Because it’s too damn easy.
And Boortz is in a glass house here. He is still running around saying that the government will get the same amount of tax revenue, that prices will not go up but you will take home your entire paycheck — which is mathematically impossible. Something’s got to give. And I think Bartlett’s right that it will be prices.
I’m reading Timothy Ferris’s Seeing in the Dark since I may myself be an amateur, rather than professional, astronomer soon. He has a phone interview with Brian May — the lead guitarist of Queen — where he talks about being an astronomy graduate student and how he left it for music but still loves the sky.
I said, “Nah! He’s making that up!” So I looked it up. And in one those of those weird coincidences, just two days before I read Ferris’ account, May got his fricking PhD.
Great. Someone else to compete with.
Patrick Michaels deflates our Senators on Greenland:
On page 820 of [the IPCC]’s spanking-new compendium on climate change, it projects that the melting of Greenland will cause a rise in sea levels of between half an inch and 4.5 inches by 2100. If there were any acceleration of ice loss under a Gore-like scenario, the IPCC says there could be an additional sea-level rise of 8 inches.
I would also add that if these senators really believed in catastrophic global warming, they would not be burning up tons of fossil fuels on a damn junket.
This is the problem with the global warming supporters — their stampede to embrace disaster scenarios. Christ, isn’t a potential 8 inch rise in sea levels enough? Why do they always have to get so hysterical?
Via Boortz, a stunning article about how our “make sure all the dumb kids pass” school system is failing to cultivate genius.
Odd though it seems for a law written and enacted during a Republican Administration, the social impulse behind No Child Left Behind is radically egalitarian. It has forced schools to deeply subsidize the education of the least gifted, and gifted programs have suffered. The year after the President signed the law in 2002, Illinois cut $16 million from gifted education; Michigan cut funding from $5 million to $500,000. Federal spending declined from $11.3 million in 2002 to $7.6 million this year.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I were a liberal, i’d love this President. He’s given them everything they want while thoroughly discrediting conservatism.
I would love to have seen Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do something like this.
You remember all the lefty whinging about how American cars aren’t clean enough to be imported into China?
Um, not so much.
And just in case you were thinking of buying a Chinese suicide crate, check out the crash test Lee has posted over at Right-Thinking. It’s the only time I’ve watched a crash test and said, “Oh my God!”.
Want another reason to oppose top-down solutions to global warming? How about the Kyoto Accord causing deforestation?
Last week, it was announced that a new analysis of temperature data showed the hotest year in history was 1934. Limbaugh, Boortz and others have been using this to say, “global warming is a myth!” because we all know that something supported by hundred of pieces of evidence is wrong whenever one piece of evidence falls away.
The Bad Astronomer take this nonsense apart:
For the 1994 to 2006 bin I get a deviation of +0.57. The average temperature in the second bump is 0.1 degrees higher than the first. In other words, it was warmer on average in the last 13 years than any time in recorded history.
Look again at the numbers. If you look at the top ten years, even with the new method, only the year of 2001 goes away (replaced with 1939, see chart below). All the other years are fairly stable, though the numbers themselves have changed. In other words, old method or new, more record years have happened in the last decade or so of the record keeping than you’d expect.
There’s still no explanation as to why it was so hot in the 1930’s. I suspect it sunlight-blocking industrial pollutants played a role. in droping the temp.
But it’s becoming clear that many who discuss global warming — on either side — have no idea how science works. Scientific knowledge is formed from all the facts, not carefully selected ones. A few planets warming does not prove the sun created global warming. A minor revision of temperature scales does not disprove global warming. A single bad hurricane does not prove it either.
You have to take into account all the data.
Update: TNR really takes the “conservatives” to task . Among other things, the 1930’s were local warming in the United States, not global warming. And the models aren’t constructed using surface temperatures.
The global warming debunkers are increasingly reminding me of the creation scientists — in fact, they are much the same people. They will happily use one piece of evidence to debunk conclusions based on thousands of pieces of evidence. Their argument range from misunderstandings (“the temperatures were revised”) to scientifically unsounds theories (“it’s the Sun!”) to outright brassbound lies (“it’s all commies!”).
Mind you, I’m not with the global warming crowd either, who are irresponsibly predicting disaster, jumping on every little factoid as though it proves global warming, shamefully exploiting unrlated tragedies for political gains and embracing stupid collectivist solutions.
But at least the science is on their side.
I just can’t seem to find the time for half a page of scribbled lines. I’m way behind on blogging these days. But the lawn is mowed, the babby asleep and the wife placated. Here’s a linkorama to tide over until I get my mojo back.
Rolling Stone — yes, Rolling Stone — has the goods on the scam job that is ethanol.
Read the whole thing. The more I learn, the more I am convinced that corn ethanol is a disaster waiting to happen. It wouldn’t be there first time we’d have a disaster because our government thought it could solve problems better than the marketplace.
Fred Thompson gets smarmy on global warming. For the record, not all of the planets in the solar system are warming. And the idea that global warming is caused by the Sun has been recently disproved.
Next!
I’m so proud:
Via the DefCon blog comes that news that Texas governor Rick Perry has appointed a creationist to head the Texas State Board of Education.
..
Here is a letter McLeroy sent out to his fellow State Board of Education members:
My Personal Confession
Given all the time in the world, I don’t think I could make a spider out of a rock. However, most of the books we are considering adopting, claim that Nothing made a spider out of a rock.
I don’t think I share a common ancestor with a tree. However, most of the books we are considering adopting, claim as a fact that we all share a common ancestor with a tree.
Brilliant! This guy doesn’t understand the most basic principles of biology, and he’s going to chair the State Board of Education. And hey, if he doesn’t understand something, why should it be taught at all?
Time to homeschool.
The lawsuits over global warming are being rushed out the door.
Now, I know global warming is bullshit.
(Note to readers with no sense of irony – that’s a joke!).
You know all thse hurricanes that global warming is causing? Um, not so much.
The problem with these storms is that Americans have a peculiar proclivity to take money and bury it in a sand dune on a hurricane-prone beach, i.e. a beach house. As a result, the number of beach homes is going up and up, and because the supply is limited (there’s only so much beach), prices have risen astronomically. And the costs and sizes of the homes have also risen, given that increases in real wealth have outpaced inflation.