Global cooling rebuttal from the mental hospital is a hoax

I read through the comments to Krugman’s recent op-ed on climate change. The most recommended comments were sympathetic to the author’s opinion, but there were some adamant comments from wingers talking about how in the past ten years, global temperatures have been declining, thereby showing that Al Gore’s mom wears combat boots. I assumed it was the latest orchestrated noise from the noise machine, and this Wash. Times article confirms. But as is usually the case, the noise makers might be slightly off base.

From Media Matters:

Wash. Times publishes op-ed promoting discredited “global cooling” claim

http://mediamatters.org/items/200907020009

On July 2, The Washington Times published a “commentary” by Cato Institute senior fellow Richard Rahn criticizing Congress for passing “the largest tax increase in American history this past Friday, under the claim it was a vote to save the climate.” In the op-ed — which was referring to the cap-and-trade energy bill recently passed by the House — Rahn stated that “proponents claim this tax bill will reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, which are purported to cause global warming” and then responded to that claim, in part, by asserting: “None of the climate models predicted the unexpected global cooling of the last decade.” However, climate experts reject the idea that relatively cooler global temperatures during the past decade are any indication that global warming is slowing.

As Media Matters for America has noted, annual global average temperatures have both risen and fallen over the past 11 years, and there have been some relatively cooler years during that period — including a decline in each of the past three years relative to the year before. But climate scientists have identified a long-term warming trend spanning several decades that is independent from the normal climate variability — which includes relatively short-term changes in climate due to events like El Niño and La Niña — to which they attribute the recent relatively cooler temperatures.

From Rahn’s July 2 Washington Times op-ed:

Why did a bare majority (219-212) of the members of the U.S. Congress vote for the largest tax increase in American history this past Friday, under the claim it was a vote to save the climate?

Before you answer the question, consider the following facts. The proponents claim this tax bill will reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, which are purported to cause global warming. First, despite the claims of President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many in the media, there is no consensus in the scientific community about how much climate change, other than the normal cycles, is taking place, nor how severe it will be, and how much man-made CO2 is responsible. None of the climate models predicted the unexpected global cooling of the last decade.

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The Republican strategy laid bare

Beck guest Scheuer: “The only chance we have as a country right now is” for bin Laden to “detonate a major weapon” in U.S. See video and comments from Media Matters here. More lunacy from the mental hospital.

These guys do realize there are elections coming up, don’t they? In 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and so on. Why all the violence talk when they could actually try to appeal to the electorate for votes? Maybe the layers of psychosis and sociopathy obscure their ability to keep track of dates and facts.

The metaphorical tee shirt stays on

[Op ed. piece]

Recently Jeremy Scahill said on Democracy Now! that it is time to take off the Obama t-shirts. I liked it, it’s clever and amusing. But I don’t plan to anytime soon, such as for the next four to eight years.

I listen to Democracy Now!, consider The Nation a favorite publication, listen to and read Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald (though I find his manner a bit off-putting sometimes), Bill Moyers, Bill Maher and other voices of the independent left media. They are very interesting, smart and give a different perspective than more, er, restrained (and often misleading) sources. I occasionally read Chomsky’s articles on his web site, but I don’t trust the man and find his articles a bit overrated. I find Krugman to be a reasonable critic of Obama; not inclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but not afraid to call a spade a spade either.

I recently heard a lefty tell me that (still) the two parties are exactly the same. I believe this is a Chomskyian sound bite, though I’m not sure, it just sounds like something he would say (or maybe Nader). I didn’t believe that notion when I heard it a decade ago, and I especially do not subscribe to it now! After eight years of Bush? As Rachel would ask with impish grin, seriously? After Brownie? And Harry? And the Emerald City? And mushroom clouds? Bill Maher had it right: center-right vs. mental hospital. That’s not a good deal, but even a child knows how to choose the lesser of two evils. If you can’t tell the difference between the two, then you’re probably not being honest, or should try removing the blinders once in a while. Obama is bound to disappoint us on some things, he already has, but he has already done many things differently than the previous administration would have done them. To deny that is simply to ignore reality. Further down the  irresponsible path is to imagine that things would not be substantially worse with senile, Iran-bombing, extremist-courting McCain in charge. Again, every Chomskyian-Naderite argument one makes is basically an argument for the mental hospital that McCain lives in.

For one thing, Obama has already staved off the Great Depression 2. It’s funny how little credit he seems to get for it. Would Nader have gotten it right? I don’t think so; he would be paralyzed by the extreme nature of his positions, and the reality of being in charge. I recently heard that people are beginning to complain that the government spends too much and runs up deficits that are too large. Which strikes me as complaining that the superhero who just pushed you out of the way of a speeding train caused your arms to bruise when you hit the ground. I know he could have approached it differently; instead of bailing out scumbag banks, he could have ignored the advice of virtually every credible economist, and done nothing, capsizing the economy. Or he could have been bolder and bailed out from the ground up by letting working class people keep their homes, which would also be a dramatic blow against income inequality, but would be too radical a solution for Washington to implement (in its current lobbyist-saturated condition), even if it should.

As a leader, Obama is skilled at sounding the proper notes. Where his opponents sound irrational and ridiculous, he sounds reasoned and rational. Where they make outlandish claims, he makes grounded decisions. His handling of the Iran crisis has been deft, easily crushing the loony criticisms made by the “maverick.”

I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t mind critiquing the Prez, or reminding him of his roots and campaign promises, or prompting him to be bolder given the pathetic state of the opposition party, but let’s not disband the team that put him there, unless we want to go back to 1980-2008. Actually, we might not even get the white glove treatment of those years, since the ideas of Rush and Hannity have become the talking points of the Republican party. We are living in a fantasy if we think that the Independents who sided with us might not swing back to the right once again, or that the ideas of intellectuals are going to suddenly become the way of things. We might get there, but not by lurching, being impatient and refusing to compromise. As Obama said, it’s a big boat, and he’s trying to change the direction of it, but if you spin the wheel too fast, the rudder breaks. At least we finally have an administration that we stand a chance of influencing. So let’s focus on that and not undermine him.

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Matt is a frequent contributor to his own blog. He likes cycling in the Rockies and playing ball with Millie.

Monday night one shots

-I’m going to bed ASAP.

-I haven’t had coffee in several days.

-Despite my propensity for going through the looking glass, I’m glad I live in a multicultural country. Riding my bike the other day, a Mexican man and his son rode by me on a two seater bike carriage deal. They waved at me and we exchanged smiles. Felt nice. It’s pretty juvenile, not being able to accept other races or to appreciate people from different cultures.

-I like magic realism. I like certain music that reminds me of long ago. Nostalgia.

-Sometimes I miss my crazy ex-girlfriend, like that Onion article. Mostly because she wasn’t crazy during most of our relationship, she just kind of became that way at some point and became impossible to deal with. Had to set off on my own, but unlike the movies, I didn’t meet another good one after that. Sometimes I wish I could go back to the good times, like eating in a Chinese restaurant with her or walking in the woods together or seeing a movie or dancing or holding hands or being two against the world.

-A friend told me a while back that I was “strong” in the emotional sense. That made me feel good; being on one’s own can help with that. Albert Einstein preferred being alone. Not sure where I am on that one.

-I like Steve Martin movies, like L.A. Story.

Minutemen maniacs

Here’s more from the annals of crime, a somewhat underreported story of three white Minutemen invading the home of a Latino family in Arizona and murdering the father and child. The invaders were considered too extreme by other, comparatively measured Minutemen. The victims were armed, undercutting the pro gun enthusiasts’ claim that the presence of guns in America thwarts crimes and deters home invasions. I suppose the crime was thwarted–the invaders sought to rob the family–but when the people using the guns in self-defense are murdered anyway, it shows that guns may not be a terribly effective deterrent. Another undercut claim: that gun owners are reaonsable, and their opponents are hysterical. It’s true that some gun owners are reasonable, perhaps, but the 30,000 people who die from gun violence each year meet their end because of some gun owner’s unreasonableness. It should also be noted that the most reasonable, civilized states in the country have the strictest controls and the fewest deaths, like Massachusetts, while less settled places like Alaska and Arizona have the most problems with gun violence.

Another crime seized on by the gun nuts is the rape-torture-murder of a young white couple in Knoxville who were carjacked by four black assailants. Here are some pictures. White supremacists took the opportunity to stage a rally in Knoxville. Funny how they didn’t do anything when a white shooter stormed a Knoxville Unitarian church last year in order to kill liberals.

That’s the thing with violent crime: it won’t adhere to any pattern people would like to ascribe to it. Except that there is a long running history of right wing fascist movements worldwide — it is never leftists who engage in brutality against groups of people for such juvenile reasons — and we have a right wing media actively devoted to inflaming its listeners to commit these crimes.

Right wingers seethed that the Knoxville case was not covered by the four major networks, saying it showed that the MSM wants to cover up black on white violent crime, no doubt as part of the political conspiracy to globalize the planet despite the horrible cost to white people. Snopes offers a more realistic explanation, saying violent murder is so common in the U.S., that any one case has to combine many sensationalist elements to garner national attention. It points out the fairly obvious counterexample of the O.J. Simpson case for a black on white violent crime being well covered by the press.

Gruesome crime roundup

I read somewhere, can’t remember who said it, that “Justice is the public face of love.” Sometimes it takes a while for that love to manifest itself. Ten years ago, a student at CU Boulder was raped at about 2 a.m. after walking home from a late evening with her boyfriend. Then her skull was partially crushed by seven blows from a baseball bat. Somehow, she survived and was found moaning in an alley the next morning, but she died the following day in th hospital. Her killer was this week found guilty on numerous counts, including two counts of first degree murder. The second count was through application of the felony murder rule: if the perp commits a felony and the victim dies, even by accident, it’s first degree murder in the eyes of the law.

This crime was said to have shattered the feeling (or illusion) of safety in Boulder, especially when the local police were unable to make much headway in solving it. The city had been much criticized, especially in the late nineties, for being out of touch with the realities of violent crime in large cities. Boulder doesn’t exactly feel like a large city; it feels like a mountain paradise where people are easygoing and outdoorsy. But in reality it has some of the same issues as other large cities.

The crime was eventually solved when dna from the victim’s rape kit was matched against a national dna database. The perpetrator went on to rape or attempt the rape of three more (known) women, and was paroled after serving seven years for kidnapping a woman.

In the gun forums, there’s an undercurrent of disgust at the violent crime problem in America. In their view, America the melting pot is a violent place where the sanity of single cultural society is upset by the presence of different races, all of which are more violent than caucasians, and those “racial others” are further agitated by being in a country where they are exposed to different races. If the U.S. were largely white, and if the government strictly controlled immigration, we would be more like Britain, or Norway, which have tremendous social cohesion and very few deaths from violent crime. Similarly, perhaps, those immigrants would stay in their own countries of origin and presumably feel more cohesion themselves (or be more violent anyway, as some seem to think that blacks, hispanics, asians have more violent tendencies; I was presented with no evidence for that, one way or the other. The pro gun people have to look for reasons other than guns to explain the violence problem, so they don’t mind settling on race. Though in this case they would find support, since the murder weapon was a baseball bat).

I thought of this because the picture of the criminal and the victim in this case certainly are an example of a brutal non white (Latino) thug destroying a peaceful, innocent caucasian woman. Here is a story about it with pictures.

On a side note, the victim used somewhat poor judgment in walking home alone at 1:30 a.m. On the other hand, she should have been able to. We should be able to expect safety, even late at night. Back to the first hand, though, let’s be serious - if women stay out that late, they should be accompanied home.

These cases can be very emotional. The jury pretty much thought the defendant was guilty from the get go, and only felt moreso that way as the trial proceeded. Then, movingly, the jury requested to approach the mother of the victim at the end. Each juror embraced the mother. Wow.

A timeline of the events leading to the perp’s arrest can be found here. Disgustingly, the defense tried to argue the sex was consensual; I suppose defendants are entitled to advance whatever theory they want, but it’s still below the belt.

In other crime news, a Boulder bank robber was captured today; since 1990, he has been arrested 60 times. One wonders how it is possible to commit that many offenses and still be walking around free to rob banks.

When your county sheriff wants to be Rush Limbaugh

Larimer county, where I reside, abuts Boulder county on the north side. The sheriff of Larimer is a right wing Rush wannabe, who targets Boulder cyclists who ride into Larimer county for ideological reasons. He also thinks there is a war on Christmas, and he is going to be a speaker at an upcoming teabag protest.

Here’s an article about his column he wrote on the Sheriff’s web site, which he was forced to take down because it brought his personal political views onto a state website: Larimer sheriff: ‘Spandex causes people to lose sense of humor’

Maybe the article should be left in place; any cyclist ticketed by a Larimer county deputy should be able to show the article to the judge and get the ticket waived for gross bias, and perhaps receive court costs.

Here’s another article about Alderden. He thinks Fort Collins, the largest city in the county of which he is Sheriff, is “imbecilic.” Larimer sheriff: Fort Collins becoming more like ‘imbecilic borough of Boulder’

He has further announced he will ticket cyclists who ride two abreast. However, it is legal for cyclists to do so. I personally don’t ride that way when in a group, and get annoyed when people do; however, I recognize their right and even, perhaps, their need at times.

Here’s another article about Alderden’s vocal opposition to the Bicyclist safety bill, which mercifully passed and goes into effect on August 5. Ellis: Bicycle safety — just too inconvenient? Note the part about trucks — this is the single biggest source of friction on the roads between drivers and cyclists. Truckers sometimes don’t like bicyclists, because to a trucker, time is money (or at least time is time spent sitting in boredom while blood clots start to form in their legs. So I sympathize with their impatience to some degree). I was “buzzed” by a truck in California, and it was one of the scarier things that has ever happened to me. Most of the trucks went around me courteously though, and sometimes I would pull over for them if I felt I was holding them up.

From another article: “Despite Alderden’s statements and the controversy surrounding them, his office has issued no tickets to cyclists violating the two-abreast law since he pledged to increase enforcement.” Perhaps it is better that Alderden use a bunch of (annoying) speech around this issue, rather than, say, secretly implement a policy of targeting liberal bicyclists.

I think motorists need more education, simply, about the rights of cyclists to use the road. In short, cyclists have the same rights as motorists to the road. I remember being annoyed when I first moved to CO at all the cyclists, and I used to be more impatient behind the wheel, but that was really my problem, not the cyclists’ problem. Rather than view cyclists as a menace or inconvenience, motorists should learn to view them as a chance to slow down and pass them safely. Cyclists make the road safer by forcing drivers out of their road-induced coma. I have become more aware of this issue since taking my motorcycle safety course; you learn that you must drive defensively and be ever alert for potential trouble. In that course, they told us how responsible motorcyclists become better drivers as well, because they pay more attention to potential hazards.

Cyclists can be irresponsible too though. The other day I was driving and a cyclist blew a stop sign on a side street and darted out in front of me. I didn’t like it because I knew his attitude must be poor, and I felt his behavior would give a negative impression to other motorists who would not be as understanding as I would be.

In my cycling, I tend to view stop signs and intersections as break time. Sometimes it’s hard to make that switch. If I’m feeling energized by the ride, I just want to act like any other car, and legally I’m entitled to do so (but that also means I’m not supposed to run the sign, either!). But usually I pull over, dismount, catch my breath, and walk my bike across. It just feels safer, smarter and reduces the chance for conflict or injury. In a car vs. cyclist contest, the car wins even if legally it loses!

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

At dinner tonight friend Thomas observed this. I think he said “We all have pain, but we can choose whether we suffer.”

Other topics were bad things coming in threes (MJ*, Fawcett, Ed McMahon), and the riotous story of the tenants upstairs at my sister’s place of business–they are builders, and they make an awful ruckus. This time, they were dropping a bowling ball onto copper sheets. This was absurdly hysterical to contemplate–in terms of tenant etiquette, dropping a bowling ball on your floor when you have downstairs neighbors has to be near the bottom.

*I consider MJ a relief though. It creeped me out knowing he was still alive. Maybe in the 3 bad things I’ll substitute in the death of the Iranian woman Neda, who absolutely should still be living her life. Bad basiji.

More guns? Fewer restrictions? More death. By state.

A chart from the Violence Policy Center shows the correlation by state. The chart may as well be a civilization chart by state - New England ranks lowest (as in most civilized) (except for Hawaii, where people are too happy for guns), and the rural south leads the way for people who meet their doom at the end of a barrel. I would be interested to see the non gun homicide rate for these states, as I have a feeling it would correlate too.

The drop in persons strongly supporting gun control — from 63% in 1999 to 39% now — has been the result in the change of opinion in Independents. They used to be with the Dems, but are now with the Rs. And the reason is very likely the terrorist attack in 2001. That’s right, people think they need firearms to protect themselves from Al Qaeda. I don’t think if people had had more guns, the terrorist attack on Bush’s favorite day could have been prevented; for one thing, guns are not allowed on airplanes (though I’ll bet the NRA is working on it). Al Qaeda likes to strike with bombs, using a secret nefarious plan that gun owners would be extremely unlikely to detect. So the idea that buying a gun makes one safer from Al Qaeda is far-fetched, putting it mildly.

More Onion classics about the male condition

Horrible bitch of an ex-girlfriend missed terribly. This one kind of makes my skin crawl.

Tragic event forces man to spend rest of life confined to office chair. Ditto.

This should be from the Onion, but instead, it’s real, about the pastor who is having a “bring your guns to church” day in Kentucky. According to the article, gun control has been marginalized thanks to the lobbying and financial power of the NRA and its fiscal advantage over the Brady Center. Support for gun control is down to about one in two people. On the other hand, it is Kentucky, home of the Creation Museum, which has a dinosaur wearing a saddle.

In other news, Michael Jackson has died, possibly from being a living zombie after years of overexposure to prescription drugs. The part of my brain that remembers Thriller fondly is drowned out by the part of my brain that hasn’t been able to take this bizarre joker seriously for years. Again I go to the Onion for a headline: “Last piece of Michael Jackson dies.”