You must know this if you are to be King

I read a lot on this subject. I start everyday with ICECAP, a compendium of recent articles and studies on the subject. Although, the Political consensus is settled and our erstwhile leaders are fully committed to reducing CO2 emissions at any cost there are still real scientist who are trying to figure out if we are warming or cooling and what role nature and or man has. Below is from a reader comment to a article titled "Adjusting temperatures for the ENSO and AMO" I am enclosing the entire comment because it is a good example of LOGIC and if you can follow it you will get a better understanding of the enormous complexity involved in understanding our universe. Anyone who says "It is settled science" is either clueless or stands to make a fortune cashing in on the bubble created by our bungling leaders.
Now, so your eyes don't glass over here are some key points:
The AMO: Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the ENSO: El Nino Southern Oscillation are multi decade changes in the massive ocean currents that influence our weather.
The referenced study analyzed these influences and then removed them to reveal an Unexplained temperature rise.
The reader uses logic to challenge conclusions and suggest other possible explanations that might be attributable to longer term frequency oscillations that span hundreds of years and observable with statistics.
When he gets to the "Argument from ignorance ...it must be witches" - this is the AHA! moment.
This is the point that you realize we don't know. The politically driven "Alarmist" are saying it must be the rising CO2 and they have convinced all the right people with their false claims of 95% certainty and "the consensus of world scientist" Blah, Blah Blah.

Anyway, I find it enlightening. As Arthur said in Monty Python's "In Search of the Holy Grail" "..you must know these things if you are to be king"
Let me know what you think. Leave a comment.

Richard S Courtney (03:24:30) :
Bill Illis:
Thankyou for this cogent
analysis. I have one comment on your method and its effect on your
conclusion. I understand your article to say your analytical method has the following steps. 1.The effect on temperature of AMO and ENSO within the time series is calculated by simple regression (this is possible because AMO and ENSO exhibit several cycles within the temporal range of the data set).
2.The temperature effect of AMO and ENSO is deleted from the time series to reveal a residual temperature trend in the time series.
3.The residual trend is assumed to be an effect of changed atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the temporal range of the data set.
4.The assumption in step 3 is used to calculate the climate sensitivity to changing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
This may be correct, but the assumption in step 3 is the
logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’. The assumption amounts to, “The cause of the residual trend is not known so it must be changing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration”. (If this ‘logical fallacy’ is not clear then consider, “The cause of crop failures is not known so it must be witches”.)
Of course, the residual trend may be a result of changing
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. However, the assumption in step 3 does not concur with the implicit assumption of steps 1 and 2 that natural cycles are affecting the temperature trend.
Other natural cycles may also be affecting the trend, and the method is not applicable to cycles with lower frequency than the time series. Such a very low frequency oscillation does seem to exist. There is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm
Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP).There is no known cause of this apparent low frequency oscillation: some people suggest it could be solar influence, but it could be the chaotic climate system seeking its attractor(s), and it could be … . However, there is no known cause of the AMO and ENSO, either.Therefore, the implicit
assumption of your steps 1 and 2 suggests that the residual trend determined by your steps 1 and 2 could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP.
Indeed, since the method adopted the implicit assumption of your steps 1 and 2, consistency suggests that all the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century is recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP. Hence, the
calculated climate sensitivity to changing atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration obtained by your method should be assumed to be a maximum value until this possibility of recovery from the LIA is assessed.
I hope these
thoughts are helpful.
Again, thankyou for your superb work that I trust will
soon be published.
Richard

A look ahead - Obama Cabinet Meeting

If I am going to survivie the next 4 years it is going to be up to me. The old adage about humor is important for all of us and we need a healthy dose of it EVERY day. Thank God there is a lot of it out there. You need to make it a priority like taking your meds or working out.
Come back here from time to time and see the gems I have found.

This one courtesy of Lucianne.com a daily compendium of "Must Reads" from around the world compiled by a group calling themselves "L dotters"

Cabinet of Curiosities #5

OBAMA: Michelle's now my Senior Advisor. You want to talk with me, ask Rahm, and if you get past him, Michelle.
EMANUEL: Waste our time, I'll cut your budget ten percent.
OBAMA: Our health initiative, HHS?
TOM DASCHLE: We're into Stage One, pouring resources into the chronically underserved undocumented immigrant community. Once they’re healthy, we’ll shift them into general coverage and begin Stage Two: making hospitals and clinics death traps through staff cuts and underfunding. That’ll reduce the strain on facilities and ease population pressures, too.
OBAMA: Good. Transportation?
RALPH NADER: There’s no ''right to drive'' in The Constitution, sir. Ban private ownership of autos -- we’ll get off foreign oil and save big on infrastructure. Let's look to the Amish for public transport ideas.
OBAMA: Nader isn't in the Cabinet--how’d he get in here? Never mind. Treasury?
PAUL KRUGMAN: You always do the opposite of what I advise, sir, so I object to a tax on air breathers.
OBAMA: Noted. State, tell Reid I want Reverend Farrakhan’s appointment as Vatican Ambassador fast-tracked. Can't wait to see his X men mix it up with the Swiss Guard.

LOL

If you want to start your day with a grin I recommend Planet Moron. I have reproduced one below.

November 14, 2008
maybe they call it research because you have to do it over again
A research study reported on this week from the Workforce Education and Development Initiative (WED) found that non-profit organizations contribute to the economy.

This is surely true. For instance, General Motors is a non-profit and we all know it contributes to the economy, including nearly $10 million contributed to Washington lobbyists and lawyers alone. Imagine what that did for local Ferragamo shoe sales!

Oh, they meant organizations that are non-profit on purpose.

The study focused primarily on the Pennsylvania Association of the Blind (PAB) and noted that the economic activity such non-profits generate is due directly to the fact that they spend the money people give them.

This finally puts to rest the long-held belief that charities use donor checks primarily to create soup stock for Meals-on-Wheels programs (you have no idea how long it takes to boil those things down).

But no, expert researchers Dr. David Passmore and Dr. Rose Baker applied their unique insights (it’s a gift, really… and a curse) and found that the PAB “purchases such items as electricity, water, office paper,… and office furniture.” This would be as opposed to sitting in the dark, thirsty, writing on the walls cross-legged on the floor.

Who knew?

But as they delved further into the subject, their curiosity obviously piqued by their startling discoveries up to that point, they found more, including irrefutable evidence that the people who work for the PAB spend their pay on “various consumer items,” and do not, as was previously believed, burn the money in ritualistic pagan harvest ceremonies. This is all “part of the complex web of economic relationships that comprise the Pennsylvania economy,” observed Passmore and Baker, clearly giddy with the realization that they may be the very first researchers ever to compile the hard data necessary to convince a skeptical academy that people both make and spend money.

Is that Mr. Nobel calling?

But then, the Workforce Education & Development Initiative, a partnership of various Penn State entities, has long been on the cutting edge of economic analysis. If you have a question about how a specific economic event might impact your area, the WED is the place to go for a report that does not specifically address your question.

And do it dependably. Every time. For example:

A repot on Merck & Co. layoffs “was designed to help understand the impact of job cuts of Merck & Co. in Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties,” however “the Brief does not forecast the specific impact of Merck & Co.’s operations.”

A report on National City Corporation layoffs “was designed to help understand the potential effect it has on the County,” however “the Brief does not forecast the specific impact of National City Corporation’s operations.”

And a report on potential gas royalty income that doesn’t offer any information on the actual impact of gas royalty income beyond the assumptions that it would probably be real good.

In other words, the WED is kind of like a murder mystery train; they provide all the clues you need, but it’s up to you to guess what the real effect on employment and tax receipts will be!

Isn’t that more fun?

Regardless, the WED clearly fills a vital role in detailing the obvious and avoiding the difficult. We should consider ourselves fortunate that the WED is able to retain the services of Passmore and Baker and that they have not been tempted to leave and apply their intellects to more lucrative pursuits, such as finding a cure for cancer, developing sustainable fusion reactions, or pasting colorful bits of felt to poster board.

Planet Moron: CONSENSUS WATCH – 11/06/2008

Check out this humorous (but accurate) account of what we are facing with CAP & TRADE, coming soon to a Utility near you. But don't despair, it is based on BAD science but it is also WELL INTENDED so those good feelings should compensate.

Here's a teaser...

As luck would have it, bankrupt power plants have a relatively small carbon footprint and in fact might be carbon positive if you factor in the overgrown weeds sopping up carbon dioxide and the workers who no longer need to commute to their jobs but instead hang around the house listlessly emitting low levels of CO2.

So it’s sort of win-win-win.

"Free pizza everyday and No more homework"

"Free pizza everyday and No more homework"

Campaign pledge from an 8th grade student running for class president. You wouldn't fall for pandering like that!!! WOULD YOU.

Well be honest with your self. THINK.. Its not enough to just have a good feeling. What exactly is CHANGE?

Keep this quote from former president Gerald Ford:

'A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to
take away everything you have.'

Read this post. It is from this blog but I have pasted the entire essay here. Do you really understand this stuff? Does it matter?

Change: It’s what you’ll get, and what you’ll be left with
With comments passed on by Paul Dreissen, CORE

As Bloomberg reported, Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions. Placing heat-trapping pollutants in the same category as ozone may lead to caps on power-plant emissions and force utilities to use the most expensive systems to curb pollution. The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants. This even as the McCain campaign comes to its senses on a realistic emission plan. They always had a more sensible and essential “all the above” solution for energy than the democrats who believe they can replace fossil fuels with solar, wind and other alternatives without any interrruption. With a multi year head start, only 2% of Britain’s energy needs are met by renewables.

Palin today said “We will control greenhouse gas emissions by giving American businesses new incentives and new rewards to seek, instead of just giving them new taxes to pay and new orders that they must follow, ‘so says government,’” Palin said during a visit to Xunlight Energy, a Toledo-based solar-power component manufacturing company. In the end many of us even this will prove unnecessary as CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant fertlizer, the gas of life.

Paul Dreissen passes on the other changes that an Obama presidency would bring. These change are not what the party’s sloganeering which sounds appealing to so many tells you.

No thanks to the “mainstream media,” the true parameters of presidential candidate Barack Obama�s plan to redistribute wealth and give tax cuts to 95 percent of Americans are finally becoming clear. Here are some of the “changes” he has in mind for our businesses, freedoms and earnings.

FICA. Mr. Obama�s plan defines “rich” as anyone making over $97,000 a year. That is because he plans to eliminate the FICA tax cap, and you will start paying an additional 7 percent tax on each and every dollar you earn! No longer will earnings above the annual cap be exempt from further FICA withholding from employer and employee accounts. Self-employed people will see their earnings above $97,000 taxed an additional 14 percent, because they will pay both the employer and employee FICA taxes. Small businesses would be hard hit.

TAX HIKES. If you are making a mere $50,000 a year or more, you will pay another 4.5 percent on every dollar you earn, starting in 2010. That’s when the Bush tax cuts expire. These “unfair tax breaks” for “rich” people like you and me will simply be allowed to lapse. Obama and the mainstream media insist that this will not constitute a “tax increase.”

DIVIDENDS. Taxes on your stock and mutual fund dividends will increase from the current 15 percent to at least 20 percent. This clear tax increase is to ensure “fairness” and “spread the wealth around.”

INHERITANCE. Estate taxes are likely to skyrocket - not just on unspent savings, but on homes, farms, small businesses, and unspent IRA and 401K retirement savings.

401K CONTRIBUTIONS. There�s even talk of eliminating part or all of the deduction for putting money aside in 401K retirement savings accounts. These, says Rush Limbaugh, are the points at which your quest for the American Dream will end. The Democrats “New New Deal” could turn a painful recession into a long Great New Depression.

JUDGES. As Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi notes in the October 28 Wall Street Journal, if Obama wins, “the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation’s most important regulatory court of appeals,” and throughout much of the judicial system. Courts will be stacked with judges who will likely rule that all these tax system changes are fair, equitable, legal and constitutional. We could see, “a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities [outside of sports], without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; ruinous shareholder suits against corporate officers and directors;” and much more.

Thomas Sowell stresses that court cases should not depend on who you are and who the judge is. We are supposed to be a country with “the rule of law and not of men.” Obama is proposing the explicit repudiation of that ideal. That is certainly “change,” but is it one that most Americans believe in?

These “changes” will affect new business development, job creation, charitable giving, and budgetary decisions in poor families. When bottom lines suffer, wealth creation and civil rights suffer. As to your right to know facts like these, and your right to informed debate, once Obama and the Democrats reinstate the “Fairness” Doctrine, public access to essential information will be severely circumscribed. The doctrine and its “50 percent” airtime rule will almost certainly apply only to talk radio and similar conservative news outlets - not to NPR, PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or MSNBC.

This is the kind of CHANGE Obama believes in. The kind of CHANGE you can be sure is coming. The kind of CHANGE you’ll have in your pocket when he’s finished “spreading the wealth around.” Ponder all this when you enter the voting booth next Tuesday. And help your friends to ponder it, too, by forwarding this to them.

"Looking out for Numero Uno"

No one can put the case better than Krauthammer. Read the whole thing

Some key tidbits: (bold/italic emphasis added by me)

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

This is beautiful. It truly points out how opportunistic politicians are. Forget ideals or doing the right thing. It's "looking out for numero uno" Think of the slime on the Titanic who disguised themselves as women to get on the Titanic's life boats. They're reacting to polls at this late point to insure their survival. If their opinion were legit and "heart felt", where were they 6 months ago?

So Krauthammer puts these guys in their place and then makes a straightforward case for McCain.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.
Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one", and who refers to the most
deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

Think of this scenario before you punch the chad for Obama.
We have this stranger we know little about.
He has no history of accomplishment of any note.
He comes out of the Chicago poitical machine
He sat in a church pew for 20 years and never heard Rev Wright's radical and bigotrd ideology.

OK, now forget all that because your purpose is to cast a vote reflecting your disapproval of G W Bush .
Punch the button for that "Change" guy.

He will take care of you. Trust him

Obama is all about J_O_B _ S

Caught this post at Coyote Blog. What's the point? The point is you can expect Obama to provide major league payback to the Unions for his election. Take a look what unions have done for the Auto Industry

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/10/first-democrati.html