The Greenhousers–At Least They Have Pluck
Despite all scientific evidence now denying the greenhouse hypothesis, the greenhousers stand by their story. That story: global temperatures will continue to rise in direct proportion to the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere and for many years after CO2 emissions stop altogether resulting mass famine, flooding, death, and the Cubs winning the World Series.
Unfortunately for Al Gore, the past year saw almost every tenet, speculation, and idea about greenhouse gasses and man-made global warming fall to the scrutiny of science:
- The Tree Ring theory upon which Mann relied was proven wrong, as tree leaves maintain a constant internal temperature of 21.6 degrees Celsius regardless of atmospheric temperature.
- The CO2-Temperature correlation theory has been shattered by 11 years of flat temperatures and 8 years of global cooling despite steady increases in CO2 output.
- The CO2-Water Vapor theory (the sine qua non of all greenhouse theory) was proven wrong by NASA.
- Anecdotal evidence from 1920s and 1930s has emerged showing that Arctic ice pack was abnormally low for about 8 years, exposing regions of Greenland that had, supposedly, been ice covered for millennia.
- The IPCC has “adjusted” its models to show that the greenhouse effect would cause 10 years of cooling before a massive increase in temperatures. Of course, this “prediction” came in year 8 of the cool down, not before it started.
- When models are adjusted to account for the 8 years of cooling (2000 to 2008), they predict another 20 years of cooling (until 2030), consistent with the 30 year cycles understood in meteorology for 100 years.
- Sunspot activity and solar irradiation are at lower levels than they have been in years–and temperatures are dropping. Just wait.
If you’re a greenhouser, take heart. You deserve great credit for standing by your convictions in the face of a hostile reality. Your efforts to stop progress and reason throughout the world are paying off in record high oil prices, policy-driven food shortages, and a mis-educated generation of kids.
You must be a Democrat.
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Hey, AP: I feel your pain, man
The Associated Press, long upset that people often quote and link to its stories on the internet, has imposed a $2.50 per word fee for bloggers who wish to quote one of its stories.
I understand. It’s tough to have a lot of people driving web traffic to your site. Considering the number of articles attributed to the AP, the cost of servers and bandwidth must be outrageous.
But I have a solution: Stop posting stories on the internet.
I have scientific proof that this will work. For several months, I did not blog at all. During that period, not a single blogger linked to or quoted any blog post I wrote.
Here’s how I see it:
1. Cancel all your web hosting contracts.
2. Take the money you save, and teach your reporters how to write.
3. Reserve some cash with which to research your stories for factual accuracy.
4. Hire many, many lawyers to scour the internet looking for violations of any of your rules and policies.
Did I leave anything out?
From now on, I’m going to Reuters. The Associated Press can go to hell.
More CO2 = More Vegetation
Here’s something we’re doing right: growing more plants!
As CO2 levels increase in the atmosphere, so does vegetation. Why? Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. WattsUpWithThat
explains it all.
Appreciative Inquiry of the Conservative Movement
It turns out that Johnny Depp and I have something in common. (It isn’t looks.)
The right–that includes me–learned nothing from Reagan. Instead of being the sunny optimists who speak of a shining city on a hill, we have become Bob Dole curmudgeons lamenting the lazy, fat, vapid youth and spoiled Baby Boomers.
(Stay with me.) I was reminded of the need to focus on what we do right on the right by two things personal experiences:
First, my dotted-line boss is leading his teams through a transformation. Under the leadership of the best business leader I’ve ever worked for, the business unit I work within is emerging from three years of self-flagellation that would have made an S&M club blush. He’s using Appreciative Inquiry and the ideas expressed in “Change Your Questions, Change Your Life,” to help us to look for what we do well.
Second, I just read “How to Wow” by Frances Cole Jones. This is the best book I’ve ever read on working a room, even if only two people are in it. (If you ever interview for a job, date, meet the future in-laws, give presentations in school or work, or give speeches, this is appointment reading.) Coaching you through the process of preparing for an important speaking assignment, Ms. Jones tells you that “embodying the qualities of someone they admire can be very helpful.” In preparing for the role of Ed Wood, Johnny Depp told James Lipton on Inside the Actors’ Studio that “he wanted to combine the blind optimism of Ronald Reagan with the overt geniality of Casey Kasem.” Earlier, she’d pointed out that Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill view of America trounced Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” America.
Perhaps I’ve forgotten who taught me the technique, but, as an actor, I do the same thing Depp does. When I played Lewis in Pippin four summers ago, I thought of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Carribean when I was in the character of a Player. (Not that kind of player.) Last summer, I did Noel Coward’s Long Island Sound, a small role, but I thought of Clark Gable being Clark Gable.
To keep this post short, I’ll leave you with this: the conservative movement needs appreciative inquiry more than it needs to win the White House or the Congress in 2008. I will try to demonstrate this here over the coming months.
Life After Clinton
I just listened to a replay of today’s “Meet the Press” on the radio, at least the roundtable. All talk was about the Democrat race: blacks have come far; Clintons have fallen farther. It struck me that the pundits–liberal Democrats all–seemed to have forgotten that another vote happens in November. Instead of deep analysis of the McCain-Obama face-off, Andrea Mitchell and Tim Russert were handicapping Obama’s cabinet picks.
Late in the segment, the team returned from 2009 as conversation turned to Hillary as veep. “No way” was the consensus, relying heavily on David Broder’s logic: Obama must demonstrate that he is his own man by rejecting Hillary just as Reagan rejected a Blue Blood Republican attempt to install Gerald Ford as Reagan’s running mate in 1980.
No year in my life has so resembled a previous year as 2008 resembles 1976. Both the American and world economies are threatened by spiraling oil prices, talk of shortages, and the need for alternative fuels. As in 1976, in the shadow of Love Canal, the environment is now the left’s favorite tool in its perpetual scheme to destroy capitalism and replace it with a soviet paradise. And Americans seem ready to turn to far left liberalism in both domestic and foreign policy to solve these problems.
The Economy
The economy’s handlers–the Fed, Congress, investment banks, institutional investors–are hamstrung by their own actions and greed. Like his predecessor in 2000, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, overestimated the economy’s strength in 2006 and early 2007. By the time he started cutting interest rates, the economy was headed south.
The White House and Congress, pre-occupied with micro-managing the Army in Iraq, also missed its cue. Most Americans, myself included, still don’t have the stimulus check. By the time it arrives, it will pay for necessities, not the luxuries that actually fuel the economic engine in America these days.
In the meantime, the fed has cut interest rates so low that it has little or no room for further cuts. Even if it does cut further, there is no indication that oil and gasoline prices (followed by food prices) will not rise to absorb any additional cash in the economy. One could argue that the recent surge in oil and gas prices (to $138 a barrel and $4 a gallon, respectively) is a direct result of the stimulus package. If so, by my calculations, those prices will increase another 20 percent each after the last check arrives.
The jump in unemployment to 5.5 percent from 5.0 percent in May is only the latest symptom of these economic problems. Others will follow. In the 1970s, we had “stagflation,” a combination of high inflation (12 percent) and a stagnant economy. We also had a “misery index” that measured inflation+unemployment, often over 20. The usual market balancers failed, largely because of high taxation, increasing regulation and interest rates that were too high to stimulate growth but too low to choke inflation. At that time, fuel and food were included in the inflation number, but we stopped counting those staples in the 1980s. If you put them back, inflation is running at 12 percent a year.
The Environment
In 1976, we were worried about a coming ice age, littering, and smoke stacks. Today we’re worrying about universal tropics, water shortages, and smoke stacks. According to environmentalists, the massive restrictions in human freedom wrought by three decades of environmental activism have made matters worse. Jerry Ford was almost as ecological (as we called it then) as was Jimmy Carter. John McCain is almost as green as Barack Obama. Either man will institute regulations and taxes that will further the damage a weak economy and handicap a healthy one.
The good news is that the plebiscitary spasm about the environment will end when people need to find work and shelter. The bad news is that Congress and Presidents won’t need to find work or shelter until after a couple of election cycles. That means that misguided environmental policies inspired by non-science promoted by the fraudsters Al Gore and Michael Mann will put more people out of work and out on the streets until Bobby Jindal takes the oath of office on January 20, 2013.
Liberal Bias
Every so often, the American electorate becomes lib-curious. It happened in the 1970s, the 1960s, the 1930s, and whenever Woodrow Wilson ran for President. This is not a permanent condition. It builds until a true liberal gains the White House and has Democrat accomplices in both houses of Congress. Most times, the people give the Dems 4 years to really screw things up. (Clinton was a quasi-liberal, but in 1994 we were still smart enough to recognize a bad thing and returned the House and Senate the GOP.)
This year, I expect the race between Obama and McCain to look a whole lot like Carter-Ford in 1976. By Labor Day, Obama will have a seemingly insurmountable lead. By October 31, that lead will be less than 5. By election day, it will be too close to call. By noon the next day, Obama will emerge victorious and the Democrats will widen their margins in the House and Senate.
Conclusion
By this time next year, the people will ask for a Mulligan.
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