I’m from the government – Page 66

Global Warming: a hoax?

blather, I'm from the government, politics, reshaping the world, science 15 Responses »

Nov 202009

Right up front: I believe the data suggests fairly strongly that the globe has warmed since the 1970s. However, the extent of that warming and, more importantly, mankinds contribution to that are topics that I believe can be reasonably debated. There have been, however, several developments that indicate that the “O Noes! Evil American Cars are gonna kill us all!” crowd has been, shall we say, fudging the numbers a tad.

First up, there’s this nugget, courtesy The Telegraph:

… a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.
…
As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

…
But if genuine, they suggest dubious practices such as:

Manipulation of evidence
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up
Suppression of evidence
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)
…
And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

For more, read this.

Additionally, check out Surfacestations.org. This site documents hundreds of official surface stations… the ground-based temperature sensors that are used to measure climate change in the United States. There are strict guidelines in how to build the sensor “shelters,” and where to locate them… and sadly, a disturbing number of them are located somewhere they *really* shouldn’t be. Like right next to the hot-air exhaust vent of an air conditioner, or next to asphalt parking lots. It would be difficult to locate a sensor somewhere that would give it a false cold reading… but it’s easy to locate it somewhere which will make it read falsely high.

Global warming is a major issue. And while the actual “warming” part of it is of course important, by far the biggest and most important aspect of global warming is the fact that it is being used by a vast number of collectivists in order to ram through massive changes to western countries – America in particular. If the scaremongers are accurate, then, yes, somethign should be done. But if the scaremongers, such as Al Gore (who stands to profit massively from global warming hysteria), are wrong, then it is not only pointless to “do something,” it is counterproductive… and ethically and morally wrong to screw up our economy and quality of life.

Here’s a simple test the next time you ponder a global warming alarmist: if they are demanding that we “do something,” is the “something” they demand we do somethign that would be good and proper regardless of whether there’s warming, or is is something that will serve to increase the power of government, reduce the freedom of the people, and transfer wealth from the productive to the non-productive?

From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of those who are most vocal about the need to fight global warming do not support reasonable solutions, but instead seek solutions that are indistinguishable from the goals of old-school Communists. If global warmign is a real problem, and humans are really responsible, there is one answer above all others that could mitigate the CO2 problem: nuclear reactors. And when it comes to actually controllign the temperature, the ability to do so via regualting “carbon credits” and the like is trivial compared to the power of “geoengineering.” So any global warmign alarmist who shrugs off nukes and geoengineering in favor of socialism… well, that alarmist is either an ignorant boob, or is a socialist simply using global warming as a cover.

And if the data supporting the warming is bogus… then the socialists need to be run out of town on a damned rail. Only then can we face the issue rationally.

UPDATE: A summary of some of the more entertaining and damning emails can be found HERE.

Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544)

Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)

Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709)

Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as “cheering news”.

Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)

Phil Jones says he has use Mann’s “Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series”…to hide the decline”. Real Climate says “hiding” was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)

And many, many more.

UPDATE 2: Searchable database of the emails.

UPDATE 3: Just cuz.

Nanny State Confusery

blather, dumbassery, Gah., I'm from the government, politics 1 Response »

Nov 192009

Britain got labelled the “Nanny State” because they have so many rules and laws designed to keep people ‘safe” while at the same time sucking all the fun out of life. But then this comes along:

The former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq appears as a seductress in a tongue-in-cheek web video ad that aims to show young people that it is OK to kiss someone with HIV.

Really? This is considered a good idea?

From the Centers for Disease Control:

Open-mouth kissing is considered a very low-risk activity for the transmission of HIV. However, prolonged open-mouth kissing could damage the mouth or lips and allow HIV to pass from an infected person to a partner and then enter the body through cuts or sores in the mouth. Because of this possible risk, the CDC recommends against open-mouth kissing with an infected partner.

So on the one hand, Britain is quashing basic human civil liberties in the interests of safety… but on the other hand, the British Red Cross is actually advocating doing something that they know can not only transmit a deadly, uncurable virus… the activity itself is a “gateway activity” that can lead to far more dangerous activities.

Gah.

AIDS is a rather anomalous disease. Throughout history, when there was an outbreak of some viral or bacterial disease that killed people in vast numbers, societies dealt with it the best way they could… which was typically quarantine (and of course, a whole lot of superstitious – and often counter-productive – nonsense as well). Those who had the disease were expected to *not* engage in activities that would spread it further. But then AIDS comes along, and all the rules go out the window. Had there been a quarantine of those infected with AIDS back when HIV was first testable, AIDS in the west would by now be a distant memory. But no. Just as political correctness allowed Nidal to murder thirteen fellow Americans, political correctness has allowed AIDS to become a massive epidemic.

Kiss someone with AIDS? How about someone with ebola or smallpox? Sure, the chances of transmission are reduced, but Dead Is Dead.

Worst of all is not that this sort of PR bullcrap will lead the uninfected to think “It will be ok for me to kiss that person with the deadly infection,” the worst of it is that it will lead people with that deadly infection to think “I can kiss/make out with/boff whoever I like.”

Look. If you have AIDS, chances are *really* high that you got it not acidentally, but through unwise/downright stupid behavior. Sad for you. But it’s evil of you to engage in behavior that could spread it further. If your self gratification is more important to you than the lives of others… we really don’t need you in society.

The end of NASA Manned Spaceflight

dumbassery, Gah., I'm from the government, news, Obamazombies, politics, science, spacecraft 12 Responses »

Nov 192009

OK, hands up anyone who didn’t see this coming…

Orlando Sentinel:

But the launch came amid major worries about NASA’s future, as the agency has been told by the White House to consider cutting its 2011 budget by as much as 10 percent. Based on the agency’s proposed 2009-2010 budget of $18.7 billion, that would equal roughly $1.87 billion.

That kind of cut would end human spaceflight for at least the next decade — and likely longer — according to a presidential space panel that recommended last month a $3 billion-a-year spending increase so NASA could run a “meaningful” manned-space program.
…
On Monday, NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters that he does not expect to know what the White House will do until February. But he said the uncertainty has made it difficult for NASA as it flies out the remaining missions.

“How do we keep our workforce and ourselves focused on what we are doing and don’t get too distracted by all the ‘what if’ scenarios?” he said.

I’ve seen what budget cuts can do to operations in an aerospace firm. I’ve seen what rumors of bugest cuts can do. Back around late 2002, when things started going screwy at United Tech in California, many people could see that the company was facing troubles. And as the troubles mounted, those who could began to split. And “those who could” were, often enough, “those the company really needed to help them pull through.” So as Obama dithers on whether or not to end America’s role as a modern nation, expect to see a lot of the more qualified people at NASA decide that Now Is The Time, and either retire or go into the private sector. And this does not mean that they will simply transfer to other aerospace programs, ready and able to help the private sector take over after NASA is reduced to a shell… many of those who left United Tech went into Dot Coms, fiber optic cables, computer manufacturing, etc.

And so come 2013, if we have a new President determined to try to reverse the numerous bad decisions made by Obama, returning the United States to space might prove difficult. In the best of times you can’t simply pick up where you left off with a program that was cancelled just a few years before. And history, especially the history of science and spaceflight, is unlikely to view the Obama years as “the best of times.”

More discussion from Examiner.com:

The problem is that having spent eight hundred billion dollars on a “stimulus package” that has failed spectacularly to stimulate the economy and having been attacked without mercy for proposing to spend trillions of dollars on “health care reform” that would raise health care costs, cut services, and ration care, the Obama administration is contemplating an election year conversion to fiscal frugality.

There is as yet no confirmation that the proposed ten percent cut will take place nor how Congress might react. But should such occur, it would prove devastating to areas of the country dependent on aerospace already reeling from the impending end of the space shuttle program. It can also be suggested that cutting NASA would constitute a breaking of faith, not only with Obama campaign promises, but with the future. Yet another cancellation of human space exploration would more than ever mean that the Obama administration is just not serious about doing space. As someone once suggested, every Obama promise has an expiration date and the one for NASA may have just about come due.

WOW! Fricken’…. boggle I mean, that’s just…. WOW.

blather, dumbassery, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, weapons 11 Responses »

Nov 122009

Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun

Part One:

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday …

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment …

This right here is bad enough. The British Nanny State – and of course several of the more blighted and corrupt cities in the US – make it a crime to simply posess a weapon. But it gets better. Lots better.

Part Two:

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

“I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

“At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.”

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

Wow.

As if it’s not bad enough that the Brits have these evil laws, the cops actually enforced them. And worse still, a British jury actually convicted him. This is *exactly* what “jury nullification” is for.

Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

Brits: it’s really well past time for y’all to have a revolution. You live in a police state.

… with thunderous applause

dumbassery, I'm from the government, news, Obamazombies, politics No Responses »

Nov 082009

Gah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvssYTVgl7I

Where’s my damned X-Wing?

What’s all this then?

dumbassery, humor, I'm from the government, politics 1 Response »

Oct 262009

British nanny-statism seems to be getting more bizarre by the millisecond. From the Mail Online:

Warwickshire Police’s handbook Policing Our Communities, issued to every member of its staff, gives advice on communicating with people from different ethnic groups in a section entitled Communication, Some Dos & Don’ts.
It states: ‘Don’t assume those words for the time of day, such as afternoon or evening, have the same meaning.’

A force spokesman explained: ‘Terms such as afternoon and evening are somewhat subjective in meaning and can vary according to a person’s culture or nationality. In many cultures the term evening is linked to time of day when people have their main meal of the day.

‘In some countries, including the UK, the evening meal time is traditionally thought of as being around 5-7pm but this might be different, say, for a family from America who might have their main meal earlier and thus for them evening may be an earlier time.’

What? Really? they are afraid they’ll offend an American by calling the period from 5 to 7 PM “evening?”

Really?

Splutter OK, that does it. Obama = blasphemy laws

dumbassery, I'm from the government, news, Obamazombies, politics, religion 2 Responses »

Oct 212009

If this report is true… then anyone who knows of this and continues to support Obama is a FRICKEN MORON.

Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law. It came from the most unlikely of places: the United States.

While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians. Though the resolution was passed unanimously, European and developing countries made it clear that they remain at odds on the issue of protecting religions from criticism. It is viewed as a transparent bid to appeal to the “Muslim street” and our Arab allies, with the administration seeking greater coexistence through the curtailment of objectionable speech. Though it has no direct enforcement (and is weaker than earlier versions), it is still viewed as a victory for those who sought to juxtapose and balance the rights of speech and religion.

Blasphemy laws are blatantly unConstitutional. The first time an American gets in trouble for blasphemy under this bullcrap, Obama should be impeached and sued into permanent poverty. This is a betrayal of all that America stands for.

Thinly disguised blasphemy laws are often defended as necessary to protect the ideals of tolerance and pluralism. They ignore the fact that the laws achieve tolerance through the ultimate act of intolerance: criminalizing the ability of some individuals to denounce sacred or sensitive values. We do not need free speech to protect popular thoughts or popular people. It is designed to protect those who challenge the majority and its institutions. Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech — the literal sacred institution of society.

Humpty Dumpty will KILL YOUR CHILDREN!!!!!

blather, dumbassery, I'm from the government 3 Responses »

Oct 192009

Oy.

BBC DEFENDS HUMPTY DUMPTY DECISION

The BBC has defended a decision to change the ending of nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty.

A version used on the CBeebies channel was altered so rather than “couldn’t put Humpty together again” all the King’s horses “made Humpty happy again”.

The broadcaster said the change was made purely for creative reasons rather than trying to give a soft version of the rhyme for children. …Labour MP Tom Harris told the Independent on Sunday: “For goodness sake. Obviously children will find it far too violent, distressing and horrific that Humpty should not be put back together again.

Wow. That’s just… lame. Even for the Nanny State, worrying about upsetting children with a centuries-old rhyme is pretty freakin’ sad. Someone should tell them that for millenia children have grown up with tales of people being eaten by wolves or being poisoned by witches, stepmoms, Socialists and other assorted evildoers, and it didn’t seem to traumatize ’em. Hell, until the 20th century, when a death in the family occured, the body was displayed for a time (a short time… ya don’t want Granny stinkin’ up the joint) in the “parlor.” But that fell out of fashion, and now it’s called the “living room” (no place for the dead, you see), and death is something we don’t let kids see or understand.

<> Well, except for the family that brought along a passel of rugrats to the showing of “Zombieland” I went to a couple days back…

Cabela’s take on the California ammo ban

dumbassery, I'm from the government, news, politics, weapons 19 Responses »

Oct 142009

Oh, sure, it’s not really a ban, but it’s certainly outrageous. Imagien if you needed to jump through the same unConstitutional hoops to, say, buy a newspaper or go into a church. Or even *vote.*

To: Cabela’s California Customers
From: Cabela’s Communications
Subject: California Assembly Bill 962
Date: Sept. 22, 2009

We are writing to inform you of pending legislation that will restrict purchases of handgun ammunition in California and will terminate our ability to service your needs for certain products.

On Friday, Sept. 11, the California Assembly passed Assembly Bill 962, by a 44-31 vote.

Among other regulations, AB 962 would:

• Ban all mail-order and Internet sales of handgun ammunition.
• Prohibit the retail sale, the offer for sale or the display of handgun ammunition in a
manner that allows ammunition to be accessible to a purchaser without assistance of a
vendor or employee.
• Require that the delivery or transfer of ownership of handgun ammunition occur in a
face-to-face transaction, with the deliverer or transferor being provided bona fide
evidence of identity of the purchaser or other transferee.

That evidence of identity, which must be legibly recorded at the time of delivery, includes:

• The right thumbprint of the purchaser or transferee.
• The date of the sale or other transaction.
• The purchaser’s or transferee’s driver’s license or other identification number and the
state in which it was issued.
• The brand, type and amount of ammunition sold or otherwise transferred.
• The purchaser’s or transferee’s signature.
• The name of the salesperson who processed the sale or other transaction.
• The purchaser’s or transferee’s full residential address and telephone number.
• The purchaser’s or transferee’s date of birth.

The bill is on the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, where it awaits his consideration. He will have until Oct. 11 to sign or veto the bill. If he does not veto the bill, it will become law.

If you wish to comment on AB 962, you may contact Gov. Schwarzenegger by phone at (916) 445-2841, or via fax at (916) 558-3160. To e-mail Gov. Schwarzenegger, visit
http://gov.ca.gov/interact

We encourage all Cabela’s customers who participate in the shooting sports to contact Gov. Schwarzenegger to voice their opposition to this initiative, which will limit your opportunities to shop with Cabela’s, and will restrict the sale of handgun ammunition everywhere in California.

Here. Have some cancer.

dumbassery, I'm from the government, politics 11 Responses »

Oct 122009

Anyone who complains about European-style universal health care is clearly a racist. To find out if you are a racist, take the following test.

A) Does this news story bother you?

A leading UK hospital has defended its practice of using organs donated by smokers after the death of a soldier who received the cancerous lungs of a heavy smoker.

Corporal Matthew Millington, 31, died at his home in 2008, less than a year after receiving a transplant that was supposed to save his life at Papworth Hospital — the UK’s largest specialist cardiothoracic hospital, in Cambridgeshire, east England.
…
Less than a year later, doctors discovered a tumor in the new lungs. Despite radiotherapy, Millington died on February 8, 2008, at his family home near Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire.

The inquest found a radiographer failed to highlight the growth of a cancerous tumor on the donor lungs.

Tests found that he had received the lungs of a donor who smoked up to 50 cigarettes a day, the inquest at North Staffordshire coroner’s court heard.

If your response to this story was anything to the right of “Fox News is evil and should be barred from the airwaves,” then you are a racist and you should report to the nearest ObamaCare Clinic for immediate organ extraction. For the children.

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