it's been known for a half century or more, may be almost dead.

For the record, I do hope the majority of those Tamils are accepted and that the vetting process we're putting them through is up to the job of weeding out the undesirables. Either way, we need a massive, deep rethink and overhaul of our immigration and refugee policy and Harper's Conservatives seem to be the only party with the balls to admit it.

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Saturday, August 21, 2010

Sweden Caves - Assange Still Creepy

UPDATE: This is really funny.  I check out my sitemeter report at least once a day, if I can.  This morning there was some dude/dudette from Greece who had used the keywords "why is julian assange so creepy" in Google who showed up. I guess I'm not alone.
---------------------------------
...withdraws rape charges against Julian Assange.

Doesn't make him any less creepy, though.
"Swedish media, citing unnamed sources, reported that two women, ages 20 and 30, took the allegations against Assange to police Friday, leading to the warrant issued by the first prosecutor. The AftonBladet, a respected Swedish daily, said the 30-year-old woman told the newspaper that the younger woman approached her with a story similar to hers -- that she had consensual sex with Assange but that the situation had turned abusive."
We've heard about these types many times before. Some of them chop up their victims and dispose of them in plastic bags or concrete.

Characteristics of a Psychopath


"..superficial charm, self-centered & self-important, need for stimulation & prone to boredom, deceptive behavior; lying, conning; manipulative, little remorse or guilt, shallow emotional response, callous with a lack of empathy, living off others; predatory, poor self-control, promiscuous sexual behavior, early behavioral problems, lack of realistic long term goals, impulsive lifestyle, irresponsible behavior, blaming others for their actions, short term relationships, juvenile delinquency, breaking parole or probation, varied criminal activity,..."
Keeper of Secrets
"The former teenage hacker from Melbourne, whose mystique as an internet subversive, a resourceful loner with no fixed address, travelling constantly between countries with laptop and backpack, constitutes what you might call Assange's romantic appeal. But then there is the flip side: a man who believes in extreme transparency, but evades and obfuscates when it comes to talking about himself in the rare interviews that he gives - which are hardly ever face to face."
[---]
"As we shake hands, he inclines his head slightly in a courtly, old-world manner, at odds with his youthful, student-traveller looks. When I remark that there's a lot to ask him, he replies: ''That's all right - I'm not going to answer half of it.''

Is Assange his real name? Yes, he replies, then says it's the name in his passport. ''What's in a name?'' he then adds mysteriously, casting doubt on his first answer."
[--]
"Living permanently in a state of exile, means that a person might always have the sharp eye of the outsider, I suggest.

''The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives you, I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see the structure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a sense of mental independence,'' replies Assange.

''You're not swept up in the trivialities of a nation. You can concentrate on the serious matters. Australia is a bit of a political wasteland. That's OK, as long as people recognise that. As long as people recognise that Australia is a suburb of a country called Anglo-Saxon.''"
[---]
"At one point, thinking about some of the material leaked on WikiLeaks, I ask him how he defines national security.

''We don't,'' he says crisply. ''We're not interested in that. We're interested in justice. We are a super-national organisation. So we're not interested in national security.''

How does he justify keeping his own life as private as possible, considering that he believes in extreme transparency?

''I don't justify it,'' he says, with just a hint of mischievousness. ''No one has sent us any official documents that were not published previously on me. Should they do so, and they meet our editorial criteria, we will publish them.''"
Published on me? Psychopath, anyone?  The man's childhood is the classic background of a messed up kid driven by his pathology to take his revenge out on the world. Read the whole thing and make up your own mind. As for me, he reminds me a little of Carlos, the Jackal. And like the Jackal, someday they may get him.

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Two New Entries on My Blogroll

Check them out. They are:

Outremer United, under European. (I think it's Brit, but I haven't been able to confirm that yet. I'll move it to the proper place if and when I find out that's not the correct place for it.) In any case, it seems to be a place for the great unwashed, the common folk of the once "Great" Britain, which is sure to drive the lefties over the edge.

Flopping Aces under the American list. I linked to Flopping Aces earlier.

And Canadian blogger The Iceman has thrown in the towel as a result of losing his job thanks to Gordon Campbell's HST. I'll leave his blog there for a while, in case anyone wants to take a stroll through it. And, though I didn't have him on the blogroll, another great Canadian blogger, The Torch, has pulled the plug. The good ones always die young. Good thing I'm bad. The proprietor of The Torch shows up guest blogging at other places, though, such as Unambiguously Ambidextrous and SDA. And speaking of Unambig, he's taking the plunge into professional journalism. The world needs more journalists like him. You know. The honest kind. The ones who are not afraid to call a spade and spade. Good luck, Adrian and Godspeed!

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The Face of Islamofascism

Another Ground Zero perspective.



h/t: Anti-Mullah

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This Just About Says It All

The Guy is Creepier...

...than originally thought.

Wikileaks founder accused of rape
Assange said: "The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing."
Awwwe. Poor baby. We dish it out but we can't take it.

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They're Serious

They won't build it: Hardhats vow not to work on controversial Mosque near Ground Zero

That and more from Flopping Aces. Be sure to listen to the audio at the bottom of the second Flopping Aces' link.

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Friday, August 20, 2010

The "Catastropic" Global Cooling Scare

From Newsweek, April 25, 1975

At least they weren't blaming it on humans.

And more on the modern warming "consensus":

Japanese scientists cool on theories
"Dr Maruyama said many scientists were doubtful about man-made climate-change theory, but did not want to risk their funding from the government or bad publicity from the mass media, which he said was leading society in the wrong direction."
Again, emphasis mine.

Climate 'Skeptics' Reveal horror stories of Scientific Suppression
"...a Canadian survey of scientists released on March 6, 2008 offered even more evidence that the alleged ‘consensus’ is non-existent. A canvass of more than 51,000 scientists with the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) found 68% of them disagree with the statement that ‘the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.'" According to the survey, only 26% of scientists attributed global warming to “human activity like burning fossil fuels.” APEGGA’s executive director Neil Windsor said, “We're not surprised at all. There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of.""
And from the The International Geological Congress, held in Oslo, Norway, from August 4-14.
"During the Geologic conference, Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia of the Center of Advanced Study in Geology at Punjab University and a visiting scholar of the Geology Department at University of Cincinnati, openly ridiculed former Vice President Al Gore and the UN IPCC's coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

"I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists," Ahluwalia, a fellow of the Geological Society of India, said during a question and answer panel discussion."
Video from the conference here.

Dr. William Happer's testimony before Congress in February, 2009 [emphasis mine]:
"But what about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated. Let me turn now to the science and try to explain why I and many scientists like me are not alarmed by increasing levels of CO2.

The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds.
Since most of the greenhouse effect for the earth is due to water vapor and clouds, added CO2 must substantially increase water’s contribution to lead to the frightening scenarios that are bandied about. The buzz word here is that there is “positive feedback.” With each passing year, experimental observations further undermine the claim of a large positive feedback from water. In fact, observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative. That is, water vapor and clouds may actually diminish the already small global warming expected from CO2, not amplify it.
[---]
"But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing. Doesn’t this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels."

And here's a lovely graph showing record temperatures that were broken in July 2009:

Update on record lows - highs - rain status

Note the circle chart showing the number of record low temperatures in July 2009 (over 3000 of them) outnumber the record high temperatures by almost two to one.

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I See the Disciples of Saint George

 UPPERDATE: EDL sings God Save the Queen while holding the Israeli flag.




UPDATE: Yup.  Chucky-poo just did it.  Off with his head.  Long live King Harry!
------------------------




Saint George's Cross




..are in a fighting mood.




Helped on with a few pints of England's finest beverage.

"Fight, fight, in heaven or hell, we are the boys from the EDL, we'll fight Islam, in Heaven or hell, cos we are the boys from the EDL"

Give 'm hell, boys.

(I wonder if Islam's apologist, and future King Charles III, will be beheaded, as his namesake ancestor was?)

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What's That Old Saying?

Oh Dear

...Things are not looking good for Canada's darling Omar Khadr. Too bad the al Qaeda manual instructing their devotees to complain they were tortured was uncovered. Have to think of something else, I guess.

They're not looking good for the Liberals, either.

Iggy's summer tour a flop: poll

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Plimer - Chapter 3 - THE SUN

Earlier.

As promised, here are some more gems from Ian Plimer:

"The Sun is the primary driving force of climate. The Sun provides Earth with a staggering amount of energy. It drives weather, ocean currents and evaporation and provides the energy for life on Earth. The Sun also prevents the oceans freezing or boiling.

Global warming occurs on other planets and moons in our Solar System. It cannot be related to human emissions of CO2 on Earth. Planets orbiting stars outside our Solar System also show global warming resulting from orbital variations and changes in energy emitted from the parent star.

Very slight changes in solar energy output have a profound effect on the Earth's climate. An energetic Sun blasts away cosmic radiation, there is less low-level cloud, and the planet reflects less energy back into space. The surface clouds which reflect energy back into space and the surface of Earth cools. This phenomenon has been calculated and validated by experiments and observations. Clouds are the engine of weather. The Earth also has a variable flux of galactic cosmic rays.

Candidates for climate drivers are the variable Sun (solar driver), planetary perturbations (Malankovitch forcing) and variable cosmic ray flux (comic ray forcing). The effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere piggy-backs on the principal drivers of climate and may amplify changes.

The solar driving and comic ray forcing of climate are seen globally on geological, arhaeological, historical and modern time scales. The solar cycles of 11, 22, 87, 210 and 1500 years have been detected in ice sheets, ice melting, floods, droughts, lake sediments, deep sea sediments, cave deposits, boreholes, tree rings, pollen, peat and floating organisms in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. There is no relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature over time.

The 23 climate models of the IPCC ignore or minimise the role of the Sun. All the models failed to predict cooling in the early 21st Century. None of the models predicted El Nino-La Nina events which transfer huge amounts of energy around the planet's surface." (pg. 100-101)
And another:
"Every second [emphasis mine], the Sun delivers to Earth the total amount of energy released by an earthquake of Richter magnitude 8. The amount of energy humans use annually is deliver from the Sun to Earth in one hour. The known recoverable resource of oil contains the energy that the Sun delivers to the Earth in 36 hours." (pg. 101) [emphasis mine]
Dr. Fruitfly should stick to genetics and leave the earth sciences to earth scientists.
"We are all very much aware that it is hotter in the blazing sunshine than when there is cloud cover. We also know that in the humid tropics, summer air temperature is much lower than in deserts at higher latitudes where the air is dry. The maximum temperatures recorded on Earth are in deserts at mid latitudes, not in the tropics." (pg. 101)
Saskboy should take note. When CO2 concentrations are high, plant life flourishes.

To go on:
"We also know that in the humid winter tropical night is far warmer than a winter night in the dry desert at the same latitude. How many of us have camped out in the desert, frying during the day and freezing at night because because of the dry air and lack of cloud cover? It is clear that clouds and humidity combined with the energy emitted by the Sun affect air temperature. Clouds reflect radiated heat from the Sun back into space. This causes the planet to cool. It was thought that clouds were caused by climate change but measurements, calculations and experiments now show that cosmic radiation forms clouds. Clouds are one of the major drivers of climate change." (pg. 101)

"However, there are other external influences that affect climate on the Earth. These are the passage of the Solar System through our galaxy. This results in Earth acquiring variable amounts of space junk (mainly dust) and being bombarded by variable amounts of galactic cosmic rays from supernova explosions." (pg. 101)
There is a lot of highly technical information in Chapter 3 of Plimer's book, but I'll quote just four of them, for the scientifically-handicapped easily-exploited dupes among us:
"Meteors buzz around in space before they fall to Earth. When in space they are bombarded by cosmic rays which create new radioactive isotopes in the meteor. Titanium 44 (Ti44) is one of these isotopes. The beauty of this technique is that the Ti44 formed in space is unaffected by processes that occurred on Earth. By measuring the amount of Ti44 in meteorites that have fallen to Earth over the last 240 years, the cosmic ray activity was plotted against solar activity and it was shown that the Sun's activity has increased over the last 100 years." (pg. 111)
"The number of cosmic particles hitting Earth changes with the changing magnetic activity of the Sun. The Sun operates as a cosmic gatekeeper blasting away the cosmic rays with solar particles and providing a shielding magnetic field through which most cosmic rays cannot penetrate. During periods of high solar activity, the cosmic particles are blasted away, less low-level clouds form and there is global warming." (page 112)
And:
"The solar constant, the energy coming from the Sun, is not a constant. Satellite measures since 1979 and sunspot activity show that the solar constant is not constant. The IPCC claims that the variation in the solar constant is less than 0.1% and concludes that it has no impact on climate compared to the effect of CO2. This claim is misleading because the 0.1% variation does not refer to the complete difference between the maximum and minimum. If this is considered, the variation is 0.22%. Changes over long periods may be three to five times the measured variation. Furthermore, a very slight variation in any complex multicomponent system can have a profound effect. The seven-year solar constant variation of 0.22% equates to surface temperature variation on Earth of 0.45 degrees C. Any temperature increase at the Earth's surface may be purely due to solar changes.

Total solar irradiance reconstructed for the period 1900-1980 and two different satellite composites (ACRIM and PMOD) that measured total solar irradiance can be used to show 20th Century climate histories. By these methods it was calculated that the Sun contributed to some 46-49% of the global warming of the Earth and, considering that there are uncertainties of 20-30%, the Sun may have been responsible for as much as 60% of the 20th Century temperature increase.

The climate modelling community has vastly underestimated the role of the Sun. The energy balance models they use produce estimates of solar-induces warming over this period that are two to ten times lower than was actually found." (pg. 122)[emphasis mine]
And the killer:
"Over geological time, there is no observed relationship between global climate and atmospheric CO2.  At times, CO2 was up to 25 times higher than at present.  At times, temperature was up to 10 degrees C higher than at present.  There were times when both temperature and CO2 were high and there were times when temperature was high and the atmospheric CO2 was low. [emphasis mine]

The time scale is not accurate enough over geological time to determine whether temperature drove the increase in DO2, as is seen from ice cores covering the last 800,000 years.  Even in modern times, there is no relationship between temperature and CO2 yet a close relationship between temperature and solar activity. The obvious question arises: If climate is unrelated to atmospheric CO2 over the last 545 Ma [Ed: million years], then how can today's climate be related to atmospheric CO2?" (pg. 130)

Stay tuned. Chapter 4 is up next.

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