Quote of the day—Matt Ridley

The environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources of energy will price them out of the marketplace; and (3) that we cannot afford the climate consequences of burning them.

Matt Ridley
March 13, 2015
Fossil Fuels Will Save the World
[There is some really good stuff in the article. If you don’t have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal you can read the article here as well.

There is stuff like:

More than a billion people on the planet have yet to get access to electricity and to experience the leap in living standards that abundant energy brings. This is not just an inconvenience for them: Indoor air pollution from wood fires kills four million people a year. The next time that somebody at a rally against fossil fuels lectures you about her concern for the fate of her grandchildren, show her a picture of an African child dying today from inhaling the dense muck of a smoky fire.

And this point about plants being CO2 starved and grow better with more CO2 which I bring up with nearly everyone that wants to tell me about man caused global warming:

Although the world has certainly warmed since the 19th century, the rate of warming has been slow and erratic. There has been no increase in the frequency or severity of storms or droughts, no acceleration of sea-level rise. Arctic sea ice has decreased, but Antarctic sea ice has increased. At the same time, scientists are agreed that the extra carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to an improvement in crop yields and a roughly 14% increase in the amount of all types of green vegetation on the planet since 1980.

The more sophisticated global-warming/climate-change people want to talk about the positive feedback loops that will create runaway warming. But they give me a blank look when I ask about the negative feedback from the plants consuming more CO2 and more vegetation resulting from the increased CO2.—Joe]

The science is settled

Via ‏@ItsRobbAllen we have an article about a paper demonstrating that mass shootings do not usher in a new age of gun control. In fact it is just the opposite.

Correlation is not causation but from looking at the numbers it seems pretty clear that horrific mass shootings are followed, a year or so later, by less support for gun control than just before the mass shooting.

The authors of the paper are clearly in favor of gun control. They ask, and answer, the question of how to go about “Breaking the Cycle”. The cycle being the “regression to the mean” and a continued drop in support after an initial surge in support for gun control following a particularly horrific mass shooting.

Their answer, in part, is:

To change the shooting cycle, gun control advocates must change the gun culture. But to change the gun culture, gun control advocates must explain, or at least distance themselves from the position that causes the fiercest opposition—that the Brady Campaign sees as its ultimate goal the criminalization of possessing guns. Nelson “Pete” Shields III, a founder of Handgun Control, Inc.—the aptly named progenitor of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence—openly advocated for the elimination of all handguns: “‘We’re going to have to take this one step at a time. . . . Our ultimate goal—total control of all guns—is going to take time.’ The ‘final problem,’ he insisted, ‘is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition’ for ordinary civilians ‘totally illegal.’”197 John Hechinger, a sponsor of the D.C. handgun ban and a board member of Handgun Control, Inc., put it simply: “We have to do away with the guns.”198

The anti-gun people have difficult hurdles to overcome. They must attract supporters that are willing to donate money and time to, at best, only make small incremental, paper-work type, changes to gun laws. They cannot speak or even whisper of banning guns. Without banning, and perhaps even with draconian bans, people with any smarts about them will realize “universal background checks”, “gun free zones”, and restrictive carry laws are just crazy talk. How many people are willing to spend time and money on something that only benefits their cause in some abstract way of encumbering “the gun culture”.

If they could speak of grand plans to ban guns and create a “gun free America” if only given enough money and time then they probably could get more support. But doing so increases their opposition more than their support.

So how to “change” (eliminate) the gun culture? That is another huge hurdle. There are no “anti-gun ranges” or “anti-gun shows” to take people to for fun, learning, and familiarity. A process/cycle has been identified for which the chances of the anti-gun forces breaking is very low. To disrupt the cycle requires a raising the bar to gun ownership such that the propagation of “the gun culture” is inhibited. But raising such a bar is virtually impossible at this time because of the courts and the resistance with which disruption is met with.

It’s a similar problem to that faced by those who advocate for reducing greenhouse gases which contribute to “Global Warming”/”Climate Change”. People like the benefits of those activities which produce the greenhouse gases as a side effect. Any effort to break “the cycle” of greenhouse gas production encounters very stiff resistance on the specifics of the proposed legislative action even though some polling data indicates a sizable portion of the (mostly ignorant) population agree with the vague, overall goals.

One could say that this paper settles the science on the politics of gun control. The gun control people are losing and as long as we continue expanding our culture they will continue to lose.

Quote of the day—James Lovelock

We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it.

But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

James Lovelock
March 2010
James Lovelock: ‘Fudging data is a sin against science’
[A pretty good case can be made that one of the main motivators for the whole global cooling/warming/change fraud is to give more power to governments. That this guy, a global warming fire and brimstone prophet, embraces the government acquisition of power should come as no surprise.

And just who do you think will have the authority? You can be pretty certain he thinks he will have a lot of it. But historically, from China and the USSR, people like him were the first to get a bullet to the back of the head or sent to the gulag.—Joe]

Changing climage- It’s the sun, in a nutshell

Why would someone push an agenda that is wrong? Lots of reasons that most of us are familiar with: ignorance, their parents did it, being reactionary, people like to feel they are part of a bigger group (there is strength in numbers, and strength is comforting), misguided principles, etc., etc. But things like ignorance can be cured, IF the ignorant person doesn’t have a significant vested interest in maintaining their current belief.

A related but different question: why would someone push something they know is wrong? Usually, it’s because they profit from it personally in some way, via research grants, accumulation of political power, they own the “alternatives” being pushed, it is a structural part of a larger belief system, or whatever.

Most global warmists / climate-change pushers can get binned into “profit from it” or the “scaring people is good for pushing more / larger government controls and regulations” view. You know the type. So here are a couple of very short, simple things about it all.

Cause MUST come before EFFECT. This isn’t even scientific method 101, this is toddler-learning-about-gravity level stuff. And if you graph CO2 and temperature, temperature change leads CO2 change. Ergo, CO2 CANNOT be driving temperature.

OK, a warmest replies, then what alternatives are there? Answer: The sun.

But, they say, the sun is constant. Ahem. No, it is NOT.

So how does it change that we can test or measure, the smarter ones counter, what’s the mechanism; it’s 93,000,000 miles away? (yes, yes, I know – it’s a darn small percentage of them that goes here, but let’s go there anyway).

Answer: Sun-spots. Sunspots, they reply, you must be joking.

Nope. Sunspots are indicative of magnetic field activity. The stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more Galactic Cosmic Rays it deflects from Earth. You see, GCR passing through the Earth’s atmosphere interact with it in a way and at a rate that they act to seed cloud nuclei. Clouds are white and reflective. So:

Lots of sunspots -> few GCR -> less cloud cover -> lower albedo, -> more energy absorbed from the sun -> planet warms.

Few sunspots -> more GCR -> more cloud cover -> higher albedo, -> less energy absorbed from the sun -> planet cools.

In the 400+ years of actual sunspot observation, the correlation between long-term sunspot patterns and climate is well established. Now we know HOW. We’ve tested it in the lab. (Svensmark at CERN) And hey, what do you know – 700 million years ago, the sun was in a part of the Milkey Way that had much higher levels of GCRs – and it was an ice-ball, pole to pole.

Quote of the day–Robert J. Avrech

Liberty is too messy, too chaotic for the forces of the Democrat party. They yearn for conformity, for a uniform sameness that gives the illusion of a serenely content society. That’s why they want to get rid of cars and shove us all into railroad cars. Socialists just love cattle cars; they just relabel them high-speed rail.

That’s why Democrats want to get rid of the Second Amendment. An armed citizenry can resist an unjust government.

Robert J. Avrech
June 24, 2013
Climate Change = People Control
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Béla Nagy, et al

A combination of an exponential decrease in cost and an exponential increase in production would make Moore’s law and Wright’s law indistinguishable, as originally pointed out by Sahal. We show for the first time that these regularities are observed in data to such a degree that the performance of these two laws is nearly the same. Our results show that technological progress is forecastable, with the square root of the logarithmic error growing linearly with the forecasting horizon at a typical rate of 2.5% per year. These results have implications for theories of technological change, and assessments of candidate technologies and policies for climate change mitigation.

Béla Nagy
J. Doyne Farmer
Quan M. Bui
Jessika E. Trancik
2012
Statistical Basis for Predicting Technological Progress
[I have two observations.

One; This is awesome! A variation of Moore’s Law applies to, apparently, all technology.

Two; It looks as if they had to make a tie in “climate change” to get National Science Foundation grant money. That’s really messed up. Government grants should not exist. The politics of research should succeed or fail using the money of someone other than that taken by gunpoint via taxes.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dr. Tim Ball

There are several misconceptions about CO2, most created because proponents tried to prove the hypothesis rather than the normal scientific practice of disproof.

Dr. Tim Ball
November 9, 2011
Whether It Is Warming or Climate Change, It Cannot be the CO2.
[There is lots of other interesting data in this post. As Ry summarized when telling me about this, “North America and Europe are net absorbers of CO2. South America and Africa are net producers. And it’s all due to natural causes. Human CO2 production is in the noise of measurement error of the natural sources.”

Beyond the point the CO2/global-warming/climate-change fraud I wanted to point out that the “normal scientific practice of disproof” is what has been tripping up the anti-gun people. Their hypothesis that gun control will decrease crime is so easy to disprove that they expose themselves as a religious faith. Their deeply held beliefs persist in the absence of and in despite of evidence. I have no problem with them exercising their First Amendment rights to exercise the the religion of their choice but they do not have the right, nor should they have the power, to force others to worship the same god(s) they do.

If you only need a couple of talking point so to put them in their place point out that since the gun ban in Washington D.C. was thrown out the number of murders (the murder rate would be lower still) has dropped to the lowest in 46 years. Since the gun ban in Chicago was overthrown the number of murders is the lowest in at least 20 years. The gun bans reduce crime hypothesis cannot survive exposure to the normal scientific practice of disproof. This has been well known since at least the mid-1980s when Rossi and Wright published their book.

The Brady Campaign, The Violence Policy Center, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence are nothing more than fading religious cults whose beliefs have killed tens of thousands of people and put millions of lives at risk. They are no more credible and should be given no more political voice than a cult advocating castration to reach an alien spacecraft.—Joe]

The Science is Settled

As we all now know, if you want to answer a question scientifically, you take a poll.  That’s the New Scientific Method.  Scientific American magazine took such a poll regarding anthropogenic Gluball Worming (that’s Kim Du Toit’s term, IIRC) and since they didn’t like the results, it would seem Reasoned DiscourseTM has kicked in.  I suppose the New Scientific Method will have to be amended – you take a poll of Open Society socialists only.  Then you’ll get the right results.

This from Hockey Schtick, which has ostensibly maintained a link to the unwanted results.  Take it for what you will.  Do your own investigation.  Myself, I find it hard to believe even though I know the left like the back of my hand and therefore such things should come as no surprise.  I heard of this poll on the Dennis Prager show last week, and figured I should share.

I used to subscribe to Scientific American, until I received the impression that desperate academics were using it merely as a vehicle for getting published.  I got tired of wading through so much evidence of non-inspiration, just to find the few interesting tidbits.  Still I’ll give them credit for being the only place I’d heard of superfluids, pre internet.

To me it’s not terribly important one way or the other.  The left has been crying “Wolf!” for generations now and it has worn thin, and worn out, for me decades ago.  The planet Earth was supposed to run out of oil in the 1980s, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism.  The “Population Time Bomb” was going to get us by then too, we were told as elementary school students, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism including forced population controls.  The planet was going to freeze up in a new ice age, we were told back in the 1960s, and then it became Glueball Worming, and now it’s “Climate Change”.  Those are just a few highlights, but this crap has been non-stop for what – about 150 years?  They’ve lost control of the narrative now.  What will happen as a result?

I figure it’ll have to get more down to the point – It’ll have to be plain old threats from the left at some point.  When the spoiled child’s attempts at lying and manipulation fall flat, the all-out tantrums come next.  The best we can do I suppose is ignore them, but when they start breaking things it gets difficult.

Environmentalism as a religion

Via IM from son James we have a philosophy professor explaining how environmentalism is a substitute for more traditional religions:

Feeling unworthy is still a large part of Western religious culture, but many people, especially in multicultural urban centers, are less religious. There are still those who believe that God is watching them and judging them, so their feelings of guilt and moral indignation are couched in the traditional theological furniture. But increasing numbers, in the middle and upper classes, identify themselves as being secular or perhaps “spiritual” rather than religious.

Now the secular world still has to make sense out of its own invisible, psychological drama—in particular, its feelings of guilt and indignation. Environmentalism, as a substitute for religion, has come to the rescue. Nietzsche’s argument about an ideal God and guilt can be replicated in a new form: We need a belief in a pristine environment because we need to be cruel to ourselves as inferior beings, and we need that because we have these aggressive instincts that cannot be let out.

Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience, we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper. In addition, the righteous pleasures of being more orthodox than your neighbor (in this case being more green) can still be had—the new heresies include failure to compost, or refusal to go organic. Vitriol that used to be reserved for Satan can now be discharged against evil corporate chief executives and drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles. Apocalyptic fear-mongering previously took the shape of repent or burn in hell, but now it is recycle or burn in the ozone hole. In fact, it is interesting the way environmentalism takes on the apocalyptic aspects of the traditional religious narrative. The idea that the end is nigh is quite central to traditional Christianity—it is a jolting wake-up call to get on the righteous path. And we find many environmentalists in a similarly earnest panic about climate change and global warming. There are also high priests of the new religion, with Al Gore (“the Goracle”) playing an especially prophetic role.

We even find parallels in environmentalism of the most extreme, self-flagellating forms of religious guilt. Nietzsche claims that religion has fostered guilt to such neurotic levels that some people feel culpable and apologetic about their very existence. Compare this with extreme conservationists who want to sacrifice themselves for trees and whales. And teachers, like myself, will attest to significant numbers of their students who feel that their cats or whatever are equal to human beings. And not only are members of the next generation egalitarian about all life, but they often feel positively awful about the way that their species has corrupted and defiled the whole beautiful symphony of nature. The planet, they feel, would be better off without us. We are not worthy. In this extreme form, one does not seek to reduce one’s carbon footprint so much as eliminate one’s very being.

It appears many people have a religious gene. They are, in essence, programmed to feel as they do toward “something greater than themselves”. As science made the unknown more knowable and more under the control of man it reduced the domain of possibility and probability of god(s) controlling people’s lives. And people had to have a substitute. This professor proposes environmentalism fulfills this need for many people.

I would like to suggest that an all powerful state fulfills that need for far too many other people–socialism can be thought of as a religion. It is a belief in the goodness of something without, or in spite of, evidence. Compare that to traditional religious faith.

This has serious implications for society and even the entire human race. If we are condemned to believe in things contrary to the facts how can we make the best decisions for ourselves let alone justify the forcing of others to adhere to the will of the majority?

Government rations, it’s what they do

Recently there has been a lot of talk of government rationing of health care. In the U.K. they have been rationing health care for a long time now and now there is talk of expanding their influence to other things:

Air travel is expected to at least double by the middle of the century as new airlines spring up in developing countries like China and rich countries like Britain expand airports such as Heathrow.

However the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) fears unlimited growth of air travel will cause greenhouse gas emissions to increase and therefore cause global warming.

The CCC report comes as a think tank suggested that the unless the UK manages to meet tough targets on cutting greenhouse gases within the next three years, everyone in the UK will have to be rationed on the amount of energy, car use and flights they take.

The Institute for Public Policy Research suggested people have a certain amount of carbon credits that limits the amount they can spend on luxuries like air travel.

Global warming is prevent me from going home

Son James and I tried to go to Moscow, Idaho last night. It was snowing in the Seattle area and eastbound Snoqualmie pass was closed due to car accidents cause by slick roads. We looked at the pass reports and Stevens pass looked good. Assuming light traffic and good roads it’s an hour longer but at least it wasn’t closed and the road was bare. Maybe we could drive faster than the storm and make it to the pass before the storm did.

We took off and the traffic in the Seattle area was heavy and it became stop and go as we neared Monroe. By the time we got to within about 10 miles of Stevens pass the road had a couple inches of snow and was very, very slick. Stop and go traffic on a incline halted our progress and we had to turn around and come back into the Seattle area. We are going to try again today. The backyard of my bunker has snow on the ground this morning. Mid-April snow at less that 500 feet above sea level in the Seattle area? There can only be one explanation: Al Gore was right, it has to be Global Warming Climate Change.


Just north of Kirkland.


Just north of Woodinville.

Update: We made it home via Snoqualmie Pass without incident, arriving about 12:20 PM. The above post was written, but I was unable to post it, about 6:45 AM.

I blame global warming

Seattle and surrounding areas in the Puget Sound are now getting heavy snow. Visibility is only a few blocks as I look out the window of our building here in Redmond.

I’m fairly certain Al Gore would agree with me, and I know Phil does. It’s all because of man caused global warming climate change.

Update: The storm forecast for the Boomershoot site:

OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-LOWER HELLS CANYON/SALMON RIVER REGION-

132 PM PDT FRI MAR 28 2008

…SNOW ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 5 AM PDT SATURDAY…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A SNOW ADVISORY…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 5 AM PDT SATURDAY.

2 TO 5 INCHES OF SNOW ARE EXPECTED FROM LATE THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING AS A COLD FRONT PASSES THROUGH THE AREA TONIGHT. QUICK BURSTS OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL WILL BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE FRONTAL PASSAGE.

More evidence for global warming

Barb says the joke is getting old. I still think it is funny. Maybe I’m just slow on some things.

In any case there is more evidence of global warming climate change:

Are the world’s ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory?

Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al Gore during his “Inconvenient Truth” lectures about mankind’s alleged impact on the global climate.

Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has soared in recent years.

As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature seems to have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the one exception — Western Europe, which had, until the weekend when temperatures plunged to as low as -10 C in some places, been basking in unseasonably warm weather.

Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades. Central and southern China, the United States, and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In China, snowfall was so heavy that over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow.

Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents.

As people continue to push for restrictions on human activities to prevent global warming climate change you know it has to be they have an agenda other than what they claim it is. It is my belief its about desire for government control rather than freedom. Freedom is too scary for most people.

Left-Speak– A Glossary of Terms

If you parse their sentences, the speech of the Left can be at times befuddling.  That is, unless you understand their unique usage of terms.  So that you may better understand Left-speak in the future, I offer the following glossary.  This is by no means an exhaustive list.  Here are some of the more common and/or more recent examples.  You might want to print this and keep it on-hand for those times when you are unable to avoid Left-speak:

Border Security:  Racism

Change:  Socialism.  Example:  “I am the candidate of ‘Change’.”

Children:  Government.  (Variations are, “The Children” and “Our Children”)  Example:  “In our ‘Compassion’ ‘We’ are creating this new entitlement program for ‘Our Children’.” (see “Compassion” and “We” below)

Climate Change:  See “Global Warming” below.  Climate change is slightly more flexible in that no matter what happens, it is bad, Liberty is to blame, and socialism, as for all things, is the solution.

Common Good:  Socialism

Compassion:  Desire for government intervention.  Example:  “‘We’ must approach all issues with great ‘Compassion’.” (see “We” below)

Compromise:  Letting go of your silly, ignorant and outdated American ideals of Liberty, and moving always in the direction of pure socialism as a way of showing those who want to destroy you that you are not closed-minded, stubborn, silly, ignorant or outdated.  You are then closed-minded, stubborn, silly, ignorant and outdated again when the Left wants you to cave-in the next time they want something, which starts approximately three seconds after you last caved.

Criminal:  Victim– especially a victim of the exploitative middle and upper classes.  (No one would ever do anything to hurt anyone else, except when goaded into it by the horrible conditions created by the adherents of capitalism)

Dissent:  Dissent is a good thing– it is one of the things that makes America great (so long as we are talking about a leftist dissenting with anyone who favors Liberty.  In all other cases, see “Divisiveness” below).

Divisiveness:  Speaking ill of or disagreeing with socialists and socialism.  Divisiveness is one of the worst things in our society today and is largely perpetrated in talk radio, blogs, private conversations, etc., by members of the pig Bourgeoisie.  This can be cause for legal action, since it could in theory cause other people to question socialists and socialism, thereby “harming” them.  (You have no right to harm another person unless that person is being ‘Divisive’, in which case it is encouraged).

Economic Justice:  Socialism (see “Social Justice” below)

Education:  Socialist education.  Example:  “‘We’ must support ‘Education’ for the sake of ‘Our Children’s’ future.

Fairness:  Socialism

Global Community:  Most of the population of the world lives under some form of socialist tyranny, often very brutal socialist tyranny.  Americans have historically lived much better lives due to our relatively higher levels of freedom and Liberty.  For this we are to hate America (if anyone is poor or unhappy, it can only be the willful doing of the more prosperous) and we are to strive to make America more like the rest of the world (poor and oppressed) as a show of solidarity, thus achieving the “Global Community”. (See “Peace” below)

Global Warming:  (See “Global Community” above)

Illegal Immigration:  A thoroughly meaningless term invented by racists, purely as an epithet.  Attempting to use “Reason” to explain it will reinforce your status as a racist.

Judgmentalism:  Thinking for one’s self in one’s self-interest, i.e. making decisions or value judgments based on principles, evidence, and rational thought.  In the eyes of the Left, this is one of worst crimes that could be committed, especially if it results in your becoming a successful American pig.  (see “Reason” below)

Liberal: Socialist.  This is an impossible term to use correctly without adding qualifiers.  Most liberals hate being called liberals.  “Liberal” has become an epithet in the eyes of the socialist, either because it implies that one is an advocate of Liberty, which socialists aren’t, or because it correctly describes them as socialists. No one knows for sure which.  (Archaic: One who advocates Liberty.  Thomas Jefferson would have considered himself a liberal.  Today’s liberals would consider Thomas Jefferson a “Judgmental” and “Divisive” pig.  If he were president, they would engage in “Dissent” with a vengeance.

Need:  This wonderfully flexible term can mean anything the socialist wants it to mean and can change from one instant to another.  Example:  “You have far more than you ‘Need’ so ‘We’ are going to take it from you and use it for the ‘Education’ and ‘Safety’ of ‘Our Children’.”  (see “We” and “Safety” below)

Open Mind:  One that unquestioningly embraces socialism as the answer to all things.

Peace:  The lack of meaningful opposition to socialist, Marxist, Fascist, communist or jihadist military expansionism, as in, “It’s time to stand up and fight for ‘Peace'”.

Progressive:  Socialist.  We once spoke of “progress” as that which improved our productivity, opportunity and standard of living.  Like many of the terms they use, the Left has turned this one around exactly 180 degrees.

Reason:  This word is not used by the Left except when describing it as a “weapon” used against the oppressed classes.  Instead they use the word “reasonable” as in “reasonable restrictions” (any restrictions) on your Liberties (see “Compromise” above and learn to be “Reasonable”).

Safety:  Existence under strict government oversight.  Some examples are “Airline Safety”, “School Safety”, “Home Safety”, “Gun Safety”, “Workplace Safety”, etc..  Example: “It is the job of our elected officials to ensure our continued ‘Safety'”.

Scientist:  Increasingly, this term is used to silence all discussion or debate.  In this sense, a “Scientist” is one who is enlisted by government interests to place a stamp of approval, under the guise of irrefutability, on socialist programs or laws.  Example:  “Any decent ‘Scientist’ will tell you that man-made ‘Global Warming’ is a real and present danger, and that our ‘Safety’ must be ensured through swift action.”   Previously, the term “Clergyman” or “God” served a similar purpose, and does so to this day in certain Muslim circles.  (Archaic:  A person engaged in the scientific process, with full disclosure and peer review, as a means of testing theories and discovering knowledge)

Social Justice:  Socialism (see “Economic Justice” above)

Sustainabe:  Under never-ending, complete government control.  Example: “A market-based economy is not ‘Sustainable’.”

Tolerance:  Tolerance [of socialists and socialism].  Failure to tolerate socialists and socialism is something that should not, and will not, be tolerated.

Unity:  Similar to “Peace”, unity describes a situation in which all opposition to socialists and socialism has been effectively silenced.

Universal Health Care:  Socialized medicine, i.e. socialism—specifically, a means by which you would be obliged to support or tolerate a certain political party or doctrine in order to save your very life.

We:  We socialists.  We the collective.  This is a subtle term, but it has a powerful meaning.  Saying “We” this and “We” that reinforces the collective thinking of the “Progressive” a bit like a mantra.  Example:  “‘We’ must ensure the ‘Safety’ of all through ‘Education’ for ‘Our Children’ and with ‘Progressive’ programs such as ‘Universal Health Care’, ‘Social Justice’, ‘Tolerance’, ‘Peace’, and by fostering the ‘Unity’ of the ‘Global Community’, through the advocacy of ‘Change’ while working with the ‘Scientists’.”

I’ll be compiling more as I come up with them.  Reader submissions are welcome.

Inconvenient news

This is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. A sample:

“Nowhere does Mr Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Dr Carter wrote. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

Professor Easterbrook disputed Mr Gore’s claim that “our civilisation has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this”. Nonsense, Professor Easterbrook said. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century”.

This is mild stuff compared to what I heard when I listened to the audio book version of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism). Gore isn’t so stupid that he doesn’t know he is trying to sell “snake oil”. My guess is that he wants to use this issue to gain power for him and for the socialists of the world. Don’t let him or his followers get away with it.

Regulating CO2

From the Seattle Times:

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear arguments on whether the federal government must regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a case that could have broad implications for utilities, auto manufacturers and other industries nationwide.

The high court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide in order to combat global warming.

CO2?????  If it weren’t for it being a violation of the various rights (sometimes I wonder why I should respect the rights of those that don’t respect my rights to keep and bear arms) the way I would reduce CO2 emissions would be to encourage the environmental wackos to stop breathing.  This attack from the wackos is not about “global warming” or “climate change”.  The man-made effects on the global climate are so small it’s almost impossible to measure.  Therefore the motivation for these attacks can only be attributed to something else.  Possible candidates for the real reason include anti-capitalism, a scam to make money by the proponents of these claims, and mental disorders.  I’m partial the mental disorder hypothesis myself–When Prophecy Fails successfully explains many of these nut cases.

Did you know that water vapor is a bigger contributor to the green house effect than CO2?  See also Jeff’s post on this subject.  And that when gasoline or diesel is burned it produces more water vapor (by volume, not mass) than it does CO2?  Of course we could always limit water vapor emissions from the wackos as well.