Steve Hayward has a long, but useful piece on Climaquiddick. He’s been reading a lot of the emails. While it’s not clear whether or not AGW is happening, it’s very clear at this point that the field has been completely discredited, even if those promoting it don’t realize it.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Speaking Of Climate Change
…not to mention Jim Hansen. Is it the new Nazism? Thoughts over at AdamSmith.org.
Is It Just Me?
Or is there a lot of spam and ads citing The One? For example, “Obama wants you to get a lower mortgage.” “Obama wants you to have a better sex life.”
Of course, I guess it makes sense. If you’re dumb enough to fall for spam in general, you’re the target market for Obama spam.
A View From Inside The Sausage Factory
…from someone who escaped:
In Washington, he used his BlackBerry to determine the bailout sum presented to Congress. His arithmetic: “We have $11 trillion residential mortgages, $3 trillion commercial mortgages. Total $14 trillion. Five percent of that is $700 billion. A nice round number.”
Looking back, he says, he is more confident about the two-by-sixes.
“Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air,” Kashkari recalls, wheeling toward the hex nuts and the bolts. “It was a political calculus. I said, ‘We don’t know how much is enough. We need as much as we can get [from Congress]. What about a trillion?’ ‘No way,’ Hank shook his head. I said, ‘Okay, what about 700 billion?’ We didn’t know if it would work. We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were, or how uncertain.”
I’m glad he got out, and wish him well in his new life in California. But it doesn’t instill confidence in the government, nor should it.
Hope
And change…
In Which I Agree With Jim Hansen
He wants Kyopenhagen to fail. I don’t agree with his reason, though — he’s opposed because it won’t go far enough in wrecking the global economy.
More Climaquiddick
Crafty use of statistics, lack-of-transparency, wild projections about future calamity requiring government intervention now…Hmmmm.
If all of this is sounding familiar there’s a reason. Stefan Rahmstorf is one of the CRU e-mail clatch and a contributor to Real Climate. For instance, here is an e-mail in which he is desperately seeking help writing a reply to a critic.
Based on this alarmist study, Schwarzenegger and the State of California have put together…a…video which includes the Rahmstorf’s prediction of a 4 foot sea level rise by 2100 and images of San Francisco inundated by rising seas.
By the way, the California Energy Commission which is pushing this is the same group that outlawed future sales of my TV a few weeks ago. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it since TVs don’t work well underwater anyway.
I’ll be OK. We’re a couple dozen feet above at least, with dunes between us and the beach a mile and a half away.
A Collision
Between jobs prospects and debt realities. Some depressing thoughts from Veronique de Rugy.
Climaquiddick Doesn’t Matter
Because there are so many better reasons to scuttle the nonsense in Copenhagen:
While it’s great fun — and entirely worthwhile — to make a big stink about Climategate, it would be a shame if people believed that Copenhagen’s inevitable failure hinged on this one scandal. Even if the CRU researchers were the model of scientific dispassion, these schemes are pointless. Indeed, even if global warming is the threat the alarmists claim it is, it makes no sense to waste trillions of dollars on “fixes” that will do little to fix the alleged problem.
I like the reference to Canada as the Richie Cunningham of the UN.
A Few Good Scientists
Temporary scientist Frank J. says that we can’t handle the truth:
Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to have scientific equipment on them to gather data, and that data studied by men with computers. Who’s going to do it? A layman like you? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the global warming skeptics and curse the climatologists. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know — that the crushing of data contrary to global warming, while tragic, probably saved grant money. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to the layman, creates scientific consensus. You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about on Twitter, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall studying those measurements you can’t even begin to comprehend.
I’m ashamed to have questioned such noble and selfless people.