Climate Change Fraud Uncovered

Usually when proprietary data is stolen and published, it is the left attempting to discredit the right. One of the reasons for this is the far left bias of most of the press. But in the last decade a combination of the blogosphere, talk radio, and fox news have broken the strangle hold that the left had on the news. This means that stories that would have been ignored in the past get to see the light of day. And it has happened again.

A hundred odd megabytes of emails and files from one of the centers of man made global warming "research" were stolen and published on the web. The contents are shocking, but not particularly surprising. They show that the people calling themselves climate scientists are actually just big government activists who will lie, cheat, and steal to show a single, biased, inaccurate point of view. Here is one of the many articles discussing the scandal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102186_pf.html

Bottom line, these jokers were caught cherry picking data, using mathematical trickery to provide misleading conclusions, threatening editors of scientific journals for publishing alternate points of view, destroying evidence called for by Freedom of Information Act requests, and generally conspiring to print conclusions not backed up by the data.

Deplorable.

Is the globe warming up? Well, it was for a while, but hasn't for the past decade. Has human activity been responsible for some of the warming that was occurring? Possibly, but the case certainly hasn't been made. Should humans work to reduce pollution? Of course. Do we know how much of a reduction it would take to have an impact on the climate? Clearly not. Have we even established the "best" temperature for human life on this planet? No, not really.

Perhaps, someday, we will have the computing power, programming expertise, and sufficient data collected to truly model our weather and climate. But we aren't there yet. And those guys know we aren't. To me, this scandal demonstrates that climate change legislation is a lot more about politics than science.

I'll believe in anthropogenic global warming when the people who are telling me about anthropogenic global warming start behaving like they believe in anthropogenic global warming.

Hairy

Exciting News from the European Union

This article was quite fascinating and delightful.

It discusses the first President of the European Union. Apparently Europeans don't get to vote for their president. After all, we can't have IMPORTANT positions decided by the LITTLE people. The whole democracy thing. So . . . . common. At last Europe can get back to being ruled by those born to the job.

Herman van Rompuy, a serenely uncontroversial, 63-year-old Belgian centrist, became the EU's first president, but the big winner was Baroness "Cathy" Ashton, an obscure New Labour quangocrat who landed the job of High Representative for Foreign Affairs. From the far corners of the couple's unruly new empire came an encouragingly harmonious chorus of: "Qui?" "Wer?" "Chi?" "Who?"

Ahh, the equivalent of the Secretary of State position for all of Europe. Someone supremely well qualified to lead, probably behind the string pulling Europe's power brokers.

Cathy's curriculum vitae is a spirit-sapping recitation of posts held and causes served, far from the rigours of the real world. Born in Lancashire, she has been a "vice chair" of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, founded an organisation to promote equality in the business world, and served as vice president of the National Council of One-Parent Families. Given a life peerage in 1999 by Tony Blair, she was sent to Brussels last year as a replacement for Peter Mandelson. Married to the former journalist Peter Kellner, now head of a polling organisation, she has two children and three stepchildren.

"Baroness Ashton is ideal for her new role," says Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party. "She has never had a proper job, and has never been elected to public office."

I also read down into the comments section and noticed some interesting observations.

And so we are reduced to the role of the people of the Soviet bloc back in the days of our struggle against totalitarian socialism.

Their role in the political process was not, as in democratic societies, to elect, remove, and hold accountable their leadership, but to READ IN THE NEWSPAPERS THE FOLLOWING DAY what the leadership had decided for them.

and

A very disturbing compromise. It is as clear as crystal that the franco-german axis has got the other 25 states by the balls. Shut UK up by choosing a Briton who does not have a clue about most things political. Satisfy the poor rest of the members by appointing as president somebody for whom certainly no traffic will stop even if he is on a pedestrian crossing. The next step will be to ensure that the economic and financial powerhouses of the EU on the Commission and at ECB will be manned by faithful french and german bankers and politicians. That is the Lisbon treaty for the rest of us.

I know that a lot of progressives think we should be more like europe, and aspire to european governance. Stuff like this shows me just how wrong they are, and lead me further in my belief of American exceptionalism.

Hairy

On the use of the word "terrorism".

So an Army Major named Hasan goes nutjob jihad and kills and maims a bunch of his fellow soldiers. Immediately the partisan divide opens. The left pretends that this is an entirely random act of madness. The right proclaims that the left are being a bunch of weenies, afraid to use the word terrorism. As well as engaging in the same kind of political correctness groupthink that allowed his bizarre behavior to be ignored.

One of the problems with this overall discussion is with the definition of terrorism. To me, terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians to intimidate a population into a particular kind of behavior.

When most people think of the word terrorism, they think about an organized group acting together to complete a plan. 9-11 is a perfect example of that. AQ did planning, fund raising, training, had secret communications and meetings, and executed a successful operation.

That's different from some guy going into his basement, grabbing all the guns he can find, screaming Allah Akbar, and shooting up the people around him.

Sure, there are problems with Muslim leaders preaching "kill the infidels", but they aren't specifically working with the psycho killer. They are just providing an environment that makes the behavior politically or theologically acceptable to some. The two kinds of terrorism are very different.

An organized group of terrorists opening fire on groups of civilians in different cities on the same day is organized terrorism.

Not so much for the Ft. Hood whack job.

I think equating the two does a disservice both to Islam and US Homeland security. It is reasonable to expect Homeland Security to stop an organized, coordinated attack. Not much you can do about a lone gunman attacking a soft target.

It is even questionable whether the Ft. Hood attack can even be considered terrorism. Hasan attacked a military target, not a civilian one.

While I agree Muslim leaders should be much more clear and vocal condemning both the attack and the voices who support the attack, I think it is also reasonable for the media to be restrained and clear about the use of the word "terrorism".

Hairy