The American Spectator

Deborah D| 5.4.10 @ 4:18PM

I think I'm in love with AG Cuccinelli!! This is the best news I've read in about two years! I'm so ready for our side to fight back against these liars, thieves, radicals, haters. Did I say "liars"?

Way to keep up the pressure on these folks. Stealing American taxpayer money to perpetrate a fraud ... about time someone went to jail. Al Gore?

Or in other contexts -- Franklin Raines, Barnie Frank, Chris Dodd...and just about the whole left side of the political aisle past and present of Congress.

Jennifer S| 5.5.10 @ 12:08PM

Ken Cuccinelli spoke at the Stafford County Tea Party on April 10. He is very personable and has a great mind. He has also spear-headed VA's efforts to block the implementation of ObamaCare in Virginia.

SoCon| 5.4.10 @ 4:31PM

Ditto, Deborah! The buffoon deserves to be investigated.

ACynic| 5.4.10 @ 5:14PM

Unfortunately, the MSM, the propaganda arm of the left wing socialist / neo-communist demokratic party on the side of the AGW religious fanatics, there will be ZERO public pressure to force the fraud and crook Mann to repay all the grant money he stole, to be kicked out of PSU, and tossed in jail.
Thus is the power of the media to make news or make news go away.

Smitty| 5.4.10 @ 5:23PM

Discredit the liars and cheats who've promulgated
"Global Warming."
Ridicule is a good thing.

JohnD| 5.4.10 @ 6:27PM

. . .prosecution is even better than ridicule.

Smitty| 5.4.10 @ 6:32PM

Hopefully, ridicule will lead to prosecution!

Jeremiah| 5.5.10 @ 12:29AM

Not the military, just the liberal brass hos.

Only braindead liberals like you would fall hook, line and sinker for the AGW BS spewed by 'scientists' who lied, threw their data away and bleated, "Hide the decline." You're terminally stupid, John.

John| 5.5.10 @ 2:34PM

Jeremiah, you folks wouldn't recognize science if it bit you on the ass.

jwallen| 5.9.10 @ 2:41PM

So John why don't you show us some of your irrefutable science...not that I want to be bit in the ass, but I am always interested in something rational. I know it seems that it always gets disproved, but isn't that the point. Even if it gets disproved it furthers the science immensely. I think directly because of this debacle the knowledge base has improved exponentially beyond anything we could ever have hoped for. Tens of thousands of people who never gave this a second thought are involved in attempting to understand how our climate system works. Maybe someday if a problem ever does become evident we will be far better equipped to deal with it because of this sometimes painful interaction. It is not however acceptable to just believe. If the past has any value it is to show us consensus in unsubstantiated science has led to more suffering and loss of human life than nature has ever sent our way. ....Jwallen....

Nobama| 5.11.10 @ 3:09PM

John is just another braindead idiot liberal whoring for the 'cause'. Liar.

Harry Braun| 5.5.10 @ 10:48AM

What we need is more transparency.

The American Petroleum Institute's lobbying efforts should be posted on a website and made public just like the Tobacco Institute was forced to do after they were found guilty.

The New York Times ran an article about the American Petroleum Institute in April of 1998. It outlines a very specific and detailed plan by oil and gas industry representatives to invest millions of dollars in an effort to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol and discredit the scientific consensus opinion that greenhouse gases are causing the planet to warm.

http://www.euronet.nl/users/e_.....-prop.html

The draft plan, titled “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” concedes that opposition to the protocol is not shared by the public or a vast majority of scientists worldwide. “There has been little, if any, public resistance or pressure applied to Congress to reject the treaty, except by those ‘inside the Beltway’ with vested interests,” it notes.

Read: Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan

http://harryhammer.wordpress.c.....tion-plan/

jwallen| 5.8.10 @ 4:07PM

Do yourself and the rest of us a favour and see if you can actually find any science supporting your we're all gonna die chicken little crap. All I ever hear is rhetoric never ever any science. Even on the report to congress the other day not a single warmest doomsayer offered any science just the same old worn out observation crap you know like the floods down south were caused by global warming but not the severe cold and snow, that was just an anomaly. There have been sites offering thousands of dollars to anyone who will put forward any actual provable science showing a correlation between CO2 and global warming. Nobody has ever come forward. Don't you think after the billions spent there should be a little more than just rhetoric supported only by useful mimics like yourself. The only science I have ever seen is science that proves conclusively that CO2 does not cause global warming. Go read a book for Christ sake. Water vapour absorbs 10 times as much longwave radiation as CO2 and is 100 times more prevalent. That makes it 1000 times more effective as a greenhouse gas. So why would you even imagine a couple of parts per million of this trace gas would cause some sort of a tragic end of the world tipping scenario so let’s starve half the population of the planet to death so that this horrible global warming monster thing doesn't kill off half the population. Grow up there is nothing hiding under your bed. ....jwallen...

Nobama| 5.11.10 @ 3:11PM

Braun's just another braindead Canadian idiot.

MikeN| 5.5.10 @ 12:35PM

The hockey stick did not hide the decline, as your own link shows.

Also, this prosecution will lead nowhere, as Cuccinelli will not be able to show fraud by Mann in those papers, which itself might be outside the purview of that law. It is not the AG's job to settle scientific disputes.

jwallen| 5.8.10 @ 7:10PM

Here is a quote on how Mann’s buddies stood up for his use of the tree ring data that he used to make his hockey stick. With friends like that who needs us sceptics to point out his lies. This is from an article I believe I read Climate Audit in relation to sceptic Keenan getting access to the oak ring data Mann used for his hockey stick recently.
Quote "Baillie made a similar statement to the Guardian:
“Keenan is the only person in the world claiming that our oak-ring patterns are temperature records,” Baillie told the Guardian.
Rob Wilson agreed with Baillie on this point, telling the Times that “oaks were virtually useless as a temperature proxy”.
Mann et al 2008
Notwithstanding the considered opinion of Baillie and Wilson that oaks are “virtually useless as a temperature proxy” and “dangerous” to use in a temperature reconstruction, no fewer than 119 oak chronologies were used in Mann et al 2008.
Among Mann’s oak chronologies were three Baillie chronologies: brit008 – Lockwood; brit042 – Shanes Castle, Northern Ireland; brit044 – Castle Coole, Northern Ireland.
A full list of the oak chronologies used in Mann et al 2008 is as follows:
“al001″ “ar009″ “ar018″ “ar024″ “ar056″ “ar057″ “ar058″ “ar060″ “ar061″ “ar072″ “brit008″ “brit011″ “brit042″ “brit044″ “ca614″ “ca615″ “ca616″ “ca617″ “ca618″ “ca619″ “ca620″ “ca621″ “ca623″ “ca624″ “ca625″ “ca626″ “fl005″ “fran001″ “fran003″ “ia001″ “ia003″ “ia004″ “ia020″ “ia021″ “ia023″ “ia024″ “ia025″ “ia026″ “ia027″ “ia029″ “ia030″ “ia032″ “il008″ “il009″ “il010″ “il011″ “il013″ “il014″ “in001″ “ks001″ “ks004″ “ks007″ “ks010″ “ky003″ “ky004″ “mi005″ “mo001″ “mo003″ “mo004″ “mo005″ “mo008″ “mo014″ “mo015″ “mo018″ “mo021″ “mo024″ “mo027″ “mo030″ “mo033″ “mo036″ “mo039″ “mo040″ “mo044″ “nc004″ “nc007″ “nj001″ “nj002″ “ny002″ “ny003″ “oh001″ “oh002″ “oh003″ “oh006″ “ok001″ “ok004″ “ok007″ “ok013″ “ok016″ “ok019″ “ok022″ “ok025″ “ok028″ “pa006″ “pa009″ “pola006″ “pola014″ “pola015″ “pola016″ “pola017″ “sc005″ “tn005″ “tn008″ “tx003″ “tx006″ “tx009″ “tx012″ “tx018″ “tx021″ “tx024″ “tx027″ “tx030″ “tx033″ “tx039″ “tx041″ “va009″ “va011″ “va014″ “va016″ “va017″
Far be it from me to disagree with the specialist view of Wilson and Baillie that these oak chronologies are “virtually useless” as a temperature or “dangerous” to use in a temperature reconstruction.
However, surely it would have been far more relevant for them to speak up at the time of the publication of Mann et al 2008 and to have expressed this view as a comment on that publication. At the time, Climate Audit urged specialists to speak out against known misuse of proxies, but they refused to do so. (see Silence of the Lambs). " end quote. I got a million of these; I smell fraud and its making me hungry. ....jwallen....

a.n.ditchfield| 5.13.10 @ 8:18AM

RULE BY BUSYBODY
a.n.ditchfield
______________________________________________________________________________________

The proper conduct of a rational being starts with respect for the minds of others.
In science, this means the exposure of one’s ideas to the scrutiny of other minds, often with conflicting views, in the peer-review process. In the study of human affairs such respect unfolds into curiosity about the working of different cultures and the role of mystical experiences in them, aroused by religious practices. Ultimately, law and institu-tions for its enforcement reflect religious concepts of what is right and what is wrong.
This was the approach taken by Richard Francis Burton, one of the greatest among the gifted Victorian scholars. His forty narratives of travels to exotic or uncharted spaces are well known, but his quest for ultimate knowledge through religious experience is revealed in Burton’s biography, written by Edward Rice.
As a secret agent of the Indian Army, in mid 19th century, Burton dressed the garb that suited the mission, developed fluency in languages and observed customs on the troublesome Northwest border, along Afghanistan. Burton was so thorough in his inquiries among Sikhs that he completed studies of holy books and went through the rituals to be accepted as a Sikh sage and preacher. He dedicated greater and longer attention to Islam and capped it with his pilgrimage to Mecca, the site forbidden to infidels.
At a time when Europeans despised what they saw as backward cultures, Burton and a group of like scholars approached them with open minds. From their findings emerged the college of oriental studies in Oxford, instrumental in shaping the na-tion-building effort that unified India into the biggest democracy in the world. European secularists would do well to apply their claimed scientific de-tachment to the study of the Christian religion as earnestly as Burton did.
In the opposite direction the Mother of Par-liaments, now in her second childhood, is making real Orwell’s nightmare of 1984. This is recent. In the 18th century all Europe was known as Christen-dom. On the Continent the French revolution broke the political power of the clergy and, in the 19th century, secularists continued the hostility in anti-clerical campaigns that swept Europe. English-speaking countries were untouched by these up-heavals and have remained, to this day, the Chris-tian societies they were in the 18th century.
Anti-clericals say that religious people are unenlightened enemies of science. Reason would rule the world if religion did not exist; there would be no more hatred to abet war and tyranny. Those of this persuasion preach scientism not science — the belief that science can explain all meaning of existence. They scorn religious believers and yet their own belief leads them to support things with no rhyme or reason and plenty of poison when scientism overreaches itself and morphs into Euro-pean ideologies.
In an alternative view Michael Crichton, with the authority of a Harvard trained medical doc-tor and former professor of anthropology at Cam-bridge, suggests that religion may be hardwired into the human brain. Suppressed in one form, it returns in another.
In a vast body of philosophical thought the Biblical kind of religion underpins reason. Histori-cally, Western science preceded the 18th century Enlightenment. The work of Newton can be traced to the biblical belief that the universe is the product of a rational Creator, who endowed man with rea-son so that he could ask questions about the natu-ral world. Noted religious-minded thinkers an-swered plenty of questions, from Newton and Des-cartes to Pasteur, to Mendel, Curie, and Zichichi. Their religious belief obviously had no adverse effect on the quality of their scientific work.
Biblical ethics form the backbone of Anglo-Saxon political institutions that evolved over one thousand years; they are not a code of conduct devised by enlightened 18th century gentlemen, as some secularists hold. One gentleman of the time was Jean Jacques Rousseau who devised a plan for a society ruled by reason in obedience to a nebulous “general will”, that would come when altar and throne were overturned. What came from fol-lowing the plan? A Europe devastated by 25 years of war contrived by the ambition of tyrants. Their thought fermented during the 19th century and dis-tilled into the totalitarian creeds of the 20th century, a witches’ brew so intoxicating that it exalts vio-lence as the highest form of human activity.
Even after the discredit of Nazism and Communism, the two spurious sons of the Enlight-enment, the effect lingers on. With the ascent of its secularism in the West, the drive to believe did not fade away. Contemporary secularists stopped prac-ticing religious faiths - but their urge was channeled into secular religions, as predicted by Crichton. Those prevalent today in leftist circles — scientism, relativism, environmentalism, egalitarianism, multi-culturalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism — have a track record as enemies of liberty, science and reason. What is new is the spread of these ersatz creeds to English speaking countries.
Take environmentalism, a badge that identifies the modern “progressive”. It is irrational by Western standards. Ecology was a term coined by Ernst Haeckel, a biologist/philosopher anti-Christian politician who roamed forests to enter into commun-ion with Nature. His ruminations, based on a mysti-cal belief in the organic harmony of the universe, grew out of pagan ideas that reject reason. They demoted man from the biblically assigned post of master of creation to that of serf of demagogues beyond the pale of a rational brain. Haeckel’s ideas were expanded in the doctrine of Lebensraum, the pan-German geopolitics, the March to the East, eugenics; all converged to Nazism.
This came about because ideology, when it twists evidence to fit prejudice, stands against rea-son and so sacrifices the scientific search for truth to a grab for power. Environmentalism’s current cause, man-made global warming theory, is such a grab by unsavory interests. Politicians look forward to trillions of dollars of revenues by taxing energy; government bureaucrats crave the power that goes with the licensing of energy production and the rationing of its use; the traffic in carbon credits has fallen into the grip of racketeers.
Incredible is the spectacle of public policies designed to scrap industrial economies, based on a global warming hypothesis that may never be proven. It has alternative hypotheses against it and shows signs that much of the supporting “science” is at best sloppy and at worst fraudulent.
Like other ideologies, global warming alarmism claims immunity to questioning, however sound the objection against it. In 1992 Al Gore pro-claimed that the debate about global warming was over and the science settled, with all the certitude of a lawyer who says: “Case closed”. This claim of consensus irks those with training in science. They know that original scientific thought arises in inde-pendent minds questioning conventional wisdom and that no case is ever closed; true science rec-ognizes no authority above proof backed by ex-perimental evidence. In contrast, ideologues hold nothing to be scrutinized in a rational way; only ideology thrust on the faithful — and imposed with witch hunts against doubters.
Over fifteen years, 50 billion dollars of pub-lic funds were misspent to fabricate a “scientific consensus” that man-made global warming threat-ens the planet, based on questionable computer models that deliver what the political agenda of the sponsor demands.
On the other side stand scientists who study and propose alternatives to the richly en-dowed man-made global warming hypothesis. Branded as Deniers, Flat-earthers, they find little funding for research, suffer character assassination or professional exclusion. That was the fate of many earnest scientists on the wrong side of the tracks, but among them are scientists with stature too great be dismissed with name-calling:
· Richard Lindzen. Professor of meteorology at MIT. His studies are directed to the effect of water vapor and cloud cover on climate change, factors that he sees as much greater than man-made carbon dioxide.
· Henrik Svensmark. Recently explained the role of cosmic rays in the ionization of wa-ter vapor in the lower troposphere and the formation of clouds. UN models assume a constant cloud cover over the planet but a 4% shift in it has a bearing on climate equivalent to that of all of man-made car-bon dioxide over two centuries. The impor-tance of this study of the physics and chemistry of clouds may well be realized.
· S. Baliunas and W. Soon are two Harvard scientists who linked the long cycles of ice ages to matching astronomical cycles.
In addition, renowned physicists with achievements based on mathematical models, question the valid-ity of models of climate with tenuous links to ex-perimental evidence.
· Antonino Zichichi. The foremost physicist of Italy, discoverer of anti-matter, as scientific advisor of the Vatican, warned the clergy to stay away from the politics of global warm-ing that rests on invalid computer models.
· Freeman Dyson. The architect of the merger of three versions of quantum elec-trodynamics, and arguably the greatest British physicist alive, studied climate com-puter models and found them wanting.
· Claude Allegre, of the Institute of Geophys-ics of Paris, devised a dating system for rocks, based on isotopes, which revolution-ized the study of the chronology of geologi-cal changes. He recently published a book: L’Imposture Climatique, ou la Fausse Écologie, a title that shows a piece of his mind. An early supporter of the global warming cause, he turned away in disgust at the antics of environmental activists.
The vitriolic attacks of environmental propa-ganda backfire when they vilify scientists of this caliber as shills of the big bad oil companies.
The claim of Al Gore that 2500 United Na-tions climate scientists hold the last word, as trained professionals, has deceived a credulous public into believing that there is a climate science with predictive capacity, known to the select few. Until recent times no university offered a B.Sc. de-gree in climate science. Climate studies draw on one hundred different fields, such as: meteorology; oceanography; mathematics, physics; chemistry; geology; fluid mechanics; paleontology; botany; zoology; etc. There is no scientific consensus and no 2500 climate scientists around.
Another false claim is that the climate stud-ies summarized in the four Assessment Reports of the UN since 1990 are based on peer-reviewed science. What the Climategate scandals revealed is the failure of peer review, when a narrow circle of researchers under the same roof reviewed their own work, carried away by the notion that they were saving the planet.
What transpires is that peer-review of such studies remains to be done. If a paper on climate is found wanting, it should be withdrawn and all sub-sequent papers, based on it, should also be with-drawn, even if this means scrapping all Assessment Reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a prelude to a fresh and unbi-ased start. As they stand, such UN Reports offer no justification for radical public policies to de-carbonize the world economy to roll it back to an 18th century agrarian economy.
Welcome to 1984, when the former Work-shop of the World would be denuded of industry in order to save the planet. Air travel should cease because it is against Nature. “If God wanted man to fly, man would have wings” is not a Christian belief; it is a tenet of environmental true believers.
There are calls by the relativistic ideologues to do away with science, since they say it is uncer-tain and blocks prompt action. In its place they de-mand “societal values”. The legal requirement that public regulatory powers be based on sound sci-ence now takes second place to the “precautionary principle”. In a nutshell, it establishes that where science is not settled, bureaucratic whim trumps science. An egregious case was the ban on use of aluminum sulfate in water supply treatment of a large Australian city, because some medical re-search had pointed to a possible link of aluminum to Alzheimer’s disease, Further medical research has since refuted such a link, but the ban remains because it is politically correct.
Such perversion by “post-normal science” finds a parallel in the secularist corrosion of political institutions of English speaking countries, previ-ously thought to be immune to it. The onslaught against civil liberties in Britain during the New La-bour years now spreads to the United States.
New Labour introduced Anti-Social Behav-iour Orders (ASBOs), decrees that tell individuals to behave how the authorities want – or else... A local authority can issue an ASBO forbidding an individ-ual from walking down a certain street, from swear-ing in public or from wearing specific clothes, with no legal proof that the citizen is guilty of anything. ASBOs are rulings at the whim of local officials and on the basis of hearsay, not evidence. Those who disobey an ASBO may be jailed for five years with-out trial. It is now popular, but will come full circle against those who find it fun to pester neighbors over trivialities. Civil liberties that hark back to Magna Charta will once again be cherished.
New Labour proposes ID cards, unheard of in English speaking countries; a list of suspect citi-zens in the hands of the powers-that-be. Only Czar-ist Russia had them, a century ago, when the world had abolished passports as a relic of 18th century oppressive regimes. Russians were then the butt of jokes: “A Russian has three parts: body, soul, and ID papers”. Mussolini liked the idea perfected by Lenin, and brought it to Italy, where citizens did not deserve the confidence of Fascist authorities. The ultimate use of ID is seen in North Korea: the owner of a bicycle must first call at a police station to re-cord the route he intends to follow.
In 1997 there were few CCTV surveillance cameras in the UK. Today Britain has one fifth of the world’s CCTV cameras, more than five million, one camera for every three households. Some cameras are equipped with automatic number-plate recognition, face recognition and behavior recogni-tion, with software to analyze movements in images in search of suspicious behavior. Operators in bun-kers use loudspeakers to shout orders at those who litter, loiter, or display movements deemed suspect to them.
Parliament had long refused to allow the creation of a police force in Britain, uncongenial with tradition and in view of the evil reputation of Continental police. But London was riddled with pickpockets. Robert Peel, as Home Secretary in 1829, got authority to form the Metropolitan Police, with the pledge that his “Bobbies” would remain unarmed. Firearms were kept under lock, and could only be carried by policemen after written authoriza-tion that laid down in precise terms the circum-stances under which they could be fired. In the 21st century, New Labour gave policemen arms and discretion in their use. There are now thousands of them on the streets, and an early victim was an innocent electrician, murdered by policemen while on his way to work.
A quest in British schools aims at finding “socially conscious” children to be pressed into service of the government to “remind adults to act responsibly on our streets,” as an official press release puts it. Turning children into informers is the practice of totalitarian regimes.
Pubs were traditionally free from restraints, as places where you could smoke, get drunk, shout, and swear to your heart’s content. Smoking is now banned in all pubs, clubs and workplaces across the UK. Toilets are now pasted with public health posters warning of the dangers of tobacco, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases and drugs.
New Labour has turned the pub and other things into outlets for its propaganda. In 2005, the “Football and Health” drive was launched to har-ness the mass appeal of football to promote healthy living. “Football is an important part of many peo-ple’s lives; it provides great opportunities to get across key messages about healthy, active lives,” brazenly justified one New Labour minister. Football fans, that pay to enter a stadium to see a match, are now served leaflets, they never asked for, about sexual health, the dangers of smoking, how much fruit they should eat.
Couples who want to adopt a child to be brought up by a mother and father are rejected by adoption panels and vilified as “homophobic” when they declare themselves Christians. Secularists fear a biblical morality that regards an anti-human life-style as sinful.
Since Biblical religion underpins reason and morality, the erosion of science and civil liberties in the West has followed the erosion of traditional religion. In its place emerges lawless rule by busy-body, as it has been for most of history and still is, in much of a world that gropes to climb out of it.