Normally I do this on Sunday or Monday, but this has been an extraordinary week in many ways.
This QOTW comes from an unexpected and surprising source. When I read it, I realized that it describes what we witnessed today on the floor of the House of Representatives.
“When the strategic interest of the nation and the world is so clear, can a few gluttons with a few bucks really drive our policy? Does this great country not have better leadership than that?”
Guess who said it? Don’t be tempted to click through right away, think about it a bit.
Who said it?
NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, in a personal essay written on the evening of June 25th.
Dr. Hansen’s latest has seen little notice due to the intense media coverage of the deaths of celebrities followed by the Waxman Markey bill in the house today.
He may not have intended those words to be relevant to today’s situation, as it was written in the context of coal in West Virginia. However, they seem prescient now.
Read his latest missive here (PDF).
Looking at his essay written the evening before, ( Thursday at 4:55PM EST, I checked the document properties) I wonder if Dr. Hansen even thought about today’s vote at all?
Here’s a man writing about himself, the day before “historic” climate legislation, much of it due to what he started in an address to congress on June 23rd, 1988, and all he thinks about is coal in West Virginia and describing his experience there?
Odd.
Back to science tomorrow. – Anthony
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John H (21:43:30)
Don’t forget…all the complaining he’ll do as a result of the increase in taxes that’ll follow this “historic” legislation. I’d love to read those journal entries.
Christopher Monckton has some very choices phrases about the whole shebang, this is before the vote…
“The White House weather forecast is not the last word on climate: it marks
the last stand of the ‘global warming’ profiteers, and the last gasp of the
scientific-technological elite.”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/twisted_science_crooked_policy.html
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the general population were even aware that a vote was taking place. Or what the stakes and consequences of passage will likely be . I suspect it is less than 20% .
Folks, this was only a battle in the war. The next battle is in the Senate — which is much more conservative than the House.
It’s not too early to fire a warning shot across the bow of your two Senators. Plenty of Democrat House members put a thumb in the eye of Pelosi today. If the same number of Senators do the same thing, this bill can be filibustered to death.
Write/call/email your Senators: click. They want their jobs more than anything else in the world. And they are not as easily pushed around by their Party leadership. Emails, calls and letters are essential to getting this terrible bill stopped.
A few clicks on the link [make sure you identify yourself as the Senator’s constituent] helps immensely. It really takes no time at all, and you will have the satisfaction of knowing you made a difference. Senators fear and loathe their electorate. But they keep careful score. So send them a missive. Tell them to represent you, not their Party line. They crave your vote. Make them earn it.
This was one battle in the war. That’s all. The Gorebots haven’t won the war — and they’ve expended too much political capital in the House fight. They’re exhausted, while we’re just pissed off and ready for the next round. So, once more into the breach. This war is far from over.
Gotta love Hansen. Well I woke up today in a determined and bitter mood, I wrote a little opinion piece called ‘CO2 the Currency of Corruption’ this morning which I’d like to take the time to advertise.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/co2-currency-of-corruption/
None of this is ok and it has very little to do with the environment. I like Smokey’s message – once more into the breach. We must not loose this war.
“Jimmy Haigh (23:56:30) :
ohioholic (22:32:09) :
Rats, I thought for sure my ‘Good Job’ in Chinese would get me up here.
I worked in China for a while. I asked for a Tsin Dao beer in a bar one day and the barmaid gave me a pair of scissors. (Apparently the word for scissors is also tsin dao. I used the wrong tones.)”
Indeed. Language, and meaning. Ask my mate what “sap caow” (SP? Who knows, but that’s phonetic, ok) means. Either 19, or something else to do with hand movements and a particular part of the male anatomy.
BTW, my mate stared in a film with Bruce Willis, “The Fith Element”. He is the Chinese looking soldier who visits “Korben Dallas” in his apartment, name Hon Ping. Used to serve me chinese take-away (Actually used to see him cook it too), at the local across the road from the pub called The Monks Brook, in Chandlers Ford, Eastliegh, England.
I thought the quote’s author was Al Gore.
Or Ted Kaczynski.
Hard to tell them apart.
It’s silly season!
BELIEF: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing; an unshakable belief in something without need for proof or evidence; a vaguely held notion.
DennisA (23:04:19) : AT 26.06
Senator Fielding has both a degree in engineering and an MBA. He paid for his visit to the USA with his own funds. He keeps asking the same question: If global CO2 is rising, why is the global temperature not rising?
He complains that people rephrase his question and provide answers to questions that they pose in return. He has been unable to get and engineer’s understanding of the lack of linkage between CO2 and temperature in the last 15 years.
After return from the USA, he met with Australian politicians, the Australian Chief Scientist and some dedicated AGW people. They were unwiling to address his question and unable to answer it. They tried a technique of deflection, saying that sea temperatures were the main indicator of CO2 effects, but he was not persuaded by the data shown.
The politicians and “experts” who assembled to convince him were somewhat shocked by the strength of his arguments and did not seem to realise that advanced thought had gone into the subject by other highly qualified scientists. They had eyes only for their mirror image scientists.
Which leads me to state in conclusion about the USA that it is not “science” which has given a bad name to the USA political process via the House of reps. Old school scientist are full of dismay that the smart alec approach of the climate scientists will be taken as “science at work”. We do not. We feel it is bad science at work and some rather dirty laundry purporting to be science has been hung in public gaze.
Stupid question, but… Do have the ability to contact our senators? Would be possible to keep them on the phone and opening letters and E-mails through the Idependence Day Holiday? If so, I will risk having a high overseas long distance bill to do just that.
Here’s another quote. It’s from Dr. David Evans’ description of a meeting twixt Australian Senators Wong and Fielding. Evans is a former scientist and alarmist whose research has made him change his mind and he is now a sceptic/denier.
“Remember, a trial without a defense is a sham, business without competition is a monopoly, science without debate is propaganda, and government without an opposition is usually a disaster. Who is paid to audit the IPCC? No one, it’s just a few unpaid bloggers.”
I don’t know if it’s his original quote or if he’s quoting someone else but it’s a keeper. Keep up the good fight everyone!
danbo (23:59:21) :
… When science is abused and used as a cloak for a money and power grab, it’s hard to respect it.
I still respect science, that is why I am here learning from you folks. I just don’t respect people who use science to further their own power.
Neven (03:46:22) :
… I find it amazing to see how much righteous indignation the AGW-hoax can produce, whereas the WMD-hoax that is costing the US trillions of dollars and thousands of lives NOW can just continue and continue and continue.
Saddam Hussein was paying the families of suicide bombers 25 thousand dollars for every attack against Israelis. After 9/11, I did not want to wait until a second suicide attack to find Saddam was paying 250 thousand dollars for every attack against America.
WMD-hoax didn’t gas the Kurds, actual WMD’s did. Where were the WMD ‘s when allied troops went in? Maybe the Iranians and Kurds had inhaled all of the WMD ‘s?
That is a truly odd report. Especially odd from a supposed man of letters. It contains none of the intellectualism typical of someone learned and wise in their discipline. Even when such things are written down to a common education level (grade 8 usually) for mass consumption, there usually remains traces of the writer’s intellectualism.
What does come through loud and clear, is that it is the opinion of someone who’s mind is made up without any regard to facts. Cognitive dissonance – its true because he believes it to be true, not because it is. Hansen is touted as an authority, but perhaps he really is just a hack. Like so many others in government service, perhaps he rose to his level through force of tenure rather than accomplishment. He stated his beliefs publicly right out of grad school. There’s little evidence that he’s subjected any of his beliefs to true critical analysis. These notes contain the same smugness apparent in published early bios. The lights may be on, but there’s clearly nobody home. Truly bizarre.
We are living in a Lysenkoist era. It is not merely climatology that is corrupted, but also many other “sciences.” Physics has the ITER project, which is one of the greatest scientific (and criminal) frauds of all time. The so-called “social sciences” are utterly depraved and politicized. And the list goes on …
Unfortunately Steve Fielding is seen as a bit of a nutter in Australia. He was elected with only a couple percentage points of total vote – and got through on preferences (a very odd system of Aussie voting). While it is true that a growing number of people are sceptical of AGW the vast majority of voters and politicians on both sides and the middle are certain of the fact and eventually the bill will be passed, even if it is for the only for the votes that politicians crave.
Anthony,
Off topic, but I got some info on the weather station at Augusta, Montana and can’t seem to get through to you with it. I have registered on the project site but have had no contact. Can you help?
Indeed, people are throwing around the idea that we got the gov’t we deserve because we “elected” them. When the people are constantly lied to, it is not possible for them to make an informed decision about how they should vote. The democratic election process has been destroyed, and we are no longer allowed a democratic process. We didn’t choose this.
Andrew
At least Dr. Hansen advocates building nuclear power plants. The trouble is that all his little green friends were anti-nuclear long before anyone anyone heard of Global Warming.
Meanwhile scientists at GE say they can convert existing coal plants to nuclear power.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/06/23/nuclear-power-going-fast/
I think you guys, for the most part, have got it dead wrong. Yes we do not have an AGW problem. However we do have a major impending energy problem, with peak oil for the world probably already past, peak NG for North America possibly already past, and peak coal only 3 to 4 decades away. Almost everything done to curb CO2 also helps with using energy more effectively and efficiently, or supports development of fossil fuel alternatives. Cap and trade will not wreck the economy. The same dire predictions were made before the Clean Air Act was passed back about 1992, and the Cassandras” predictions of cost were high by more than factor 10. USA competitiveness was not damaged, and major societal benefits were realized. The same will happen now, and for sure, addressing energy efficiency will create a lot of jobs, which are much needed.
The original economists’ models predicting ruin from addressing CO2 were run back about 1993, and were rerun and used to address Congressional committees in 1998. The models had two underlying fundamental assumptions that were just wrong. The primary asumption was that anything that could be done efficiency-wise was already being done, and the second was that any economic alternatives for fossil fuels were already being implemented, so that the only things that could be done to reduce CO2 were to reduce economic activity, or move to uneconomic alternatives.
So now we are starting to do the right things, even if for the wrong reason. Any reason that gets things moving in the right direction is good by me. Failing to address paek energy will really have dire economic consequences. Murray
Pat (05:48:26) :
Jimmy Haigh (23:56:30) :
ohioholic (22:32:09) :
Indeed. Language, and meaning. Ask my mate what “sap caow” (SP? Who knows, but that’s phonetic, ok) means. Either 19, or something else to do with hand movements and a particular part of the male anatomy.
Language indeed. I live in Thailand these days and speak a little of the language. I was in a restaurant in Bangkok once and insead of asking, in Thai, “Where can I was my hands” I actually asked “Where can I wash my pork?”
I’m sorry, I still can’t like James Hansen. I can only imagine what his line of reasoning would be to make him conclude this.
Neven,
Consider that the purveyers of AGW are also the same bunch who brought us “Bush Lied”.
The Iraq War was an inevitability. If Gore had been President, the Iraq war would have still happened — and we would already be eight years into Cap and Trade.
Seems to me Jim is looking for an exit strategy from the co2 warming error. By aligning himself with anti pollution campaigners he can gradually de-emphasise the unsupportable sensitivity equation and shift to the undesirable elements of emissions from coal burning, and the environmental issues around it’s production.
It’s a displacement activity for him.
Slightly off topic, but the UK Met Office is losing about $7 million in funding. I have a link here from The Register. The Register is an IT site with a very British sense of humour in their articles. Have a look at the comments as well.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/26/hadley_centre_for_climate_change_budget_cut_mod_funding/
Quote:
“A loss of £4.3m ($7m) funding will hit the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, according to the science journal Nature. The research institute provides the government with bleeding-edge computer models indicating which parts of the UK should stockpile sunscreen and floaties for the coming Thermageddon.”
“Power to the People” they cried.
We thought they meant us and we gave them Power.
“Cut the Power to the People”
I think they mean us this time.
Why are we still cheering?