Snow and the Hypocrisy of it all

So, here it is in Seattle. End of March (the 29th to be specific). I am getting married that day. The average low for March to April is between 37 and 41 degrees. But it's snowing, which means it's well below 37 degrees.

Let's skip ahead several weeks to April (the 18th to be specific). I am coming home from work around 5pm. Did I mention it was snowing, again? The average low for April is 41 degrees. But it's snowing, which means it's well below 41 degrees.

Al Gore and the rest of the environazis will tell you the earth is warming up, that it is getting hotter. The averages for the seasons is getting warmer. Ice caps are melting to prove their point. Yet it snowed in March and it snowed in April.

In other words, it's getting colder than it normally is this time of year.

Al Gore et al will tell you the planet is getting warmer and we need to watch our carbon footprint because the increased temperatures are our fault.

Although repeated studies conclude differently. The environazis dismiss these studies because so-called "big oil" is funding them.

Of course no one, especially the pro-green media, is going to tell you that Al is sinking $300 million into a carbon credit businesses (ie, funding them).

More Global Warming Information

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it: Global warming is a hoax. A myth. The witch hunt of the 21st century. Additional proof comes our way daily (see previous blog post) and now there is even more evidence that our planet is not heating up.

From NPR no less:

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
by Richard Harris
Morning Edition, March 19, 2008

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.

That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.

Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.

"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.

One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.


My only concern with this article is the absurd claim that the oceans have risen half and inch in the past 4 years. That is simply not true according to NASA - to the point that they have measured the rate of ocean rise at only 2.09 millimeters (0.081 inches) per year if you take into account all the measured ice melting contributing to the rise in oceans. At that rate, it would take over 6 years to raise the ocean levels to one half inch.

Global Warming is FAKE

Lifted from the Nation Post:

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, February 25, 2008

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

Now I get to post a big "I told you so".

JUSTICE!

What Christmas Is All About

I'm going to be as blunt about this as I can, but bear with me:

Non-Christians cannot celebrate Christmas

I'm sorry, but it is as simple that.

Christmas is a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. End of story.

It's not about all the secular celebrating progressives, atheists, liberals, etc. try to push on us. Christmas is not about what they want it to be.

Because it's not their holiday. It's ours.

Let the non-believers come up with their own holiday. It can even be on the same day as ours and have the same traditions. They call can it anything they want, Winter Holiday, Festivus, anything - but they cannot call it Christmas.

Christmas is the "Mass of Christ", if you don't believe, you cannot partake. Whites cannot do Kwanza. Muslims cannot do Hannuka. Non-believers cannot do Christmas. Period.

You want to celebrate Christmas? Then get saved. Go to church. Live your life according to the Word of God.

Linus explained exactly what Christmas is all about, it's simple and to the point:



There is no other versions of Christmas. Anything else is not Christmas but a pale fascimile.

Debunking the 14 Points of Fascism - Part V

The left hates the military. Possibly for no other reason than because it is an organization that provides structure and order. These things are poison to liberals. Britt and Despair are no exception to this rule.

4. Supremacy of the Military: Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Military service is the ultimate form of public service. In no other way can someone serve their country than to possibly put their lives on the line. The ultimate sacrifice. Additionally, the military does more than defend the country. My brother was in Indonesia (he is a Marine) helping the victims of the earth quake there. When the tsunami hit last year, first on the scene with food, medicine and clean water was the U.S. Navy reaching places no international relief agency could. The military in the form of the National Guard provides essential humanitarian services during domestic disasters such as hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes. It wasn't Mayor Ray Nagin or Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco who were helping the victims of hurricane Katrina (just the opposite, they both failed miserably in their roles of first responders for their city and state) it was the National Guard.

To top it all off, the United States military is an all volunteer force. No one is conscripted into service via a draft. Compare that to many of the liberally progressive countries that do have military conscription, such as:

Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

Actually, there are 87 countries world wide that have conscription of one form or another for their military. France is considering reinstating their draft as well.

There is also nothing glamorous about this form of national duty. It's a dirty and dangerous job for little pay and recognition by the civilians they protect. Some join the military for the educational scholarships. Most join because they feel it is their duty.

-Bush slashes domestic programs, boosts defense. Arlen Spector calls it "scandalous"

According to the full article, Bush only made the proposal to Congress. It's up to Congress to work through the proposal and come up with the appropriate legislation. This involves working with those on both sides of the political isle.

Snippets from the article yields that the Pentagon would only get a 4.8% increase, this during a time of war.

The Bush plan would cut discretionary programs outside national security by 0.5 percent.
The administration emphasized it was not cutting Medicare but slowing its annual growth to 7.5 percent from 7.8 percent.

Bush would hold the growth in discretionary spending to 3.2 percent, below the 3.4 percent inflation rate.

Nine of the 15 Cabinet agencies would see cuts, with education down 3.8 percent, justice reduced by 7.2 percent and transportation 9.4 percent lower. Veterans Affairs was given an 8 percent increase, one of the few domestic programs to get a bigger budget.

A handful of domestic programs would get fresh cash. Those include research and development, math and science education, high-tech training and alternative fuel sources.

I would hardly call a 0.5% cut in discretionary spending a "slash" in domestic spending. And when you see exactly where the cuts are, most of it could be attributed to simply "cutting the fat"

-Funding for job training, rural health care, low-income schools and help for people lacking health insurance would face big cuts under a bill passed Friday by the House

If you read the news headline above, it sounds like the Bush administration was cutting every program across the board. The fact is, not many programs actually received deep cuts. Some did, but many did not, and in some cases, some programs actually received increases:

The measure, which passed 250-151, contains $142.5 billion in spending under Congress' control for labor, health and education programs. That's essentially a freeze at current levels.

But new demands, including $870 million to administer the new Medicare prescription drug program, have forced cuts in scores of programs.

"We made some tough decisions," said Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, who led the floor effort to get the bill passed. "But when looked at as a whole, this bill provides $142.5 billion to over 500 discretionary programs. It is a lot of money and it does a lot of good."

Regula added that the bill's program terminations and other cuts were used to fund high-priority items such as Pell Grants and the budget to run the Medicare drug program.

In practice, that translates to an 84 percent cut from $300 million down to $47 million in training programs for doctors and nurses, and $806 million in cuts to Bush's No Child Left Behind education initiative, a more than 3 percent drop. Grants for local community-action agencies that help the poor would be cut in half, to $320 million.

The National Institutes of Health, whose budget has doubled in recent years, would be held to a less than 1 percent increase. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would absorb a 5 percent cut from current funding.

It needs to be noted that this was just the House bill that was voted on. The Senate has it's own version of the bill that needs to be reconciled with the House bill. As such, these cuts may not stand as it appears in the House bill.

-Pentagon to spend 75 billion for three new brigades

From the full article:

Of the $75 billion for the military, the bulk would go to the Army to support deployed troops, help convert the Army's force structure to smaller "modular" combat brigades, and to begin repairing and replacing battered military equipment. Some of the money would help accelerate the training and equipping of Iraqi and Afghan security forces, one official said.

As much as $1 billion would go toward defeating roadside bombs, the official said. The money would be spent on improved intelligence and surveillance, the training of canine detection teams and the development of technology.

These are not new brigades. This is the conversion of exiting Army units into smaller “modular” brigades. This will make them more efficient and effective. In addition, some of the funds will go to the repair or replacement of battered equipment. While liberals typically scream about how Rumsfeld is not providing the troops with the equipment they need, Despair is complaining that the Bush administration is spending funds to do exactly that.

With some of the funds going to equipping and training Iraqi security forces, this means that the United States will be able to pull out of Iraq sooner. Again, this is exactly what the liberals want – except for Despair, apparently.

Additionally, $1 billion has been earmarked towards finding methods to defeat improvised explosive devices, also known as roadside bombs. Here is an example of the Bush administration dedicating funds specifically to protecting our troops in the combat zone.

I keep hearing from liberals that they “support” the troops, but when push comes to shove I find nothing but disdain for the military coming from the left.

-Three cable channels now feed news, information and entertainment about the armed services into millions of living rooms, 24 hours a day, seven days a week: The Military Channel, the Military History Channel and the Pentagon Channel.

There are literally hundreds of cable and satellite channels available across the country and Despair is complaining about three of them being pro-military. Three. I guess it would be fair to point out that out of the hundreds of radio stations available, the left has a liberal talk show that now feeds news, information, entertainment and opinion through hundreds of thousands of radios...

Being that the United States military is an all volunteer force, it is necessary to promote the armed forces in a positive light. Three cable channels are providing just that. I think it also needs to be said that the First Amendment, which guarentees our freedom of speech, not only allows for, but protects these three channels right to exist.

Unless someone wants to point out that liberals don't believe the First Amendment applies to everyone - but that would be fascist.

Debunking the 14 Points of Fascism - Part IV

Getting back to the 14 Points as laid out by Laurence Britt and the news headline clippings of Our Lord Despair. No, I haven't forgotten about the Washington Post article, but since that is a lengthy article and I've practically been challenged to debunk it - I'll have to go through it thoroughly before I can write about. However, since the original topic at hand was to go through Britt's Point and answer Despair's comments, I will do that first. I understand that the Post article was one of those comments but I want to address it separately.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Britt is drawing from the treatment of the Jews by Hitler during the Second World War. However, again he concludes that such use of scapegoating is used only by extreme right-wing/fascist movements. History has shown us differently, especially in the decades following World War II. Almost every single dictatorship on the planet, extremists on both sides, right and left-wing, have used the tactics of scapegoating in order to unify their people and consolidate a power base. For Britt to claim this is something that is done only against "liberals, communists; socialists" is intellectually dishonest.

Despair is equally as dishonest in his headline snippets:

-Headline: "Congressman: Muslims 'enemy amongst us'"

This was taken from an interview between Sean Hannity and Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y..

However, what Lord Despair fails to mention is this little gem also lifted from the same article. While liberal Democrats immediately jump to attach King, he apparently isnt the only one who believes that a majority of mosques ran in the U.S. are ran by extremists (which is the crux of the quote):

However, in testimony before the U.S. State Department in 1999, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, affirmed most of the mosques in the U.S. are run by extremists.

"We would like to advise our government, our congressmen, that there is something big going on and people do not understand it," he said. "You have many mosques around the United States ... So the most dangerous things are going on in these mosques that have self appointed leaders throughout the United States. The extremist ideology makes them very active. We can say that they took over 80 per cent of the mosques in the United States ... . This means that the ideology of extremism has been spread to the youth and the new generation."

I find it difficult to hold Bush responsible for creating this scapegoat since he wasn't even president in 1999. There is also a significant difference in creating a scapegoat and pointing out the truth. However, Bush has stated many times that he does not believe all Muslims are evil or dangerous people. In fact the president has always called Islam the "religion of peace". The few that prevert the relgion of Islam, according to Bush, are the ones we need to worry about.

-World history textbook used by seventh-graders at Scottsdales Mohave Middle School was pulled from classrooms mid-semester amid growing Right-wing criticism of the books unbiased portrayal of Islam.

While we are led to believe that the administration was responsible for the pulling of the text books from Scottdale Mohave Middle School, the truth is that the parents were actually active in this event. It was the parents who sent in over 100 e-mails demanding the book be pulled because they disagreed with how Christianity was compared to Islam. Hardly what one would consider "Right-wing" criticism.

Despair also fails to inform anyone that the book in question was in a trial phase. It wasn't necessarily going to used by the school as part of it's normal curiculum. Nor does he explain the parents side of the story. Instead, the book in question is "unbiased" and the parents are "Right-wingers". Fortunately, the full article gives the other side of the story:

Janie White is a Scottsdale parent who complained about the "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond" textbook, which was being used on a trial basis at her daughter's school. In a Jan. 25 email to Superintendent John Baracy, she objected to what she believed was "religious bias, dogma, myth and proselytizing."

"I received a significant number of e-mails saying (the book) was Islamic propaganda and we shouldn't use it," said district governing board member Christine Schild. Before the board could take action, the book's publisher requested an end to its trial license with the district in March, and the district quit using the materials.

Nancy Bredin, national sales manager at TCI, insists the publishing company did not pull the license due to the controversy. Instead, she said, the newly-released state standards do not match the textbook's focus.

"We pulled out because it became very clear we did not match the standards," Bredin said. The book is still being tried in schools in other states, she added.

The textbook covers history from the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century to the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. It devotes 33 pages to Christianity and 42 pages to Islam. Bredin explained the book is meant to serve as the second in a twopart series....

The lessons about Islam are what concern parents such as White. In her complaint to Baracy, she referred to the American Textbook Council, a group that objects to TCI's explanation of concepts such as jihad.

The book defines jihad as "a struggle within each individual to please God, but that may also be a physical struggle for protection against enemies."

David Damrel, a professor at the Arizona State University's Department of Religious Studies, reviewed several chapters of the book at the Tribune's request. He said the passages generally did a good job of describing Muslim attitudes toward jihad in an accurate way.

Complaints about the book started early this year, when White sent a series of e-mails to Baracy demanding the textbook be removed from her daughter's classroom.

The book simply didn't meet state standards. Yes, the parents had complained regarding the contents of the book, this is their right as parents. However, to label the parents as "Right-wing" simply because they didn't go along with Despair's line of thinking is inane. I find it interesting that Despair believes his stance that the book was "unbiased" and therefore his point of view is the correct one - but if anyone disagrees with it, they are immediately biased and subject to ad hominem labeling.

-Rallies planned against 'Islamofacism': Event to 'unify all Americans behind common goal'

One of the biggest debating falicies used by Our Lord Despaire is that he purposely takes an event or comment out of it's context and presents it as something it is not. Despair attempts to tie in the rally with scapegoating. However, the full article paints a different picture:

"The purpose of this rally is to unify all Americans behind a common goal and against an enemy that is seeking to destroy values we all hold dearly," said Jesse Petrilla, head of the organization. "This is not a rally to promote hate, but a rally to promote peace and tolerance and make clear what America stands for," he said, noting Muslims are being encouraged to attend the rallies which, so far, are scheduled in 13 states.

"Republicans, Democrats, pacifists, all ethnicities are urged to march on the day of the event and show their true support for the United States of America," he said.

Kind of changes the tone of the quote, doesnt it? Gone are the images of brown shirts burning Muslims in effigy, only to replaced with the reality of a multicultural, bi-partisan, peaceful rally exaulting the virtues of the United States of America.

The reality of the situation is, and I understand no extreme left-wing liberal wants to aknowledge it, is that the United States was attacked by a group of people who claim allegience to the same organization and to a radical Islamic doctrine. Targetting these specific people as self-described enemies to the people and government of the United States is not scapegoating, it's not profiling, it's not anything abhorent in any fashion. It's specifically identifying and targeting those who wish to do us harm.

The difference between what the Nazi's did to the Jews and what the current administration is doing to the radical Islamic Jihadists that are trying to kill us is simple; the Jews never flew a fuel-laden jet airliner into a series of buildings in an attempt to kill as many innocents civilians as possible.

Pointing out a realistic threat to life and liberty is not scapegoating - it's the smart thing to do.