Conffederate
Confederate

August 30, 2011

Hey Manmade Global Warming Cultists!

You're still gullible idiots.

That is all.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 08:15 AM | Comments (4)

August 27, 2011

"Scientist" Rejects Scientific Method to Mock Irene; Justifiably Mocked By World, Inexplicably Linked by Drudge

A man named Stephen Goddard running a web site he calls "Real Science" has certainly made an ass out of himself today, and ruined any credibility that he may have had as a scientist.

Goddard claims that Hurricane Irene is nothing of the sort, and that the mid-strength category 1 hurricane came on-shore in North Carolina this morning with winds no higher than 33MPH.

His "evidence" of a grand conspiracy of a massively over-hyped storm? Screen captures on his computer of Weather Underground information for Beaufort, Buxton, Wilmington, Jacksonville, and Greenville, NC, plus Norfolk, VA.

That's it.

Screen captures.

Ignore NOAA's Hurricane Hunters, Weather.com, and Wunderground's own experts. Ignore what every local meteorologist is telling you, and ignore the live video of the pounding winds and rains being broadcast on ever local, national, and cable channel.

Ignore the tens or hundreds of thousands of people posting real-time pictures and first-hand accounts on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, social media sites, and the photo evidence being shared to their local media. Ignore the actual storm damage and surge levels utterly consistent with a large category 1 hurricane.

Weather truther Stephen Goddard looked at a couple of web pages and didn't like what he saw.

Conspiracy!

This is up there with the PrisonPlanet crap Drudge has taken a fancy to linking lately.

He's well on his way to becoming Alex Jones.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 04:40 PM | Comments (6)

August 26, 2011

The Incredible Insensitivity of the Vacationer-In-Chief

The narcissism of our 44th President continues unabated.

A sun-soaked relaxer-in-chief spent close to five hours at a private Edgartown beach with the first family yesterday — still with no plans to cut the presidential vacation short while other islanders heeding the threat of Hurricane Irene packed up paradise and high-tailed it to the mainland.

...

Vineyard hotel managers urged guests to plan their exits as soon as possible, and emergency officials told locals to stock up on four days of food and water.

The Obamas, meanwhile, enjoyed a low-key day amid the white sands and tall waves of the private Pohogonot beach. The president did convene a conference call with emergency officials for an Irene update earlier in the day.

He had no plans to leave Martha's Vineyard early — even as emergency crews mobilized around him.

As local citizens and emergency management officials work frantically to secure homes and businesses against approaching Hurricane Irene, the Obama family continues to frolic in the sun and obstruct emergency preparation efforts.

Are they completely immune to the needs of others? The longer Michelle and Barack soak up the sun, the less time the private property owner has to prepare for a storm that is described as an "extraordinary threat" to the Northeast and New England. If the Obama's do decide to leave, it will be at the last possible moment.

In doing so, they increase the danger to their drivers and Secret Service details, their jet and helicopter crews, the White House support staff that must travel with the President.

They increase the danger to local employees who must come in behind the dallying President and his $10 million wife , who must try to secure the property against gale-force winds and driving rain and storm surge, and then somehow scamper themselves to safety as Irene roars up the coast.

The lives of average Americans they put in harm's way are but an afterthought to the Michelle Antoinette and our golf-mad President.

May history remember them as the failures they are.

Update: Obama's planning to leave tonight. God forbid they give the people who must stormproof the property much daylight in which to do it.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 11:37 AM | Comments (8)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Irene is starting to lash the NC coast with wind and waves, and if I don't miss my guess, some of the guys I went to high school with (I'm looking at you, Jon and Grady) are now on surfboards.

The good news is that Irene has decreased a little in power, with sustained winds of 105 MPH and gusts of up to 125 MPH. That won't make a whole lot of difference when hit hits land between Atlantic Beach and Cape Hatteras as it will still deliver punishing winds and a dangerous storm surge, but it may translate into a little less damage in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states.

The best news so far is that the majority of the computer models show Irene avoiding a direct hit on major cities in the northeast. This means the maximum storm surge threat may be lowered a bit around New York City, though high winds, torrential rains, and the inevitable threat of tornadoes spinning off from the hurricane still insures it is a very lethal threat.

Sadly, I can just about promise that a dozen or more people will die in this hurricane as they do in every hurricane, mostly by ignoring common sense guidelines that would keep them safe.

Some idiot tourist is going to drown in the waves. Several somebodies are going to drive into flood waters during the storm itself and drown.

These deaths always happen.

Odds are that someone is going to be outside when they shouldn't and be struck with flying debris, and odds are that someone will electrocute themselves, die in a fire cause by candles, or succumb to carbon monoxide from using a grill indoors. You can post all the warnings you want, but there are always idiots and know-it-alls that refuse to respect the power of nature, or are simply dense. Darwin has no mercy on the stupid.

Aside from the deaths of idiots (which cannot be helped), the greatest threat we face from Irene is the economic damage, which is impossible to predict at this point. Our economy is so fragile at this point that it takes very little to plunge us into a deeper depression.

Keep your fingers crossed, folks. Irene may be hundreds or thousands of miles from your home, but it will still impact you in ways we don't fully understand or have the ability to predict.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2011

North Carolina Governor Declares Every Concealed Carry Permit in eastern NC Invalid Due to Hurricane Irene

Thanks to a brain-dead state law foisted upon us by a Democratic state legislature (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.7), every time the governor—in this instance, Democrat Beverly Perdue—declares a state of emergency, it is illegal from that moment onward to carry a concealed weapon until the state of emergency has been declared over.

14-288.7. Transporting dangerous weapon or substance during emergency; possessing off premises; exceptions.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, it is unlawful for any person to transport or possess off his own premises any dangerous weapon or substance in any area:

(1) In which a declared state of emergency exists; or

(2) Within the immediate vicinity of which a riot is occurring.

(b) This section does not apply to persons exempted from the provisions of G.S. 14-269 with respect to any activities lawfully engaged in while carrying out their duties.

(c) Any person who violates any provision of this section is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

We've dealt with this bit of Democrat-generated stupidity before.

Governor Purdue made this declaration while the state was at work, meaning everyone who has a carry permit and lives east of Interstate 95 who was away from home instantly became a criminal by proclamation.

If we look at Google Maps, that means that a carry permit holder in Wilson dining at the Cracker Barrel is perfectly legal, but the permit holder a block to the east filling up on gas at the Kangaroo Express is now a criminal.

Ridiculous.

Update: I'd forgotten we were stuck with this crap last year as well.

Update: Looks like I was wrong about the I-95 cutoff. It includes those entire counties.

John Richardson notes that Perdue issued a statement with her executive order that gun provisions would not take effect, but as South Carolina's Joe Wilson might say, Bev Perdue, you lie.

Bev Perdue is incorrect in her assertions that the declaration of the State of Emergency does not trigger firearm restrictions. As I noted last year when she invoked a State of Emergency in the face of Hurricane Earl, if she uses Article 36A of Chapter 14 of the General Statutes, it invokes G.S. § 14-288.7 which states in part, "it is unlawful for any person to transport or possess off his own premises any dangerous weapon or substance in any area" if a state of emergency is declared. Just because she is the governor does not give Bev Perdue the authority to ignore plainly written state laws when it is politically inconvenient for her.

In other words, Perdue does not have the authority to declare the ban null and void, anymore than the governor can arbitrarily decide than any other law no longer applies.

While a state of emergency is in effect in North Carolina, taking guns of your property is illegal, whether concealed or openly carried. We need to address this flaw in our gun laws as soon as the NC Legislature returns to Raleigh.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 11:16 AM | Comments (68)

July 22, 2011

Gone Fishin'

I'm taking my family on a long-deserved vacation to the mountains of western North Carolina for a week, starting Saturday morning. Hopefully, that involves some trout and smallmouth fishing in the area lakes and streams. I don't know if the place we're going even has an internet connection, so I may very well not be online for the duration of the trip.

I'm leaving you in the best of hands, and I'll see you in a week.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 08:18 PM | Comments (2)

April 28, 2011

Finally...

A crisis worthy of our President.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 01:40 PM | Comments (3)

June 24, 2010

Confirmed: Huffington Post Readers Every Bit As Buggered As You Suspected

We've long known that the community-based reality is fond of creating their own "truth" to justify their ideological beliefs, and the claim that it is raining oil in Louisiana is just the latest example of that constructed world.

The article includes video purporting to show evidence of oily rain, but what it clearly shows is an asphalt parking area where years of oil leaks from cars have left dark splotches of used oil on the ground. Being lighter than water, the oily film floats as the puddles form, just as they have everywhere automobiles have run, for decades.

See for yourself.

But that bit of reality doesn't sit well for HuffPo-ers, who responded to a poll questioning the likelihood of oily rain by declaring that it "Looks like oily rain to me!" by a whopping 47.59%. The next most popular result was "I'm skeptical" (25.02%), followed by the obviously correct answer "It's probably just dirty roads" garnering just 27.39% of the vote.

Should we be encouraged that a slim majority of HuffPo readers weren't convinced that this obvious dark fantasy isn't real, or should we be depressed that only 27.39% are grounded enough in reality to recognize a clear fake?

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 08:55 AM | Comments (6)

June 17, 2010

Climate Change "Consensus" Faked

Why, this can't be true, can it?

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was "only a few dozen experts," he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.

So "settled science" of global warming=24 cultists (more or less) desperate for grant money, corrupt governments (including our own Congress and President) angling to use fear to establish more power and control, and a raft of gullible greens willing to buy any fable fed to them.

Did I miss anything?

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 12:07 PM | Comments (6)

June 11, 2010

Area Woman Mauled by Small Furry Creature

The Carolina fox jihad continues:

Dorothy Holland said Friday that she was planting flowers barefoot in the back yard of her Holly Springs home when the animal attacked her for what she thought was about five to 10 minutes.

A neighbor responding to her screams for help managed to scare the fox behind a building, where another neighbor shot it twice.

"I thought I was going to die," Holland said. "I thought this was my last day."

Holland suffered numerous wounds to her feet and has a serious infection in her left foot that has her hospitalized at WakeMed in Cary.

She said she believes she wouldn't have survived had it not been for her neighbors.

Hey... Talon Thomas can't be everywhere.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 03:45 PM | Comments (8)

June 10, 2010

Lesson: Don't Attack a Kid Named "Talon," Even If You Are a Carnivore

Talon Thomas is one tough kid:

An 11-year-old boy and a 22-year-old man say they were attacked this week by foxes in southern Moore County.

The attacks happened near the intersection of Sycamore Street and Midway Road in Aberdeen.

Talon Thomas, 11, said he was bitten and scratched by the fox while walking home from school Tuesday.

"He bit me on my leg, and then I just picked him up, and I just hit his head against the road and he started kicking me in my head," he said.

Talon said he kept the fox pinned down and tried to keep him quiet so he wouldn't alert other foxes.

"He kept kicking his legs up and I thought his whole family was going to come after me," he said.

Talon caught the fox and took him to his parents. It's not yet known if the fox was rabid but Talon received a series of rabies shots as a precaution.

Read the first sentence of the last paragraph again.

Talon caught the fox and took him to his parents.

I guess you should also read the part where he decided to pick the fox up when he was attacked, and slammed his head against the road.

Most people attacked by a toothy, clawed carnivore, would attempt to escape the area.

Talon Thomas is not most people.

Feel free to post Talon Thomas Facts in the comments.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 08:14 AM | Comments (13)

March 09, 2010

Good News: Obama's Eco-Nazis A Threat to a Million Sport-Fishing Jobs

That this is even a possibility is incredibly absurd:

"In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority."

Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for "marine spatial planning" by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.

Led by NOAA's Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.

Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.

As noted later in the article, policies based on junk science are being pushed by anti-use environmental extremists friendly to the Administration could be a threat to a multi-billion dollar industry employing over a million people.

I'd think this was a parody, if this wasn't the exact path Obama's energy policy has already taken.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 10:54 AM | Comments (5)

March 05, 2010

Global Warming Scientists Scramble to Find Way To Blame Man for Earth's Methane Release

I can only imagine that Phil Jones, Algore, and the rest of the anthropogenic global warming fetishists are wracking their brains to find a way to blame mankind for this discovery:

Vast amounts of methane are bubbling up from the East Siberian sea, raising fears of a massive hike in global warming.

Permafrost in the seabed has been previously assumed to act as an effective cap for the enormous amount of methane in the area.

But researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences, the University of Alaska and Stockholm University have found that eight million tonnes of methane are currently leaking into the atmosphere every year.

"The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans," said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF's International Arctic Research Center. "Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap."

The problem with this discovery is two-fold for the AGW Truthers.

First, the role of methane release in triggering previous warming periods is well documented, and the continuing release would seem to provide a far more likely explanation for any warming that may have occurred or which may occur in the near future than the anthropogenic argument.

Second, the release of the discovery comes at a time when the anthropogenic warming supporter are reeling under a continuous stream of revelations that have undermined the credibility of the "settled science" itself and many of the scientists/officials involved.

The great fear for anthropogenic warming supporters isn't that the world may be warming, but that they won't be able to find a way to profit from it, financially, or politically.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 10:16 AM | Comments (4)

March 04, 2010

Trash Sues For Cash

Give me a freakin' break:

VICTIMS of Hurricane Katrina from Mississippi are seeking to sue carbon gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the devastating 2005 storm, legal documents showed.

The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit.

"The plaintiffs allege that defendants' operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming," say the documents, seen by AFP.

The increase in global surface air and water temperatures "in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs' private property, as well as public property useful to them".

Every single person taking part in this lawsuit emits carbon dioxide with every breath they take. Hopefully someone will countersue to keep these idiots from breeding.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 03:11 PM | Comments (5)

March 02, 2010

Climate Change Cultists Don't Believe in Peer-Reviewed Science, Unless Reviewed By Like-Minded Believers

Two interesting ways of telling the same, sad story.

Via Breitbart:

A British climate researcher at the centre of a row over global warming science has admitted he wrote some "pretty awful" emails to sceptics when he was refusing their requests for data.

But Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, defended Monday his decision not to release the data about temperatures from around the world, saying it was not "standard practice" to do so.

"I have obviously written some pretty awful emails," Jones told British lawmakers in response to a question about a message he sent to a sceptic in which he refused to release data saying he believed it would be misused.

And from the UK Daily Mail:

Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method.

'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data.

But yesterday Professor Jones - in his first public appearance since the scandal broke - denied manipulating the figures.

Looking pale and clasping his shaking hands in front of him, he told MPs: 'I have obviously written some pretty awful emails.'

He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites.

And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.


Uh, how is that scientific method supposed to function again? This is from Wikipedia, but I think they still have this mostly correct (my emphasis below):

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2]

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently-derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

A core principle of the scientific method is the full-disclosure of all relevant documentation. Dr. Jones, along with many of his peers damned in the Climategate emails, have decided to completely abandon the scientific method for faith-based beliefs.

There seems to be very little separating climate change cultists from the evolutionists creationists they love to mock, except that they don't have the self-awareness to know their beliefs are based on faith.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 11:23 AM | Comments (2)

February 22, 2010

And They Call Themselves Scientists

Anthropogenic climate change cultists are forced to retreat again:

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

What is interesting about this particular report is that scientists don't know if see levels will rise or fall, only that the method by which they reached their conclusions are wrong. To me, that seems to sum up what is wrong with the entire anthropogenic climate change movement.

We don't know if the world is getting warmer, or colder, or even if we are looking at the right factors and variables. All we know for certain is that it has been warmer for short periods of time, and far colder for much longer periods of time, and that the sea has been both higher and lower than it is now.

In our arrogance, we assume that whatever is now is "correct" and that variations are bad, and that somehow we must be responsible.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 03:54 PM | Comments (6)

February 18, 2010

Run Away! UN Climate Change Chief Bails for Private Sector

At least he seems to be able to see the writing on the wall:

Yvo de Boer, the United Nation's top climate official, announced Thursday that he would step down from his post in July to work in the private sector on environmental sustainability.

De Boer has overseen international climate talks for nearly four years, laboring without success to produce a legally binding pact to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

His departure comes amidst uncertainty as to whether the 193 member nations of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change can produce a final treaty in Mexico in December.

"Working with my colleagues . . . in support of the climate change negotiations has been a tremendous experience", De Boer said in a statement. " . . . But I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge."

The "new challenge" is apparently to retain his credibility and ability to make money on "green" causes... which seems to be the primary driver behind many anthropogenic climate change fantasists.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 09:47 AM | Comments (3)

February 14, 2010

The Anthropogenic Climate Change Lie Collapses Ever Faster; Why Don't We See Prosecutions?

I have some very simple questions: When will politicians, businessmen, and scientists active in anthropogenic climate change fraud be brought up on racketeering charges and imprisoned for attempting to steal siphon off trillions of dollars in what would have been the most expensive criminal conspiracy in human history?

Will any nation admit that the "solutions" being offered by this fraud, which would have radically damaged the economies of almost the entire developed world, constitutes treason?

These are legitimate questions, but don't look for serious investigations or prosecutions. Too many people in high elected and appointed offices—including our own President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, Congressmen and Senators were either stooges buying an ideologically-convenient position that would only show their ignorance or complicity.

And the complicity is mounting.

Phil Jones, the embattled scientist that led East Anglia's Climate Research Unit prior to "Climategate," has now admitted that the world's temperate has not increased in the past 15 years, and that mankind may have no role in climate change.

Other scientists agree with Jones' admission, even as the so-called "settled science" continues to implode.

Climate change fanatics have now been exposed as rubes for the second time in the past 40 years (the global cooling freaks were out during my youth). Their arrogance, however, will never let them admit they were wrong, and you will never see Eric Holder or his boss in the White House push to prosecute their fellow believers.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 12:34 PM | Comments (16)

February 02, 2010

Punxsutawney Phil Predicts Six More Weeks of Climate Change Fraud

Every day it seems a new revelation comes to light about how climate change advocates doctored research, tweaked models, excluded objective results that subverted their predetermined conclusions, or otherwise corrupted the scientific process in a heavily-politicized push for control over the smallest aspects of our lives in the name of saving the planet.

Even the loudest of global warming proponents are now calling for top global warming researchers to resign in disgrace.

How much longer can climate change cultists hang on to their fantasy that reputable science proves the existence of anthropogenic climate change?

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 03:18 PM | Comments (2)

January 28, 2010

Climate Fraud Scientists Can't be Prosecuted For Hiding Data

The only thing good that come out of this is that the British may eliminate an absurd six-month statute of limitations on punishing those who violate their Freedom of Information act.

If the University of East Anglia would like to retain even a shred of credibility and dignity it should terminate all the scientists in the Climate Research Unit that willfully took part in a conspiracy to conceal real climate data that did not support the climate change hysteria they were hyping.

Furthermore, there are U.S. scientists that colluded with the British scientists to subvert the integrity of the scientific process, and it would seem that fraud and racketeering laws could be brought to bear against those who participated in this self-documented conspiracy.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 12:18 PM | Comments (5)

January 11, 2010

So Hot, We'll Freeze to Death

I had to go out a few minutes early this morning to use the global warming scraper™ on my car's windows before I could begin my morning commute.

It seems that some scientists are suggesting that instead of being an exception, that might one day become a regular part of my routine.

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.

That's just the teaser; may sure you really dig into the article to get a full taste of just how much climate change cultists have lied to you about the direction our climate is heading.

The current, bitterly cold weather blanketing much of the northern hemisphere is a taste of what real science predicts for our future in the short term, and the long term as well.

The last 10,000 years have been very good to us; the 90,000 before that sucked, as it will again when our present interglacial comes to an end. The longer your view is of history, the more we see just how lucky we are that the human species had such an extended warm period in which to develop, but that long view also shows us that we're due for a long, and nasty temperature drop. We're overdue for the next ice age:

These data should frighten you. All of civilization developed during the last interglacial, and the data show that such interglacials are very brief. Our time looks about up. Data such as these are what led us to state, in the Preface, that the next ice age is about to hit us, any millennium now. It does not take a detailed theory to make this prediction. We don't necessarily know why the next ice age is imminent (at least on a geological timescale), but the pattern is unmistakable.

The real reason to be frightened is that we really don't understand what causes the pattern. We don't know why the ice ages are broken by the short interglacials. We do know something – that the driving force is astronomical.

Mankind is self-important, and arrogantly wants to believe that we can control the climate. Because of this we have wasted billions of dollars (and are poised to waste trillions more) trying to reverse a process in which we play a seemingly insignificant role.

We need to be focusing our efforts on trying to determine how—when the real climate change occurs—we're going to deal with longer periods of intense cold. We can't change the climate, but we can learn to adapt to it as it changes, as long as we don't waste our time, energy, and effort trying to control nature itself.

Update: I don't want to lose my funding! The scientist that was the bais for the Daily Mail article is challenging their representation of his work. Smart man. You don't bite the hand that feeds you all of that delicious grant money. He would probably come closer to agreeing with this Telegraph version of events, which will see him safely into retirement.

Attempting to claim that the reality of cooling and the projection of cooling actually supports a long term case for warming is a contortion to make a Cirque du Soleil gymnast wince, but it is amusing to watch.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 11:26 AM | Comments (13)

January 05, 2010

Sorry Your Mommy Got Blown Up, Timmy: We Were Watching Icebergs

Pardon me for the sarcasm, but that future mea culpa is one that will likely be delivered (in substance, if not form) to the families of Americans killed because global warming cultists in the CIA are using assets to hunt clouds, tropical forests and ice instead of terrorists:

The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.

The collaboration restarts an effort the Bush administration shut down and has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis.

That silly Bush administration!

Why, if there is one thing I've heard throughout the so-called "war on terror" it is that we've just had far too many intelligence assets being wasted, and that we might be better off draining analysts to retarget climate data from our multi-billion dollar constellation of satellites to a bunch of fear-mongering climatologists.

The article, of course, claims that:

the monitoring program has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering, federal officials said, but instead releases secret information already collected or takes advantage of opportunities to record environmental data when classified sensors are otherwise idle or passing over wilderness.

Bull.

Anyone who has ever worked—well, anywhere—knows that side projects that have "little or no impact" invariably end up drawing a substantial number of resources away from their primary missions. In this case, that inevitable scope creep is intruding on a line of work where the consequences of failure can be the death of the very citizens the CIA is supposed to protect.

As for the scientists, I would think they already have their hands full attempting to validate and explain their existing manipulated data and doctored models.

But that's just me.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 12:01 PM | Comments (2)

January 01, 2010

More "Settled" Science: Atmospheric CO2 Hasn't Increased Since Fillmore Administration

Actually, they are going only on recorded data, so another way of saying this is that atmospheric CO2 hasn't risen in recorded history:

Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere.

However, some studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb carbon dioxide recently may have begun to decline and that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is therefore beginning to increase.

Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase. Because understanding of the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide is important for predicting future climate change, it is essential to have accurate knowledge of whether that fraction is changing or will change as emissions increase.

Oh, that lovely phrase again, where they reveal anthropogenic climate change cultists reveal they've assumed variables for their models that will lead to a desired outcome, instead of using what they actually known.

Using what you know and can prove instead of making speculative assumptions that invariably justify your preferred outcome... what a concept.

Update: The research abstract is a bit more clear:

Several recent studies have highlighted the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started loosing part of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This is an important claim, because so far only about 40% of those emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, which has prevented additional climate change. This study re-examines the available atmospheric CO2 and emissions data including their uncertainties. It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.

My bold above.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 12:53 PM | Comments (13)

December 17, 2009

It Is Time To Treat Climategate As A Crime

A Russian claim that the Hadley Center for Climate Change tampered with Russian climate data—which would gut the validity of the data provided by the CRU and NOAA/NASA, which was used in turn by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change—was released during a most contentious time during the Copenhagen conference, with the obvious intent of causing the widest possible damage.

That doesn't mean in any way that the claim is anything other than accurate.

...On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country's territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.
IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

In short, the Russians are claiming that the Hadley CRU cherry-picked and manipulated data, essentially faking the appearance of temperature change across Russian territory.

This seems entirely consistent with previous revelations discovered when the East Anglia CRU hack triggered Climategate by showing behind the scenes attempts by climatologists and their computer programmers to manipulate data and then cover up both their manipulations and real but conflicting data.

If the Russia's can prove their claims, then this will be another compelling argument that the climatological community is part of the largest scientific fraud in human history. It would also mean that these same untrustworthy scientists have destroyed the credibility of the scientific community, and no doubt severely undercut what we know or think we know about climate change.

Quite simply, we can't trust any of their claims at this point. It seems the claim that man is responsible for global warming or climate change is utterly without credible scientific merit at this point because of the politicization of the process. We simply don't know—can't know—what our impact is on the climate because of their corruption of the data.

I have yet to find anyone with a solid idea of how long it will take to regenerate accurate, scientifically-valid data, and once that data is compiled, it is going to now be a very difficult sell to a world that has seen the scientific community destroy their credibility.

James Delingpole notes that if the Russians are right, "the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock."

Thanks to significant willful fraud, we know know that billions"perhaps trillions—of dollars wee about to we wasted, the economies of nations crippled, and the freedoms of billions of people usurped or curtailed.

This apparently widespread fraud, collusion, attempted coverup and attempts at political manipulation should be regarded and legally viewed as treason. If it can be proven that any individual scientist or group of scientists willfully corrupted the data, they should face jail time up to and including life in prison. If they willfully corrupted the data and then took steps in a conspiracy to hide their manipulation, up to or including destroying the real data, the doctored data, or their models, they should face the possibility of execution. Any politician, policymaker, or advocate that was privy to these schemes should also face the same, sobering sentences.

I'm not overstating the seriousness of these crimes. The climate change community attempted to make victims out of the entire human race.

It's time to begin the criminal investigations that will be needed to put them on trial.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 10:40 AM | Comments (16)

December 09, 2009

Howl

If you have some time to kill, you could amuse yourself by watching various left wing bloggers and pundits try to undermine Sarah Palin's op-ed discussing the politicization of climate change science that appears in today's Washington Post.

The Op-ed, titled "Copenhagen's political science" contains what appears to be a few rhetorical embellishments and minor factual inaccuracies based upon what we now know, but overall, is more or less accurate.

Climategate and questions about the validity of data sets maintained and possibly manipulated by several other research gatekeepers should be taken very seriously, and the raw data reexamined and opened to public review. Instead, climate change scientists have conspired to hide their data, and in the case of the East Anglia CRU, "lost" their raw data, a very improbable claim according to career scientists.

Likewise, the code for the CRU's climate modeling software was exposed in the Climategate leak, and reveals that the the modeling of temperature trends was all but fraudulent, and compromised repeatedly by manual "adjustments" designed to provide advocates of anthropogenic global warming the manufactured evidence they desired.

The outrage on the left was loud and predictable.

Alan Colmes claimed the op-ed was "false and misleading," but instead bogged down in minutia. Perhaps Palin was incorrect in claim that AGW advocates deliberately destroyed data, but those scientists were forced to admit admit the raw data was destroyed. The rest of his "evidence" includes an ad hominem attack from a former Post correspondent and an attempt at obfuscation by a left-wing think tank over the damage cap-and-trade would do the to economy. The later still included an admission that Palin was essentially right on main basic point, that cap-and-tax would cost American jobs.

Think Progress also screams in indignation, but does no better a job of explaining why admittedly polarized and deceptive practices lead to science that should be trusted.

Taylor Marsh repeats similarly unimpressive arguments, and quite unscientific claims that climate change is leading polar bears to cannibalism (simultaneously, other advocates complain that the bears are in danger of extinction even as their population grows).

A survey of progressive blogs responding to Palin's op-ed seem to focus primarily on variations of the argument that:

  • the data is accurate and unaltered, but doesn't need to be released to the public
  • that the scientists involved have unimpeachable integrity, even though they admit in private emails to attempting to manipulate peer review and data to achieve desired results (which is why the CRU's head has stepped down and others in the cabal are under investigation)
  • the data models are accurate, even though programmer's notes in the CRU code reveals it to have been manually corrupted to achieve specific results, thereby corrupting an other models that use the CRU's code or data, as apparently all other significant models used by the United Nations apparently do

If critics of anthropogenic climate change are correct, then billions of lives will be affected and trillions of dollars wasted for a minimal or non-existent impact to the natural process of climate change.

It is therefore only logical to open the raw data to public scrutiny outside of the closed enclaves of pro-AGW theorists so that independent scientists and statisticians can validate the data and conclusions drawn thus far.

If supporters of anthropogenic climate change are correct, then billions of lives will be affected and trillions of dollars must be spent for the most effective impact to reversing anthropogenic climate change.

It is therefore only logical to open the raw data to public scrutiny outside of the closed enclaves of pro-AGW theorists so that independent scientists and statisticians can validate the data and conclusions drawn thus far, in order to establish the best policies and procedures to make sure we do things correctly.

Those that still argue that the science is settled and insist that we must act now are not looking for the best solutions for mankind or the planet. They are opportunists drumming up fears based upon uncertainty, motivated by political or financial gain. They are the ones now howling the loudest, fearing that their mad dash will come to naught.

Such souls should be watched, monitored, investigated, and sentenced appropriately, regardless of station.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 02:30 PM | Comments (11)

December 08, 2009

Marcellus Was Right

Something is rotten in the state of Demark:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

What the leak to the Guardian reveals is that the Obama administration, the Brown government, and unknown co-conspirators know that the Climategate emails and other revelations have severely damaged the credibility of the cause of anthropogenic climate change. They are now fearful that they would fail to ram through the radical changes that they originally desired, and are instead focused on building a coalition of rich nations to adopt a still-radical but less-aggressive agreement that quite frankly guts the support that developing nations that thought they stood to gain from "Hopenhagen," while significantly undercutting their influence at the same time.

But the so-called "Danish text" is far more damning than even the Guardian lets on.

It conclusively shows that the nations involved in preparing that document don't actually believe that anthropogenic global warming is a threat. If they did, they wouldn't secretly be preparing a document that does less than what their so-called "settled science" says is the absolutely minimum necessary to avoid a global catastrophe.

They're charlatans, and this document is the smoking gun that unmasked anthropogenic climate change as a cynically-motivated bid for power, and nothing more.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 02:02 PM | Comments (3)

December 05, 2009

Obama: The Climate Change Denier and Threat

As Barack Obama commits to heading to a climate change summit despite strong evidence of scientific fraud, it certainly appears that denial is his course:

The controversy swirling around the leaked e-mails of climate scientists apparently trying to downplay data and exclude dissenting opinions has led to calls for President Obama to skip this month's climate summit in Denmark until the e-mails can be investigated.

Instead, the White House announced Friday that Obama was doubling down on his commitment to the summit's goals and moving his visit later in the month, hoping it will secure a "meaningful" agreement.

The scandal being referred to as "Climate-gate" has rallied global warming skeptics, who say the threat is exaggerated -- let alone caused by humans. In some of the e-mails stolen by hackers and posted online, scientists at Britain's University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit appear to discuss hiding or deleting data that may contradicts global warming claims. Others discuss ways of keeping competing research out of peer-reviewed journals.

While deniers have repeatedly claimed that the "science is settled" the simple fact of the matter is that the President's own science advisor has some of his emails disclosed in the East Anglia CRU scandal, the CRU's head has had to step down, other researchers (including at least one in the United States) are under investigation, the code of the CRU's data model exposes it as clearly being compromised, and the integrity of the raw data being used by NASA is also being called in question.

Not only is the science not settled, it now appears that the scientific process was entirely corrupted and the process of peer review politicized.

No credible person can now claim that the science is settled, and any objective person would have to agree with the UK's Met Office that the existing value-added data is worthless and that the raw data and raw data alone must be re-examined, a process that will not be complete before 2012.

But our President is not an objective one. His is a radical left-wing ideologue, and man-made climate change is a matter of theological faith for him. For Barack Obama, compromised or even blatantly falsified data is irrelevant. He is as committed a zealot as Al Gore, and addicted the the thought of the control he can exert over Americans if he can simply ram through his agenda... facts or fraud be damned.

Barack Obama does not have the best interests of the United States at heart... and that makes him dangerous to our nation's future, not a potential savior of it.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 02:52 PM | Comments (8)

December 04, 2009

Oh, Deer

When I was younger, my father and I used to drive through Tarboro, NC, on the way to hunt deer on a farm outside of Enfield. If we knew we could have hung outside the jewelry store on Main Street in Tarboro, it would have saved us some gas.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 09:01 AM | Comments (1)

December 03, 2009

The Inupiat Story CNN Missed

John D. Sutter, not content to mill around while continuing revelations rock the integrity of the AGW community, decided to write a an article for CNN called Climate change threatens life in Shishmaref, Alaska.

It's actually quite a pleasant read, but Sutter seems to miss the real lesson to be learned from the world's impact on the Inupiat people.

You see, the Inupiat were once a nomadic people until a distant federal government saw fit to intrude into their lives, telling then that their children must live by government rules, forcing them to live as the government saw fit and undermining their culture.

Over time, the people adapted to the conditions the distant government bureaucrats forced them into, and as a result, they now have their very existence as a culture jeopardized because the government turned a mobile society into a sedentary people ill-suited to live a life that nature in that part of the world conspired against. Now seemingly helpless and conditioned to look for handouts, their culture faces extinction because they've lost the nomadic ways of their forefathers, thanks to the intervention of the government.

Sutter seems to think his article is about climate change. The climate always changes. The real problem here is a government crippled a society already engineered to deal with that change by arrogantly imposing their will, insisting their ways are better.

Something to think about.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 12:00 PM | Comments (3)

The AGW Racketeering Deepens

NASA has joined the list of key AGW research mainstays that has conspired to hide real climate data in hopes of keeping the theory of man-made global warming alive.

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

The more this scandal unfolds, the more I'm stunned by the scale of it all. It appears that the entire AGW movement is based upon politically manipulated data designed to keep providing billions of dollars in research grants flowing to those who would forsake their integrity and objectivity in an organized conspiracy to defraud every last human being on planet Earth.

This shouldn't be just a matter of questioning science, but the subject of an international racketeering investigation that should encompass thousands of scientists and researchers, grant writers, scientific advisors in the world's governments, politicians (up to and including current heads of state) and activists such as former Vice President Al Gore.

It would seem to me that if individuals and groups in the investigation knew about or were manufacturing compromised, manipulated, or outright false data that were being used to determine the laws and policies of states, nations, and the international community, then those colluding would be guilty of something akin to treason.

Do you thank that overstated? Entire economies would be drastically and fundamentally altered by suggestions made by these perpetrators, affecting the lives of billions of people far more profoundly than espionage, terrorism, or even most wars.

I think a death sentence would be too extreme for even the worst of the culprits, but serious felony charges should be considered, and life sentences would seem more than fair for those that would put billions of lives at risk over what increasingly seems to be nothing less than naked greed and the pursuit of power and influence.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 10:50 AM | Comments (5)

December 02, 2009

Barbara Boxer: Lincoln's Assassination in Ford's Theater Was Really About Whether or Not Booth Got His Gun Legally

The key to being a liberal Senator seems to be the ability to ignore the body on the ground in order to whine about the origins of the smoking gun.

Enjoy Senator Barbara Boxer's warped brand of climate change fraud denial:

Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Wednesday afternoon.

Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the recently released e-mails, showing scientists allegedly overstating the case for climate change, should be treated as a crime.

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" she said during a committee meeting. "Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I'm looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public."

She's far more concerned about catching the (probable) insider that released the information to the public than dealing with the very real probability that the cult of man-made global warming is based upon fraudulent, manipulated, and politicized data.

It takes quite a woman to stick her head in the sand while it's still up her own butt, but Babs seems to be capable of that, if very little else.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 08:50 PM | Comments (10)

More "Settled" Science

Professor Plimer said climate change was caused by natural events such as volcanic eruptions, the shifting of the Earth’s orbit and cosmic radiation. He said: "Carbon dioxide levels have been up to 1,000 times higher in the past. CO2 cannot be driving global warming now.

"In the past we have had rapid and significant climate change with temperature changes greater than anything we are measuring today. They are driven by processes that have been going on since the beginning of time."

He cited periods of warming during the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages – when Vikings grew crops on Greenland – and cooler phases such as the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850.

Note the part where he states "CO2 cannot be driving global warming now," because the political event occurring next week in Copenhagen hinges upon CO2 being the greenhouse gas that "must"be regulated... a fact that is nothing but a fraud, like the AGW movement itself.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 09:52 AM | Comments (5)

November 27, 2009

And the Walls Kept Tumbling Down

First, the fabled "hockey stick" warming trend was shown to have been doctored. Then there was "Climategate," where a hacker's raid on Britain's bastion of climate research uncovered manipulated data, a conspiracy to silence critics and control the flow of information, and programmer's notes in the computer code used to generate climate model's that shown them to be arbitrarily manipulated to generate a desired result. Now, global warming research from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NiWA) in New Zealand indicates that alarmists there are also guilty of fraud.

I'm not scientist, but had a smattering of geology and oceanography courses as an undergraduate while thinking about pursuing a coastal and marine studies minor. As a result of that admittedly brief scientific education I understand that the Earth has been warmer than it is now, and that it has been cooler than it is now, and that the idea of a "right" temperature, sea level, or climate is entirely a man-made idea.

The biggest scam being perpetrated right now is that climate is stable, or can be stabilized. It will always change, and there is nothing significant we can do about that.

I believe in conservation, habitat preservation, minimizing pollution, and being energy efficient. That is entirely compatible with a lifestyle and a message we should pass along to future generations.

But we shouldn't have to lie to people and play on their fears to do what is in their best interests. By doing so, the global warming cult that is unraveling before us has severely damaged the credibility of a conservative, conservation mindset that far predated the current "green" trendiness.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 08:44 AM | Comments (16)

June 17, 2009

PeaGate

There are many, many legitimate news stories that need to be written criticizing the arrogance, missteps, and outright lies of the Obama Administration, but Matt Drudge's attempt to drum up "PeaGate"—insinuating that Michelle Obama faked her White House garden, is really reaching...

... and more than just a little incompetent.

You'll note that there are two links in the photo, the first goes to the press release about the March 20th planting of the garden,and the second links to the press release about the June 16 harvest.

That's 88 days... well within normal boundaries for many plants grown as early-season vegetables, including those mention in the harvest press release.

Peas? They can be ready in 60 days. Lettuce? Looseleaf, butterhead, and romaine, range between 40-75 days.

It took maybe 20 seconds on Google to look that up. That's 20 seconds that could have saved Drudge from making a complete ass out of himself.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 11:49 AM | Comments (31)