Above: At left – Myself, James O’Brien from FSU, and Steve McIntyre at podium. Photo by Evan Jones
This morning’s breakfast program featured congressman Tom McClintock of California. He quipped:
“I was the first to discover global warming during a grade school trip to a natural history museum, where I deduced dinosaurs were destroyed by warming temperatures.” Unfortunately, he said, Miss Conroy, his elementary school teacher, failed to nominate him for a Nobel Prize, “so instead of jetting around the world in a fleet of Gulfstream Fives to tell people they need to feel guilty about driving to work, I have to take the subway. And I don’t get paid $100,000 a speech for my original discovery. But then again, I don’t have Al Gore’s electricity bills either, so I guess it all balances out.”
NASA’s only geologist to walk the moon, Harrison “Jack” Schmidt gave the noon presentation today. I hope to have the text of his speech posted here soon.
Also today I made my presentation on the surfacestations.org project at 4PM, and sat on the panel with Steve McIntyre whose presentation immediately followed me. Both were well received, Steve is now off to Thailand.
I spoke with a number of people today, including Richard Lindzen, who had encouraging words and we exchanged some good ideas. I’ll have more on that later. It’s now midnight, I’m exhausted and have another day tomorrow plus a flight back to California.
Professor Bob Carter is doing a better job than I am in blogging, (he apparently has more time) so I’ll post his report again below.
March 8, 2009
Currently, visitors from outside USA who happen to turn their TVs to one of the 24-hours news channels are astonished – or at least, I was – at the vehement hostility of right-wing commentators to the new Obama administration. This hostility has spread even to some Democrats, who were instrumental in helping to defer Mr Obama’s $410 billion financial rescue package when it was approaching the vote in Congress on Thursday.
The reason is that attached to the bill are more than 6,000, mostly small, spending earmarks (US lingo for tailored, pork-barrel voting inducements), summing to about $7 billion, each one of which is in the interest of particular members or Senators. Earmarking has a long history in the US legislature, but its efflorescent continuation against the financial crisis, and the associated announcement today of 8.1% US unemployment, does not look good given that President Obama gave a campaign pledge to close the practice down.
It is accepted that any new head-of-state deserves a honeymoon period, but Barack Obama may already be close to exhausting his. This is partly because of the unfulfillable expectations that his campaign rhetoric aroused, partly because of the sheer size of the urgent problems that confronted him, and partly because of the polarizing nature of some of the key appointments he has made to his administration. This is particularly true in the environmental area and associated portfolios, where he has appointed John Holdren as Science Adviser, Stephen Chu as Secretary of Energy, Carol Browner (former EPA head) in the new position of Energy Co-ordinator and Lisa Jackson as Administrator of the EPA.
However distinguished the careers of these persons, their public record on the key environmental issues of the day is not one of balance – and especially not regarding global warming. One wonders whether a senior representative of the Obama climate team will pitch up at the Heartland conference, for it is very clear that his administration would benefit from an injection of reality on the issue.
Against this background – and the dependence of President Obama on revenue from a carbon dioxide cap and trade bill to meet his aim of halving the US deficit in the four years 2012-2016 – travellers from around the world are today converging on the Mariott Marquis in Times Square, where the Heartland Institute is hosting its second Manhatten conference on climate change.
Accordingly, press and blog comment is starting to stir. Fascinatingly, two of the first cabs off the rank give diametrically opposed views of the conference.
Writing in the Canadian National Post, Peter Foster summarises the IPCC claim that the climate is at a crisis point, with human carbon dioxide emissions the main culprit, then commenting:
The Heartland conference will present papers suggesting that such views are at best simplistic and at worst downright wrong. It will also feature bold voices who stress the political nature of the climate change bandwagon, and its success in closing down debate as it threatens already foundering global prosperity. These include Vaclav Kraus, president of the Czech Republic and of the European Union.
Meanwhile, over at Grist, Coby Beck adopts the long-favoured technique of ad hominem attack in an attempt to discredit the Heartland-2 event. In a vicious example of the polemic art, Mr Beck manages to denigrate Roy Spencer, Dick Lindzen, Bill Gray, Willie Soon, Arthur Robinson, Stephen McIntyre, Jack Schmidt, Christopher Monckton and Lawrence Solomon – fine intellects, one and all – summarily dismissing them, and others, with the sneering comment:
Hardly ‘the world’s elite scientists specializing in climate issues.’ In fact, none of these experts is a trained climate scientist. In the community of actual experts, the consensus is:
- The earth is rapidly warming (over 0.6 deg. C in the last century)
- Human activities are the primary cause
- Warming will continue and accelerate if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
Can this be the same group of people who Peter Harris characterizes as:
I’ll be thinking about that [climate change as the new state religion] every time I look out of my window over the next couple of days, grateful that there are intellectual lights still shining inside the building, and at least some voices speaking up for intellectual freedom and scientific objectivity.
Though it received little press coverage at the time, last year’s Heartland-1 conference resulted in the striking Manhatten Declaration on Climate Change, which commented, inter alia:
That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
The Heartland-2 event obviously has a hard act to follow.
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That is some article by Matt McGrath BBC environment reporter.
If you have not read it yet then:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7934046.stm
“For the scientists gathering in the Danish capital, this meeting is about removing as much wriggle room as possible from the political negotiations on a new global climate treaty taking place in December.”
So this meeting is not about science it is about removing as much wriggle room as possible!!
“Its prorector Lykke Friis said the scientists would be presenting the latest and the clearest information, meaning political leaders would not have the excuse that they needed more research before agreeing on a deal. ”
Why do they need to meet?
Their conclusions are clear.
Please allow me to add:
– American Thinker,
– The Weekly Standard
– National Review
– Washington Times
– NewsMax
– UK Telegraph
– and of course talk radio.
to the list of media outlets.
I hope that the German sceptic websites (I’m sure they will) will post info about the ICCC.
“Mr Materman analyzed the CET on a month-by-month basis at 30 years intervals and found that for most months there has been no significant change in Tmean for 300 years except for the fall months which showed a slight warming trend.”
300 years ago would be about 1709. So am I right in thinking that Harold Pierce Jr is claiming our average temperature in the UK has not changed significantly since then? This is news.
Error in the above link for the Klyasthorin and Lyubushin book about oceanic and fish stock oscillations, here’s the correct one:
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
UK Sceptic,
I’m 99% sure President Obama will overreach in a huge way, and with a big backlash to follow. He’s made it clear he intends to radically alter America.
I think he got the mandate completely confused. Somehow he got the notion Americans want him to radically change the country, when in fact Americans only want him to improve their lives and wallets.
Now he’s raising taxes, ignoring the borders, intends to nationalise healthcare, and burden business with cap and trade, etc. Few businesses are willing to invest in such a hostile environment. Kiss job creation good bye. Say hello to unemployment.
To me it’s a DECLARATION OF WAR ON PRIVATE BUSINESS.
And that’s the way the markets see it too. All the major international stock markets have plummeted in the wake of his policy announcements.
The big bad backlash is coming. Be patient.
The real fun for the current administration has not even begun.
Just wait until Joe Sixpack finds out CO2 taxes are going to add to his gasoline bill.
Or Miss Granny down the street is going to pay more on her electrical bill.
You simply cannot raise $650 billion without someone noticing.
Even if congress is stupid enough to impose a cap and trade tax on the economy, there will be a big price paid in 2010. This will get very interesting if the current temperature trends stay in place for a couple more years. Also, if La Nina continues and the arctic continues its current trend of increasing ice cover.
People are being recommended for high level positions in this government who cannot even pay their own taxes. That has always been a weakness of people who advocate higher taxes; they don’t pay their share.
People love to see polar bears on Animal Planet, but they don’t want to pay for them.
[I don’t give a damn whom that was aimed at. It has no place here. ~ Evan]
Not aimed at anyone – just noticed a pattern slighly different to the “older men men with bald patches” comment that was written in an earlier posting on the conference. Here I was thinking that it was the AGW crowd alone that lacked a sense of humor. Sorry if you took offence Evan. No insult at all intended, just an off beat observation from someone who has an off beat sense of humour, following on from the earlier observation.
Dorlomin
This is a subject I have posted on many times and here is my own analysis over the entire period since 1660. This prompted me to write aditional pieces over the last couple of years. I will post separately after this a satirical piece I wrote on the static tempereatures experienced diring this period which has some serious analysis based on the life expectancy of a 70 year old. I posted this here a few weeks ago. First is the serious analysis.
CET from 1660 to 2008
January
Generally past years are cooler than the 1990’s which was just 0.10C warmer than 1730’s and 1920’s
Overall the monthly figures are dragged right down by the very cold little ice age which covers most of the period from the 1660’s to around 1880
February
As above with 1730 cooler by .10 1860 by .2 1870 by .3 and 1920 by .2
March
As above but 1730 cooler by .6 1920 by .8 and 1930 by .9 i.e. one of the greatest changes in any month (other than winter Dec-February inc)
April
1990s cooler than 1940 by 0.7 1860 by .3 and 1730 by .2 otherwise broadly similar
May. 1990s cooler than 1660 by 0.3 same as 1720 and 1730 cooler than 1800 by 0.3 same as 1820 and 1830 cooler than 1830 by .10 and 1910 by .3 otherwise broadly the same
June
1990 same as 1980 1970 and 1960
Cooler than 1960 by .4 1950 by .2 1940 by .3 1930 by .4 1890 by .4 1870 by .1 1860 by .1 1850 by .3 1840 by .3 1830 by .6 1820 by.4 1800 by .2 1790 by .2 1780 by .8 1770 by .7 1760 by .1 1750 by .4 same as 1740 cooler than 1730 by .7 1720 by .9 1710 by .3 same as 1700 and 1680 cooler than 1670 by .3 and 1660 by .3
Overall June has become a much cooler month
July 1990 cooler than 1730 by .4 1750 by .5 1760 by .4 1770 by .4 1780 by .4 1790 by .4 1800 by .4 1870 by .5 1930 by .4
Overall July has become a rather cooler month
August
1990 was cooler than 1930 by .3 1770 by .5 and 1700 by .3
Overall August has become a little warmer.
September
1990s cooler than 1720 and 1730 by .2 and 1740 by .1 It was the same as 1930 and cooler than 1940 by .2
Overall there was little difference
October
1990 cooler than 1960 by .4 and .4 warmer than 1900 1850 1830 1820 1730 1660
Overall October has become a little warmer
November
1990s cooler than 1970 by .2
Overall this month has become distinctly milder
December
1990 cooler than 1980 by .5 1970 by .6 1950 by .2 1940 by .1 1860 by .1 1820 by .3 1730 by .3
The month has become a little milder
Temperatures have fluctuated considerably throughout the period with months often changing their ‘traditional’ characteristics.
Generally modern winter months have become milder than the winters of the little ice age period (not surprising!) which brought the overall averages for the year sharply down. November has also become distinctly milder and March much milder. July has become rather cooler whilst June is distinctly cooler, other months show limited difference either way.
The early 1700’s were remarkably similar to the current period but the warmth was over a more extended period and came from a lower base. In this respect average temperatures have barely changed in nearly 300 years from pre industrial times. Many other periods have been fairly close in warmth to the modern era but again the little ice age winters knocked the annual averages down somewhat. The 1820’s 1900’s 1920’s and 1930’s were also notably warm.
TonyB
Obama justifies proposed US cap-and-trade policy in the face of economic problems by touting it as deficit reduction move (less than half the revenue targeted at solving the “serious and dangerous problem” of AGW). Take away with one hand, re-distribute with the other.
If a cap-and-trade policy is passed and global warming continues to “pause” there will be a segment of the population who will immediately believe cap-and-trade did it. Belief in AGW and effectiveness of cap-and-trade seem to go hand in hand.
Ok guys, we can stop being skeptics, not!
Obama has introduced measures that “guarantee scientific integrity in Federal Policy,
Promising scientific Integrity instead of ideology!
But it will not divorce science from politics, or strip ideology from presidential decisions.
Read here all about the latest smoke curtain produced by the biggest scam artist ever to set foot in the White House!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/politics/10obama.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Dorlomin
Here is the satirical piece I wrote that is referenced above (3 42 03) but it is intended to make a serious point about our misuse of statistics and our tendancy to look at the short term. It should be looked at in the ligt of the data contained in my previous post 3 42 03
Article follows
Being at a loose end I set my dedicated team of climate researchers here in the UK on the task of graphing Hadley CET temperatures to 1660 so we could demonstrate to the misinformed the realities of indisputable catastrophic climate change, and get our large budgets increased. Unfortunately the ‘adjustments and smoothing interpolator’ was away on holiday and the ‘trend line coordinator’ was away at a wedding, so I must apologise that the data shown below is unadjusted and looks nowhere near as pretty and nicely ordered as we have been used to.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/beck_mencken_hadley.jpg
One of our staff is a former actuary and thought she would amuse herself by working systematically through the records back to 1660, to see for herself the alarming warming trend over the centuries-obviously she had seen the Gore film and was wearing the T Shirt emblazoned with the catchy slogan;
“Catastrophic climate change-STOP it NOW! Ask me HOW!”
Living near the coast she thought about the cycle of the tides, and whilst realising that the climate cycle was different- in as much it is however long we want it to be and starts from whatever point necessary to maximise our funding- thought it would be fun to use this idea of a regular cycle.
Consequently she based her calculations on a three score year and ten life span as she worked out the average annual mean temperature enjoyed by ‘British Everyman’ through each year of each decade. This assumed he was born at the start of a decade and died the last year of the decade seventy years later. Of course we urged her to call this mythical person ‘everywoman’ but as a woman was likely to live longer, as an actuary she thought this would only complicate matters, so 70 years it is.
These are her calculations;
Someone born in Britain in 1660 and living to 70- Average annual temp 8.87c
Someone born in 1670 and living to 70 Average annual temp 8.98
1680 9.01
1690 9.05
1700 9.19
1710 9.21
1720 9.17
1730 9.14
1740 9.04
1750 9.03
1760 9.08
1770 9.10
1780 9.07
1790 9.12
1800 9.15
1810 9.13
1820 9.14
1830 9.12
1840 9.10
1850 9.14 (Start of the famously reliable Hadley global temperatures)
1860 9.17
1870 9.21
1880 9.30 Official end of the Little Ice Age
1890 9.39
1900 9.40
1910 9.46
1920 9.497
1930 9.60
1940 9.70 (projected to 2009)
1950 9.76 Extrapolating current trends (our favourite phrase)
1960 9.79 Using advanced modelling techniques to create a robust scenario.
The actuary has a poetic turn of mind and decided to call the people born in the period from 1660 to 1880 as ‘LIA Everyman’ in as much the person lived part or all of their lives during the little ice age. She called those born from 1890 to the present day as ‘UHI Everyman’ She assures me that no adjustments have been made to correct UHI Everyman’s unfair reputation to exaggerate his (or her) temperatures.
It was at this point that the Accountants -who were in auditing our accounts to ensure we were spending our grants wisely- became really interested. They’re at a bit of a loose end as they’re the group who audit the annual EU accounts-they’ve refused to endorse them for 12 years in a row now, and say it’s so easy to spot the fraud that it’s not a full time job anymore! Consequently they hope to get some work with the IPCC as they see them as a rapidly growing enterprise as fond of throwing meaningless and unsubstantiated-some might unkindly say fraudulent –numbers around, as the EU are.
After examination of the data the accountants reluctantly agreed that the temperatures were remarkably consistent, and the increase of a fraction of a degree in mean average temperatures during Everyman’s lifetime over a period of 350 years was so well within natural variability it was difficult to make any useful analogy (other than it was the sort of increase in average warmth that would pass by completely unnoticed if we weren’t looking hard for it). The fractional temperature difference was unlikely to have any effect on Everyman’s choice of clothes, or the day they might attempt to have their first swim of the year in the sea. Wearing approved buoyancy aids of course
The Accountants were particularly intrigued by the fact that the very slight rise in overall temperatures was almost entirely due to the absence of cold winters depressing overall temperatures, rather than hotter summers. At this point the actuary mentioned that warmer winters were good, as statistically, fewer people died.
Someone else mused that the modern temperatures seemed rather too close for comfort to those experienced during the Little Ice Age, and another murmured as to what the temperature variance would show if we did this exercise for the MWP, or the Roman warm period.
I quickly pointed out that it was just a Little Ice age and not the real thing, and that Dr Mann had told us all that the MWP was an outdated concept, and as I had never heard of the Romans they couldn’t exist, and neither could their allegedly warm period. Another Accountant mentioned that if UHI was stripped out, the already tiny increase in temperature since the Little Ice Age would disappear. I reminded them who was paying their bills and to stop that sort of Contrarian talk immediately.
Of course I fired the actuary when she confessed that the almost indistinguishable blue line along the bottom of her original graph represented total man made co2 since 1750. Obviously she was some sort of closet right wing tool of Big Oil out to cause trouble.
I’m undecided whether to turn this report over to our adjustments and smoothing interpolator for remedial work or merely to lose it. Or burn it.
TonyB
Harold Pierce Jr
I had no luck with your link, could you repeat it please. I am particularly interested as I ran a thread once on using fish as a termperature proxy. How sad is that…Having said that the relationship was startling. In our neck of the woods- the southern coast of England -the warm weather proxy were pilchards and intermediate the herring. This is reflected in the records of the fish markets and place names -there is a Pilchard Inn dating to 1386.
If anyone is interested to read this information I will find the plaice I have put it (sorry!)
TonyB
John Wright (00:40:43) :
They have the original logo for the conference which was meant to say that the crisis is canceled, not the conference.
The newer and improved logo (but still “cancelled” instead of “canceled”) is less fancy, you can see it at http://icecap.us/
If a rise of 0.6C over the past century counts as “rapidly warming”, how did people who predict a similar rise over the coming century ever get to be called “denialists”?
Ron de Haan (03:45:09) :
Nice link. AGW is a part of Obama’s value system of market control, green power, re-distribution of wealth, etc. and a clear breakthrough disproving AGW is unlikely because of the chaotic nature of climate science. So AGW will be “in the pipeline” as long as the current political climate continues or until temps continue to trend down over the next four years (but that would be caused by cap-and-trade).
Chris Schoneveld writes (23:59:37) :
“Bob, can you stop putting down Obama (give him a break, at least he reversed Bush’s anti-science policies and other stupidities) …”
Interesting, aren’t they? They do exactly what they say they don’t want others to do, and forget that Bush was for moving away from fossile fuels from the beginning of his presidency. Though there appears to have been a purge of the events from the mainstream news outlets, there are still traces available if you search dilligently.
http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/696.html
So, Bush was pushing the alternative fuels and such all along, but he was just not for curtailing commerce and harming the economy.
Then again, to know that, one would have to listen to the man. That’s not possible where the preconception (in this case, that he is “stupid” and “anti-science”) is allowed to direct one’s actions.
Graduating from a major university and flying a fighter jet don’t seem to me to be indicators of a “stupid” man, or one who is “anti-science”. But the claim that he is indicates to me one who ignores facts that militate against his agenda.
Anthony,
What I deduce from the photo is that climate investigators must have facial hair. Just anecdotal, but does this foreshadow a trend?
REPLY: Yes, but the math behind it is rather hairy. – Anthony
When I look at the CET temperatures from 1659 until the present day I always feel a bit unhappy.
1659 to 1670 are displayed correct to 1C and average correct to 0.01C
1671 to 1698 are displayed correct to 0.5 C and average correct to 0.01C
1699 onwards are displayed to 0.1 C and average correct to 0.01C
I just cannot understand this early accuracy.
Gordon Manley did a fantastic job getting all this data together and his endeavour to produce such a table is remarkable and I take my hat off to him.
The earlier readings were recorded using different “scales”.
One thermometer was 3 feet long with freezing point at 82.2F and a linear scale marked off in inches. The Royal Society thermometer measured freezing equivalent to 88F while others had freezing point at 77.5F
Manley use Fahrenheit approximations for these measurements.
Measurements prior to September 1752 would have been dated using Julian Calender. September 1752 had eleven fewer days which were needed to fall in line with the Julian Calender.
England Central Temperatures used readings and measurements from Edinburgh; yes Edinburgh Scotland. Like most of Europe, Scotland changed to Julian Calendar in 1600, that is 152 years before England. (Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day the fourth of January which was twenty fifth December in England. Confused?)
Now if a reading was made in Edinburgh on say 26th August then that we recorded as a 5th September date. What does that do to the average for August? The temperature for August, or any month for that matter, would have been recorded on different days.
Manley was aware of these problems, he also indicated that the change of calendar gave cooler temperatures.
The link below outlines Gordon Manley’s work.
http://www.rmets.org/pdf/QJ53manley.pdf
The end of the document displays his Fahrenheit CET conversions.
All averages are given to one decimal place.
TonyB,
I reposted the tested and corrected link about climatic cycles and fishing close to the original posting, but here it is:
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf
Queen1, I would look into the major university thing and that jet fighter. There are extenuating circumstances around both events that mark these two things about Bush in a rather unremarkable manner. I would not choose those two items as highlights of his early adult life. They be murky waters.
Overcoming drug and alcohol abuse is, in my mind, no small feat for an overconfident “decider” with anger issues. Regardless of the murky items (re the above), it is his recovery while in the shadow of a truly great father that impresses me. I don’t think he was, is, or will historically be known has having been good presidential material. However, he would have made a damned good Senator. He missed his true calling. Why did he miss it? Because there was a group of people who decided he should run for President and convinced this rather gullible man of lofty abilities he did not have. He should have listened to his own voice. If he had done that, instead of the invasive voices that have surrounded him, the Republican party could very well have had the voice of a leader among them as they tussle with the growing Democratic party.
From 20,000 years ago until the Industrial Revolution there was an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 100ppm yet, ignoring the Ice Age, temperatures were lower at 280ppm than at the 200ppm that the Romans and Greeks saw.
At 270ppm we experienced the Little Ice Age. Even with that much CO2 in the air, along with other greenhouse gases, there still wasn’t enough GHGs to act as a radiative buffer to protect the planet from cooling.
Today we’re at 380ppm (a globally averaged out number as we all know here, it is higher in urban areas) yet we just suffered a very cold and long winter. If GHGs were indeed capable of warming the planet as much as Alarmists say, then their solution of lowering CO2 to less than 280ppm would have been disastrous for us. The winter we just had would have been far colder, would have caused pensioners to suffer, raised energy costs for everyone, killed wildlife, froze plant life, destroyed farm produce, and caused deserts to grow.
When Alarmists are told that it annoys them greatly.
B Kerr
I always take the view they are reasonably correct to a large fraction (and were largely measured properly) and as they are unadjusted for UHI the deficiencies at the start are outweighed by deficiencies at the end. This is hardly scientific, but as good as the ‘global temperatures since 1850’ debate ever gets, or the use of weather stations in obviously suspect locations which compromises temperatures since the start. It is probably worse these days as so much weight is given to their findings.
I have the paper somewhere where Manley gave his reasons for the adjustments he did to allow for the Julian calendar. I often think the problem is not with having enough information to marshall arguments but knowing where it has been put 🙂
The thing that worries me more is that Callendar selected his very small data base that 1850 temperratures are based on (and the AGW hypotheses) and Manley appeared to have a hand in rejecting some and including others-and we don’t know why. Callendars extensive archives are very instructive -have you read them?
I don’t know if Manley has anything similar, as there appears to be much of interest hidden away that could influence what is currently being promoted as factual these days.
Tonyb
CO2 = tax (which will increase tax for all income brackets)
tax = funding for social programs
more programs = larger government
larger government = left wing global warming movment payouts
nothing less, nothing more.
The Canadian mouth piece for alarmism The Globe and Mail, national newspaper part of the media empire Thomson Reuters CTV Globemedia doesn’t report about the Heartland Conference in New York but offers yet another alarmist headline from Copenhagen about models projecting bigger than IPCC predicted sea level rise! Meanwhile waterfront property taxes are not going down…
Pamela,
isn’t that interesting, that there is another man with some sort of father issues chosen for POTUS? I didn’t have good feelings about Bush Jr. because of this and I’m not very happy with what I’ve read about Obama’s issues.