On the Mother of the Two Boston Terror Suspects

If denial were steroids, this gal would be Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Raphael Palmiero, and Mark McGwire combined....Maybe throw in a little Lance Armstrong, too.

They SAY that They Like Consensus

Don Easterbrook is a professor emeritus of geology and earth science at Western Washington University. He has authored 8 books and close to 150 research papers. He is a political independent, environmentalist, and has never taken a penny from big oil. Professor Easterbrook did an exhaustive search of the georef database and ultimately came up with these numbers. There have been 485 (as of 2010) articles on the Medieval Warm Period in which it was stated that the episode was real, global, and at least as warm as what we're experiencing today. The fellow also found over 1,400 articles which likewise authenticated the reality and global nature of the Little Ice Age. These global warming people assert that they like consensus, but on this one they instead put all of their stock in the data of a newcomer who damn near committed every error in the manual and whose hockey stick graph literally made most geologists laugh. Boy, has the scientific enterprise ever deteriorated of late.

At the Intersection of Genius and Humility and Caution 2

"A philosopher who has long been attached to a favorite hypothesis, and especially if he has distinguished himself by his ingenuity in discovering of pursuing it, will not sometimes be convinced of its falsity by the plainest evidence of fact." Joseph Priestly............."If we begin in certainty, we will end in doubts." Francis Bacon............."Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell.

Adaptive Seasoning

The earth is essentially a living organism, and living organisms mostly adapt. Professor Lindzen probably had the best analogy, I think. He points to the fact that when a human being puts something alien into his or her body, there generally aren't properties in that body which interact with it negatively to make the insult worse. In fact, just the opposite tends to happen; inflammation, mucous, fever, etc.. And the same is evidently true of the planet earth, too. Yes, a fair amount of carbon dioxide has entered the atmosphere (not anywhere near the levels of previous epochs but certainly more than those of the little ice age or even the Medieval warm period), but there has not, NOT, been a runaway greenhouse effect. There hasn't, folks, because the planet has a way of healing/cooling itself via an increase in cloud cover (a derivation of the increases in water vapor) and, yes, this in fact represents a NEGATIVE feedback...............................................................................................P.S. I also think that it's important to point out here that this planet of ours has absorbed a hell of a lot more punishment than this 150 ppm  increase of CO2 that we have admittedly been a part of; massive volcanic eruptions, continents colliding (what, you think that the map has always looked this way?), meteor strikes, solar flares, etc.. This whole construct of us somehow being able to render the planet helpless (never mind control its thermostat) is ridiculous and, yes, yet another example of US putting US at the center of the universe.

America's Nastiest Congresspersons?

Hm, I would probably have to go with Democrats, Henry Waxmen, Alan Grayson, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Republicans, Dana Rohrebacher, Joe Wilson, and Virginia Foxx (Jean Schmidt and Alan West both having been bounced in the latest election). I watch a lot of C-Span, folks, and these six individuals are pretty much the bottom of the barrel; mean-spirited, virulently partisan 24/7. How anybody in his or her right mind would ever want to vote for 'em is WELL beyond me.

More in Terms of Devious Decline Hiding

The scientific evidence is overwhelming that the earth experienced a significant amount of global cooling (as much a half a degree Celsius) from 1940 to 1975. The data involved is especially solid after 1958 in that that was when weather stations started utilizing radiosonde balloon data (a technique that has shown to be virtually consistent with the satellite data of post 1979). But, just like with pretty much everything global warming, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum (or in Al Gore's instance, the Oscar ceremonies). It seems, folks, that James Hansen (the author of the second and third graphs, the third being the adjusted one) ultimately didn't care for this little piece of reality and decided instead to "adjust" it a tad. So, instead of having a scenario in which the temperature actually went down for approximately 35 years (this, in spite of the hard evidence that man-induced CO2 emissions were skyrocketing), you magically had it simply taking a breather. This is absolutely unbelievable, folks.

On The Ten Commandments as a Reliable Moral Indices

I don't know, folks, the fact that "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife" made it and "Thou Shalt Not Enslave Another Human Being Into Servitude" didn't, is probably a sufficient enough rationale to maybe look elsewhere.