EDITORIAL: Global warming’s ‘dirty laundry’ – Washington Times

EDITORIAL: Global warming’s ‘dirty laundry’ – Washington Times.

University of Virginia should disclose climate emails

Those who say man alone is responsible for overheating the planet frequently dismiss any role the sun might play. As can be seen in an ongoing freedom-of-information lawsuit leveled against the University of Virginia (UVA), sunshine is precisely what the heralds of climate catastrophe fear most of all.

The American Tradition Institute (ATI) is going after 12,000 emails sent or received by Michael E. Mann while he was on the staff of the publicly-funded university. Mr. Mann is famous for coming up with one of the “tricks” used to “hide the decline” in global temperatures. On Wednesday, ATI released a small selection of emails it hopes will convince a Prince William County judge that full disclosure of the rest is in the public interest.

In March 2003, for example, a trusted colleague of Mr. Mann’s emailed to find out how the UVA professor arrived at his conclusions. Mr. Mann admitted he was missing crucial data and “can’t seem to dig them up.” Though he was working on this project on the taxpayers’ dime, he provided the information for the researcher’s personal use only. “So please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first,” Mr. Mann wrote. “This is the sort of ‘dirty laundry’ one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things.”

David Schnare, a scientist and lawyer who runs ATI’s Environmental Law Center, said he was shocked that anyone claiming to be a scientist wouldn’t keep a detailed log of his research activities. “In science, there is no dirty laundry,” Mr. Schnare told The Washington Times. “Science progresses by proving to yourself that you were wrong, that your hypothesis was in error. Every time you’re wrong, it means you can cut off some area of research and start on a better one.”

The institute has about 200 emails that it obtained from a number of sources, including the Climategate leaks. The messages show preachers of imminent climate catastrophe like Mr. Mann weren’t interested in the kind of open discussion that allows scientific progress. Various exchanges included warnings to “PLEASE DELETE” the email after reading.

Mr. Mann insists disclosure would have a chilling effect. “Allowing the indiscriminate release of these materials will cause damage to reputations and harm principles of academic freedom,” he wrote in an August letter to UVA.

As important as it is to protect Mr. Mann’s feelings from being hurt, trillions of dollars are at stake with climate-policy decisions being made based on his work. From cap-and-trade to the Kyoto treaty, it’s not enough to make a choice based solely on a trust that this secretive cabal of climate scientists is telling the truth. The taxpayers paid Mr. Mann; they deserve to know exactly what they were getting for their money.

So far, the Climategate disclosures have unmasked shoddy methods in service of a leftist public-policy agenda. Compelling release of all communications – dirty laundry and all – is the only way to provide the full context. Let an informed public decide on its own whether they’ve been hoodwinked by charlatans, or that the sky really is falling.

The Washington Times

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The Verdict Is In…Global Warming Is A Hoax

Reblogged from That Mr. G Guy's Blog:

Via Memeorandum From an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, sixteen well respected scientists have signed the opinion piece which states that we don’t need to worry so much about global warming. Basically, they’re saying what what opponents have been saying all along…Follow the money. Here’s an excerpt; Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article: A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to …

In Obama he trusts – Why Our President Fails – Dr. Milton R. Wolf

Reblogged from Letting Freedom Ring:

• 

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf via The Washington Times (12/28/2011) There’s something profoundly tragic about the failed presidency of Barack Obama. He was supposed to be a new kind of president, a man who embodied hope and would transcend petty politics and even race. Instead, we’re left with a downgraded America that is stagnating under the weight of its bloated government. As tragic as that alone is, even this is but a mere symptom of Mr. Obama’s larger fundamental failure: He simply does not trust the …

Using Two Cows to Explain the Theory of Government

Reblogged from TurnRight:

• 

January 15, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve received several versions of this over the years. I’m not sure whether I like this more than the modern fable of the ant and the grasshopper, but it’s definitely good. ============================================ Cows and Government Socialism Is this the hope or the change? You have two cows. The government takes one and give one to your neighbor. Communism You have two cows. The government takes them both and promises you milk but you starve. Fascism You have …

16 scientists declare: ‘no compelling scientific argument’ for ‘drastic actions on global warming’ The Daily Caller

16 scientists declare: ‘no compelling scientific argument’ for ‘drastic actions on global warming’

Climate Change | | The Daily Caller.

 

 

By Caroline May – The Daily Caller

Sixteen scientists took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal Friday to argue that there is “no compelling scientific argument” for “drastic actions on global warming.”

According to the group, made up of scientists from around the world, while there has been a concerted campaign to incite concern and action to stop climate change, the science is not coming together in a fashion that would warrant economy-stifling changes.

“The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause,” they wrote. “Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.”

In these scientists’ opinion, Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant, but rather a key necessity for life — spurring the growth of plant life.

The group further condemned the climate of fear that has acted to trample dissenting view points of the “global warming is a crisis” message.

“Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse,” they wrote.

So why is the scientific community so intent on stoking fear over global warming, when the science is not jibing with their conclusions? According to the Wall Street Journal Sixteen, it all boils down to money.

“Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow,” they wrote. “Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.”

The scientists conclude by urging candidates for public office to buck the trend and look at global warming claims with a skeptical eye.

“There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy,” they wrote. “Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.”

The article was signed by Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

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Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants – Michelle Malkin – Townhall Conservative

 

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Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants – Michelle Malkin – Townhall Conservative.

So, it turns out that the cool cat billed as “No Drama Obama” by his sycophants is actually quite the drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore conservative detractors of his administration, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by our critiques. Yes, mine included.

On Wednesday, the president had himself a mini-”Toddlers and Tiaras”-style meltdown with Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix for a post-State of the Union dog-and-pony show. As Brewer told pool reporters on the scene, Obama took umbrage at Brewer’s recent memoir. She minced no words on the cover: “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border.”

And she minced no words describing her impressions of Obama as they sparred over her state’s tough immigration enforcement law, which is now the subject of a Justice Department witch-hunt. Brewer called Obama “patronizing” and “condescending.” I’d say she was excruciatingly polite.

According to Brewer, “He was a little disturbed about my book. … I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read (an) excerpt.” In the shadow of Air Force One, Obama complained that Brewer hadn’t “treated him cordially” and then stalked off while she was responding mid-sentence.

Photogs captured the fracas on film. The civility police gasped at Brewer’s “disrespectful” finger-pointing. On cue, one progressive commentator insinuated the gesture was a “racist” jab tantamount to lynching.

The president was singing a more laid-back tune last summer. As debate on Capitol Hill over the debt ceiling and spending sizzled, Obama bragged to reporters: “I’m not trying to poke at you guys. … I generally don’t watch what is said about me on cable. I generally don’t read what’s said about me even in The Hill (newspaper), so part of this job is having a thick skin and understanding that a lot of this stuff is not personal.”

Uh-huh. At least two other Republican governors — Rick Perry of Texas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana — have recounted similar presidential snit fits on the tarmac. He sulked over a letter Jindal wrote to the administration about food stamps for Gulf oil spill victims; he bolted after a half-minute meeting with Perry at an Austin airport over border security issues.

You know those “petty grievances” of “Washington politics” that Obama has long condemned? Now it can be told: He knows whereof he squawks.

As New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor‘s new book, “The Obamas,” reveals, the president and his inner circle spent even more time carping about conservative influence on public opinion. “He wanted the media to be more of a referee; to put unfair Republican charges to rest,” Kantor discovered. “He could brush off the wildest, most baseless attacks themselves, he told (senior adviser and Chicago pal) Valerie Jarrett, along with (campaign finance bundler and treasurer) Marty Nesbitt and (bundler and finance mogul) John Rogers, at lunch in the little dining room next to the Oval Office.”

But what “galled him,” the book observed, “was when they gained mainstream credibility despite distortions of truth.”

Kantor then dutifully served as a pro-Obama referee:

“Rogers had just noticed a new book by the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin called ‘Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies.’ Among many other allegations, Malkin wrote that Michelle Obama — the president’s ‘bitter half’ — was secretly running the country in Lady Macbeth-like fashion. Malkin even took a hatchet to long-dead Fraser Robinson (Mrs. Obama‘s father), arguing with no evidence that his job at a water plant made him part of the ‘Chicago political corruptocracy.’ The book debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and stayed there for weeks.”

The facts? It was a former alderman in Chicago, Leon Depres, who provided evidence that Robinson’s job in the city water department was a reward for loyalty to the Daley political faction.

It was Washington Post writer Liza Mundy who reported that the department was “a renowned repository of patronage jobs.”

It’s the Illinois press that has long documented Mrs. Obama’s ties to the Chicago machine. It’s Kantor herself who spotlighted the first lady’s internecine warfare with her husband’s Cabinet. And from her meddling in everything from the AmeriCorps inspector general firing case to her aggressive, Big Labor-backed push for a publicly subsidized food police corps, Michelle Obama has been openly expanding her East Wing fiefdom in Marie Antoinette-like fashion.

How long before we see a FLOTUS tarmac tantrum? We did get two divas for the price of one. As longtime observers of the royal Obamas have long observed: Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants’ problem has never been the color of their skin. It’s the thinness.

NUGENT: Fast and Furious stinks – Washington Times

NUGENT: Fast and Furious stinks – Washington Times.

Gun-smuggling scheme another reason to distrust government

By Ted Nugent – The Washington Times

The United States of America has turned into bizarro land. Think of this: Our very own Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), under the direct guidance of the attorney general of the United States – America’s top cop, mind you – not only allowed, but encouraged American gun dealers to sell about 2,000 guns to known punks involved in the drug trade in order to trace the guns to Mexican drug cartels. If you think that’s unbelievably nuts, get a load of this: The suspected goons who bought the guns were not even placed under law enforcement surveillance.

This is analogous to the Drug Enforcement Administration knowingly allowing international dope pushers to sell heroin on American streets without placing the dope dealers under surveillance in hopes that somehow, some way, the dope pushers would enable the DEA to trace the heroin back to some dirty, cave-dwelling Afghan opium poppy farmer so we could then poison the farmer’s poppy fields. Wait a minute, let’s not give this crackpot administration any more loony ideas.

In all of its bureaucratic buffoonery, the ATF lost control of the weapons. Of course it did, as there were no electronic tracing components on the guns. Our less-than-esteemed attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to whom the ATF reports, claimed not to know a thing about this brain-dead operation.

What kind of inebriated idiot would hatch an evil scheme such as this and then believe that, somehow, the guns could be traced to Mexican drug cartels without an electronic tracing component? This isn’t some low-ranking bureaucratic village idiot but a high-ranking government bureaucratic idiot who is paid by U.S. taxpayers.

It’s not as if the drug cartels needed any more guns. An estimated 35,000 Mexicans have been slaughtered in recent years in drug-related violence. What could an additional 2,000 guns provide the already heavily armed drug cartels, which get all the fully automatic machine guns they could possibly want from their own military and Central American gunrunners? Are you kidding me?

We should be given the names of the bureaucratic idiots at ATF who hatched this criminal idea and the bureaucratic punks who authorized it. They shouldn’t just be fired. They should be prosecuted and put in a cage with other gunrunning thugs. That’s what this was: a U.S. government-sanctioned gun-smuggling scheme.

Meanwhile, because the bureaucratic punks in Washington who hatched and approved this terminally brain-dead gunrunning idea have not been charged with a crime, all across America, law-abiding citizens must comply with onerous gun restrictions that make them victims. Great. Punish the good guys. That seems to be standard operating procedure in Barack Obama’s and Eric Holder’s America.

More guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens ultimately ensures more dead bad guys – not more guns in the hands of violent dope dealers. I want an attorney general who declares open season on the recidivistic, violent punks who victimize law-abiding Americans.

Americans addicted to common sense have always had a healthy disdain for government bureaucrats addicted to power. Our instinctual distrust for government is further fueled by Mr. Holder’s ATF Operation Fast and Furious. At its core it was stupid, sinister, evil and criminal.

The only thing fast and furious that ought to happen is a full-on murder investigation by the FBI of the government goons who hatched, authorized and now are covering up this brain-dead, criminal scheme, which ended up costing the life of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Fast and Furious stinks. It smells just like Watergate did, only worse.

Ted Nugent is an American rock ‘n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ‘N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).

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CARDENAS: Obama embraces default amnesty – Washington Times

 

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CARDENAS: Obama embraces default amnesty – Washington Times.

Americans are disgusted with immigration policy for good reason

By Al Cardenas – The Washington Times

President Obama’s State of the Union address – coupled with recent troubling decisions by his administration to expand a pattern of de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants – cemented the unfortunate reality that this president continues intentionally to abdicate a responsibility to advance serious immigration reform. Empty rhetoric, repetitive platitudes and continued support for the already-rejected Dream Act do not make up a comprehensive proposal to this complex policy issue.

These remarks follow the administration’s decision to ease certain regulations on the visa program and move to release some deportation cases by focusing solely on whether a person poses “a national security threat,” only the latest addition to a list of blatant unilateral White House orders intended to curry favor with Hispanics.

The politics is conniving: Portray reform-minded Republicans and conservatives as unsympathetic to this fastest-growing demographic sector and bolster the president’s re-election chances in swing states with significant Hispanic votes, such as Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado and Arizona.

This scheme is not only misguided, but to someone who legally entered this great nation as a youth, it’s appalling.

I join most Americans, especially fellow Hispanics, across the political and ideological spectrum who understand the importance of legal immigration as vital to sustaining the greatness of America’s economic and cultural fabric.

It’s an absurd idea – fronted by liberals and often a complicit media – that legal immigrants, including Hispanics, who chose to follow the rule of law and contribute to the American community would be willing to give a subservient pass – let alone their vote – to politicians who embrace and promote the politics of illegal immigration and leave nearly 12 million undocumented aliens in limbo.

With a broken system, illegal immigration makes a mockery of the promise of legal immigration, and the American people are rightfully fed up.

According to a Gallup poll released last week, liberals were the only ideological or party segment to express greater satisfaction than dissatisfaction with current levels of immigration. All others, including Democrats, supported a decrease in immigration levels.

Gallup also found that “Americans’ dissatisfaction with immigration ranks third highest among 17 issues Gallup asked about.”

It’s little wonder that immigration is gaining as a critical election-year issue, with voters questioning inaction on reform.

Republicans in their presidential primary are taking note and debating immigration proposals – as they should. As Florida, my home state, takes center stage in the primary cycle, expect voters to demand more answers on immigration. Today, the leading Republican candidates will address the Hispanic Leadership Network’s annual conference in Miami, hosted by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. It’s the perfect opportunity for them to outline their specific proposals.

There is little chance that Congress will address significant immigration reform this year. However, the issue must be a top priority in the first 100 days of 2013, and any serious reform legislation must embrace these key principles: vastly improved border security; visa reform for highly skilled workers, investors and agricultural workers; and the documenting of the millions of illegal immigrants already here.

The first priority must be to develop a comprehensive border-security-and-surveillance strategy to include increased border manpower, strengthened border barriers, expanded surveillance capabilities, enhanced investigative personnel and enforced border detention.

We cannot afford porous borders and unknown people – potential security risks – living in our country and taxing our state and local communities’ safety-net budgets.

Then, Congress must implement a nationwide mandatory employment verification program with enhanced employer penalties. This will require all illegal immigrants to register, and those who state a desire to leave voluntarily will have the right to apply subsequently for admission without prejudice.

They must admit to their unlawful presence in the United States and waive any claim for asylum. Work-permit opportunities would be available to those without criminal records who can demonstrate proof of employment when filing an application. In such cases, there is no direct path to citizenship, and recipients of work permits must have paid income taxes, have health insurance and must pay fines and penalties.

Special rules will be developed for the elderly, disabled individuals, students and those in military service, longtime agricultural workers and aliens brought to the United States as innocent children younger than 12.

Thereafter, the Department of Commerce would determine the number of temporary work permits to be made available annually to fulfill the needs of America’s employers.

With regard to high-skilled immigration, master’s and doctoral-degree graduates from U.S. universities in science, technology, engineering and math areas will receive visas as long as they have job offers.

No law will be perfect and please every constituency, but the time is urgent; action must be taken, and every congressional leader who abhors dealing with the topic should bite the political bullet and agree to a comprehensive reform package in early 2013 for the good of the nation.

I’m confident that this election cycle will elevate the debate on immigration reform because the American people have realized what the administration and liberals in Congress have not: The current attitude of sanctioning illegal immigration as a blatant political ploy places our economy and communities at risk and is simply unacceptable.

Al Cardenas is the chairman of the American Conservative Union. He is a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.

Above The Law

Reblogged from My Blog:

How far we have come in three years, from where we started when Barack Obama was elected. The promise that he offered to renew and restore America to the position of glory that she held, has turned into a nightmare of lawlessness and willful disobedience to the very Constitution that he swore an oath to protect. Far from ending the wars that we were involved it, he has instead involved us in continuing conflict with no end in sight, with a promise of more at hand. We are now facing a future of uncertainty …

Auschwitz: Ignoring History, Predicting the Future – Tea Party Nation

Auschwitz: Ignoring History, Predicting the Future – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

The late Israeli scholar and diplomat, Abba Eban, (1915-2002) said, “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

Similarly, Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.” In Churchill’s case, he was referring to the U.S. reluctance to become involved in another war in Europe, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 changed that overnight. By 1945, along with our allies, the wars in Europe and Asia were over.

Sixty-seven years ago, on January 27, 1945, elements of the Soviet army came upon the Auschwitz concentration camps to discover a Nazi killing machine, one of several such camps created to exploit forced labor and to systematically kill Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, clerics, prisoners of war, and anyone else deemed an enemy of the Nazi state, right down to children and infants.

The Nazis killed people on such a scale that it is almost incomprehensible. It happened within my lifetime and that of many others, some of whom are among the fortunate survivors. And yet, today, the denial of the Holocaust and the millions of other Nazi victims is an article of faith among Arabs in the Middle East and countless others around the world.

A January 25th Agence France-Presse article reported that “One in five young Germans has no idea that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp, a poll released Wednesday showed, two days ahead of Holocaust memorial day. Although 90 percent of those asked did know it was a concentration camp”, the Stern magazine poll revealed “that Auschwitz meant nothing to 21 percent of 18-29 year olds.”

It is essential that people in their respective nations know their own and other’s histories. A hallmark of the former Soviet regime in Russia was the way it rewrote history and, in George Orwell’s classic “1984”, a work of fiction about communism, there was a Ministry of Truth in which history was rewritten.

In the United States, since around the 1960s, strenuous efforts have been made to alter the teaching of the nation’s history. The Founding Fathers are often portrayed as slaveholders to downplay their devotion to liberty.

Even they knew that slavery was an abomination, but their task was to create a new nation, one dedicated to libety. The U.S. Constitution was approved by twelve state delegations in 1787, but in 1861, barely 74 years later it would take a Civil War to put an end to slavery and another hundred years to end the exclusion of African Americans from access to their full rights under the Constitution.

Several generations of Americans have passed through our school systems—literally controlled by the federal government after the creation of the Department of Education in 1979 after being transferred from the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a legacy of Jimmy Carter’s single term. All curriculum taught in the schools comes from the DOE thanks to its control over a national, one-size-fits-all testing system introduced with the “No Child Left Behind” program championed by George W. Bush.

To not know about Auschwitz, whether one is German, American, or any other nationality is a failure on a grand scale because it means that it can be repeated. To not know America’s epic struggle to fulfill its promise of liberty leaves new generations at a disadvantage, as in the case of a fifth of young Germans today, ignorant of their nation’s past.

In today’s world, many worry about the fate of Israel, surrounded by hostile nations and openly threatened by an Iran seeking nuclear weapons. Its independence was declared in 1948, barely three years after the end of World War II. Its first task was to absorb, not only the survivors of the Nazi regime throughout Europe, but those who were forced to flee Arab nations in the wake of the war. Its independence was greeted with the first of several wars against it. The general hostility to Jews that preceded the Holocaust by centuries is a stain on humanity.

So there is cause for concern when one in five young Germans have no idea what went on in Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps.

It is a concern when the Syrian dictatorship has already killed 5,000 of its own people to maintain itself.

It is a concern for Iraq, already falling back into an internal conflict after decades of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the end of the U.S. occupation.

It is a concern for an Iranian dictatorship on the cusp of creating its own nuclear weapons.

It is a concern for Venezuela, held in the grip of Hugo Chavez’s dictatorship, an acolyte of Communist Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

It is a concern for Europeans whose political experiment, the European Union, threatens the financial stability of its member nations with the sole exception of Germany.

It is a concern for Americans who witnessed the unilateral limited nuclear disarmament of the nation and the huge reduction of its military power by the Obama administration, less than the lifetime after the end of World War II.

The world remains a dangerous place. That is the lesson of history.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Related articles

• One FIFTH of young Germans have never heard of Auschwitz, survey reveals (dailymail.co.uk)