Interesting Items
Alex Gimarc
<[email protected]>
Monday, February 1, 2010
Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. SPPI
2. O’Keefe
3. Toyota
4. Space
5. Hayworth
6. Autism
7. Yemen
1. SPPI. Meteorologists Joe D’Aleo and Anthony Watts published a 111 page
report on ground stations used to gather global temperatures over the last
century and a half. The paper is entitled: Surface Temperature Records:
Policy Driven Deception. Like most things associated with government-funded
climate science these days, even the basic data collection is corrupted. You
can find the paper as a pdf at:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html .
Here is the Summary for Policymakers (also cross-posted at PowerLine, Mon):
1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have
been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it
cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant "global warming" in
the 20th century.
2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious
problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term
temperature trends.
3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate
observed warming both regionally and globally.
4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more
than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer
reporting.
5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude,
higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement
of warming.
6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and
inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.
7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the
overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island
contamination alone.
8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant
data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.
9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial.
Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.
10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to
terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature
record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based
constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the
surface temperature record.
11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the
systematic hyping of 20th-century "global warming".
12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical
changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal
ocean and solar changes.
13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be
trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.
14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature
record of CRU, GISS and NCDC "chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate
scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations."
15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also
requires a full investigation and audit.
2. O’Keefe. Breitbart and Big Government contributor James O’Keefe was
arrested in Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office last week. He had two others
with him who were also arrested. All three were posing as telephone
technicians. O’Keefe was the young conservative that documented ACORN’s
corruption in a series of video stings last year. Breitbart has not yet
released all of those videos. O’Keefe was arrested and spent over 28 hours in
jail while the federal prosecutor told the world that he was attempting to
install wiretapping electronics in Landrieu’s office. The state run media
picked up that meme with as much vigor and gusto as they spent ignoring
O’Keefe’s expose of ACORN. What appears to be going on is that during the
runup to the senate vote on health care last December, nobody was able to call
Landrieu’s congressional offices and talk to an actual human. Apparently she
shut her phones off statewide and was
lying about them being busy. O’Keefe was staging a photo opportunity to
demonstrate that the phones indeed were working. If this goes to discovery –
for whatever reason – Landrieu may end up very embarrassed.
3. Toyota. Toyota announced a recall of nearly four million vehicles due to a
problem with accelerators that may stick in the “down” position. There was
another ongoing recall of four million other vehicles with slipping floor mats
that also could interfere with the proper working of an accelerator pedal. The
dealer fix is to install a spacer in the accelerator pedal mechanism.
Concurrently with the recall, Toyota announced they were suspending manufacture
of eight lines of new vehicles so they could get the modification done at the
factory. Those manufacturing lines, all based in the US, are expected to
restart later this month. While it is easy to believe all the worst things
about the motivations of the Obama administration in all of this, it is highly
suspicious that both GM and Chrysler – both government owned and operated –
nearly simultaneously with the Toyota announcement – started ad campaigns aimed
directly at Toyota
owners. Additionally, a gentleman who identified himself as a long time
Toyota employee called Limbaugh late last week and claimed that the entire
thing was trumped up, an artificial Obama administration hit intended to damage
Toyota’s reputation and American sales so as to elevate GM and Chrysler. Have
no clue as to the veracity of this claim, but given the heavy-handed,
Chicago-style thuggery of the Obama administration in the legal, financial and
regulatory regimes over the course of the last year, this claim is not without
merit. It’s not paranoia if they are really out to get you.
4. Space. One of the few (only?) good things in the new Obama budget is a
restructuring of NASA. The ARES and Constellation programs – essentially
Apollo II – have been cancelled. Instead, the agency is being told to swing
their efforts toward making it possible for private enterprise to move people
permanently into orbit. Done properly, this will move NASA from the sole owner
– operator of manned spaceflight capability in this nation to an entity that
simply charters rides and equipment from the private sector. By weeks’ end,
new NASA Administrator Charles Boldin was talking about thousands of people
permanently in space. For over 40 years, NASA has maintained and vigorously
defended an absolute government monopoly in manned space flight. It appears
that this monopoly is well on its way to ending. Too bad this administration
does not apply that same logic to health care, student loans, auto
manufacturing, banking, home
mortgages, energy, or a thousand other things they are mucking around in.
Good show to all involved. The door has opened a little bit. We will see if
we can keep it open.
5. Hayworth. Former Arizona Congressman and current talk show host J.D.
Hayworth announced he was going to run against John McCain for US Senate in
Arizona last week. Hayworth was part of the first round of Republicans that
were run out of office in 2006, mostly over his virulently anti-immigration
reform position. McCain responded immediately by filing a FEC complaint that
essentially forced Hayworth to resign his radio show. The complaint alleged
that Hayworth was using the talk show to illegally campaign against him.
McCain also released the first round of ads accusing Hayworth who had been a
pretty reliable budget cutter of voting for lots and lots of earmarks while in
congress. Of course, Hayworth can point out McCain’s vote for TARP in
response. Yada. Yada. Yada. This has all the makings of an old fashioned
grudge match with Arizona conservatives versus the leader of senate RINOs. The
worry about this fist fight will be
that whoever wins the primary will be too damaged to survive the general
election in November. Finally, McCain had former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
campaigning for him in Arizona. Palin owes McCain for elevating her to the
national stage and is paying back that obligation.
6. Autism. Last week also saw the refutation of the autism – vaccination by
the British General Medical Council. It found that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a
Canadian GI who published the first paper attempting to link autism with
vaccinations had acted unethically in preparation and publication of his
paper. This guy has been singularly damaging to overall health care worldwide,
as he became of the modern anti-vaccination movement. That movement has
parents in fear of vaccine based autism refusing vaccinations for measles,
mumps and rubella (MMR) for their children. This in turn has led to a
significant increase in all three diseases among children worldwide. The
Council found that Wakefield was doing tests that he had no business doing;
that he was unqualified to do those tests; that he had a financial interest in
developing an alternative to vaccinations; and that he may have even faked test
results. Reason, Thurs.
7. Yemen. Now that Yemen has become yet another center of Islamist and Al
Qaida activity, US forces in the Gulf have started moving forces (primarily
UAVs) to engage the enemy. However, the mollycoddling vermin infesting Eric
Holder’s (In)Justice Department have halted our ability to take out the center
of the problem. The reason is that one of the leaders is an American citizen
who converted to Islam; and they have are trying to figure out how to make war
against an American citizen who is making war against America. It’s pretty
easy to figure out and we have the formal precedent with Lincoln, Grant and
Sherman. It’s not all that easy to figure out if you are viewing the current
anti-Islamist festivities as a police action rather than a World War. Perhaps
this is change we can believe in.
More later -
- AG
Editor's note: I thought the punishment for treason was well established:
firing squad at sunrise.
Rich Martin
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better
than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not
your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your
chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia
State House, August 1, 1776.
Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column:
http://www.thevanguard.org/
To read Alex Gimarc’s columns, go to http://home.gci.net/~agimarc/
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