Articles: We Are Cursed Because We Think

Articles: We Are Cursed Because We Think

We Are Cursed Because We Think

By W.A. Beatty

One of the great things about the American Thinker website is that (most) readers are able to think! 
But with that ability comes a curse.  The curse is the propensity of AT
readers to examine all facets of a proposal or issue, to consider
ultimate results, to recognize unintended consequences, to evaluate its
merits, and to pronounce a bad idea as bad regardless of how it makes us
feel.



This
ability to think complicates our lives, which would be much less
complicated if we conservatives could do what liberals always do: feel
rather than think.



Below are some examples of what I mean.  I'm certain that AT readers can think of others.



Let's begin with J.R. Dunn's article of 6 Nov. 14.  Dunn thinks about the ultimate result of Barack  Obama's "Open Doors" immigration policy. 



Dunn first explained from where Obama's immigration plan came:

His
“plan” was simply to carry on what the American left had been doing
since FDR: encourage creeping socialization by taking advantage of the
moral weakness of the American populace.

Dunn then explained why Obama's policy had/has unintended consequences:

As
a result of asinine policy borne of multiculturalism and his obsession
with third-world immigration, the doors were left open and deadly
disease -- always overlooked by sophisticated urbanites, familiar with
only the mild "childhood" diseases -- came roaring in: the result has
been the importation of potential epidemic disease into the U.S.: Ebola,
enteroviruses, and others.

Dunn closed his article with a summation of Obama policy:

But
it acts as a pure metaphor for the Age of Obama: failure, incompetence,
willful negligence, dishonesty, the collapse of the elites, and utter
indifference toward the public welfare.

That is a great example of thinking.  Obama's immigration policy, as Dunn pointed out, had/has some unintended consequences, but the policy sure felt good.



LBJ,
fifty years ago, started the "War on Poverty" so that liberals could
feel good by ending poverty (and buy votes).  Twenty trillion dollars
later, the poverty level remains largely unchanged.  But the votes stayed bought.

...
between 2009 and 2011, a shocking one third of Americans slipped below
the federal poverty line for at least two months, data show.

The current situation is just as bad.  Liberals feel just as much today as they did fifty years ago.

Typical
liberals, who are filled with lots of emotion but low on the facts, are
worried that children and disabled people will now go without.   If
they did a little research, they would know this expired waiver
[requiring work in order to receive welfare] will only affect
able-bodied people with no children.

Welfare
and the War on Poverty sound good, and they let liberals feel good. 
But the price – a wrecked economy and a large portion of society lost –
is high for feeling good.  And liberals want to continue the feeling. 
"Despite five decades of the War on Poverty and $20 trillion spent, with
no sign of victory in sight, Obama said the 'war' must be stepped up." 



Today's
welfare state, and its antecedent, the "War on Poverty," certainly have
and had unintended consequences.  Thinking fifty years ago could have
recognized them, but thinking didn't feel good then.  And thinking
doesn't feel good today.



Minimum wage: Derrick Wilburn, in a 21 Jun. AT article,
provided some useful information.  Unfortunately, reading the article
and analysis of the facts he presented would require thinking –
something liberals will not do.  So let's look to another article, one that requires no thinking.  That should appeal to liberals.

The
whole argument of a guaranteed minimum wage is fallacious.  It is wrong
in principle, therefore it is wrong in practice.  It leads to evils
much worse than those it proposes to cure.



The
whole trouble is that it is so easy to confuse the end with the means. 
The main objective, its proponents say, is to give everybody a living
wage.

The second quote sums up the liberal position.  They confuse the end with the means in order to feel good.  The problem with this
article is that it doesn't foster good feelings, so liberals simply
ignore it.  Ignoring facts allows liberals to keep on feeling good by
ignoring actual outcomes.



Even Obama confuses (on purpose?) the minimum wage issue in his 2014 State of the Union address.  Perhaps Obama should consider what Economist Dr. Walter E. Williams wrote:
"Mandated wages are one of the most effective means of pricing one's
competition out of the market, ...[.]"  But that will never happen
because "consideration" requires thought and interferes with feeling.



ObamaCare:
Sure, it sounded good, and liberals felt good about providing health
care for everyone.  But (and there's always a “but” when Obama is
involved) someone must pay.  The latest reality check
suggests that all is not going to liberals' plan.  More people
receiving health care = more cost = higher premiums.  I'll bet even
Nancy Pelosi could have thought of that had she taken the time to read
the ObamaCare bill before voting for it.  But no, she was too busy
feeling good.



And
let's not forget our national defense.  People who wish to do us and
this country harm often place themselves and their weapons in schools,
hospitals, and residential areas because they know that liberals will cry out
if our military kills or injures non-combatants while attacking them. 
Hamas, with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group favored by Obama, admits that it places its weapons in schools and hospitals.  In (what I assume to be) an effort to feel good, Obama said he has no sympathy
for Hamas.  Was his condemnation not sincere, meant only for public
consumption, knowing the MSM would spread his feel good sentiments
worldwide?



It's
unfortunate that party politics has to enter into this discussion, but
ultimately it does.  The vast majority of MSM journalists are liberal
and vote Democrat.  They present their "facts" from a liberal
perspective that favors Democrats, ignoring and omitting information
that does not further both groups' agendas.  They feel rather than
think.  We (mostly Republican) conservatives must therefore dig out
information that is what the late, great Paul Harvey referred to as "the
rest of the story" so we can think about the entire situation or
proposal.



I
know some conservative Democrats, but they can never explain why they
associate themselves with that party.  The Republican Party comprises
mostly of conservatives, but there are a few RINOs out there.  So the
"problem" goes beyond party politics.  It is a conservative-liberal
phenomenon.  For liberals, and therefore for most Democrats, feeling
trumps thinking.  And we thinking conservatives are cursed. 



Bottom line: liberals feel, then stop there.  They never think – never have, never will.



Dr.
Warren Beatty (not the liberal actor) earned a Ph.D. in quantitative
management and statistics from Florida State University.  He was a (very
conservative) professor of quantitative management specializing in
using statistics to assist/support decision-making.  He has been a
consultant to many small businesses and is now retired.  Dr. Beatty is a
veteran who served in the U.S. Army for 22 years.  He blogs at
rwno.limewebs.com.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/we_are_cursed_because_we_think.html#ixzz3KTxQ0bxl

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Articles: The Left Avows Its Ungodly Love of Filth

Articles: The Left Avows Its Ungodly Love of Filth

 

The Left Avows Its Ungodly Love of Filth

By Stephen Mauzy

Since
the beginning of time, the sentient, civilized person has strived to
distance himself from filth, and for unarguably rational reasons.  Filth
is parasites, dysentery, disease, decay, putrescence – all of which
shorten lifespan and infuse what lifespan there is with misery.



With
this in mind, the latest leftist initiative to turn us against our
nature occurred in California last month, when the democratically
elected hegemony banned (after first demonizing) all single-use plastic
bags.  That an overwhelming majority of Californians oppose the ban is
beside the point.  Such is the arrogance of tyrants, petite and grand. 



The
leftist intellect portrays waste where a marvel of engineering and
utility exists.  There's the obvious: the plastic bag enables us to
segregate our groceries.  Meat remains separated from fruit and
vegetables.  We've all encountered the leaky package of raw chicken.
 Because the chicken is segregated, the risk of salmonella and coliform
is minimized.  



Best
of all, the chicken-contaminated plastic bag can simply be tossed away.
 Compare this to the revolting reusable grocery bag – canvas or
polypropylene – which over time festers a cauldron of mold and bacteria
and, thus, disease.  Why?  Because no one washes the reusable bag
after it has lugged home the leaky chicken.  Next time, the reusable
grocery bag will just as likely haul back the naked apple and broccoli
floret as it will another leaky chicken.



The
term “one use” is also a misnomer and another example of manipulating
language for devious purpose.  When the plastic bag isn't rightly thrown
away because it's been contaminated, it's frequently called into duty
that further distances us from filth.  Consider the lining of bathroom
trash cans.  When a cold overruns the household and the bathroom trash
can fills with mucus-sodden tissue, the trash can itself remains
disease-free.  No one need contact the tissues or clean the trash can –
simply replace the old plastic bag with a new one. 



The left counters,
“Yes, but banning plastic bags will significantly reduce energy use and
waste.”  For argument's sake, let's say it's true (it isn't).  It's
still a non sequitur.



Banning
anything will reduce energy use and another person's definition of
“waste.”  If we really want to reduce energy use and waste, let's ban
refrigerators larger than 10 cubic feet, homes larger than 1,000 square
feet, automobiles with more than 150 horsepower engines.  Better yet,
let's ban refrigerators, traditional stick homes, and automobiles.  Bury
your food, live in a mud hut, ride the horse to work.  There's no limit
to the ways energy use and waste can be reduced.  And if you want to go
all in, if you are truly serious about the cause, simply die.  There's
nothing more outside dying you can do to reduce energy use and waste.



That
energy – hydrocarbons specifically – used to produce a plastic bag is
meaningless anyway, as is the number of times the plastic bag is used.
 Plastic bags are value-added goods, which is evidenced by the
profitable manufacture and sale of plastic bags.  Thus, the energy used
is value-adding, not wasteful.  Whether the bag is used once or a
hundred times is no one's business; only the buyer knows what
constitutes utility, and he telegraphs his utility by shopping in stores
that provide plastic bags. 



Not
that it matters; the underlying motive isn't about saving energy or
reducing waste.  Entrepreneurs operating in free markets will always
provide the most agreeable, most efficient solutions where energy,
waste, or anything else is concerned.  Tyranny is the real motive here,
and the left wraps tyranny and delivers it in the passive-aggressive
multi-use canvas bag of the coward – the concentrated political minority
interest.  Because too few Californians were stupid enough to fall for
sophistry, sophistry was legislated from above.  



Of
course, an intellectual movement favoring filth is nothing new.  Many
towns and municipalities have long required their citizens to separate
glass, plastic, and paper and set them aside in clearly marked bins.
 The next step is to mandate separating organic and inorganic;
then you can get even closer to filth.  But it's easier to escape a
municipality than a state.  That's what makes statewide bans all the
more damnable. 



These
incremental steps that lead to more interaction with filth irritate at
first, and frustrate later.  Your clothes are dingier, and your
automatic dishwasher grows more putrid due to lack of detergent
phosphates.  Your body is more difficult to clean and to invigorate
because of the trickle that flows out of the shower head.  Low-flow
toilets present opportunities to get more intimate with the most
revolting of filth.  One flush or two?  This means having to watch.  And
when the curious child or the optimistic adult finds himself in
purgatory – where he or she isn't quite sure what's going on –  one more
flush will do the trick.  It doesn't, and thus we become even
nauseatingly intimate with the filth we most wish to avoid. 



In
Europe, the leftists want to ensure no one can escape filth at the most
quotidian level.  Bureaucrats in Brussels are so imbued with leisure
that they have time to ponder the lowly vacuum cleaner, so they
legislate vacuum-cleaner power;
thus the European can be assured of never escaping dust, animal dander,
dust mites, detritus, dirt, or whatever filth is brought or blown into
the house.   



And
while the left poses, postures, and pontificates on the
environment-friendliness of its tyranny, it concurrently fantasizes of a
world untouched by the human hand.  It sighs doe-eyed at the thought of
a world bereft of CO₂ emissions, hydrocarbon-fueled machines (which, when benefits are weighted against costs, clean much more than defile),
capitalism, anything with a human touch, and even anything with humans.
 Stasis it what the left desires.  Let's all return to 20,000 BC, when
everything was putatively perfect.  Better to return to a time when a
thorn prick could turn septic and then into a long agonizing death than
to despoil an imperceptible amount of acreage. 



Such
is the trajectory when a country is populated by people with too much
time, too little common sense, and too many governmental avenues to
impose their will.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/10/the_left_avows_its_ungodly_love_of_filth.html#ixzz3GW8YWowe

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Articles: The Left Avows Its Ungodly Love of Filth

Articles: The Left Avows Its Ungodly Love of Filth

 

The Left Avows Its Ungodly Love of Filth

By Stephen Mauzy

Since
the beginning of time, the sentient, civilized person has strived to
distance himself from filth, and for unarguably rational reasons.  Filth
is parasites, dysentery, disease, decay, putrescence – all of which
shorten lifespan and infuse what lifespan there is with misery.



With
this in mind, the latest leftist initiative to turn us against our
nature occurred in California last month, when the democratically
elected hegemony banned (after first demonizing) all single-use plastic
bags.  That an overwhelming majority of Californians oppose the ban is
beside the point.  Such is the arrogance of tyrants, petite and grand. 



The
leftist intellect portrays waste where a marvel of engineering and
utility exists.  There's the obvious: the plastic bag enables us to
segregate our groceries.  Meat remains separated from fruit and
vegetables.  We've all encountered the leaky package of raw chicken.
 Because the chicken is segregated, the risk of salmonella and coliform
is minimized.  



Best
of all, the chicken-contaminated plastic bag can simply be tossed away.
 Compare this to the revolting reusable grocery bag – canvas or
polypropylene – which over time festers a cauldron of mold and bacteria
and, thus, disease.  Why?  Because no one washes the reusable bag
after it has lugged home the leaky chicken.  Next time, the reusable
grocery bag will just as likely haul back the naked apple and broccoli
floret as it will another leaky chicken.



The
term “one use” is also a misnomer and another example of manipulating
language for devious purpose.  When the plastic bag isn't rightly thrown
away because it's been contaminated, it's frequently called into duty
that further distances us from filth.  Consider the lining of bathroom
trash cans.  When a cold overruns the household and the bathroom trash
can fills with mucus-sodden tissue, the trash can itself remains
disease-free.  No one need contact the tissues or clean the trash can –
simply replace the old plastic bag with a new one. 



The left counters,
“Yes, but banning plastic bags will significantly reduce energy use and
waste.”  For argument's sake, let's say it's true (it isn't).  It's
still a non sequitur.



Banning
anything will reduce energy use and another person's definition of
“waste.”  If we really want to reduce energy use and waste, let's ban
refrigerators larger than 10 cubic feet, homes larger than 1,000 square
feet, automobiles with more than 150 horsepower engines.  Better yet,
let's ban refrigerators, traditional stick homes, and automobiles.  Bury
your food, live in a mud hut, ride the horse to work.  There's no limit
to the ways energy use and waste can be reduced.  And if you want to go
all in, if you are truly serious about the cause, simply die.  There's
nothing more outside dying you can do to reduce energy use and waste.



That
energy – hydrocarbons specifically – used to produce a plastic bag is
meaningless anyway, as is the number of times the plastic bag is used.
 Plastic bags are value-added goods, which is evidenced by the
profitable manufacture and sale of plastic bags.  Thus, the energy used
is value-adding, not wasteful.  Whether the bag is used once or a
hundred times is no one's business; only the buyer knows what
constitutes utility, and he telegraphs his utility by shopping in stores
that provide plastic bags. 



Not
that it matters; the underlying motive isn't about saving energy or
reducing waste.  Entrepreneurs operating in free markets will always
provide the most agreeable, most efficient solutions where energy,
waste, or anything else is concerned.  Tyranny is the real motive here,
and the left wraps tyranny and delivers it in the passive-aggressive
multi-use canvas bag of the coward – the concentrated political minority
interest.  Because too few Californians were stupid enough to fall for
sophistry, sophistry was legislated from above.  



Of
course, an intellectual movement favoring filth is nothing new.  Many
towns and municipalities have long required their citizens to separate
glass, plastic, and paper and set them aside in clearly marked bins.
 The next step is to mandate separating organic and inorganic;
then you can get even closer to filth.  But it's easier to escape a
municipality than a state.  That's what makes statewide bans all the
more damnable. 



These
incremental steps that lead to more interaction with filth irritate at
first, and frustrate later.  Your clothes are dingier, and your
automatic dishwasher grows more putrid due to lack of detergent
phosphates.  Your body is more difficult to clean and to invigorate
because of the trickle that flows out of the shower head.  Low-flow
toilets present opportunities to get more intimate with the most
revolting of filth.  One flush or two?  This means having to watch.  And
when the curious child or the optimistic adult finds himself in
purgatory – where he or she isn't quite sure what's going on –  one more
flush will do the trick.  It doesn't, and thus we become even
nauseatingly intimate with the filth we most wish to avoid. 



In
Europe, the leftists want to ensure no one can escape filth at the most
quotidian level.  Bureaucrats in Brussels are so imbued with leisure
that they have time to ponder the lowly vacuum cleaner, so they
legislate vacuum-cleaner power;
thus the European can be assured of never escaping dust, animal dander,
dust mites, detritus, dirt, or whatever filth is brought or blown into
the house.   



And
while the left poses, postures, and pontificates on the
environment-friendliness of its tyranny, it concurrently fantasizes of a
world untouched by the human hand.  It sighs doe-eyed at the thought of
a world bereft of CO₂ emissions, hydrocarbon-fueled machines (which, when benefits are weighted against costs, clean much more than defile),
capitalism, anything with a human touch, and even anything with humans.
 Stasis it what the left desires.  Let's all return to 20,000 BC, when
everything was putatively perfect.  Better to return to a time when a
thorn prick could turn septic and then into a long agonizing death than
to despoil an imperceptible amount of acreage. 



Such
is the trajectory when a country is populated by people with too much
time, too little common sense, and too many governmental avenues to
impose their will.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/10/the_left_avows_its_ungodly_love_of_filth.html#ixzz3GW8YWowe

Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Articles: Progressives At War with Reality

Articles: Progressives At War with Reality

July 6, 2014

Progressives At War with Reality

By Taylor Lewis

In his essay The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man,
Frederick Engels wrote, “Let us not, however, flatter ourselves
overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such
victory nature takes its revenge on us.” Engels may have been a dunce on
economics and class sociology, but his warning was prescient to
progressivism’s attempt to subvert the shackles of reality.



Listening
to today’s progressives, you get the impression that we are on the
inexorable path to utopia. People are more tolerant and accepting than
ever before. Abortion and birth control are readily available. Sex
selection of the unborn is on the rise. Marriage has ceased
being a sacred bond and is becoming a catch-all term for any contract
agreed to by one or more persons. As government takes over more swaths
of the economy, promises of material abundance keep escaping the mouths
of politicians.



The
implicit goal in all of this progress is total domination over nature
by man. Poverty, sickness, intolerance, ugliness -- the left wants
nothing to be left to chance or God’s hands. The power to mold the
future so that it fits one grand vision is the Holy Grail of
progressivism.



A slew of recent news stories elucidate this sweeping objective. In Slate, transgender activist Christin Scarlett Milloy condemns the practice of assigning gender at birth. She -- her preferred pronoun, though this photo
makes me question its accuracy -- writes that upon birth, a child’s
“potential is limitless.” The second that gender is determined, the
newborn’s “life is instantly and brutally reduced... down to one
concrete set of expectations and stereotypes.” Essentially, the baby’s
future is split, so that its career as a blue collar construction worker
or ballet dancer is now predetermined.



Not
giving the infant or the parents consent to “choose” gender is now seen
as a great injustice. It may sound strange but it shouldn’t. In the
great age of choice, why shouldn’t we subvert the tradition of gender
assignments? Are we not free unless we can ignore a doctor’s “cursory
assessment” of what’s between a newborn’s legs?



If
nature is the enemy, then biological reality must be defeated. Hence
the move to transcend gender, and its social expectations, through
medical operations. But even the construction of artificial genitals
doesn’t seem to be enough to soothe the unrest of those uncomfortable
with binary gender roles. Milloy notes that transgendered individuals
have a higher rate of suicide and
depression than cisgender folks. Why is this? Milloy attributes it to
bullying and being assigned the wrong gender at birth. The idea of
revenge for believing man can overthrow nature is not given a hint of
consideration.



Striving
to master sex and gender is not the only mission of progressives. Now,
there are attempts being made to counteract life’s one guarantee: death.
A recent front page story in the New York Times detailed
how a funeral home in New Orleans specializes in posing the corpse of
the recently deceased performing their favorite activity. One deceased
woman was photographed while propped up at a table “amid miniature New
Orleans Saints helmets, with a can of Busch beer at one hand and a
menthol cigarette between her fingers” as was her wont in life. The
practice, which originated in Puerto Rico, is still relatively rare. In
San Juan, viewings in recent years have included a “paramedic displayed
behind the wheel of his ambulance” and “a man dressed for his wake like
Che Guevara, cigar in hand and seated Indian style.” Some people are
beginning to request this type of funeral upon their death. Elsie
Rodríguez, vice president of the Marín Funeral Home in Puerto Rico,
rationalizes the custom because it eases the burden felt by the
deceased’s family. He told the Times, “the family literally suffers less, because they see their loved one in a way that would have made them happy.”



In
the scheme of things, does posing the dead engaged in a favored
activity really corrupt the soul? Perhaps not, but it’s indicative of a
fanciful longing to not leave things as they are. This year, a man in
Ohio received his wish that upon his death, his body was to be placed on
his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and towed to the cemetery in a custom
plexiglass coffin. Did parading his lifeless body around bring some
happiness to his spiritual being? We’ll never know the answer. But does
clinging to the last vestiges of earthly existence undermine a person’s
contribution to the living world? I believe the answer is “yes,” despite
what reprieve it may bring for family members in anguish. As Wesley Smith of
the Discovery Institute writes, conducting “living” funerals is just
another contemporary disposition that attempts “to deflect the ultimate
reality of human mortality.”



Gender-bending
and death denial aren’t consequences of a flawed philosophy on life,
but merely symptoms. If you believe mankind can conquer the mountains,
squash all injustice, and create a society of pure happiness, then it
makes sense to push the limits of nature and see if God will truly stand
down to His own creation. Of course, in the fight between God and man,
man must always lose, or else he wouldn’t be man to begin with. That’s
why progressivism’s march to conquer nature nearly always ends in
despair.



Pushing
too hard against reality is liable to create unintended ramifications
that distort and disorder our own well-being and sense of purposeful
design. In short, it conflates what we know to be true with what’s
false. Pretending the dead are still alive doesn’t bring proper closure.
It only delays the inevitable reckoning. Just the same, arbitrarily
choosing one’s gender based on personal inclinations doesn’t appear to
boost self-esteem. The epidemic of suicide attempts among transgendered
individuals says there is something highly disrupting about challenging
one of nature’s most embedded realities.



Without
a recognition and acceptance of natural order, things become
disorienting to the point of meaningless. If good and evil are no
different, if life and death hold no meaningful difference, if girl and
boy are simply words with no distinction, then what foundation do we
have to plant the flag of reality? It is as Milan Kundera wrote:

“...it
reminds us of Stalin’s son, who ran to electrocute himself on the
barbed wire when he could no longer stand to watch the poles of human
existence come so close to each other as to touch, when there was no
longer any difference between sublime and squalid, angel and fly, God
and shit.”

Kundera
called this feeling of weightlessness in a world crying out to be
grounded “the unbearable lightness of being.” When it attaches itself to
a person, our moral compass goes haywire. Life begins to lose all
direction. The only way to recalibrate ourselves is to rediscover our
role in the universe.



The
difference between the man who sees reality as living truth and the man
who must control all external factors is surrender and pride. Those who
surrender accept the path given, and find joy along the way. Those who
have the overwhelming need for control -- and are prideful enough to
believe they can succeed -- end up destroying what nature provides. They
pull reality’s various poles together, flattening the landscape until
they are left with nothing.



In Canto III of Paradiso,
Dante summed up the ordered liberty position perfectly: “For in His
will is our peace.” Those who try to conquer the laws of nature will
never find peace because they are ultimately trying to accomplish the
impossible. Failure leads to dismay, dismay leads to arrogance, and
arrogance leads to an inability to distinguish between what’s right and
wrong. And without that moral fortitude, we may as well be animals
without a higher purpose.

Articles: Climate Consensus Con Game

Articles: Climate Consensus Con Game

Climate Consensus Con Game

By S. Fred Singer

February 17, 2014

 

 

At
the outset, let's be quite clear: There is no consensus about dangerous
anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) -- and there never was.  There is
not even a consensus on whether human activities, such as burning fossil
fuels to produce useful energy, affect global climate significantly. 
So what's all this fuss about?





Let's
also be quite clear that science does not work by way of consensus. 
Science does not progress by appeal to authority; in fact, major
scientific advances usually come from outside the consensus; one can
cite many classic examples, from Galileo to Einstein.  [Another way to
phrase this issue: Scientific veracity does not depend on fashionable
thinking.]  In other words, the very notion of a scientific consensus is
unscientific.





The
degree of consensus also depends on the way the questions are phrased. 
For example, we can get 100% consensus if the question is "Do you
believe in climate change?"  We can get a near-100% consensus if the
question is "Do you believe that humans have some
effect on the climate?"  This latter question also would include also
local effects, like urbanization, clearing of forests, agriculture, etc.





So one has to be rather careful and always ask: What is the exact question for which a consensus has been claimed?





Subverting Peer Review





Finally,
we should point out that a consensus can be manufactured -- even where
no consensus exists.  For example, it has become very popular to claim
that 97% of all publications support AGW.  Here the key question to ask
is: Which publications and what exactly is the form of support?





Thanks
to the revelations of the Climategate e-mails, we now have a more
skeptical view about the process which is used to vet publications.  We
know now that peer-review, once considered by many as the
'gold-standard,' can be manipulated -- and in fact has been manipulated
by a gang of UK and US climate scientists who have been very open about
their aim to keep dissenting views from being published.  We also know
from the same e-mails that editors can be bullied by determined
activists.





In
any case, the peer-review process can easily be slanted by the editor,
who usually selects the reviewers.  And some editors misuse their
position to advance their personal biases.





We have, for example, the case of a former editor of Science
who was quite open about his belief in DAGW, and actively discouraged
publication of any papers that went against his bias.  Finally, he had
to be shamed into giving voice to a climate skeptic's contrary opinion,
based on solid scientific evidence.  But of course, he reserved to
himself the last word in the debate.





My occasional scientific coauthors David Douglass (U. of Rochester) and John Christy (U. of Alabama, Huntsville) describe a particularly egregious instance of the blatant subversion of peer-review -- all supported by evidence from Climategate e-mails.





Confusing the Issue





Further,
we should mention the possibility of confusing the public, and often
many scientists as well, by clever use of words.  I will give just two
examples:





It
is often pointed out that there has been essentially no warming trend
in the last 15 years -- even though greenhouse forcing from carbon
dioxide has been steadily increasing.  At the same time, climate
activists claim that the past decade is the warmest since thermometer
records were started.





It happens that both statements are true; yet they do not contradict each other.  How is this possible?





We are dealing here with a case of simple confusion.  On the one hand we have a temperature trend which has been essentially zero for at least 15 years.  On the other hand, we have a temperature level which is highest since the Little Ice Age ended, around 1800 A.D.





Note
that 'level' and 'trend' are quite different concepts -- and even use
different units.  Level is measured in degreesC; trend is measured in
degC per decade.  [This
is a very general problem; for example, many people confuse electric
energy with electric power; one is measured in joules or kilowatt-hours;
the other is measured in kilowatts.]





It
may help here to think of prices on the stock market.  The Dow-Jones
index has more or less been level for the last several weeks,
fluctuating between 15,000 and 16,000, showing essentially a zero trend;
but it is at its highest level since the D-J index was started in 1896.





This
is only one example by which climate activists can confuse the public
-- and often even themselves -- into believing that there is a consensus
on DAGW.   Look at two typical recent headlines:





               "2013 sixth-hottest year, confirms long-term warming: UN"
               "U.S. Dec/Jan Temperatures 3rd Coldest in 30 Years"





Both
are correct, but neither mentions the important fact that the trend has
been flat for at least 15 years -- thus falsifying the greenhouse
climate models, all of which predict a strong future warming.





And
of course, government climate policies are all based on such
unvalidated climate models -- which have already been proven wrong.  Yet
the latest UN-IPCC report of Sept 2013 claims to be 95% certain about
DAGW!  Aware of the actual temperature data, how can they claim this and
keep a straight face?





Their
laughable answer: 95% of climate models agree; therefore the
observations must be wrong!  One can only shake one's head sadly at such
a display of "science."





Another
trick question by activists trying to sell a "consensus": "If you are
seriously ill and 99 doctors recommend a certain treatment, would you go
with the one doctor who disagrees?" 





It
all depends.  Suppose I do some research and find that all 99 doctors
got their information from a single (anonymous) article in Wikipedia,
what then?





Opinion Polls





Both
sides in the climate debate have made active use of opinion polls.  In
1990, when I started to become seriously involved in climate-change
arguments and incorporated the SEPP (Science & Environmental Policy
Project), I decided to poll the experts.  Having limited funds, and
before the advent of widespread e-mail, I polled the officers of the
listed technical committees of the American Meteorological Society -- a
sample of less than 100.  I figured those must be the experts.





I
took the precaution of isolating myself from this survey by enlisting
the cooperation of Dr Jay Winston, a widely respected meteorologist,
skeptical of climate skeptics.  And I employed two graduate students who
had no discernible expertise in climate issues to conduct the actual
survey and analyze the returns.





This
exercise produced an interesting result: Roughly half of the AMS
experts believed there must be a significant human influence on the
climate through the release of carbon dioxide -- while the other half
had considerable doubt about the validity of climate models.





Subsequent
polls, for example those by Hans von Storch in Germany, have given
similar results -- while polls conducted by activists have consistently
shown strong support for AGW.  A classic case is a survey of the
abstracts of nearly 1000 papers, by science historian Naomi Oreskes (UC
San Diego); published in 2004 Science, she claimed a
near-unanimous consensus about AGW.  However, after being challenged,
Oreskes discovered having overlooked some 11,000 abstracts -- and
published a discreet Correction in a later issue of Science.





On
the other hand, independent polls by newspapers, by Pew, Gallup, and
other respected organizations, using much larger samples, have mirrored
the results of my earlier AMS poll.  But what has been most interesting is the gradual decline over the years in public support for DAGW, as shown by these independent polls.





Over
the years also, there have been a large number of "declarations,
manifestos, and petitions" -- signed by scientists, and designed to
influence public opinion -- starting with the "Leipzig Declaration" of
1995.  Noteworthy among the many is the Copenhagen Diagnosis (2009),
published to build up hype for a UN conference that failed utterly.





It
is safe to say that the overall impact of such polls has been minimal,
compared to the political consequences of UN-IPCC (Inter-governmental
Panel on Climate Change) reports that led to (mostly failed) attempts at
international action, like the Kyoto Protocol (1997-2012).  One should
mention here the Oregon Petition against Kyoto, signed by some 31,000
(mostly US) scientists and engineers -- nearly 10,000 with advanced
degrees.  More important perhaps, in July 1997 the US Senate passed the
Byrd-Hagel Resolution against a Kyoto-like treaty by unanimous vote --
which probably dissuaded the Clinton-Gore White House from ever
submitting Kyoto for Senate ratification.





Is Consensus still an issue?





By
now, the question of a scientific consensus on AGW may have become
largely academic.  What counts are the actual climate observations,
which have shaken public faith in climate models that preach DAGW.  The
wild claims of the IPCC are being offset by the more sober, fact-based
publications of the NIPCC (Non-governmental International Panel on
Climate Change).  While many national science academies and
organizations still cling to the ever-changing "evidence" presented by
the IPCC, it may be significant that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has
translated and published a condensation of NIPCC reports.  





In the words of physicist Prof Howard "Cork" Hayden:





"If the science were as certain as climate activists pretend, then there would be precisely one
climate model, and it would be in agreement with measured data.  As it
happens, climate modelers have constructed literally dozens of climate
models.  What they all have in common is a failure to represent reality,
and a failure to agree with the other models.  As the models have
increasingly diverged from the data, the climate clique have
nevertheless grown increasingly confident -- from cocky in 2001 (66%
certainty in IPCC's Third Assessment Report) to downright arrogant in
2013 (95% certainty in the Fifth Assessment Report)."





Climate activists seem to embrace faith and ideology -- and are no longer interested in facts.
S.
Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and
director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project.  His
specialty is atmospheric and space physics.  An expert in remote sensing
and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather
Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National
Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere.  He is a senior fellow of
the Heartland Institute and the Independent Institute, and an elected
Fellow of several scientific and engineering organizations.  He
co-authored the NY Times best-seller Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years. 
In 2007, he founded and has since chaired the NIPCC (Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change), which has released several
scientific reports [See www.NIPCCreport.org].    For recent writings, see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer/ and also Google Scholar.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/climate_consensus_con_game.html#ixzz2tbiyyQVU

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The United Whims of America - Derek Hunter - Page full

The United Whims of America - Derek Hunter - Page full

The United Whims of America

Derek Hunter | Jan 26, 2014

 

  

 
We are a nation of laws, or at least we used to be.



We have become a nation of subjects living at the mercy of the whims of
progressive politicians willing to use government agencies, their
positions and a complicit media to trample voter’s rights, silence
opposition and impose an agenda voters rejected and reject laws they
explicitly supported. If the law can be overruled or ignored by
politicians in this way, and government agencies can be weaponized, all
while being ignored by the self-appointed “free press,” liberty isn’t
just threatened, it’s dead.



The nation was shocked when it learned Obama administration used the
Internal Revenue Service to target and silence political opponents, and
the president swore at the time he would root out those responsible. But
within weeks, he stopped caring and labeled it as a “phony scandal,”
and the media fell in line and moved on. And this was just the tip of
the power-abuse iceberg.



We still have no idea who ordered the IRS to target political foes of
progressives – the trail ended when Lois Lerner read a 5-minute
statement to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, then
contemptibly and illegally took the Fifth rather than answer questions
from committee members. Imagine the howls in the press if a Republican
even tried to get away with that. Lerner not only got away with it, she
was given paid leave then allowed to retire with full benefits. And the
targeting not only continues, but progressives now seek to codify in
regulation the abuses they undertook so they can silence opposition in
the future.



It’s something out of a Hollywood movie…only Hollywood has become a
player in the fight. Well, not exactly a player, more like an unwilling
participant.



Hollywood conservatives, to the extent they exist, have a group called
Friends of Abe. It’s essentially a social club where people who
otherwise have to hide their personal opinions because they wouldn’t get
work get together and talk, sometimes with politicians as guests. I
first heard about the group from Andrew Breitbart, who was an integral
member. He expressed the importance not only of the anonymity of the
members, but of the existence of the group at the time. The group
eventually became known, but the membership, beyond a few, remained a
closely guarded secret. Enter the IRS.



FoA applied for tax-exempt status and soon found itself on the IRS hit
list. Not only does the IRS want financial records, it wants names. It’s
not illegal to join a conservative group (yet), not even in Hollywood,
but it can be career suicide. Moreover, it’s no one’s damn business who
joins a social club of like-minded political colleagues. But if you want
to ruin people, if you want to codify uniformity of thought and silence
people who dare step out of line, you need to identify them.



For all the talk of “McCarthyism” by progressives, they conveniently
ignore a few things about the late senator. First, he did root out
communists who had infiltrated government (the real sin for which they
won’t forgive him). And second, his right hand in the “witch hunt” was
none other than their hero, Robert F. Kennedy.



As progressives cheer the IRS’ embrace of deplorable tactics because
those tactics help major funders “purge” their ranks of impurity, the
federal level is not the only one on which they work against liberty.



The state of New York, under the leadership of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is
seeking to “audit” the books of Project Veritas. PV, the group founded
by gonzo journalist James O’Keefe, exposes progressive hypocrisy and
illegality and provides a clear-as-day juxtaposition that exposes the
complicity of traditional media in shrouding the progressive agenda in
legitimacy. Another unforgivable sin.



New York has no reason to believe there is any problem with PV’s books.
It just wants to make sure … in the same way the Stasi used to just want
to make sure. And it’s not the financials New York cares about anyway.
It’s the names. If you want to target your enemies, it helps to know
their names.



The media silence on this abuse is drowned out only by the sound of its drooling at the prospect of investigating those names.



Fascism is alive and well in the Empire State.



But the assault on conservatives is only one front in the war on
liberty. After all, what’s the point of attacking your enemies if you
don’t have an agenda to advance?



President Obama’s “democracy by dictate” is widely known and celebrated
by the media, his “pen and phone” will make the history books. But his
ignoring and/or changing the law, even laws he supported, is not unique
to him. His example has and will serve as inspiration for other
progressive politicians.



One such example is Mark Herring, the new attorney general of Virginia.
Herring, a former state senator who voted in favor of a state
constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, announced this week that,
as Attorney General, he would not defend the law against a legal
challenge.



When Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban ballot initiative in California
cruised to easy victory, the attorney general there also refused to
defend a law overwhelmingly supported by voters. Citizen groups stepped
up to do the job the AG refused to do. The ban was overturned by a lower
court, and the Supreme Court ruled the plaintiffs did not have standing
because they were not the state government. So, by refusing to defend a
law directly approved by voters, the AG of California effectively
overturned the will of the people and replaced it with his own.



The same thing is happening in Virginia.



Because this is happening on gay marriage, many people won’t care. But
if the rule of law and the clear will of the people can be overturned on
the whims of a politician, either by action or lack thereof, there is
no law.



Progressives are the quickest to cry “democracy” when it suits their
needs, yet they routinely ignore public opinion when it’s against them.
And they’ve never been afraid to use the courts to get what they
couldn’t get what they wanted at the ballot box. But now, packing the
courts is not the sure thing they’re looking for, so they’ve gone a step
farther and gotten politicians sworn to uphold the law to go against
their oaths. We are close to transforming this nation from one of laws
to one of progressive whims.



There are bad laws and wrong laws and laws that don’t work. But the
beauty of our system is there is a way to change them – through our
representatives. And if our representatives don’t change or pass the
laws we want, we can vote in new ones. But the left is moving us toward a
new normal, one in which “We The People” are removed from the process.
Progressive politicians ignoring or rewriting laws at will moves us from
a system where government derives its power from the consent of the
governed to one where we exist on the whims of a few politicians.



You may not care now because the whims are in your favor. If you support
gay marriage in California or Virginia, you may be quite content with
your AG refusing to enforce them. If you support Colorado and Washington
flouting federal drug laws by legalizing marijuana and getting the OK
from Attorney General Eric Holder, you may be happy now. If you support
amnesty, you may support President Obama deciding to treat immigration
law as if the DREAM Act were passed by Congress and signed by him.



But whims change. Power passes to people you may not agree with or who
take it to an even greater extreme, and their abuses may not be so much
to your taste. What then? Where will you go for justice when you realize
a right you do care about is gone and its return is dependent upon the
whims of someone elected to protect it, only they aren’t interested in
giving it back?

 

Articles: The Inventor of the Global Warming Hockey Stick Doubles Down

Articles: The Inventor of the Global Warming Hockey Stick Doubles Down

The Inventor of the Global Warming Hockey Stick Doubles Down

By S. Fred Singer

 January 21, 2014

 

 

Professor Michael Mann, the inventor of the Hockeystick temperature graph, had a contentious editorial essay in the January 17^th
issue of the New York Times.  [The Hockeystick graph purports to show
that temperatures of the last thousand years declined steadily -- until
the 20^th century, when there was a sudden large rise.] 


I
am using the word "inventor" on purpose, since the Hockeystick is a
manufactured item and does not correspond to well-established historic
reality.  It does not show the generally beneficial Medieval Warm Period
(MWP) at around 1000 AD, or the calamitous Little Ice Age (LIA) between
about 1400 and 1800.  In the absence of any thermometers during most of
this period, the Hockeystick is based on an analysis of so-called proxy
data, mostly tree rings, from before 1000 AD to 1980, where the proxy
temperature  suddenly stops and a rapidly rising thermometer record is
joined on.





Since
its publication in 1998 and 1999, the hockeystick graph has had a
turbulent history.  It was adopted by the IPCC (UN-Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) in its 3^rd Assessment Report (2001) to support the claim of a major anthropogenic global warming (AGW) during the 20^th
century.  Since then, the IPCC has distanced itself from the graph,
which has been completely discredited.  It not disagrees not only with
much historic evidence that shows a MWP and LIA, but also with other
analyses  of proxy data.  Most of the criticism has come from the work
of two Canadian statisticians, Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who
have uncovered a misuse of data, a biased calibration procedure, and
fundamental errors in the statistical methods.





McKitrick,
an econometrician at Guelph University in Canada, has a pungent comment
on Mann's op-ed, which was titled "If you see something, say
something."

"OK, I see a second-rate scientist carrying on like a jackass and making a public nuisance of himself."

I have added my own comment as follows:  "OK, I want to say something too: I see an
ideologue, desperately trying to support a hypothesis that's been
falsified by observations.  While the majority of climate alarmists are
trying to discover a physical reason that might just save the AGW
hypothesis, Mann simply ignores the 'inconvenient truth' that the global
climate has not warmed significantly for at least the past 15 years --
while emissions of greenhouse gases have surged globally."

Of course, this is not the first time that "hide the decline" Mike has done this.  Remember his "Nature
trick" -- so much admired by his 'Climategate team' mates?  [For those
who don't remember the 2009 Climategate scandal: It consisted of a leak
of some thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia,
involving mainly Michael Mann and several of his English colleagues,
documenting their completely unethical attempts to suppress any contrary
opinions and publications from climate skeptics by misusing the
peer-review process and by pressuring editors of scientific journals --
unfortunately, with some success.]





We don't quite know yet what the "Nature
trick" refers to -- until we get Michael Mann to tell us why he has
refused to reveal his never-published post-1980 proxy data.  We may have
to wait until we have him on the witness stand and under oath.  But I
strongly suspect that it has to do with absence of any temperature
increase after 1980; its publication would have created a conflict with
the reported (and problematic) thermometer data and with the assertion
by the IPCC that humans are responsible for such a temperature rise.





In
actuality, we now have adequate proxy data from other sources, most
particularly from Fredrick Ljungqvist and David Anderson.  Their
separate publications agree that there has been little if any
temperature rise since about 1940!  However, there was a real
temperature increase between 1920 and 1940, which can be seen also in
the various proxy as well as thermometer data.





Anti-Science





Michael
Mann saw something he didn't like in the Senate testimony (Jan 16,
2014) of fiercely independent climate scientist and blogger, Georgia
Tech professor Judith Curry; so he decided to say something in his NYT
op-ed.  He forgot that often it is better to say nothing than to accuse
Curry of peddling anti-science.





Curry has lost no time in taking Mann's challenge and turning the tables on him:                            

"Since
you have publicly accused my Congressional testimony of being
'anti-science,' I expect you to (publicly) document and rebut any
statement in my testimony that is factually inaccurate or where my
conclusions are not supported by the evidence that I provide.


During
the Hearing, Senator Whitehouse asked me a question about why people
refer to me as a 'contrarian.'  I said something like the following:
Skepticism is one of the norms of science.  We build
confidence in our theories as they are able to withstand skeptical
challenges.  If instead, scientists defend their theories by calling
their opponents names, well that is a sign that their theories are in
trouble.

Curry's final message to Mann:

"If you want to avoid yourself being labeled as 'anti-science', I suggest that you are obligated to respond to my challenge."

War on Coal





It
is interesting that Mann now plays the role of the victim in purported
persecution by powerful interests, darkly identified as the fossil-fuel
industry.  Actually, the reverse may be the case.  Mann has become a
strong proponent of emission controls on carbon dioxide, which fits in
very nicely with the ongoing War on Coal conducted by the EPA and the
White House -- and with the editorial policies of the New York Times --
coal being the most prolific source of CO2. 





It
is ironic that while coal use is increasing rapidly in China and India,
it is also increasing in Europe where governments have been anti-CO2
fanatics in the past but have decided to stop nuclear power, which emits
no CO2 whatsoever.





In
the United States, requirements are being set up to capture CO2 from
smoke stacks of power plants and store it underground.  Carbon Capture
and Sequestration is a difficult and costly undertaking, and has never
been demonstrated on a commercial scale.  There have even been calls for
sucking CO2 out of the global atmosphere, which sounds like an
impossible task -- and in any case, would be very, very expensive.





 And
to what purpose?  As pointed out many times, CO2 is beneficial for
agriculture.  As a natural fertilizer, it accelerates the growth of
crops.  Czech physicist Lubos Motl has calculated that if it were indeed
possible to reduce CO2 levels to their pre-industrial value, global
agriculture would suffer a strong decline and billions of people would
starve to death. 





But
perhaps this level of population control is what the climate fanatics
are really after.  They have always maintained that the Earth suffers
from over-population and that the number
of people needs to be reduced to protect natural values -- a truly
misanthropic scheme.  In 1974, the Club of Rome group published a
detailed study, predicting that a billion people would die of
starvation, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in 2010.  One of the
proponents of this thesis is now the White House science adviser.





S.
Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and
director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project.  His
specialty is atmospheric and space physics.  An expert in remote sensing
and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather
Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National
Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere.  He is a senior fellow of
the Heartland Institute and the Independent Institute.  He co-authored
the NY Times best-seller Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years. 
In 2007, he founded and has since chaired the NIPCC (Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change), which has released several
scientific reports [See www.NIPCCreport.org].    For recent writings, see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer/ and also Google Scholar.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/the_inventor_of_the_global_warming_hockey_stick_doubles_down.html#ixzz2r16zxusF

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