Tuesday, September 14, 2010

U.S. Citizens Have No Obligation To Answer Questions

I am really glad to see this.  I will remember this next time I cross a border.

KNIFE TRICKS: I Am Detained By The Feds For Not Answering Questions
Sherman Oaks, California

I was detained last night by
federal authorities at San Francisco International Airport for refusing
to answer questions about why I had travelled outside the United States.

The
end result is that, after waiting for about half an hour and refusing
to answer further questions, I was released – because U.S. citizens who
have produced proof of citizenship and a written customs declaration are
not obligated to answer questions.

[snip]

Principal Take-Aways


1. Cops Really Don’t Like It When You Refuse To Answer Their Questions.
The passport control officer was aghast when I told her that my visit
to China was none of her business. This must not happen often, because
several of the officers involved seemed thrown by my refusal to meekly
bend to their whim.

2. They’re Keeping Records. A federal, computer-searchable file exists on my refusal to answer questions.

3. This Is About Power, Not Security.
The CBP goons want U.S. citizens to answer their questions as a
ritualistic bow to their power. Well, CBP has no power over me. I am a
law-abiding citizen, and, as such, I am the master, and the federal cops
are my servants. They would do well to remember that.

4. U.S. Citizens Have No Obligation To Answer Questions.
Ultimately, the cops let me go, because there was nothing they could
do. A returning U.S. citizen has an obligation to provide proof of
citizenship, and the officer has legitimate reasons to investigate if
she suspects the veracity of the citizenship claim. A U.S. citizen
returning with goods also has an obligation to complete a written
customs declaration. But that’s it. You don’t have to answer questions
about where you went, why you went, who you saw, etc.

Of course, if you don’t, you get hassled.

But that’s a small price to pay to remind these thugs that their powers are limited and restricted.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Seriously disgusting abuse of government power

Back to blogging ... been "AFK" for a while. Will try to post links and more a little more often.

Morning Links | The Agitator
Department of Transportation fines non-profit air ambulance service $30,000 for using the wrong pronoun.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Global Cooling Is Coming -- and Beware the Big Chill, Scientist Warns

FOXNews.com - Global Cooling Is Coming -- and Beware the Big Chill, Scientist Warns
Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, a scientist who has written more than 150 peer-reviewed papers has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Like a drunken sailor?

Here's a really short, right-on-the-money comment on Congress's spending "like a drunken sailor".
» One Sailor’s View of Obama & Congress
Dvorak Uncensored: General interest observations and true web-log.

Friday, April 16, 2010

It's a sad day in America when this is good advice

Unfortunately America is becoming more and more like AmeriKa ... "papers please" is becoming the norm, and the Obamination that is our current "leader" isn't making it any better ....

The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » Flex Your Rights Presents: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police
The Bill of Rights provides citizens basic protections against unlawful searches and seizures via the Fourth Amendment, protections against self incrimination via the Fifth Amendment, and the right to an attorney via the Sixth Amendment. On a theoretical level, most people probably know this but what does this mean on a practical level?

If the police pull you over, are you required to answer the officer’s questions if he hasn’t informed you of your right to remain silent? What does “probable cause” and “reasonable suspicion” mean when a police officer wants to search your vehicle and do you have a right to refuse the search? Should you consent to the search if you know you have nothing to hide? If the police knock on your front door, are you legally required to let them in if they don’t have a warrant? Are the police legally required to tell the truth or can they make false promises or otherwise trick you into waiving your constitutionally protected civil rights?

If you are unsure about the answers to these questions, don’t feel bad; I wasn’t too sure myself. The 4 part video series 10 Rules for Dealing with Police from the group that calls itself Flex Your Rights answers these questions and more in terms a lay person like myself can easily understand. Some of the advice is common sense (see rules 1, 7, & 8 below) while others are more legal in nature.

Whether you are a “law abiding citizen” who almost never has an encounter with the police or a “cop magnet,” this advice not only could keep you from being in serious legal trouble but also keep you from being beaten, tazered, or shot (if you follow these rules and these things still happen, you have more legal recourse against offending officers).

If you don’t have time to watch these videos right away, here are the 10 Rules for Dealing with Police in brief:

Read the article ... Flex Your Rights Presents: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Don't trust Wikipedia when it comes to climate issues

When you are researching on the Internet, Wikipedia has become the "place to go" for most research.  However, when it comes to climate issues, particularly those related to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), Wikipedia can't be trusted.  This has been well documented by several researchers -- if you make a change to an AGW article which mentions climate skeptics favourably, the change will be reversed quickly.

Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia – Telegraph Blogs
If you want to know the truth about Climategate, definitely don’t use Wikipedia. “Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy”, is its preferred, mealy-mouthed euphemism to describe the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age. Not that you’d ever guess it was a scandal from the accompanying article. It reads more like a damage-limitation press release put out by concerned friends and sympathisers of the lying, cheating, data-rigging scientists

Which funnily enough, is pretty much what it is. Even Wikipedia’s own moderators acknowledge that the entry has been hijacked, as this commentary by an “uninvolved editor” makes clear.

Unfortunately, this naked bias and corruption has infected the supposedly neutral Wikipedia’s entire coverage of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. And much of this, as Lawrence Solomon reports in the National Post, is the work of one man, a Cambridge-based scientist and Green Party activist named William Connolley.

The American Spectator : Wikipedia Meets Its Own Climategate
.... the use of Wikipedia itself to inflame the political debate by permitting activists to rewrite the contributions of others. All by itself, that surely is a contributor to online incivility.

The issue that I am particularly thinking about is "climate change" -- or global warming as it was once called (until the globe stopped warming, about a decade ago). Recently the Financial Post in Canada published an article by Lawrence Solomon, with this remarkable headline:
How Wikipedia's green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.
Solomon draws attention to the online labors of one William M. Connolley, a Green Party activist and software engineer in Britain. Starting in February 2003, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. I continue with a two-paragraph direct quote from Mr. Solomon's article:
[Connolley] rewrote Wikipedia's articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug. 11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band [of climatologist activists]. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band [of activists] especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it -- more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred -- over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
Lawrence Solomon: Climategate at Wikipedia - FP Comment

A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC - Telegraph

VERY good article about why the IPCC is dead in the water.

A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC - Telegraph

Friday, February 26, 2010

Graphical proof of a long-term global cooling trend

The big picture: 65 million years of temperature swings « JoNova
David Lappi is a geologist from Alaska who has sent in a set of beautiful graphs–including an especially prosaic one of the last 10,000 years in Greenland–that he put together himself (and which I’ve copied here at the top).

If you wonder where today’s temperature fits in with the grand scheme of time on Earth since the dinosaurs were wiped out, here’s the history. We start with the whole 65 million years, then zoom in, and zoom in again to the last 12,000 from both ends of the world. What’s obvious is that in terms of homo sapiens history, things are warm now (because we’re not in an ice age). But, in terms of homo sapiens civilization, things are cooler than usual, and appear to be cooling.

Then again, since T-rex & Co. vanished, it’s been one long slide down the thermometer, and our current “record heatwave” is far cooler than normal. The dinosaurs would have scoffed at us: “What? You think this is warm?”

With so much volatility in the graphs, anyone could play “pick a trend” and depending on which dot you start from, you can get any trend you want. — Jo

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

AGW High Priest says Medieval Warm Period real, no warming since 1995

No surprise here.

Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » Phil Jones blows the gaff
The AGW true believers who determinedly reasserted their faith after the Climate Research Unit emails leaked have just been embarrassed by one of the high priests of the cult. Phil Jones, the former head of the CRU, now admits that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995.

Reading this is an entertaining counterpoint to the sight of the five-foot-long icicles hanging from the eaves outside my office window. Dunno whether it means anything — probably doesn’t — but the last time I saw icicles this size was during the bizarre six-day-long ice storm that socked Philadelphia early in, I think, 1993.

Jones himself claims to still believe in AGW, but he’s also now conceding that temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period (Remember? That thing Mann and the Hockey Team tried to flimflam out of existence?) may have averaged higher than today’s. And he trots out the reliable old “the dog ate my primary data” excuse for another walk.

Stay tuned. As bad as it looks now, I’m pretty certain that the depths of embarrassment and disgrace waiting for AGW true believers have not been fully plumbed even yet.
Climategate U-turn: Astonishment as scientist at centre of global warming email row admits data not well organised | Mail Online
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made
No kidding.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

ESR on Naming and Shaming the AGW fanatics

Well said, good explanation of the AGW crowd.

Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » Naming and shaming the AGW fraudsters
James Delingpole, in Climategate: Time for the Tumbrils, noting the public collapse in credibility of AGW “science” utters a fine rant summed up in this wise (parochial references to British political figures and organizations omitted):

I’m in no mood for being magnanimous in victory. I want the lying, cheating, fraudulent scientists prosecuted and fined or imprisoned. I want warmist politicians booted out and I want fellow-travellers who are still pushing this green con trick to be punished at the polls for their culpable idiocy.

For years I’ve been made to feel a pariah for my views on AGW. Now it’s payback time and I take small satisfaction from seeing so many rats deserting their sinking ship. I don’t want them on my side. I want to see them in hell, reliving scenes from Hieronymus Bosch.

I too long to see the frauds and the fellow-travellers in the hell they’ve earned for themselves. But revenge, while it’s a tasty dish that long-time public “deniers” like Delingpole and myself are now thoroughly enjoying, isn’t the best reason to hound them and their enabling organizations out of public life. The best reason not to relent, to name and shame the fraudsters and shatter their reputations and humilate them — ideally, to the point where there’s a rash of prominent suicides as a result — is this:

If we don’t destroy them, they’ll surely ramp up yet another colossal, politicized eco-fraud to plague us all.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

More Climategate fallout, this time from the UK Guardian

Here's another story about (probably fraudulent, certainly unverifiable) data being used in a now-discredited story that forms one of the cornerstones of the rapidly-crumbling AGW edifice:

Chinese Urbanization Study | Climate Skeptic
Why it matters

The Guardian writes:

[I]t is important to keep this in perspective, however. This dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanisation on temperatures in China does not change the global picture of temperature trends. There is plenty of evidence of global warming, not least from oceans far from urban influences.

This is correct. Further, it is absurd to deny the world has warmed over the last 150 years as the little ice age of the 17th and 18th centuries was one of the coldest periods in thousands of years, and thus it is totally natural that we have seen warming in recovery from these frigid times.

But here is what it is important to understand: The real debate between skeptics and alarmists is not over whether the Earth has warmed over the last century or whether CO2 from man contributes incrementally to warming. The real debate is over whether the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 is high or low. Skeptics like me argue for low sensitivity, on the order of 0.5-1.0C per doubling once all feedbacks are taken in to account. Alarmists argue for numbers 3C and higher.

The problem alarmists have is that it is very, very difficult to reconcile past warming to high-sensitivity forecasts. It takes a lot of mathematical contortions, from time-delays to cooling aerosols to ignoring ocean cycles and natural recovery from the little ice age to make the numbers reconcile. Halving the actual historic warming by attributing the other half to measurement biases makes it even, uh, more impossible to reconcile high sensitivity models to actual history.

Reason series on Climategate - Update 1: The China Syndrome

Climategate Update 1: The China Syndrome* - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine
Climategate just gets more interesting all the time doesn't it? The Guardian is reporting that the Climatic Research Unit (the U.K. research group at the center of the Climategate affair) has somehow lost critical temperature data again, in this case data from Chinese weather stations that are supposed to prove that the urban heat island effect accounts for a neglible portion of the warming trend found in temperature records. The abstract for the study published in 1990 in Nature reads:

Read the rest of the Reason article at the link above.
In any case, Phil Jones and the CRU crowd are in the process of finding out the truth of the old adage, "It's not the crime, it's the cover up" that eventually brings someone down.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Surprise, surprise, CO2 increase may cause COOLING ....

» Study: Earth Self-Regulation Discovery may make Carbon Credits, Etc. Irrelevant Dvorak Uncensored: General interest observations and true web-log.
Despite the apparent bias of many climate researchers, they do have one thing right; carbon levels have risen notably over the twentieth century from about 300 ppm to 375 ppm. While still far from the estimated levels of around 3,000 ppm during the time of the dinosaurs (appr. 150 MYA), the rising levels do mark a legitimate trend. However, there is increasing evidence that the rising carbon, contrary to alarmist reports is actually having remarkably little effect on global temperatures.

A new study authored by Susan Solomon, lead author of the study and a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo. could explain why atmospheric carbon is not contributing to warming significantly. According to the study, as carbon levels have risen, the cold air at high altitudes over the tropics has actually grown colder. The lower temperatures at this “coldest point” have caused global water vapor levels to drop, even as carbon levels rise.

Water vapor helps trap heat, and is a far the strongest of the major greenhouse gases, contributing 36–72 percent of the greenhouse effect. However more atmospheric carbon has actually decreased water vapor levels. Thus rather than a “doomsday” cycle of runaway warming, Mother Earth appears surprisingly tolerant of carbon, decreasing atmospheric levels of water vapor — a more effective greenhouse gas — to compensate.

Describes Professor Solomon, “There is slow warming that has taken place over the last 100 years. But from one decade to another, there can be fluctuations in the warming trend.”

The study was published in the prestigious journal Science.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Sun Also Flares

And now for something completely different -- sort of.  Maybe the Mormons are right -- stockpile enough supplies to survive for a year independently. If a solar flare of the magnitude of the "Carrington Event" were to occur tomorrow, the world would be in Serious Trouble ...

Cliff May : The Sun Also Flares - Townhall.com
The strongest solar storm on record is the Carrington Event of 1859, named after Richard Carrington, an astronomer who witnessed the super solar flare that set off the event as he was projecting an image of the sun on a white screen. In those days, of course, there was nothing much to damage. A high-intensity burst of electro-magnetic energy shot through telegraph lines, disrupting communications, shocking technicians and setting their papers on fire. Northern Lights were visible as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. But otherwise life went on as normal.

The same would not be true were a solar storm of similar magnitude to erupt today. Instead, the infrastructure we depend on would be wiped out. Most of us would not adapt well to this sudden return to a pre-industrial age.

How likely is a repeat of the Carrington Event? Scientists say it is not only possible -- it is inevitable. What they don't know is when. The best estimates are that super solar storms occur once every 100 years - which means we are 50 years overdue.

Both the Wikipedia page and the NASA page on the Carrington Event suggest that such events are twice-a-millenium events, or once every 500 years, not once a century according to the Townhall.com "report". I guess it's just another life-gamble: should I worry about surviving a once-in-10-lifetimes event or should I just live like a grasshopper?

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Stray animals and welfare recipients ....

dispatches from TJICistan » Blog Archive » offense intended
The main difference between welfare recipients and stray animals is that there’s actual demand for stray animals.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Google and WIkipedia collude to hide "Climategate" data

Fascinating blog post with some very convincing links comparing Google searches for "Climategate" to Bing searches for the same thing.  Disturbing, to say the least ...

Climate Observer: Those Who Control The Information Try To Control The Debate.
The rise and exposure of Climategate did more than just show the email correspondence of a few climate scientists who were determined to shut down dissent, manipulate the peer review process hide or destroy information requested under FOI, hide their mistakes, etc, etc. They also exposed the bias of information sources like Wikipedia (as we have seen before), as well as exposing the bias of Google as a web browser. National Post journalist Lawrence Solomon investigated these phenomenon and this is what he found: In the first article entitled Wikipedia's Climate Doctor we find:

The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.

...The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.

... This bias by Wikipedia was not isolated. In fact the Google readjustment (read hiding) of the
number of articles referring to Climategate became known as
"Googlegate," such was the level of interference. In Solomon's article Better off with Bing he writes:

This week,
Google announced an end to its long-standing collaboration with the
Chinese Communists — it will no longer censor users inside China.


That’s good of it. Maybe Google will now also stop using its search engine to censor the rest of us, in the Western countries.

Search for “Googlegate” on Google and you’ll get a paltry result (my result yesterday was 29,300). Search for “Googlegate” on Bing,
Microsoft’s search engine competitor, and the result numbers an
eye-popping 72.4 million. If you’re a regular Google user, as opposed
to a Bing user, you might not even know that “Googlegate” has been a
hot topic for years in the blogosphere — that’s the power that comes of
being able to control information.

Despite Google’s
motto of “Do No Evil,” it has long been controversial and suspected of
evil-doing — and not just in its cooperation with China, or in
protecting itself by hiding criticism of itself from unsuspecting
Google users. In recent months,
most of the evil-doing has focused on the Climategate scandal, the
startling emails from the Climate Research Unit in the UK that show
climate change scientists to be cooking the books.


For
many weeks now, readers have been sending me emails describing how
Google has been doing its best to hide information relating to
Climategate, which has been the single biggest story on the Internet
since the Climategate emails came to light on November 19.
By
Nov. 26, the term had gone viral and Google returned more results for
“climategate” (10.4 million) than for “global warming” (10.1 million).
As the Climate Scandal exploded, and increasing numbers of blog sites
covered it, the number of web pages with Climategate continued to
climb. On Dec. 7, Google’s search engine found 31.6 million hits for
people who searched for “Climategate.”

Sometime
around then, in early December, Google began to minimize the
Climategate scandal by hiding Climategate pages from its users. By Dec.
17, the number of climategate pages that a Google search found dropped
by almost 10 million, to 22.2 million. One day later Google dropped its
find by another 8 million pages, to 14.1 million. By Dec. 23, Google
could find only 7.5 million hits and on Dec. 24 just 6 million. And
yesterday, when I checked, Google reported a mere 1.8 million
climategate pages.
See Here.

Bing,
in contrast, didn’t make climategate pages disappear. As you’d expect
from a search engine that wasn’t manipulating data, search results on
Bing climbed steadily until they peaked at around 51 million, where
they have remained since. See Here

Starting
in late November, Google has been keeping the public in the dark about
Climategate in other ways, too. Ordinarily, when people begin keying in
their search terms, Google helpfully suggests the balance of their
text, through an automatic feature it calls Google Suggests.

At
the very beginning of the Climategate scandal, before it became huge,
Google Suggests worked as advertised. If someone typed in c-l-i-,
Google would have shown them “climategate” on a list of options. Many
people, in fact, learned about Climategate this very way, because most
major media outlets had not yet picked up on the scandal. As
Climategate rose in intensity, the term also rose in prominence on the
Google Suggest list — anyone keying in c-l-i would see “climategate” at
the top of the list.

But
suddenly in late November, for reasons known only to Google, Google
often would not suggest “climategate” to those who keyed in c-l-i. Even
c-l-i-m-a or c-l-i-m-a-t-e-g-a-t weren’t enough to solicit a suggestion.

Bing, in contrast, did not and does not steer users away from
climategate — it has consistently suggested “climategate” to those who
keyed in c-l-i or even c-l.

For those whom Google can’t steer
away from “climategate,” and who key in all 11 letters to learn about
the eye-opening emails, Google goes the extra yard in keeping people in
the dark — it dishes up a page that trivializes the scientific
significance of climategate. Those who click on Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” after asking for “climategate” find themselves on a Wikipedia page entitled Climatic Research Unit hacking incidentthat
downplays the content of the emails and focuses on the “unauthorised
release of thousands of emails and other documents obtained through the
hacking of a server,” the “illegal taking of data,” the “Law
enforcement agencies [that] are investigating the matter as a crime,”
and “the death threats that were subsequently made against climate
scientists named in the emails.”


For those who don’t
use Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” feature, Google presents them with
this one-sided Wikipedia page as the first item in its search results.
Wikipedia actually has a page called “Climategate” that contains
damning information about the scientists caught up in the scandal but
its own censors won’t let the public see it — anyone who tries to key
in “Climategate” on the Wikipedia site will be instantly redirected to
the Wikipedia-approved version of climategate, where the scandal is
described as nothing more than “a smear campaign.”

Why would Google want to tamp down interest in climategate? Money and power could have something to do with it. Search
for Google and its founders and you’ll see that they have made big
financial bets on global warming through investments in renewable and
other green technologies; that they have a close relationship with Al Gore, that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is close to Barack Obama.


But search for Googlegate and you’ll also see that more than money is at stake. The
accusations against Google of censorship are wide-spread, involving
schemes to elect Barack Obama, attacks on Christianity (key in
“Christianity is” and Google will suggest unflattering completions to
the phrase), and political correctness (key in “Islam is” and nothing
negative is suggested).


The bottom line? Google is as
inscrutable as the Chinese, and perhaps no less corrupt. For safe
searches, you’re best off with Bing.

So,
the tentacles of climategate go beyond influencing the temperature
records of countries all round the world, to include influence over
major information sources such as Wikipedia (by having someone inside
do the gate keeping) to Google by their external relationship to Gore
and to members of his former political party. Is it any wonder that
some people either still have not heard of Climategate or have no idea
as to the depths of manipulation they are being subject to on a daily
basis.



No comment ...

Notes from the Massachusetts Senate Race - Reason Magazine
Nigerian Zionists for Coakley. Irish Republicans for Brown. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of any of this.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Google and WIkipedia collude to hide "Climategate" data

Fascinating blog post with some very convincing links comparing Google searches for "Climategate" to Bing searches for the same thing.  Disturbing, to say the least ...

Climate Observer: Those Who Control The Information Try To Control The Debate.
The rise and exposure of Climategate did more than just show the email correspondence of a few climate scientists who were determined to shut down dissent, manipulate the peer review process hide or destroy information requested under FOI, hide their mistakes, etc, etc. They also exposed the bias of information sources like Wikipedia (as we have seen before), as well as exposing the bias of Google as a web browser. National Post journalist Lawrence Solomon investigated these phenomenon and this is what he found: In the first article entitled Wikipedia's Climate Doctor we find:

The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.

...The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.

... This bias by Wikipedia was not isolated. In fact the Google readjustment (read hiding) of the
number of articles referring to Climategate became known as
"Googlegate," such was the level of interference. In Solomon's article Better off with Bing he writes:

This week,
Google announced an end to its long-standing collaboration with the
Chinese Communists — it will no longer censor users inside China.


That’s good of it. Maybe Google will now also stop using its search engine to censor the rest of us, in the Western countries.

Search for “Googlegate” on Google and you’ll get a paltry result (my result yesterday was 29,300). Search for “Googlegate” on Bing,
Microsoft’s search engine competitor, and the result numbers an
eye-popping 72.4 million. If you’re a regular Google user, as opposed
to a Bing user, you might not even know that “Googlegate” has been a
hot topic for years in the blogosphere — that’s the power that comes of
being able to control information.

Despite Google’s
motto of “Do No Evil,” it has long been controversial and suspected of
evil-doing — and not just in its cooperation with China, or in
protecting itself by hiding criticism of itself from unsuspecting
Google users. In recent months,
most of the evil-doing has focused on the Climategate scandal, the
startling emails from the Climate Research Unit in the UK that show
climate change scientists to be cooking the books.


For
many weeks now, readers have been sending me emails describing how
Google has been doing its best to hide information relating to
Climategate, which has been the single biggest story on the Internet
since the Climategate emails came to light on November 19.
By
Nov. 26, the term had gone viral and Google returned more results for
“climategate” (10.4 million) than for “global warming” (10.1 million).
As the Climate Scandal exploded, and increasing numbers of blog sites
covered it, the number of web pages with Climategate continued to
climb. On Dec. 7, Google’s search engine found 31.6 million hits for
people who searched for “Climategate.”

Sometime
around then, in early December, Google began to minimize the
Climategate scandal by hiding Climategate pages from its users. By Dec.
17, the number of climategate pages that a Google search found dropped
by almost 10 million, to 22.2 million. One day later Google dropped its
find by another 8 million pages, to 14.1 million. By Dec. 23, Google
could find only 7.5 million hits and on Dec. 24 just 6 million. And
yesterday, when I checked, Google reported a mere 1.8 million
climategate pages.
See Here.

Bing,
in contrast, didn’t make climategate pages disappear. As you’d expect
from a search engine that wasn’t manipulating data, search results on
Bing climbed steadily until they peaked at around 51 million, where
they have remained since. See Here

Starting
in late November, Google has been keeping the public in the dark about
Climategate in other ways, too. Ordinarily, when people begin keying in
their search terms, Google helpfully suggests the balance of their
text, through an automatic feature it calls Google Suggests.

At
the very beginning of the Climategate scandal, before it became huge,
Google Suggests worked as advertised. If someone typed in c-l-i-,
Google would have shown them “climategate” on a list of options. Many
people, in fact, learned about Climategate this very way, because most
major media outlets had not yet picked up on the scandal. As
Climategate rose in intensity, the term also rose in prominence on the
Google Suggest list — anyone keying in c-l-i would see “climategate” at
the top of the list.

But
suddenly in late November, for reasons known only to Google, Google
often would not suggest “climategate” to those who keyed in c-l-i. Even
c-l-i-m-a or c-l-i-m-a-t-e-g-a-t weren’t enough to solicit a suggestion.

Bing, in contrast, did not and does not steer users away from
climategate — it has consistently suggested “climategate” to those who
keyed in c-l-i or even c-l.

For those whom Google can’t steer
away from “climategate,” and who key in all 11 letters to learn about
the eye-opening emails, Google goes the extra yard in keeping people in
the dark — it dishes up a page that trivializes the scientific
significance of climategate. Those who click on Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” after asking for “climategate” find themselves on a Wikipedia page entitled Climatic Research Unit hacking incidentthat
downplays the content of the emails and focuses on the “unauthorised
release of thousands of emails and other documents obtained through the
hacking of a server,” the “illegal taking of data,” the “Law
enforcement agencies [that] are investigating the matter as a crime,”
and “the death threats that were subsequently made against climate
scientists named in the emails.”


For those who don’t
use Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” feature, Google presents them with
this one-sided Wikipedia page as the first item in its search results.
Wikipedia actually has a page called “Climategate” that contains
damning information about the scientists caught up in the scandal but
its own censors won’t let the public see it — anyone who tries to key
in “Climategate” on the Wikipedia site will be instantly redirected to
the Wikipedia-approved version of climategate, where the scandal is
described as nothing more than “a smear campaign.”

Why would Google want to tamp down interest in climategate? Money and power could have something to do with it. Search
for Google and its founders and you’ll see that they have made big
financial bets on global warming through investments in renewable and
other green technologies; that they have a close relationship with Al Gore, that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is close to Barack Obama.


But search for Googlegate and you’ll also see that more than money is at stake. The
accusations against Google of censorship are wide-spread, involving
schemes to elect Barack Obama, attacks on Christianity (key in
“Christianity is” and Google will suggest unflattering completions to
the phrase), and political correctness (key in “Islam is” and nothing
negative is suggested).


The bottom line? Google is as
inscrutable as the Chinese, and perhaps no less corrupt. For safe
searches, you’re best off with Bing.

So,
the tentacles of climategate go beyond influencing the temperature
records of countries all round the world, to include influence over
major information sources such as Wikipedia (by having someone inside
do the gate keeping) to Google by their external relationship to Gore
and to members of his former political party. Is it any wonder that
some people either still have not heard of Climategate or have no idea
as to the depths of manipulation they are being subject to on a daily
basis.



Sunday, January 17, 2010

NASA Caught in Climate Data Manipulation

NASA Caught in Climate Data Manipulation; New Revelations Headlined on KUSI-TV Climate Special | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference
Climate researchers have discovered that NASA researchers improperly manipulated data in order to claim 2005 as "THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD." KUSI-TV meteorologist, Weather Channel founder, and iconic weatherman John Coleman will present these findings in a one-hour special airing on KUSI-TV on Jan.14 at 9 p.m. A related report will be made available on the Internet at 6 p.m. EST on January 14th at www.kusi.com.

In a new report, computer expert E. Michael Smith and Certified Consulting Meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo discovered extensive manipulation of the temperature data by the U.S. Government's two primary climate centers: the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) in Ashville, North Carolina and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at Columbia University in New York City. Smith and D'Aleo accuse these centers of manipulating temperature data to give the appearance of warmer temperatures than actually occurred by trimming the number and location of weather observation stations. The report is available online at http://icecap.us/images/uploads/NOAAroleinclimategate.pdf.

The report reveals that there were no actual temperatures left in the computer database when NASA/NCDC proclaimed 2005 as "THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD." The NCDC deleted actual temperatures at thousands of locations throughout the world as it changed to a system of global grid points, each of which is determined by averaging the temperatures of two or more adjacent weather observation stations. So the NCDC grid map contains only averaged, not real temperatures, giving rise to significant doubt that the result is a valid representation of Earth temperatures.

The number of actual weather observation points used as a starting point for world average temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,000 now. "That leaves much of the world unaccounted for," says D'Aleo.

The NCDC data are regularly used by the National Weather Service to declare a given month or year as setting a record for warmth. Such pronouncements are typically made in support of the global warming alarmism agenda. Researchers who support the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also regularly use the NASA/NCDC data, including researchers associated with the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that is now at the center of the "Climategate" controversy.

This problem is only the tip of the iceberg with NCDC data. "For one thing, it is clear that comparing data from previous years, when the final figure was produced by averaging a large number of temperatures, with those of later years, produced from a small temperature base and the grid method, is like comparing apples and oranges," says Smith. "When the differences between the warmest year in history and the tenth warmest year is less than three quarters of a degree, it becomes silly to rely on such comparisons," added D'Aleo who asserts that the data manipulation is "scientific travesty" that was committed by activist scientists to advance the global warming agenda.

The KUSI show is available online here in four 12-minute segments:

Weather Channel Founder's 'Global Warming - The Other Side' Airs In San Diego | NewsBusters.org
A rather remarkable thing happened Thursday: a documentary highly skeptical of man's role in global warming was aired on broadcast television.

The program, "Global Warming: The Other Side," was created and hosted by John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel, and debuted on San Diego's independent television station KUSI.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

"Crony Capitalism" is NOT the "Free Market"

Good column by John Stossel, the former ABC maverick who is now with Fox Business Network TV and also writes for Reason Magazine.

Let's Take the "Crony" Out of "Crony Capitalism" by John Stossel on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent
When Judge Richard Posner, the prolific conservative intellectual, released his book "A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent Into Depression" (http://tinyurl.com/ylnlbn2) last year, you might have thought the final verdict was in: Capitalism caused the economic downturn and high unemployment.

That this verdict was pronounced by someone like Posner, who is associated with the University of Chicago and the free-market law and economics movement, gave moral support to all the politicians who were intent on exploiting the recession (as they exploit all crises) to increase government control of the economy.

But what exactly is this "capitalism" that is blamed?

The word "capitalism" is used in two contradictory ways. Sometimes it's used to mean the free market, or laissez faire. Other times it's used to mean today's government-guided economy. Logically, "capitalism" can't be both things. Either markets are free or government controls them. We can't have it both ways.

The truth is that we don't have a free market — government regulation and management are pervasive — so it's misleading to say that "capitalism" caused today's problems. The free market is innocent.

But it's fair to say that crony capitalism created the economic mess.
Column continues at the link above.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

More skeptical science that didn't make the MSM

This is the first I've heard of these studies of deep ocean currents, yet this was presented in 2008.

DAVID ROSE: The mini ice age starts here | Mail Online

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only
the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to
last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate
scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural
cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans –
challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished
beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According
to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer
sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since
2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not
dispute this.


North Pole



The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate
computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900
has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will
continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise. 

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was
caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to
the present ‘cold mode’.

This challenge
to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an
irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists
could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.

...

Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago.

Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.

Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.

'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.

‘The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.’

There's more on this here: Could we be in for 30 years of global COOLING?

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Schneier on Security: TSA Logo Contest

Wonderful!  You need to visit Bruce Schneier's blog entry on this if only to see the first logo entry.

Schneier on Security: TSA Logo Contest
TSA Logo Contest

Over at "Ask the Pilot," Patrick Smith has a great idea:
Calling all artists: One thing TSA needs, I think, is a better logo and a snappy motto. Perhaps there's a graphic designer out there who can help with a new rendition of the agency's circular eagle-and-flag motif. I'm imagining a revised eagle, its talons clutching a box cutter and a toothpaste tube. It says "Transportation Security Administration" around the top. Below are the three simple words of the TSA mission statement: "Tedium, Weakness, Farce."
Let's do it. I'm announcing the TSA Logo Contest. Rules are simple: create a TSA logo. People are welcome to give ideas in the comments, but only actual created logos are eligible to compete. (When my website administrator wakes up, I'll ask him how we can post images in the comments.) Contest ends on February 6th. Winner receives copies of my books, copies of Patrick Smith's book, an empty 12-ounce bottle labeled "saline" that you can refill and get through any TSA security checkpoint, and a fake boarding pass on any flight for any date.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

It Didn't Start With Climategate

As those of us in the earth sciences have been saying for years:

Power Line - It Didn't Start With Climategate
The whistleblower at the University of East Anglia who leaked emails and other documents that reveal the fraud that is being perpetrated by the world's leading global warming alarmists did us all a great service. But it is important to realize that the deception didn't just begin: rather, the global warming hysteria movement has been shot through with fraud from the start.

The most important document in the history of the anthropogenic global warming movement was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Second Assessment Report, which was published under the auspices of the United Nations in 1996. This report was the principal basis for the Kyoto Accord which was signed in 1997, and for the nonsense that has been inflicted on the world's elementary school students ever since.

But the Second Assessment Report was hijacked by an AGW activist who re-wrote key conclusions and injected a level of alarmism that had not been present in the consensus document. You can get the whole story here, along with a great deal more information about the global warming controversy. The Science and Environmental Project summarized what happened as follows:

     IPCC assessment reports, and particularly their Summaries for Policymakers (SPM), are noted for their selective use of information and their bias to support the political goal of control of fossil fuels in order to fight an alleged anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

    Perhaps the most blatant example is IPCC's Second Assessment Report (SAR), completed in 1995 and published in 1996. Its SPM contains the memorable phrase "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." You may recall that this 1996 IPCC report played a key role in the political deliberations that led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

    This ambiguous phrase suggests a group of climate scientists, examining both human and natural influences on climate change, looking at published scientific research, and carefully weighing their decision. Nothing of the sort has ever happened. The IPCC has consistently ignored the major natural influences on climate change and has focused almost entirely on human causes, especially on GH gases and more especially on carbon dioxide, which is linked to industrial activities and therefore 'bad' almost by definition.
This is from Professor Seitz's 1996 Wall Street Journal article:

    This IPCC report, like all others, is held in such high regard largely because it has been peer-reviewed. That is, it has been read, discussed, modified and approved by an international body of experts. These scientists have laid their reputations on the line. But this report is not what it appears to be--it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

    A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version. The scientists were assuming that the IPCC would obey the IPCC Rules--a body of regulations that is supposed to govern the panel's actions. Nothing in the IPCC Rules permits anyone to change a scientific report after it has been accepted by the panel of scientific contributors and the full IPCC.

Hat-tip to DMV