2015: WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD?

2015: WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD?

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CLIMATE

Government agencies and climate activists (but I repeat myself) are loudly proclaiming 2015 the “warmest year on record.” There are several obvious problems with this, starting with the fact that the “record” they refer to goes back only until the late 19th century, 1879, coinciding with the end of the Little Ice Age. So, yeah, things have gotten slightly warmer since the Little Ice Age. That’s a good thing.

Actually, current temperatures are relatively cool–cooler than the Earth has been something like 90% of the time since the end of the last real Ice Age, 12,000 or so years ago. When the place where I am typing was buried under ice a mile deep. If you want to worry about climate change, contemplate the fact that we are due, or soon will be due, for another Ice Age.

Then there is the fact that the margin by which 2015 was the “warmest ever” is tiny compared to the margin of error in such measurements. Does anyone seriously believe that we can determine an average global temperature to within a few hundredths of a degree? Now, or 150 years ago? No.

Finally–for now–there is the fact that the “warmest ever” claim is based on surface temperature data that are fatally flawed, both because historical data have been altered by government-funded activists for political reasons, and because surface temperature stations are frequently–usually–thrown off by local environmental factors, most notably (although not most scandalously) the urban heat island effect.

Dr. Roy Spencer has more:

[O]ur satellite analysis has 2015 only third warmest [since 1979] which has also been widely reported for weeks now. I understand that the RSS satellite analysis has it 4th warmest. …

There are many things I could say, but I would be repeating myself:

– Land measurements…that thermometers over land appear to have serious spurious warming issues from urbanization effects. Anthony Watts is to be credited for spearheading the effort to demonstrate this over the U.S. where recent warming has been exaggerated by about 60%, and I suspect the problem in other regions of the globe will be at least as bad. Apparently, the NOAA homogenization procedure forces good data to match bad data. That the raw data has serious spurious warming effects is easy to demonstrate…and has been for the last 50 years in the peer-reviewed literature….why is it not yet explicitly estimated and removed?

– Ocean Measurements…that even some NOAA scientists don’t like the new Karlized ocean surface temperature dataset that made the global warming pause disappear; many feel it also forces good data to agree with bad data. (I see a common theme here.)

– El Nino…that a goodly portion of the record warmth in 2015 was naturally induced, just as it was in previous record warm years.

– Thermometers Still Disagree with Models…that even if 2015 is the warmest on record, and NOAA has exactly the right answer, it is still well below the average forecast of the IPCC’s climate models, and something very close to that average forms the basis for global warming policy. In other words, even if every successive year is a new record, it matters quite a lot just how much warming we are talking about.

This is a blindingly obvious point, but one that is always overlooked, probably on purpose, in news accounts. The real story is that by any measure, the Earth’s climate is not behaving the way the alarmists promised it would.

Then we have scientists out there claiming silly things, like the satellites measure temperatures at atmospheric altitudes where people don’t live anyway, so we should ignore them.

Oh, really? Would those same scientists also claim we should ignore the ocean heat content measurements — also where nobody lives — even though that is supposedly the most important piece of evidence that heat is accumulating in the climate system?

Hmmm?

Dr. Spencer goes on to discuss what he calls “the elephant in the room”: the corrupting influence of billions of dollars in government money:

By now it has become a truism that government agencies will prefer whichever dataset supports the governments desired policies. You might think that government agencies are only out to report the truth, but if that’s the case, why are these agencies run by political appointees?

I can say this as a former government employee who used to help NASA sell its programs to congress: We weren’t funded to investigate non-problems, and if global warming were ever to become a non-problem, funding would go away. I was told what I could and couldn’t say to Congress…Jim Hansen got to say whatever he wanted. I grew tired of it, and resigned.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying climate change is a non-problem; only that government programs that fund almost 100% of the research into climate change cannot be viewed as unbiased. Agencies can only maintain (or, preferably, grow) their budgets if the problem they want to study persists. Since at least the 1980s, an institutional bias exists which has encouraged the climate research community to view virtually all climate change as human-caused.

There indeed is a climate change problem to study…but I don’t think we know with any certainty how much is natural versus manmade. There is no way to know, because there is (contrary to the IPCC’s claims) no fingerprint of human versus natural warming. Even natural warming originating over the ocean will cause faster warming over land than over ocean, just as we already observe.

But since the government has framed virtually all of the research programs in terms of human-caused climate change, that’s what the funded scientists will dutifully report it to be, in terms of supposed causation.

And until the culture in the government funding agencies changes, I don’t see a new way of doing business materializing. It might require congress to direct the funding agencies to spend at least a small portion of their budgets to look for evidence of natural causes of climate change.

Because scientists, I have learned, will tend to find whatever they are paid to find in terms of causation…which is sometimes very difficult to pin down in science.

This is the essence of the problem: the world’s governments are pouring billions of dollars into “research” of one kind only: research that supports giving more power over the world’s economies to governments. Huh. Funny coincidence: when the supposed climate problem was global cooling (a more realistic scare than global warming) back in the 1970s, the solution was more government power, too. Global cooling would have worked just as well for statists, probably better. But: cooling, warming, what’s the difference? We want your money, and we want to run your life! That is what global warming hysteria is all about. The money and the power. Global warming activism is perhaps the most corrupt enterprise of the 21st century.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/01/2015-warmest-year-on-record.php

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE “HAWKISH UPSTART”

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE “HAWKISH UPSTART”

 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN CRIME, SENATE, SENTENCING REFORM,TOM COTTON

There isn’t much in the current political scene that brings a smile to my face, but the opening paragraph in this Politico article did:

Sen. Tom Cotton, the hawkish upstart who’s already made waves railing against the Iran nuclear deal and government surveillance programs, is now leading a new rebellion against a bipartisan effort to overhaul the criminal justice system — hoping to torpedo one of the few pieces of major legislation that could pass Congress in President Barack Obama’s final year.

Any guess as to where the sympathies of author, Seung Min Kim, lie?

I should remind Politico that Groucho Marx took Freedonia to war because Ambassador Trentino called him an upstart.

Senator Cotton is waging a different kind of war in his effort to stop the early release of thousands of convicted drug dealers in the midst of a heroin epidemic:

GOP tensions over a bill that would effectively loosen some mandatory minimum sentences spilled over during a party lunch last week, when Cotton (R-Ark.), the outspoken Senate freshman, lobbied his colleagues heavily against the legislation, according to people familiar with the closed-door conversation. The measure passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall with bipartisan support.

“It would be very dangerous and unwise to proceed with the Senate Judiciary bill, which would lead to the release of thousands of violent felons,” Cotton said later in an interview with POLITICO. “I think it’s no surprise that Republicans are divided on this question … [but] I don’t think any Republicans want legislation that is going to let out violent felons, which this bill would do.”

Cotton reportedly received support at the lunch from Senators David Perdue (another “upstart” willing to stand up for law and order and the rule of law) and Jim Risch.

Their efforts may be having the desire effect on Majority Leader McConnell. According to Politico:

[L]ast week, McConnell — who is often hesitant to press ahead on issues that divide his 54-member conference — indicated a breather of sorts on the bill, saying GOP senators would take some time to get educated on the measure.

Those comments discouraged some supporters, since any major pause could spell doom for the bill this year. In a couple of months, the GOP-led Congress will turn its attention to its top legislative priority — budget and appropriations bills — while individual lawmakers shift into full campaign mode.

I doubt that, once in full campaign mode, Republican legislators will want to explain to their constituents why they are backing President Obama’s pet legislation — a jail break for drug dealers. As Senator Risch reportedly asked during the party lunch: shouldn’t the GOP be a party of law and order?

Yes it should, for reasons of public safety and political prudence.

BY THE WAY: Politico gets it wrong when it claims that Senator Cotton has “railed” against government surveillance programs. The Senator has been a leading opponent of attempts to undermine our ability to find out what terrorists are plotting.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/01/lets-hear-it-for-the-hawkish-upstart.php

It's About Domination: Rape (and Other Sex) Attacks Across Europe

Disturbing news about migrant violence in Germany and Austria reads like a sick advert for a porn movie.

BY MEIRA SVIRSKY

Protests against the Cologne attacks in Germany. The sign reads "The sex-mob attacks have a background." (Photo: © Reuters)

Disturbing news out of Germany and Austria reads like a sick advert for a porn movie. “Report: Locals Fled Pool After Migrants Masturbated Into Jacuzzi, Defecated Into Kid’s Pool, Invaded Girls Changing Rooms.” The report continues, saying that when challenged by the pool staff, the men laughed “in the face of pool staff.”

The obscene actions were caught on film by a security camera. After being  thrown out by lifeguards, the men came back, “jeering” and taking selfies in the polluted hot tub.

Many other pools have reported similar incidences, including aseries of sexual assaults on bathers as young as a three-year-old boy at the pool with his mother and 11-year-old girls targeted at water slides by gangs of migrants.

After the New Year’s Eve attacks in Germany, where coordinated, organized gangs of migrant men in Cologne and other cities surrounded German women and proceeded to grope, rape and rob them as their helpless boyfriends and police watched (who were themselves surrounded and harassed), the gloves supposedly came off the politically-correct Germany media.

Still, there has been only a trickle of reports. (And disturbingly, included in the reports is the fact that, in one particular sexual-assault incident, the men were detained by police, only to be later released.)

Shamed into reporting the Cologne attacks after a full four days of media silence, the discussion unfortunately centered on victim blaming (by none other than the mayor of Cologne herself -- as well as skewed takes on the incidents by feminists ready to sacrifice their sisters to the greater cause of anti-“racism”).

In the cases of gang harassment at pools, officials have taken a similar tack, saying migrant men must be schooled in Europeans values and norms. Pools that refused to allow in migrants in the wake of these incidents have been either shamed or forced into reopening their doors to them, with explanatory posters of improper behavior posted prominently at their doors.

Which completely misses the point.

Yes, a culture of pederasty exists in Afghanistan, where pre-pubescent boys are taken by powerful officials to be “played with” at will.

Yes, women in Middle Eastern and some African countries dress more modestly than their European counterparts, leading some Middle Eastern men to assume European women are “fair meat.”  

That doesn’t explain coordinated attacks in at least 12 German states, according to a leaked report of the federal criminal police, nor does it explain leering gangs taking selfies in post-polluted hot tubs.

The New York Times reports Alice Schwarzer, described as a leading “second-wave” German feminist, “became a lightning rod for feminist and anti-racist anger after New Year’s Eve when she condemned the Cologne attacks as a “gang bang” designed to terrorize women. 

Although Schwarzer clarified  “she never sought to ignore the fact that there is ‘a problem with epidemic, structural violence against women in Germany, as anywhere in the world,’” she was one of the few to name the reality of what is happening in Europe today.

“Violence is always the dark core of domination, whether it is between ethnic groups, or between different peoples or between the sexes,” Schwarzer said.

Europeans, who expected the migrants to receive their outpouring of largess graciously, have awakened to the latest manifestation of Islamist terror, whose goal is to control and dominate foreign cultures until they submit to the imposition of sharia-compliant Islam.

Apparently, as we have seen with brutalities of the Islamic State and with the above deviant behaviors in Europe, anything goes in order to achieve this goal.

Barring the rise of the extreme right as a counter force, which will result in a violent, full-scale war with Europe’s new populations – taking many innocents along with it -- if there is to be light at the end of this ideological tunnel, it must come from within the Muslim populations. Liberal Europe, it seems, has no stomach for it.

In Germany, one small flicker of that light was seen over the weekend as thousands of Syrian refuges holding signs saying “No to Sexism, No to Racism,” “We respect the values of German society” and “We are all Cologne” demonstrated across Germany against the Cologne attacks.

Many more such demonstrations and subsequent actions will be needed to propel Europe to rid itself of its newly imported fifth column.

Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org

LET’S HEAR IT FOR SENATOR PERDUE

LET’S HEAR IT FOR SENATOR PERDUE

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN IMMIGRATION, JUDICIAL NOMINEES,MEDIA BIAS

When Democratic presidents nominate leftist minority group members to the federal bench, it’s win-win for them. Either they get a leftist confirmed plus the right to brag about how much they’re doing for minorities or the Democrats can castigate Republicans for being mean to minorities.

The nomination of Dax Lopez to the federal district court for the Northern District of Georgia is a classic example. Lopez is Hispanic (and Jewish too). But Sen. David Perdue stood up to the pressure to rubber stamp his nomination and blocked iy.

Now Perdue is feeling the backlash, as is clear from this article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The Hispanic National Bar Association has blasted Perdue, as has the Anti-Defamation League. And the Democrats, of course, are playing this for all they think it’s worth. Antonio Molina, the caucus chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia sniffed:

These kinds of partisan games only reinforce what we already know about the GOP—there is no room at their table for Latinos. They’ve now gone from blocking commonsense immigration reform and opportunity for DREAMers to depriving Georgia of a talented legal mind for no other reason than his association with the Latino community.

But should Lopez be confirmed? In my view, the Democrats are lucky that any Obama nominees are being taken up in his lame duck year. Indeed, I believe that Republicans should have enforced a strong presumption against any judicial confirmations in response to President Obama’s lawless executive amnesty.

That aside, Perdue was right to block this particular nominee. Why?

First, he and fellow Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson received many letters from state legislators and law enforcement officials opposing Lopez’s nomination. In fact, the sheriffs of Georgia’s second and third most populous counties (Gwinett and Cobb) opposed it. So did the State Senate Majority Whip and State Senate Majority Caucus Chairman.

Second, Lopez is a radical who favors lawlessness as a means to accomplish his policy preferences. He served on the Board of Directors of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO). Lopez says that GALEO is “an organization very near and dear to my heart.”

During Lopez’s time on the GALEO board, this outfit, among other leftist positions:

Applauded the Fulton County Sheriff for refusing to cooperate with ICE on deportations.

Supported Obama’s unlawful executive orders on illegal immigration and amnesty.

Opposed Georgia’s voter identification law.

Opposed Georgia’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Lopez also took a lead role in slandering opponents of illegal immigration. He researched, wrote, and edited a GALEO White Paper that attacked groups such as the Center for Immigration Studies, claiming that their views are “strikingly similar” to those of “racial separatists.” He singled out one anti-illegal immigration activist in part for saying “there is no universal civil right to live in the United States.”

Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren noted GALEO’s strident lawlessness in his letter opposing Lopez’s nomination. He wrote:

In my 38 years of law enforcement service in Cobb County Georgia, including 11 years as Sheriff, I have never seen an organization work harder against the interest of our state. GALEO has called for law enforcement to turn a blind eye towards criminals that have illegally penetrated our borders and then perpetrated crimes against the very citizens I am sworn to protect.

Third, Lopez likes receiving preferential treatment because of his ethnicity. A vocal supporter of race-based affirmative action for his entire public life, I’m told that he has said his LSAT score was low and he would never have been admitted to Vanderbilt Law School but for the preference he received as a Hispanic.

Fourth, Lopez believes strongly in judicial activism. Speaking about federal judges during the 1960s, Lopez reportedly said:

The simple answer to how these judges became the unsung heroes of the [c]ivil rights movement is that judges have the power not only to talk about change, they can actually ORDER change…and what they did is that through the Courts they provided non violent forum [sic] to address injustice which led to real change, nonviolent revolution. . . .

These were the original activist judges, judges that applied all of the law, not just the portions they felt supported their own prejudiced views.

If confirmed, Lopez would almost surely strive to become a “hero” by applying “all of the law” to advance his revolutionary agenda, especially when it comes to illegal immigration.

Senator Perdue will be roundly condemned in the mainstream media and in other liberal circles for standing against Lopez’s confirmation. The Democrats will use this to raise money to try and defeat him when he stands for re-election.

It is important, therefore, that Perdue’s vote be praised by conservative outlets, so that less courageous Senators, and those from less Red states, will feel comfortable standing against hardcore left-wing judicial nominees in the future.

Letters to the Senator from our readers commending, cc-ing other GOP Senators, would also be helpful.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/01/lets-hear-it-for-senator-perdue.php

Ted Cruz (DP: I lost the source link for this after editing it to wrap into column space)

I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but I am declaring myself for Ted Cruz, because I have always leaned toward the moderate wing of the Republican Party and have always been first and foremost a foreign affairs conservative. But, the Republican Party is too far away from even minimal effectiveness, even with Congressional majorities, the issues being so aligned closer to conservative values, and the sheer incompetence and thuggishness of the Obama administration so evident and scary. And, Republicans in leadership have been as willing as Democrats to allow the hollowing of our military and degradation of its spirit. The situations in the MidEast and with Russia and China are among the most fearsome that our country has faced and we have frittered away our abilities to counter these threats. At the same time, our domestic strengths have been so weakened and spent into moral and financial near bankruptcy that unless we rebuild domestically we can forget about having a future in dealing with foreign gangsters not to mention the class of gangsters -- the politicians arm-in-arm with Wall Street and megacorporations --who are looting our pockets and self-esteem.

Ted Cruz is not a foreign affairs candidate. If anything, I would expect him to be restrained, both out of traditional conservative restraint and due to concentrating on setting us upright at home. He may be too restrained for my taste but there is something more important right now at stake, the very survival of the United States as the strong beacon of values that light up the world. Meanwhile, I feel confident that Ted Cruz will help rebuild our military strength and combativeness, weakened by social experiments that disregard fighting effectiveness, and will not stand idly by as foreign slime spit at us.

Ted Cruz is a principled Constitutionalist and conservative of the stripe that used to be so common. That's why the hypocrites and sell-outs in the Senate despise him, because compared to his legislative bravery they are revealed as pygmies of pusillanimity. I remember when Barry Goldwater ran for the nomination, how castigated he was by the Republican establishment, who deserted him. He lost by a landslide, but set a standard that Americans could gather around and retake the Republican Party for conservative principle and patriotism that didn't just conveniently wave the flag but who were willing to bleed for it and for what it stands for. That is Ted Cruz. Every generation, we must reassert our standard of principles, or see them bought for a pocket of lucre and allowed to be weakened for the passing comforts of laziness.

Ted Cruz may very well go down to defeat. It is tough to buck the stacked big city states in the electoral college and the sheer wall of hatred spewed by the mainstream media against any Republican -- and most Americans still get their news and views from the mainstream media. So may any other Republican go down to defeat. None of them are inspiring. I am willing to see that happen IF, IF, the Republican candidate sets out a clear standard of conservatism and articulate, knowledgeable defense of the Constitution and decency of values. Of all the candidates, only Ted Cruz has done that and can do that and be counted on to govern that way if elected.

At National Review some of the leading principled conservatives, none of them sycophants of big government-big business, set out their reasoned opposition to Donald Trump. In doing so they actually set out the case for a real, principled, knowledgeable, brave conservative. The only one on the field who lives up to that standard is Ted Cruz.

Sober reflections by Allahpundit.  The NYT quote is worth considering:

[T]he cadre of Republican lobbyists, operatives and elected officials based in Washington are much more unnerved by Mr. Cruz, a go-it-alone, hard-right crusader who campaigns against the political establishment and could curtail their influence and access, building his own Republican machine to essentially replace them…

“We can live with Trump.” ...