Celestial Junk

Kitchner's Last Volunteer

2009-07-18T19:48:00.000-06:00

He was one of the last three surviving British veterans of the First World War, the last surviving founder member of the RAF, the last man to have witnessed the Battle of Jutland and the last surviving member of the Royal Naval Air Service.

Afghanistan by the Numbers

2009-07-18T19:37:00.002-06:00

Serious research from BruceR at Flit; I think we've certainly been doing our bit:

Just a quick look again at the combined Iraq-Afghanistan fatalities (figures from icasualties.org):

Total fatal casualties, both theatres (change in the 33 months since I did this the last time):

1. United States: 5066 (+1922)
2. United Kingdom: 364 (+204)
3. Canada: 125 (+83)
4. Italy: 48 (+6)
5. Spain: 36 (+6)
6. Germany: 33 (+15)
7. Poland: 32 (+15)
8. Denmark: 31 (+22)
9. France: 28 (+19)
10. Netherlands: 21 (+16)

... keep reading.

Barrack Hussein “Sugar Daddy” Obama

2009-07-18T18:19:00.000-06:00

….would just like to remind you that he’s too sexy for this tie, too sexy for this tie, so sexy oh my! He also says that you can keep the change on that last trillion, you earned it. Now if you don’t mind he’s gotta go sculpt the ol’ guns and chisel out those pecks.

Who Saved GI Joe?

2009-07-18T09:38:00.002-06:00

From Belmont Club:

But something forgotten may be remembered, especially when the organism is fighting for survival. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner argued in 1983 that humans had “multiple intelligences” — ways of knowing that were poorly studied. One of these he called “naturalistic” intelligence, which might best be described as the ability to apprehend the communication conveyed by subtle changes in the environment in ways still known, perhaps, to primitive people. Who can say whether men in extreme danger might not suddenly experience a sudden revival of “knowing” in a way they had long forgotten. What did Mitchell Paige experience that night on Guadalcanal? Since we can reach no conclusion, we’d best let Paige finish his story, from the point when reinforcements arrived and they drove the Japanese back.

... which reminds me of what I consider one of the most important books ever written, one that just may change your life, or save it ... The Gift of Fear.

Only Westerners Would be This Stupid

2009-07-18T09:33:00.003-06:00

When foxes are eating the chickens, do you seek the council of a fox to save the chickens?

In the 1990s, Western liberals, alarmed at the presence of Islamic fundamentalists in their midst, turned in desperation to Muslims whom they dubbed “reformers” or “modernizers.” They hoped that these figures would have a moderating influence on disaffected Muslim youths who refused to integrate into Western society. One such “reformer” is Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born academic. Ramadan has won the confidence of many in the West, including the British government, which asked him to serve on its task force for preventing Islamic extremism. But as Caroline Fourest shows in her superbly documented book, which first appeared in French in 2004, Ramadan is not a worthy figure.

... keep reading.

Liar

2009-07-17T23:09:00.001-06:00

Race and Energy

2009-07-17T23:05:00.000-06:00

The Skeptic's Handbook

2009-07-17T21:25:00.007-06:00

Avoid the clutter:

The bottom line is simple

Don't fall for the "complexity argument or accept vague answers. The climate is complex, but the only thing that matters here is whether adding CO2 will make the world warmer.

Everything hinges on this one question. If carbon dioxide is not a significant cause, then carbon sequestration, cap-and-trade, emissions trading, and the Kyoto agreement are a waste of time and money. All of them divert resources away from things that matter - like finding a cure for cancer and feeding Somali babies. Having a real debate IS the best thing for the environment.

... read the Skeptic's Handbook.

Source

And more ... the dominoes continue to fall ... click.

Living on Credit

2009-07-17T12:10:00.004-06:00

Deleveraging from excessive national debt is a painful and long task ... just ask Canadians. Now in America, we have what may be the most incipient cabal of progressives to ever run a country, anywhere. America's Democrats are about to cause a catastrophe which will ensnare Canada. Simply put, tax strapped Americans won't spend ... which means Ontario is apt to become a rust-belt; and, as always happens when progressives get frustrated that things aren't working, they lash out ... the result this time being that any protectionism Canada suffered during the Bush years will seem tame in comparison to what the dolts down south will unleash.

Truly, we are witnessing history in the making ... history that is racking up a bill of enormous proportions:

And today? Obama's first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.

The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.

[...]

"The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event," writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR's Foreign Affairs magazine. "Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious."

You Think it's Bad Now

2009-07-17T11:05:00.004-06:00

... just wait until the rats begin to leave the ship:

Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress economic growth in the United States. Over time, accumulating debt would cause substantial harm to the economy. The following chart shows our projection of federal debt relative to GDP under the two scenarios we modeled.

Lucky for us, the most brilliant mind in America ... and possibly the world, has a solution. Spend more money:

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

Now, there's an idea Joe!

Taxation Without Representation

2009-07-17T08:34:00.006-06:00

What a scam ... ensure power by setting it up that those who vote you in, don't have to pay tax. The only thing is, that the 50% who vote you in are too stupid to realize that in almost all cases taxes run down hill ... that is, small businesses and corporations pass on tax debt to their customers. If they can't, they simply leave town to more hospitable places. That's why Texas is booming as tax exhausted individuals and companies flee the "progressive" economies in other states:

It’s worth recalling that when the Founding Fathers led the American colonists in revolt against British oppression, they weren’t rebelling against torture on the rack or being chained in galleys or having to let aristocrats deflower their daughters. They were rebelling against taxes. To them, having to pay duties they hadn’t voted for themselves was a tyrannical taking of property—theft—and, in true Lockean fashion, they concluded that since government exists to protect life, liberty, and property, a regime that does the opposite renders itself illegitimate. What would they make, then, of today’s New York City, where 1.2 percent of the taxpayers—40,000 households—pay 50 percent of the income taxes, and half the households pay no income tax at all? If the tax code ensures that those who pay the bulk of the taxes are always a minority of those who vote for the legislature that imposes the taxes, isn’t that taxation without representation? Isn’t it also the tyranny of the majority that the Founders tried to prevent?

Oops

2009-07-17T08:24:00.003-06:00

Could it be, that the amazing magical divining IPCC models of wonder are wrong?

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

Just Because

2009-07-16T19:29:00.002-06:00

... enjoy AR-15 with a smile:

Ration

2009-07-16T10:17:00.000-06:00

More Model Fantasy

2009-07-16T09:27:00.002-06:00

Hardly a week goes by now without another "cut" being administered to warmist claims of runaway Global Warming.

Now, we find out that IPCC models may have way over estimated the warming caused by CO2:

A large aerosol cooling, therefore, implies a correspondingly large climate sensitivity. Conversely, reduced aerosol cooling implies lower GHG warming, which in turn implies lower model sensitivity. The upshot of this is that sensitivity values used in models for the past quarter of a century have been set too high. Using elevated sensitivity settings has significant implications for model predictions of future global temperature increases. The low-end value of model sensitivity used by the IPCC is 2°C. Using this value results, naturally, in the lowest predictions for future temperature increases. According to the paper “Consistency Between Satellite-Derived and Modeled Estimates of the Direct Aerosol Effect” published in Science on july 10, 2009, Gunnar Myhre states that previous values for aerosol cooling are too high—by as much as 40 percent—implying the IPCC’s model sensitivity settings are too high also. Here is the abstract of the paper:

And here I thought that the science was settled ... that humans had found out all there was to know about climate forcing and all that stuff. Pity.

Now You See It

2009-07-16T07:09:00.005-06:00

... now you don't. How convenient. Suddenly the last 10 years of flat temperatures become warmer ... just in time for cap and tax. The new warming science seems to have more in common with Madoff than with science.

The Details.

Obama-Care Hell

2009-07-15T10:33:00.008-06:00

Just in case you doubted that the only function of "progressives" was to grow government.

Canada Health Care

2009-07-14T17:41:00.002-06:00

To our American readers, we ask that you view the following video. While you do so, keep in mind that health care in Canada varies from province to province. This video focussed on Quebec, where private care is an option; in all other provinces it's against the law.

Canadians have grown up with health care horror stories, so tales of long wait times, botched procedures, and impossible to get assistance are common. Like the video says, without any exaggeration, these stories number in the millions.

My own personal experience with Canada-Care is a mixed bag ... the least of the bad being long wait times. The point is, that just from my own family and personal circle of relationships I could tell you horror-stories that would spin your head.

On a positive note, I've noticed health care greatly improving in my own province, Saskatchewan, but the cost to the treasury is enormous, and wait times for virtually all procedures are still into the many months.

Elrose Storm Chase

2009-07-14T13:50:00.006-06:00

Massive storms swept through West/Central Sk on July 13th. I waited out in Rosetown where I figured the greatest chance of tornadoes was. I moved my location to Elrose at about 4:00 pm and wasn't dissapointed. Although I didn't see any tornadoes, the storms that formed right overhead all produced funnel clouds and rapidly rotating wall clouds. A massive cell about 100 clicks West was drawing the cells Westward, so just as each storm formed by Elrose it would suddenly get pulled to the West, causing it to lift and rain through the base dousing any chance of tornadoes. The pictures here are (1) of a wall cloud, (2) funnel, and (3) an interesting formation I caught late in the day by Dinsmore.

A Frigid June

2009-07-14T13:34:00.000-06:00

Some factoids for ya'll:

· This June is tied for the 8th coolest on record. The average temperature was 67.5. (That’s) 3.7 degrees below normal…which also occurred in 1897.

· This was the coolest June since 1958…when the average temperature as 67.2 degrees.

· Below average temperatures occurred on 23 out of 30 days this June…or 75 percent of the month

· Central Park has not hit 90 degrees in the month of June this year. The last time this occurred was back in 1996.

... keep reading.

Falling Down

2009-07-14T13:11:00.004-06:00

... in California:

On May 19, California voters went to the polls to decide whether to pass a package of six tax-and-gimmick ballot propositions. Its supporters—Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democratic legislative leaders, the California Teachers Association, and the overwhelming majority of the state’s major newspapers—billed it as the last best hope to plug Sacramento’s $24 billion budget deficit. “Either pass it,” warned the Los Angeles Times editorial board, “or risk fiscal disaster.”

Those who believe that either money or the media determine political outcomes should pay close heed to what happened next: Although opponents were outspent by more than 7 to 1, they trounced the state’s political class, rejecting five of the six measures by an average of 30 percentage points. The only proposition to pass was an anger-driven new law that limits elected officials’ salaries.

Faced with such thorough repudiation, California’s best and brightest then did a telling thing. They lashed right back.

[...]

During the last two decades, the Golden State has been transformed from what was once known as the nation’s most anti-labor outpost to a state essentially run by public-sector unions. Nearly three in five publicsector workers are unionized, compared to less than two in five public employees in other states. The Democratic Party, which is fully in hock to unions, has controlled the legislature and most statewide posts, with the notable exception of the governor’s mansion, for more than a decade. That means more government workers, higher salaries, and drastically higher pension costs.

... keep reading about how ~~Obama~~ progressives destroyed the 7th largest economy on earth.

Barack on the Flying Trapeze

2009-07-13T10:39:00.003-06:00

Rex nails it:

He flies through the air with the greatest of ease,

the daring young man on the flying trapeze.

We've been watching over the past two weeks, willingly or not, the wrong icon. Michael Jackson's a distraction. Barack Obama is the superstar of the world, the real celebrity. And because he's President of the world's foremost power (for now), his actions have real, not just symbolic, meaning.

We've seen him in action for a bit more than six months. What we can say with confidence, now that we have the evidence of his actions, is that had he run on (a) transforming the U.S. economy by massive federal government intervention, (b) taking an owner's stake in the automobile industry, (c) transforming the rules of America's energy economy, (d) instituting a national health-care system - all of these simultaneously and in the centre of a financial meltdown - Barack Obama wouldn't merely have lost the election, he wouldn't have got as many votes as gnarly old Ross Perot did in an election long past. He wouldn't, in other words, have beaten a bad-tempered, egotistical spoiler.

[...]

Mr. Obama has taken the real crisis of the U.S. (and world) economy and used it as the screen and lever for a massive agenda of transformation, a transformation that calls for expenditures on a scale never before seen in the history of government on this planet. The first expenditure, which began under George Bush's tenure, was large, but it was very specific. The financial “infrastructure” of America's economy was about to be exploded, and it was argued that government “had no choice” but to shore up the financial institutions without which there would be utter chaos in the overall economy. That was the genesis of the so-called bank bailout. After that came the stimulus package, the attempt to kick-start jobs, to get those “shovel ready” projects “out the door.” Both had to be done immediately. There was no time for review or oversight.

[...]

It is inconceivable that these ideas occurred to Mr. Obama postelection. His agenda is of such scale and particularity that it is evidence of design and previous contemplation. He knew what he wished to do when he was campaigning, but he was not going to whisper the scale and range of his designs while the campaign was on. It would have scared off people.

Heaven and Earth

2009-07-13T10:24:00.003-06:00

Professor Ian Plimer:

Plimer’s uncompromising position has not made him popular. ‘They say I rape cows, eat babies, that I know nothing about anything. My favourite letter was the one that said: “Dear sir, drop dead”. I’ve also had a demo in Sydney outside one of my book launches, and I’ve had mothers coming up to me with two-year-old children in their arms saying: “Don’t you have any kind of morality? This child’s future is being destroyed.’’’ Plimer’s response to the last one is typically robust. ‘If you’re so concerned, why did you breed?’

[...]

One of the things that so irks him about modern environmentalism is that it is driven by people who are ‘too wealthy’. ‘When I try explaining “global warming” to people in Iran or Turkey they have no idea what I’m talking about. Their life is about getting through to the next day, finding their next meal. Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury. It’s the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets.’

[...]

Does he really believe his message will ever get through? Plimer smiles. ‘If you’d asked any scientist or doctor 30 years ago where stomach ulcers come from, they would all have given the same answer: obviously it comes from the acid brought on by too much stress. All of them apart from two scientists who were pilloried for their crazy, whacko theory that it was caused by a bacteria. In 2005 they won the Nobel prize. The “consensus” was wrong.'

... a note to trolls, don't bother with the "he's not a climatologist" shtick. Appeals to authority are not valid criticism and irrelevant.

(... and yes John, I've used appeals to authority myself in the past)

It would seem, that even the G8 are beginning to see the writing on the wall ... click.

Physically, Morally - Broken

2009-07-12T10:09:00.004-06:00

In every conflict, climaxes that spell the beginning of the end for one side usually are signalled by increases, not decreases, in casualties on all sides. It happened in Iraq ... are we witnessing the same in Afghanistan?

Vance:

The general said Canadians have to remember progress in the war cannot be measured by the number of soldiers killed, because the purpose of the mission is to protect Afghans and help the country onto its feet.

That, he said, would be an enormous challenge even without the insurgency.
"It's a shattered place -- physically, morally, broken -- but has shown in the past the ability to rebound," he said.

"I see the ability to rebound present, and the potential, everywhere I go."

El Nino

2009-07-11T20:07:00.001-06:00

... and what the sudden appearance of the latest one may teach us:

On the website The Blackboard, there is a plot of the latest sea surface temperature anomalies from the Hadley Center. It has jumped dramatically in just one month. The reason is clearly related to the 2009 El Niño which has developed quickly over the last several months as seen in the ECMWF ocean data (see).

The ECMWF vertical cross-sections (see, see, see and see) provide a useful perspective in that substantial cool (as well as warm) anomalies exist at depth. The El Niño signal is clear in the equatorial cross-section.

There are two messages in this data. First, the sudden development of this El Niño illustrates that it is dominated by ocean and atmospheric circulation changes, not an annual global average radiative forcing. Second, the regional variation in the patterning of heating further reinforces that climate is dominated by spatial variations in circulation features, and not a global-annual average surface temperature trend or other climate metric averaged on this space scale (see and see).