Protestor decry global warming

You can caption this: Why Gummby is still the best sidekick

Satisfying, yet creepy

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) today asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — the actions of climate scientists revealed by the Climategate Files, and the subsequent admissions by the editors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

[The] Minority Staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works believe the scientists involved may have violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, federal laws. In addition to these findings, we believe the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC -backed “consensus” and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.

You should read the whole thing, but this is satisfying becuase indeed: the Big Lie has been told, and used to manipulate the outcome of public policy.

Not like that has never been done before, mind you. Everyone does it these days for one reason or another -- and if some politician says he isn't doing it, he's either self-ignorant or he thinks you're too stupid to understand what he's saying. Lies made to spread panic and cause civil distrust are told all the time in American politics today, and it's reprehensible.

So in one sense, it's totally satisfying to see someone call one of the worst offenders out on his malicious and self-serving campaign to bilk the world out of capital resources. Gore's not the only one who should be on what PJ O'Rourke once called the "enemies list" (cf. "the big lie"), but he's a big fat target for this bit of dirty work.

But this is creepy for a deeper reason:

[the report] suggests scientific misconduct that may violate the Shelby Amendment — requiring open access to the results of government-funded research — and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) policies on scientific misconduct (which were announced December 12, 2000).

The sentence itself is so Orwellian and totalitarian in substance that I don't really know where to start. The United States has an "Office of Science and Technology Policy"? I mean: I'm in favor of scientists telling the truth and everything -- it seems like the basic part of actually being a "scientist" and not "Dr. Doom" or "Miguelito Lovelace", but when the government starts defining what truth is or ought to be, I'm ready to move to another plant -- with or without oxygen.

HT: Instapundit

link to original entry

Good Morning Holy Spirit

Not to make light of a terrible thing, but Benny Hinn's wife of 30 years files for divorce.

Personally, I just don't get divorce -- especially after 30 years, and when frankly everything about the marriage is past the problems normal people will have. Are they bickering about money or missed opportunities? Imagine that this is about some third person -- how does that happen after 30 years?

Wow.

A few notes on Global Warming

Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.

He also sounds much less ebullient about the basic theory, admitting that there is little difference between global warming rates in the Nineties and in two previous periods since 1860.

New research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

And the only place you can consistently find these reports in the US is Drudge. The MSM isn't reporting this at all.

Why 'Carbon Bigfoot' is a great sidekick

You haters. You simply aren't watching the development of the issue. Of course Carbon Bigfoot is the right sidekick for Calvinist Gadfly: Because the warming is causing the blizzards and freezing, dummy.

Calvinist Gadfly dot com

OK, so I have this idea to make calvinistgadfly.com a weekly cartton strip, and becasue of a conversaion I had with my wife this weekend I have a sidekick for the Gadfly -- Carbon Bigfoot.

Am I the only one getting stoked about this?

Let it snow baby - Let it rain dear!

The Great Global Warming Collapse.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do – a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, “The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.” Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

Won't have to blog much more about this, I guess.

How to win others

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air highlights Sally Jenkins' essay in the Washington Post. My favorite part in Jenkins' essay?

Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikini selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn’t.

There is a parable about evangelism in there someplace, but I don't have time to work it out for you. After 6 years of me blogging and you reading it, you can make up your own Turkism here, I am sure.