As the northern hemisphere reels from one of the harshest winters in many years, folks in the southern hemisphere — who are just wrapping up their summer season — are also dealing with much cooler weather. Sydney, Australia, “reached a high of just 21 [Celsius] again today, five degrees below the monthly average. It is now safe to say it has been the coolest February in 23 years.” Hobart, Tasmania has experienced its coldest February in 12 years. Same for Canberra.
Yeah, I know one month’s weather does not a climate change make. But I just wanted to preserve this anomaly for later this year, when the media goes bananas over 115-degree days in Las Vegas.
Over the past year, front page news stories have provided ample anecdotal evidence that makes it mighty hard to get worked up about global warming. Now, hard empirical data further supports that skepticism.
All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
I really, really, REALLY hope that some media outlet somewhere will provide at least a little coverage of next week’s International Conference on Climate Change in New York City. This data will likely occupy a prominent role in the proceedings.
[NOTE: Anthony Watts, author of the original article which reported the data, objects to the wording in the Daily Tech report quoted above:
There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, but it does not “erase” anything.
Fair enough. But even as an unusual anomaly, it’s still newsworthy.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life just released the results of an exhaustive study on the current state of religion in America. The research does not paint a pretty picture.
Among the findings:
“The United States is 78 percent Christian and about to lose its status as a majority Protestant nation, at 51 percent and slipping.”
“More than one-quarter of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another religion or no religion at all.”
“One in four adults ages 18 to 29 claim no affiliation with a religious institution.”
“The majority of the unaffiliated — 12 percent of the overall population — describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” and about half of those say faith is at least somewhat important to them.”
“The Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition . . . roughly 10 percent of all Americans are ex-Catholics.”
“Non-denominational churches are growing.”
“Although evangelical churches strive to win new Christian believers from the ‘unchurched,’ the survey found most converts to evangelical churches were raised Protestant.”
“Atheists or agnostics account for 4 percent of the total population.”
“The group with the worst retention is one of the fastest growing — Jehovah’s Witnesses. Only 37 percent of those raised in the sect known for door-to-door proselytizing said they remain members.”
These findings suggest several important lessons for churches today.
Despite the effort to remain “relevant” over the last several decades, usually by providing all kinds of social activities, American churches are increasingly viewed by Americans as irrelevant. For all its good intentions, the social gospel is a failure; it does not address the deepest needs of humanity.
Evangelism efforts directed at converting members of other churches are facing a shrinking market. Increasingly, churches must adapt their message to reach people who have little or no religious background.
Religions built upon a highly authoritative command structure (such as Catholicism and Jehovah’s Witnesses) have the most difficult time holding on to members, while churches with the least authoritative command structure (non-denominational) are bucking the trend and growing.
Put all of this together, and a simple picture emerges: People find the greatest fulfillment in a religion that emphasizes personal spirituality without bureaucratic control. Do a fresh reading of the New Testament, and you’ll find that’s exactly why early Christianity became so popular. It consisted of independent local churches that were dedicated to a simple program of character development.
I suspect the same approach would work today, if churches would only try it. Of course, it would require that a lot of very powerful people give up their positions of prominence, so I don’t expect a mass movement in that direction.
Lorne Gunter examines recent research — in conjunction with corroborating front page news stories of extreme weather conditions worldwide — that suggests we might be in for a period of climate change alright. And it ain’t global warming.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.
It’s way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it’s way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.
Already, environmental groups have sent out their opinion to their media friends that the conference is simply a platform for corporate apologists and can safely be ignored. One group alleges the conference will have “no real scientists” present despite an impressive array of speakers such as Patrick Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
It is ironic that in an age when the scientific method is held to be so sacred and therefore immune from the whim of political pressure, discussion of dissenting voices get squelched in favor of a politically favorable outcome.
Global warming is too important a subject to not to debate, and we in the U.S. may rue the day we rushed pell-mell into expensive and shortsighted solutions when much more rational and cost-effective ones were readily available.
Arnold Kling polishes his crystal ball and looks ahead at what we can expect if the Democrats win the White House and increase their majorities in both houses of Congress in the next election.
Promises of middle class tax relief and fiscal responsibility will pretty much guarantee constraints on spending.
That leaves regulation as the primary tool of choice. Expect a rash of new government mandates and regulations on health insurance, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, energy, automobiles, appliances, executive compensation, wages, and more. These will, in turn, stifle entrepreneurial innovation, drive up prices, and reduce the quality of everything we buy. The result will be a rise in unemployment, and even more regulation as the government seeks to drive inequities out of the private sector.
What then?
Somewhere down the road, as people see the indignity of the many intrusions and the adversity of the consequences, I hope that there will be a backlash. Otherwise, if the era of mandates emerges as I fear it will, then the engine of capitalism in America may run out of the fuel of competition.
In other words, America will become just another lethargic, moribund socialist state, like most of Europe is today.
All of this assumes, of course, that the Dems take full control of the government in the November elections. That’s why this election is such a crucial milestone in defining what kind of country Americans really want.
This tidbit from Patrick Healy ought to make for some interesting dinner table discussion in the Clinton household after the campaign is over:
Engaging in hindsight, several advisers have now concluded that they were not smart to use former President Bill Clinton as much as they did, that “his presence, aura and legacy caused national fatigue with the Clintons,” in the words of one senior adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity to assess the campaign candidly.
Finally! This country has had enough of the Clintons, and even the New York Times is reporting it.
I just wonder now if Hillary has also had enough of Bill Clinton, now that it is apparent he torpedoed her candidacy.
Kathleen Parker explores the sociological underpinnings of the Cult of Obi-Wan Obama. In her view, we are witnessing a narcissistic generation’s search for meaning in a culture that has long ago abandoned spirituality.
In post-Judeo-Christian America, the sports club is the new church. Global warming is the new religion. Vegetarianism is the new sacrament. Hooking up, the new prayer. Talk therapy, the new witnessing. Tattooing and piercing, the new sacred symbols and rituals.
And apparently, Barack Obama is the new messiah.
I suspect by the time this campaign is over, some of the glamor will have faded. But there can be no doubt that the irrational swooning over this man extends far beyond normal political partisanship. It speaks more to the character of our country, than the personality of the man.
If you have any doubt about the reality of media bias, a comparison of two stories about congressmen with ethical and legal problems should remove all doubt. Here are the rules:
When a Democratic congressman gets in trouble, hide his party affiliation. Force the reader to guess which party might be tainted.
When a Republican congressman gets in trouble, make sure that his party affiliation is the very first word in the article. Leave no doubt that the Republicans are the party of sleaze and corruption.
There was a time when the media could get away with this sort of childishness. They still try, obviously, but people are on to the trick now. The only damage done is to the media’s own credibility.
The New York Times has published a piece detailing the money management woes of the Hillary campaign. The article quotes Joe Trippi, a former Edwards campaign advisor, on why her campaign is running into money problems.
“The problem is she ran a campaign like they were staying at the Ritz-Carlton,” Mr. Trippi said. “Everything was the best. The most expensive draping at events. The biggest charter. It was like, ‘We’re going to show you how presidential we are by making our events look presidential.’ ” For instance, during the week before the Jan. 19 caucuses in Nevada, the Clinton campaign spent more than $25,000 for rooms at the Bellagio in Las Vegas; nearly $5,000 was spent at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas that week. Some staff members also stayed at Planet Hollywood nearby.
This gives an insight into how Hillary manages money, and that’s interesting in its own right. But it also reveals how she will run the country. Remember, this is the same woman who vowed that she would “take those profits” from the corporations and use the money to ramp up more government programs to help the middle class. Somehow, this story does not inspire confidence that her program to help the middle class wouldn’t be just another wasteful government boondoggle.
The Department of Defense has released this video of Wednesday’s shoot-down of that defunct satellite. The satellite was traveling at 17,000 miles per hour, and the missile nailed it. Wow.
Besides the coolness factor, I suspect our government is publicizing this because it wants the bad guys around the world to know what our military is capable of.
The Daily Mail provides a lengthy compendium of weather anomalies over the last year, in both the northern and southern hemispheres, that makes it mighty difficult to justify all the alarm over global warming.
In light of such similar news from so many places round the world, it may not seem surprising that U.S. satellite data for January shows the extent of snow cover in the northern hemisphere as reaching its highest level since 1966, 42 years ago – and that temperatures were lower than their average for the whole of the 20th century.
If recent weather patterns are any indication of what we’re heading into, global warming can’t get here fast enough. But this year does not inspire confidence in scientists’ ability to predict climate change.
But one of the oddest features of this great freeze is how little it was predicted.
We are so used to hearing that the world is inexorably warming up thanks to rising CO2 emissions, and that recent years have been the hottest since records were kept, that no one prepared us for the possibility that there might suddenly be such a dramatic exception to the accepted trend.
So far, the leading advocates of the global warming thesis have remained fairly quiet about the 2008 freeze, although some may explain that “freak weather events” such as we are now witnessing are just what we should expect to see as Planet Earth hots up – even if this produces the paradox that warming may sometimes lead to cooling.
For whatever it’s worth, while I’m writing this, the temperature outside is 15 degrees (F), and sleet is falling. It will be a fun drive to work this morning.
Former Bush speechwriter William McGurn looks at three examples of Bush sticking to his principles, despite scorching criticism from the press. In all three cases (the tax cuts, the ban on stem-cell research, and the surge in Iraq), Bush was eventually vindicated in his judgment.
President Bush hasn’t always been right. But he’s been right on the things that matter most, and he’s been willing to take the heat. I, for one, admire him for it.
Memo to Bill Clinton: This is how a real legacy is created.
Hillary is just now getting around to setting up a campaign headquarters and field offices in Texas. Why so late? Apparently, lack of funds.
I hope the folks in Austin who are renting out office space to the Hillary campaign ran a background check. They would find a disturbing pattern there.
Somehow, the manner in which Hillary runs her campaign does not inspire confidence in her ability to run the largest economy in the world.
Nicholas von Hoffman makes a strong case for a McCain running mate who will provide the winning edge, no matter who the Dem candidate is: Condalezza Rice.
For a party that up to now has been clueless about how to run against either a woman or a person of color, Condoleezza Rice is pure political gold.
Condi already has a cadre of fans stumping for her. The question remains, however, is she interested in the job? By her own admission, her dream job is Commissioner of the National Football League. I’m not sure that even the Vice President gets a free pass to the Super Bowl.
Tammy Bruce sets the record straight on the record profits earned by ExxonMobil last year. Their profit may have broken a record, but so did the taxes they paid. And who benefits from those profits? The middle-class stock holders, that’s who:
Ironically, many of the people who cheer the Clinton/Obama/Hugo Chavez message of nationalizing companies don’t even realize they’re cheering for the cutoff of checks their parents or grandparents rely on every month; dividend checks from those ‘evil, profit mongering oil companies,’ which in fact are owned by the American people, primarily the middle class and the elderly.
And don’t forget the billions in research and development that the oil companies are spending in an effort to find the energy we all expect to have in abundance, and cheaply.
Someday, after the golden goose is slain, we’ll all wake up and realize how good we had it.
First, what are the chances of a Clinton-Obama ticket? Nope, no way:
For thirty-five years, she’s been constantly upstaged by a charismatic and attractive male whose oratorical and glad-handing gifts vastly exceed her own. She doesn’t want to spend the eight years of her potential presidency similarly upstaged by another guy, notably younger and thinner than she is, with an electrifying magnetism that easily equals her husband’s.
Well, what about reversing the roles: an Obama-Clinton ticket? Not a chance:
As a prominent part of the previous Clinton administration, she witnessed first hand all the indignities and burdens thrust upon Vice President Al Gore—in fact, she administered some of them herself. Why would she want to open herself to the humiliation of waiting around in a powerless, second-string job in case some disaster befell a conspicuously young and vigorous president?
For Democrats, the “Dream Ticket” will happen only in their dreams.
UPDATE: If Obama and Clinton deadlock in the primaries, the Democratic nomination will come down to the votes of the 796 Super Delegates in the August convention. By rule, these delegates are free to vote their conscience — meaning, they will be subjected to every available bribe, dirty trick, and threat to secure their votes. In which case, Hillary will win, hands down. The Dems are already in a tizzy about this. Look at the bickering that’s already started among Massachusetts Democrats about the role of their Super Delegates.
Polls consistently show that Americans, by a wide margin, trust the military more than politicians. That infuriates progressives, who see the military as symbolic of all that’s wrong with America. William J. Astore seeks to help progressives understand why Americans are so fond of the military. He points to two reasons.
First, the military is the most diverse institution in American society. Here, people are truly judged by what they can do, not by phony racial, gender, political, or class divides. That stands in sharp contrast to, say, academia, where diversity is a hollow motto.
Second, the military is the last bastion of male identity. Here, a young man’s masculinity is encouraged and honored, not denigrated or feminized. Even with the increased efforts to open up the services to more women, the military is still first and foremost a fighting machine, dominated by testosterone.
The fact that progressives stand on the wrong side of both those issues explains why they just don’t get it.
The comment by John Kerry in 2006, to the effect that students who can’t make it in college end up “stuck in Iraq,” struck many Americans as grossly unfair precisely because military service still remains a proud first choice for many young Americans.
An article at ScienceDaily illustrates the shaky science undergirding the global warming scare. The article draws attention to key “tipping elements” that suggest the planet is teetering on the brink of catastrophe. That, of course, is the message the reader is supposed to take away.
But read the article carefully, and it’s obvious that the science behind this alarming headline is suspiciously thin. Words like “could,” “may,” “potentially,” and “suggest” occur over and over again, leaving room for a lot of variation in climate outcomes — not exactly what the lead paragraph implies.
Furthermore, several statements in the article clearly assume worst case scenarios that are by no means certain, or declare outright that actual outcomes are unknown. Some examples (emphasis added):
The exact tipping point for disintegration of the ice sheet is unknown . . .
A worst case scenario shows the ice sheet could collapse within 300 years, possibly raising sea level by as much as five meters.
But a global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could cause a collapse of the West African monsoon. This could lead either to drying of the Sahel or towetting due to increased inflow from the West. [Wet or dry, take your pick. Either way, global warming is to blame!]
The Indian summer monsoon could become erratic and in the worst case start to chaotically change between an active and a weak phase within a few years.
A global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could push the element past the tipping point so that deep water formation stops.
In addition to all the hedging language, did you notice that a couple of these scenarios assume a global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius? Allow me to set the assumptions like this, and I can build an equally strong case for no global warming, or even global cooling.
I have no problem with scientists exploring future climate trends, or even raising concerns about possible dangers in those trends. What I resent is journalists and politicians taking those concerns and manufacturing apocalyptic horror stories designed to panic the public into accepting draconian policy changes.
UPDATE: In contrast to all the hedging in this story about a very iffy future, take a look at what is actually happening around the world this winter, and see if you can still make a case for global warming.
Look carefully at how the diversity advocates push their agenda, and it’s obvious that their broadmindedness has carefully drawn limits. John Leo relates several examples of Catholic charities that have been driven out of business by government mandates that they provide services contrary to core church teachings. In other words, the church’s traditional stance on moral issues is exempt from diversity protection.
Those who talk the most about diversity and pluralism are often the most willing to mandate that all private and religious institutions conform to one ideological framework. Liberals . . . are eradicating the differences needed to make tolerance a viable practice. In order to enhance diversity, it is necessary to suppress it.
It is only a matter of time before all churches that adhere to traditional (i.e., conservative) principles will feel the jackboot of a fascist government on their necks.
He does not yet have his party’s nomination, but Barack Obama has already succeeded in doing something no other candidate has been able to do: Demolish the racial barrier to the highest office in the land.
As Jeff Jacoby notes, whites in record numbers are voting for a black man for President. But unlike previous black candidates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Obama’s candidacy is not built on a foundation of black victimology and white guilt.
The color of Obama’s skin is irrelevant to his character and to his fitness for office. Would that its significance to his campaign were nil. No, we’re not there yet. But there is no faster way to a society in which race doesn’t matter than to stop talking and acting as if it does.
I just got back from attending the Kansas Republican caucus for Sedgwick and Butler Counties, conducted in the Century II convention center in downtown Wichita. The caucus was scheduled to begin at 10:00, but attendees were urged to arrive before 9:00. At 10:00, officials announced that over 3,000 were in the auditorium, and the line outside was still several blocks long. So they delayed the start awhile to let everyone get in.
Kansans tend to be a taciturn bunch, so there was not a lot of the raucous shouting and foot-stomping that accompanies political gatherings elsewhere.
Still, it was obvious that many folks came to this event with passion for their candidates, and the Republican Party in general. Rep. Todd Tiahart (R-KS) brought the crowd to their feet several times with a rousing reminder of why this country cannot afford a Democrat in the White House.
As expected, the Ron Paul crowd wins the Spirit Award for the greatest number of campaign posters and most eccentric outfits.
The Huckabee contingent was almost as loud, but apparently the Huckabee campaign is having a little cash crunch, judging from this photo.
After all the speeches and hoopla were done, it was time to get down to business and cast our votes.
An interesting side story: I sat next to a middle-aged woman who has two sons serving in the U. S. Army. One, an officer, just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. The other, an enlisted man, is still there. She confirmed what I have heard so often from others who have loved ones in harm’s way in this war. Those who serve are fully committed to the rightness of our mission there. The worst thing this country could do would be to yank these warriors out of Iraq before the job is completed. As much as this mother wanted her sons home safe and sound, she was more concerned that they come home with honor, having accomplished what they were sent to do. She was at this caucus to prevent a surrender Democrat from besmirching the honor of her sons. God bless her!
On the way out of the convention center, I snapped this photo. This is what it’s all about.
Skeptics of global warming are not allowed to reference any weather anomalies that might suggest the earth is cooling, not warming — and there are plenty of those this winter (or see the government’s own data here).
But the global warming alarmists, like Sen. John Kerry, are free to point to a single storm system as definitive proof that global warming is on the verge of destroying the planet.
The obsession that liberals have with global warming has gotten so out of hand that they sound like a bunch of mental patients in an asylum.
Consider for a moment what a clever strategy this is: it’s too cold outside, must be global warming. Too hot? Global warming. Hurricanes? Tornadoes? Floods? Global warming all.
It really is enough to make you heave.
Ordinary people can sense when they are being dealt a rigged hand. And this game is definitely rigged.
That rule of civilized behavior takes on a whole new meaning in the hands of Islamofascists looking for ever more deadly ways to spread their message of misery and mayhem. Oliver North exposes the moral bankruptcy of an ideology that uses women and children as human bombs.
Apparently, al-Qaida is running short of mentally competent volunteers who want to murder fellow Muslims in the process of becoming “martyrs” for Allah.
You would think this barbaric behavior would be greeted with howls of condemnation from Islamic leaders. But other than the government of Iraq, Islam has been strangely silent on this misuse of women and children.
From Damascus, Riyadh, Amman, Ankara and Tehran, there was only silence. No Islamic leader or senior cleric rose to condemn the murder of God’s most vulnerable creatures, whom mankind is entrusted to protect.
Those in our nation who argue that no culture is superior to another are living in a fool’s dream, and had better wake up before this evil lands on their doorstep.
Historian Arthur Herman revisits the Tet Offensive in January 1968, and its role in shaping the media coverage of the Vietnam War. Although the Offensive proved to be a crushing military defeat for North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, it ultimately led to the undoing of the U.S. presence in Vietnam, due primarily to the deeply negative reporting that dominated the American media during that period. We are still paying a price for that campaign of misinformation.
Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory. That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq. The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes — such as the Petraeus surge — minimized and glossed over.
Here’s an interesting history of the scientific basis for the theory of social networking that says everyone on the planet is only six relationships away from everyone else — along with some reasons why it is so difficult to test the theory.
I did not realize there was a Wichita angle to the story.
Sounds impressive, huh? Like the Bali Conference last fall, no doubt.
Unfortunately, this is one climate conference that you will likely never read about in the papers, or see on TV. This one (March 2-4, NYC) is sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a conservative research and education non-profit organization dedicated to “discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.” In keeping with that mission, this conference is open to all sides of the global warming debate, including skeptics.
Actual surveys of climate scientists and recent reviews of the scholarly literature both show the so-called “skeptics” may actually be in the majority of the climate science community. They do not lack scholarly credentials or scientific integrity, but a platform from which they can be heard. Their voices have been drowned out by publicity built upon the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an entity with an agenda to build support for the theory of man-made catastrophic global warming.
The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change is intended to start the process of providing these brave scholars with a competing platform.
Such a forum is unlikely to fit the template that the politicized media endorses, so it will be quietly ignored.
Kathryn Jean Lopez recently wrote a review on the movie Juno. She made some good observations about the phenomenon of arrested development that seems to be more widespread among young men these days (as typified by a character in the movie).
More interesting, however, was the response that Lopez received from a reader. Here are some key snippets.
Feminism’s second wave has had many, many unintended consequences, one of which is that men, not just women have been liberated from their traditional roles. Many men simply don’t feel the need to grow up because women have quite plainly said they don’t need or value men. “You say you can take care of yourselves? Fantastic! I’m gonna go invent computer games and play them for as long as I want.”
. . .
You (women) said you could take care of yourselves, and you’re doing so just fine. You treat them as disposable, dispensable, replaceable components of your lives and so they’re disengaged from you and they choose not to make commitments to you. The dissolution of a commitment to marry and have children has enormous negative financial and emotional consequences to a man. Why should they make such commitments when women consider such commitments easily violable, valueless, and trivial? Is there anything about the response of men to our culture and the choices of women that really surprises you?
The two genders are like magnets — let the opposing polarities face each other, and there is a strong attraction that binds them together; but try to force the same polarities together, and they repel each other.
Like it or not, men and women are different, and any effort to force them into absolutely equal roles is doomed to fail. This does not mean women must be forced into a box. It means simply that men and women have innate but unique qualities that should be respected and encouraged.
