November 23rd 2008
Sunday Scan - 11/23/08
Hot! Hot! Not!
I
t’s one of those cognitive dissonance moments: They tell you this October was the hottest October ever recorded - excuse the pandering Paris photo - and you’re asking yourself, “Yeah, but wasn’t I freezing my fanny off for most of the month?” Yes you were, and you should believe your fanny, not Warmie “scientists,” who live to feed bogus data into the global warming industrial machine.
Fortunately, they don’t get away with this malarkey like they used to. Here’s Christopher Booker from the UK Telegraph, with emphasis added by Okie:
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its “worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
As the Okie says,
Innocent error, or intentional manipulation of the data sets because the reality of the situation just doesn’t fit into the Anthropogenic Climate Change catechism? Shoot, I don’t know. But, the Global Warming proponents have been willing to use funny numbers before. At the very least it’s sloppy work that went unnoticed by GISS because the information was exactly what they wanted to see.
Yup. And there’s much, more more. Read the Okie’s post.
Obama Limo No Green Machine
B
arack Obama isn’t only the first black president, he’s the first really green one - at least that’s what he promises. If he can come through on his pricey eco-incentives (a big if in this economy), we’ll see tepid, dangerous 35 mpg as the norm - but Barry is not the Norm, as these disguised spy shots of his new limo show:
It has the body style of standard issue Caddy DTS, one of the environment pillagers of the Cadillac stable - although GM has succeeded in leaving its 8 mpg days behind and claims 15 mpg city/23 mpg highway on their land schooner. But that’s before cladding. And it’s not really a DTS, as we’ll learn.
Take a moment to consider the width of the presidential door. Is that eight inches of width? Sure looks like it. Car Advice, the Aussie car blog that slapped its watermark all over the photos, says the glass is five inches thick and that given all the weight - enough to protect from roadside bombs, reportedly - the DTS platform was left behind in favor of GM’s Topkick platform - one that’s used for medium-duty trucks that typically get about 10 mpg. Before armor cladding.
I could make some jokes about Obama’s campaign promises about forcing more fuel efficiency, but truth be told, these spy shots were taken sometime before the Car Advice post in August - before Obama was elected, so he’s [probably] had nothing to do with its design. And, truth be told, the more protection they can give him, the better. If there’s one thing this country doesn’t need, it’s some miscreant killing our president - especially our first black president.
True Dat
an Hopes Jet-Pack Takes Him Across Colorado Gorge
I imagine he does, and that “hopes” hardly captures the intensity of his feelings.
As Venezuela Votes, A Note On Chavez
I
f you’re interested in tracking the election in Venezuela today, where Hugo (No, you go) Chavez’s government is facing some tough challenges in provincial races, I suggest you check in periodically at Venezuela News and Views. I’ve found its author, Daniel, to be an honest news broker, even though he rightly loathes Chavez.
Last Friday, Daniel set up the election nicely:
Huge rains have fallen this afternoon over Caracas and some areas of the country. Traffic is collapsed everywhere; landslides are happening; bridges are washed away.
What does Chavez do in front of the emergency? He calls a cadena [TV event] to discuss a joint project of light bulbs with Vietnam, with cardboard models and all. Half of the country is washed away, half of the country is in need to listen to the radio to know ways to escape to return home from a hellish commute, and all they find is Chavez doing electoral politicking with a joint project with Vietnam, not even an inauguration. Chavez desperately trying to scrap a few more votes while people might be watching their home slide into oblivion.
It is hard to imagine a better example of abuse of the media by Chavez, who even has the nerve to say that “we are aware of some problems but we are taking care of them” and keep going on with his cadena as if nothing, a cadena that no one gives a [bleep] about. That is correct, if right now you are stuck in the worse traffic of your life, rain everywhere, and that mountain on the side looming quite dangerous as increasing rivulets of water keep coming down at you, the only thing you can hear, ON ANY radio station, is Chavez bull[bleep]ing about Vietnam and probably as usual rewriting history.
And that happened in 1999, and it happened about 4 years ago when someone drowned in the middle of Caracas main highway while Chavez was once again on cadena. You think the man would learn. You think that someone in his entourage would suggest to tape the [bleep] cadena and play it later. But no. The supreme narcissistic creep, the most egotistical Venezuelan alive, keeps going on with his glory, giving a [bleep] about the rest of the country, be it his opposition stuck in traffic or his poor devotees whose shacks perilously clinging on the hills are about to slide down in a tide of mud.
What will it take for some of Chavez followers to realize that the guy only thinks of himself and that they are simply used for his personal goals?
Good question. Frightfully, some people never learn.
That Plucking Palin
W
arning: The video below of the now oddly infamous Sarah Palin pre-Thanksgiving interview is the one MSNBC’s David Shuster didn’t dare to show, opting instead for a “sanitized” version without “the goriest parts.” He presumably wasn’t talking about Al.
Go ahead - watch it twice, three times even and I defy you to find gore. Two turkeys, all feathered and white, are put into a chute alive, then removed from the chute, all feathered and white and presumably nicely, quietly dead. Still, Shuster warned parents to shoo the kids from the room - although I’m not sure whether it was because they’d see a turkey handled without awe and respect, or because they’d see a conservative Republican woman.
Tim Blair shows how the the liberal media remains spiteful and hateful, even now that the election is over, with MSNBC using these headlines for the clip:
• TURKEYS DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM MEDIA
• GOV. SARAH KEEPS TALKING WHILE TURKEYS GET SLAUGHTERED BEHIND HER
• GOV. PALIN APPARENTLY OBLIVIOUS TO TURKEY CARNAGE OVER HER SHOULDER
MEDIA CREDIBILITY DIES AS MEDIA CONTINUES TO WRING PALIN’S NECK.
NBC also got queasy at the thought of turkeys that don’t come from tofu, warning viewers that the clip might be “too grisly for some.” That’s funny, but this comment, from the WaPo item on the story (WaPo covered it?!) is not:
“They got a turkey like Palin into a slaughterhouse and let her out alive? For shame.”
Where is the outrage? Where are the demands for PC anti-misogyinsm? Oh, forget it. Never mind. They will never demand of themselves what they demand from others.
The funniest part of the clip comes at 1:58 in, as Palin says:
Oh, this was neat. I was happy to get to be invited to participate in this. For one, you need a little levity in this job, especially with so much that’s gone on in the past few months that’s been so political, obviously, that it’s nice to go out and do something to promote a local business, and just to participate in something that isn’t so heavy-handed politics that it invites criticism.
Certainly, we’ll even invite criticism for doing this, too, but at least this was fun.
Yup. As my friend Jim said to a Lib friend of his regarding this clip: “How in the world can YOU be a liberal Lefty? This reaction from the MSM ought to drive you crazy!”
Death of the Libertarians?
W
hen the OC Register - one of the only papers in the country with a libertarian editorial policy - asks “Time to Dump the LP?,” you know the party that couldn’t do any worse has done worse.
Libertarian Party prez candidate Bob Barr raised a whopping $1.2 million this year and got about 10,000 votes per state - 510,000 in all. I could have resurrected my old college campus party - The Mindless Turd Party - and gotten more votes than Barr if I’d run Larry Craig for prez.
Reason magazine, the mouthpiece of the movement (Libertarian, not Mindless Turd), has a big piece on the OCReg describes as a “post-mortem” on the party, and Ilya Somin, writing at Volokh, sums it all up nicely:
Libertarians often emphasize that failed enterprises should be liquidated rather than kept going on artificial life support. That enables their resources to be reinvested in other, more successful firms. The point is well taken, and it applies to the Libertarian Party itself. For 35 years, the Party has consumed valuable resources, both financial and human. The money spent on the LP and the time donated by its committed activists could do a lot more to promote libertarianism if used in other ways.
I hope my local Libertarian friends still have a Grover Cleveland Social Club Christmas dinner and invite me.
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Posted in Cars, Leftism, Libertarianism, Media bias, Obama, Palin | 11 Comments » | 
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November 26th, 2008 at 8:04 am
November 26th, 2008 at 9:26 am
November 26th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
November 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
November 28th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
December 4th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Comments
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Probably not a “deliberate” error, but when a mistake causes the results to show lower than usual temperatures, the data and calculations get a second look and the errors are caught. Mistakes in the opposite direction, however, produce the desired result of confirming “global warming” and are rushed out the door to make the morning paper’s deadline. Our hard-won system of scientific inquiry and skepticism is slowly being poisoned by the race for research funding and the hunger for political power.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Laer,
Thanks for the link! With a “believing” POTUS, a “believing” Congress and a sycophantic “believing” MSM — this isn’t lookin’ so good!
“Okie”
November 24th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Socratease, if the errors are systematic and confirming to the global warming case only, then how do you explain the fact that the climate models have consistently UNDERSTATED the level of warming actually experienced? And why do you think that the race for thousands of dollars in grant money is a bigger financial incentive than the billions of dollars that dirty industries (e.g., coal, utilities, chemicals, etc.) would like to avoid spending in remediation and emissions control? Talk about “believers” who don’t base their judgments on empirical facts but on preconceived notions, you ought to reread your own post. Both you and Laer ought to be asking why we are seeing warming and what we need to do about rather than quibbling over a clerical error in one sent of data. It really is true that those who fail to do the math are doomed to talk nonsense…
November 24th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
What are you smoking, DG? The models overstate the increase.
You ought to be asking yourself why we should fund global cooling efforts based on the knowledge at hand, the microscopic return on investment, and the other uses of the funds that would save more lives - fighting disease, bringing clean water, building flood protection, etc.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Laer, unfortunately, I am not smoking anything. But even the climate change skeptics, who are qualified to opine on the issue, admit as much. For example:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Nov08/SoilBlackCarbon.kr.html(note the quote in the third-from-last paragraph). Funnily enough, one of my sales guys who is a well-connected Republican (who was invited to McCain’s inaugural ball had he won) sent me this just last week. Once I went through the logic of the global warming debate with him, based largely on the same stuff I emailed you, he conceded the argument. You’re going to have to show some data to establish a case that the models are not conservative enough, since, based on this black carbon issue, they appear to be getting even more conservative relative to the changes experienced. Doesn’t sound like a big conspiracy for climate science graduate students to win grant money, does it?!?