I think that this should be a required tutorial for anyone, especially media personalities, before they are allowed to discuss anthropomorphic global warming (now often simply called ‘climate change’ - because it turns out the earth wasn’t warming like they thought.)

The reason that this should be required is because it is a widely held view that all scientist are in agreement that man is responsible for causing drastic, dangerous, and irreparable damage to the earths climate.

This just isn’t the case.

Here are five tests concerning the hypothesis that there is “dangerous human-caused global warming” occurring - presented by Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia:

1. Has global temperature warmed over the last few years?
2. Is today’s global temperature unnaturally high?
3. Does CO2 output correlate with temperature change?
4. Does CO2 lead or lag temperature change?
5. Does the pattern of temperature change match theoretical predictions of greenhouse warming?

Video responses to these questions follows:

Original videos moved. Here are the four parts from a different lecture (same guy) that also answer the 5 questions above. Just listen to them if you cannot watch.

Do these tests definitely prove there is no such thing as anthropomorphic global warming? No. But they at least present a fairly strong argument that there isn’t a scientific consensus. In other words, the science is not ‘closed.‘

Note that this is not an argument against conserving energy and being less wasteful. I think those are great things. However - I strongly oppose being forced to do something by the government based on junk science. 

I’ve posted much about this topic. Here are some links. I am not, in any way, asking you to 100% agree. But please at least consider these arguments:

• Science Cannot Be Closed. UPDATE: Video Rebuttal Added
• Gore Strikes Back - Plus: Am I Prophetic?
• Al Gore : The Secular Savior
• Practical Environment Solutions

[ht:nb]

I love ‘teh’…

Greenland Global Warming trek snowed out…

South African snow adventurer Correne Erasmus-Coetzer has been forced to abandon her dream of becoming the first African woman to cross the icy continent of Greenland on foot.

The dream came to an end this week when the expedition of nine men and women came up against a ferocious wind and snow storm, and rapidly dwindling food supplies, as they approached the quarter-way mark of their 550km slog from the east to west coast of Greenland, across the Arctic Circle.

Erasmus-Coetzer was hoping to create awareness about global warming and raise money for the Durban-based Wilderness Leadership School.

source

Apparently by lumping all of their Awareness Points into the Global Warming Belief skill, they neglected to upgrade their Arctic Coldness and Common Sense abilities.

Continued…

Erasmus-Coetzer said the conditions in Greenland were worse than anything she had experienced during previous expeditions to the North and the South Poles.

It was a bit like “walking in milk” she said, explaining that the sky was full of snow and this made it impossible to distinguish between the horizon and the sky.

Christopher Hitchens explains the importance of Iraq clearly and effectively.

Hitchens, Hewitt, Obama & Iraq

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The problem with BioFuels and Ethanol:

Allow me to re-print this Steyn Quote:

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.

[...]

Whether or not there’s very slight global cooling or very slight global warming, there’s no need for a “war” on either, no rationale for loosing a plague of eco-locusts on the food supply. So why be surprised that totalitarian solutions to mythical problems wind up causing real devastation? As for Time’s tree, by all means put it up: It helps block out the view of starving peasants on the far horizon.

-Mark Steyn

I wrote a much lengthier post about this quite a while back (long before people were talking about food shortages) called Green Conservatism. Please read it. We need to come up with realistic practical solutions to our energy problems. 

I guess shrieking and throwing tantrums like a bunch of whiny babies just wasn’t getting the job done.

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley’s controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center.

The women’s anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for “Witches, clowns and sirens day,” the last of the group’s weeklong homage to Mother’s Day.

“Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we’re going to end war,” Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FOXNews.com.

source

History of the Wilhelm

And a compilation of Wilhelms in case you missed them:

It’s that time of year again when the oil companies report their profits and everyone throws a fit. I admit, my own initial reaction to hearing about high profits is negative. But logical decisions and understanding are not based on gut reactions and emotional perceptions. Here is a great article from Investors Business Daily that adds some clarity to the role that profits play in supply side economics (I have added emphasis for skimmers):

Profits Of Doom?

Profits: Exxon Mobil’s first-quarter earnings of $10.9 billion, up 17% from a year earlier, are stirring outrage in Washington. Some are calling such profits “obscene.” What a sad lack of understanding of economics.

Case in point: Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Like her rival, Barack Obama, she’s pushing a massive “windfall profit” tax on those “greedy” oil companies. “There is something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon’s record $11 billion in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street,” Clinton said Thursday. “This is truly Dick Cheney’s wonderland.”
No, what’s seriously wrong is that politicians such as Clinton can cynically manipulate public opinion to enact disastrous policies.

Indeed, rather than be upset at Exxon’s profits, Americans should be thrilled — and angry at a Congress that doesn’t seem to want to encourage the oil industry to make even more.
Our free-market economy is built on profit. Higher profits mean more jobs, higher incomes, more investment in equipment and people, higher standards of living. Yes, profits are the engine for all of this — and that includes the profits of “Big Oil.”

By signaling that supply is scarce, higher profits encourage more production. Except, that is, when Congress through its inept lawmaking stands in the way. And that’s the case now with the oil industry.

Congress seems almost constantly at war with the oil companies — slapping them with taxes and pillorying their CEOs while ignoring the fact that higher profits lead to more exploration, drilling and development.

If anyone is to blame for our current energy mess, it’s Congress. At least 20 billion barrels of oil sit untapped in Alaska and another 30 billion lie offshore. Such sources that could help satisfy U.S. demand for years to come. Yet, Congress has put them out of bounds.
Instead, Congress scapegoats oil profits. In reality, according to Ernst & Young, from 1992 to 2006 the U.S. oil industry spent $1.25 trillion on long-term investment vs. profits of $900 billion.

Truth is, oil industry profits are in line with the rest of American industry. In 2007, a record year, they earned 8.3 cents per dollar of sales. Beverage companies and cigarette makers, by contrast, earned 19.1 cents. Drug makers, 18.4 cents. Indeed, all manufacturers, 8.9 cents on average, made more than “Big Oil.”

Besides, we’ve tried windfall profits taxes before, in the early 1980s, and they were an utter failure. As the Congressional Research Service found, revenues produced for the government were nearly 75% below what was expected. Meanwhile, domestic oil output fell 8%, while oil imports surged 16%.

That’s just poor policy, and even worse economics.

Remember: Oil companies don’t really pay “windfall profit” taxes, anyway. You do. Some 50 million Americans today own oil company stock, either directly or through 401(k)s and mutual funds. Don’t be suckered: “Windfall profits” taxes come right out of your retirement account, not out of the oil industry’s business.

Oh sure, Big Oil’s profits are up. But so are the taxes they pay. In 2006, that came to $90 billion — up 334% in just four years.

This is how Clinton-style populism works. It starts with ignorance and ends with serious damage to our economy.

Oil prices aren’t high because profits are up; they’re high because we don’t have enough oil. By clamping down on drilling, refusing to move forward on nuclear energy and hitting producers with punitive taxes, Congress is doing all it can to ensure we don’t have enough in the future.

Awesome… http://englishfail.wordpress.com

Here are some samples:

You can read more about Anus Burger’s here.

My dear friends on the left, this is the chairman of your party, Howard Dean:

Recently Dean has been passing around this:

John McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years. He’s said it, and it’s on tape.
But his campaign hates that he was caught. They’ve viciously attacked anyone who reminded the American people that he said it, including me. They’ve said that those who reference the 100 years comments are “deliberately misleading voters.”

So we’ve taken John McCain’s own words — video of him saying that 100 years would be “fine with me” — and made a TV ad. There’s no confusion, no distortion, no misleading — it’s John McCain, on tape, for voters to judge on their own.
It’s one of the most powerful political ads I’ve ever seen. It’s devastating — and the McCain campaign will spend the rest of the election trying to fight it.

My friends, I have commented about this before (here and here), and it is an outright lie. If DNC Chairman Howard Dean is concerned about “deliberately misleading voters,” why doesn’t he play the whole quote from John McCain? Here is video of what John McCain said:

“Make it a hundred”

“We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.”

“It’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world.”

Hello? Does that equal wanting 100 years of war in Iraq? Only if you have no clue what we are doing in Japan, South Korea, etc… Or of course - if you just totally ignore that part of his statement. Charles Krauthammer illuminates the following folks who have done just that:

• “He (McCain) says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq” (Barack Obama, Feb. 19)

• “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years” (Obama, Feb. 26)

• “He’s (McCain) willing to keep this war going for 100 years” (Hillary Clinton, March 17).

• “What date between now and the election in November will he (McCain) drop this promise of a 100-year war in Iraq?” (Chris Matthews, March 4)

• Why, even a CNN anchor (Rick Sanchez) buys it: “John McCain is telling us … that we need to win even if it takes 100 years” (March 16). “

As Lenin is said to have said: “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” And as this lie passes into truth, the Democrats are ready to deploy it “as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain’s national security credentials against him,” reports David Paul Kuhn of the Politico.

Hence: A Howard Dean fundraising letter charging McCain with seeking “an endless war in Iraq.” And a Democratic National Committee press release in which Dean asserts: “McCain’s strategy is a war without end. . . . Elect John McCain and get 100 years in Iraq.

[...]

The Democrats are undeterred. “It’s seldom you get such a clean shot,” a senior Obama adviser told the Politico. It’s seldom that you see such a dirty lie.

Even The New Republic has a piece on this:

Howard Dean whines that he’s been “viciously attacked.” Cry me a river. He deserves whatever he’s getting for his dishonest and cynical pandering to unadulterated isolationist sentiment (which is becoming quite a trend in the Democratic Party; remember John Kerry’s disgraceful “opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America” remark in his 2004 acceptance speech). Of course, Iraq may never become the place where “Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed,” in which case keeping American troops there may not be in our best interest. But McCain never said he supported keeping American soldiers in harm’s way for “100 years.” In fact, he explicitly warned against it. Howard Dean, Barack Obama and any semi-sentient person who bothered to spend 30 seconds listening to McCain’s answer knows what he meant.

So here is my question to my dear friends on the left (and I really mean this, as some of my best friends are totally rational people and center left politically) - What do you think of this? Remember - this isn’t some random gaffe from a nobody- these are the leaders of your party and presidential contenders. Ultimately, do you agree with the positions of the democratic party leadership? The reason I ask, is because - at least, as far as my friends on the left go - I don’t actually believe that you do.

Here are 23 questions about currently held liberal positions: Are You A Liberal?

I used to lean left politically too - but once I actually discovered where the left actually stood on issues (even more importantly - once I really learned where conservative philosophy stood) I realized that I held conservative values.

I have no problem with people questioning whether or not McCain’s idea is good on the merits of it’s full context. (aka. maintaining a military presence similar to Japan and N. Korea.) But the Democratic leadership are not doing this, and instead, are distorting what McCain clearly said.