Globaloney Warming? - Czech Mate

Another head of state with something between his ears besides bone.

Czech president Vaclav Klaus on the UN report (link may not hold - Drudge)

Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•

Luboš Motl did the translation and has a very interesting piece on Vaclav Klaus as well as much more of the interview than is available via Drudge. The song accompanying his take is hilarious.

Reading for a chilly Sunday

Below are links to a series of articles from the National Post concerning global warming, the science and politics thereof. (ht: John A at Climate Audit).

Statistics needed The Deniers -- Part I

Warming is real - and has benefits The Deniers -- Part II

The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science The Deniers -- Part III

Polar scientists on thin ice The Deniers -- Part IV

The original denier: into the cold The Deniers -- Part V

The sun moves climate change The Deniers -- Part VI

Will the sun cool us? The Deniers -- Part VII

The limits of predictability The Deniers -- Part VIII

Look to Mars for the truth on global warming The Deniers -- Part IX

Limited role for C02 The Deniers -- Part X

Wars and Rumors of Wars

As He sat on The Mount Of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the close of the age?" And Jesus answered them, "Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in My Name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs." (Matthew 24:3-8 RSV)

This is not a bible lesson. It is just a lesson in how some things never change.

The Guardian is alarmed right now. Their fear is that Bush and his cabal of neocons will drag a resistant American Pentagon, Congress, State Department and populace into war with Iran. Why?..... because he has never forgiven the mullahs for 1979. Really, these people can not be this stupid.

An excerpt from Big Lizards:

Where the Guardian article gets really peculiar is when the journalists try to psychoanalyze President Bush, presumably hoping to tap into the traditional leftist meme that Republican "warmongers" are mentally disturbed as well as stupid:

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

In fact, President Bush is of the generation that recognizes that Iran declared war on us in 1979 -- and they have been fighting that war as strongly as they can for the last 28 years. They certainly struck a horrific blow against us in Beirut in 1983, when they killed 241 American Marines, 58 French paratroopers, a Lebanese custodian, and the wife and four children of a Lebanese janitor (the infamous Beirut barracks terrorist bombing).

Iran's current bloody-handed actions in Iraq are further proof that they consider themselves at war against us, even if we haven't yet accepted that we are at war against them:

* Sending arms and explosives to the anti-democratic forces, both Shia and Sunni;

* Giving advanced military training to Shiite terrorists, in order to attack Americans and Iraqi government forces;

* Supporting Muqtada Sadr during the period he was actually fighting against American troops in Najaf and in Sadr City;

* Sending actual members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards into Iraq (Qods Force) to launch direct attacks on American and coalition forces;

* And green-lighting Hezbollah to attack our ally Israel, unprovoked, to draw them into a war in Lebanon.

Iran has been threatening us with horrific retaliation if we do attack; but realistically, there is little they can do. Their most effective response would be to use mines to try to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a huge percentage of the world's oil passes; but that is precisely what the "Herman Option" is designed to prevent. And in fact, two British minesweeping ships have already been dispatched to the Gulf, along with American submarines.

The Guardian article concludes on what must, for them, be a very sober note:

If it does come to war, [Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI] said Iran would retaliate, but that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock," he said.

Unlike the guardians of the Left -- including the Guardian -- I don't believe that "counter-shock" is going to be anywhere near as bad as we have suffered in Iraq, for the simple reason that we will not invade Iran; that is, we will not send troops to occupy the country and force regime change, as we did in Iraq. That part would be up to the Iranian people themselves, who by all accounts detest the ruling mullahs and hate how they are trying to push modern Persia back into the 7th century.

There is a difference between striking Iran's nuclear sites and/or gas refineries vs. invading that country. I think Americans might well support the former, but I doubt very much if they want to do the latter.

Words!

Words! Words! I'm so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do?

My Fair Lady, lyrics from Show Me

Charles Krauthammer has a good oped in the Washington Post on what passes for debate on Iraq in the halls of the Senate.

I don't deny that this is a fair application of "civil war" to the current situation. What I note with dismay, however, is how important -- and absurdly irrelevant -- the application of certain loaded words to the situation has become.

What is striking is how much of the debate in Washington about Iraq has to do not with the war but with the words. Who owns them, who deploys them, who uses them as a bludgeon. NBC's announcement in November that it would henceforth use the term civil war -- a statement far more political than analytical, invoking the same fake authority with which the networks regally "declare" election winners (e.g., Florida to Al Gore, Nov. 7, 2000) -- set the tone of definitional self-importance.

Words. We had weeks of debates in the Senate about Iraq. They eventually went nowhere, being shut down (temporarily) by partisan procedural disputes. But they were going nowhere anyway. The debates were not about real fighting in a real place. They were about how the various senators would position themselves in relation to that real fighting in that real place. At issue? With what tone and nuance and addenda to express disapproval of a troop surge that the president was going to order anyway.

When it came to doing something serious about the surge, the Senate ducked. It unanimously (81-0) approved sending Gen. David H. Petraeus to Baghdad to do the surge -- precisely what a majority of the senators said they did not want done.

If you really oppose the surge, how can you not oppose the appointment of the man whose very mission is to carry it out? Yet not one senator did so. Instead, they spent days fine-tuning the wording of a nonbinding -- i.e., entirely toothless -- expression of disapproval.


Read the whole thing. It won't take long.

Unsettling

Bizarre. Orwellian. Obscene. all of the above.

Via Little Green Footballs.

Do you like a good story?

If you do read this book, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I just finished it and I can not remember the last time I was so completely engrossed in a story.

Anita Diamont's Red Tent was good and Jodi Picoult is always good with books like The Tenth Circle, but this book by Diane Setterfield is in a class by itself.

The author has managed to write a completely satisfying story. The main characters, a reclusive and mysterious writer named Vida Winter and her biographer the bookish but haunted Margaret Lea come together in an isolated estate in the Moors to tell a story of secrets and ghosts and lost chances and love and most of all siblings. Read it. You will not be disappointed.

The God's honest truth

From John at powerline :

The current crop of candidates is not perfect; what crop ever was? But they are strong leaders of extraordinary ability. And Giuliani, McCain and Romney are united on the key issue of our time, victory in the war against Islamic extremism. If a purer conservative wants to get into the race, fine, and I might well back him. (And, no, I'm not talking about Mike Huckabee or Sam Brownback.) But conservatives need to get over any fantasies they may harbor about the Gingrich administration that never will be and the Reagan administration that never was, and get on with the business of electing the best possible--and I do mean "possible"--candidate in 2008.

Why is this so hard for some folks to understand?

Yahoo! Pipes

The tech world is full of innovations, nearly every single day. It's impossible to even keep up, let alone move forward. Though it seems like a pain sometimes, truth be told it's a blessing to live in an age when such progress is a daily occurrence.

Sometimes a novelty stands out among the daily inventions, a novelty which appears to be seminal. So it seems to me is the new Yahoo! system they call "Pipes". It's the first truly new thing I can remember seeing on the Internet in a couple of years (say after the introduction of the social AJAX sites like Digg). Pipes is a mechanism by which you the user can create an internet application all of your own—by requiring little more on your part than dragging and dropping. It's a reference to pipes in Unix, for all you Unix programmers, but now refers to internet processes rather than shell utilities. There's a good explanation here and here. Check it out.

Is Wells getting this? We didn't.

If the big story going around is Wilson and his trip to Niger and somebody tells you 'his wife was involved in the trip just ask the CIA' how would you interpret that?

His wife is involved in sending him and the CIA knows the story?

You might not get the connection that the wife herself is CIA.

She's involved somehow but you don't know what that means.

The above was information given to David Gregory by Ari Fleischer, according to Ari's testimony. Russert testified that what his reporters know, he knows, because they share information with him. So.....? Gregory tells Andrea and Tim that administration sources say the wife is involved somehow. But how?

Andrea Mitchell may be telling the truth that 'she did not know Wilson's wife was CIA'.
Russert may be telling the truth that he did not know Wilson's wife was CIA.
They both may be telling the truth that they did not know that Valery Plame was Wilson's wife.

But they all knew that Wilson's wife had some connection to the trip set up by the CIA wherein Wilson went to Niger. They were trying to figure it out. Mitchell is known to have spoken with Harlow at CIA. Did she ask about Mrs. Wilson and got nowhere?

Andrea did not know Wilson's wife's name as anything other than Mrs. Wilson (or possibly, Valery Wilson). She did not know to ask about Valery Plame. Andrea does not use Google all that much it seems.

(It's also possible that Andrea actually knew Valery Plame, CIA, from other work she had done over the years but didn't know Valery Plame was Wilson's wife. This was pointed out by MaidMarion, a commenter at JOM. And, boy, wouldn't that be a shocker to find out when reading Novak's article!)

So where does Wells think he's going by wanting Andrea to testify and wanting to show her on-air statement about some reporters knowing about the wife's CIA connection which she later retracted? Does he think he can create doubt in the jury about the state of their (Gregory, Mitchell, Russert) knowledge by bringing up Ari's testimony and speculating that Gregory told them that Wilson's wife was CIA?

They can ALL deny it. They can ALL be testifying truthfully. But they ain't going to volunteer anything more. And that won't be any help to Libby.

But Russert had sufficient knowledge to bring up something to Libby, to ask him about it. Ask Libby the question they all wanted answered.

Do you know anything about what my reporters are telling me about Wilson's wife's involvement in his CIA trip?

Libby assumes Russert knows wifey is CIA.

And we ALL assume Russert has to know wifey is CIA in order to make such a statement to Libby.

And, worst of all, Russert assumes he himself has to have known that Wilson's wife was CIA in order to say anything about it to Libby at all! So, to him, it's 'impossible' to have done so!

Has Wells figured this out?!?!?!

The Libby Case: The Government Rests

During Fitzgerald's investigation, Lewis Libby submitted to approximately ten hours of Government questioning, nearly nine of which were by a very skilled prosecutor without the protection of defense counsel under oath in front of a Grand Jury.

From that testimony, three snippets of less than three minutes total are now the subject of intense scrutiny.

Three witnesses testified that their versions of the events described by Libby in those snippets are somewhat different than Libby's version.

To me, the evidence is clear about this:

The memories of the three witnesses main prosecution witnesses, two of whom were highly respected journalists, one of whom was less experienced, were selective at best.

It just so happened that what they selectively remembered differed somewhat from what Libby testified to respecting the events described in the snippets.

As Church Lady used to say, "How Conveeeeeeeeenient" for the Prosecution.

My take is that the government's evidence is somewhat thin to go to the jury.

But it is probably not an abuse of discretion for Judge Walton to overrule a Rule 29 motion, and let it go forward. He could go either way, IMO.

I have, however, not done any research on the issue, and have not read the cases cited in the parties' briefs. So I don't have any idea how I would rule on such a motion.

Iowahawk has the emails

You have got to go read Iowahawk's collection of "emails" to Senator Edwards from the lefty blogger Marcotte.

The emails are written in a progression beginning with getting the job and ending with...you know, getting canned. Here is one of them:

To: Senator John Edwards
From: Amanda Marcotte
Re: Campaign Ideas

Dear Senator Edwards:

I had a couple of ideas for getting the campaign off to a fucking roaring start. I ran some numbers and discovered that (1) Orange County North Carolina has a shocking lack of women's reproductive health centers, and (2) your new home there has 28,000 square feet of space. What better way to address community health needs -- and appeal to the women's vote -- than by installing an abortion clinic inside your own house? It would only take up about 500 square feet total (not counting the exterior biohazard dumpster), and you appear to have a fucking awesome space between the indoor basketball court and reflective koi pond.

I also discovered that North Carolina is home to NASCAR, which as you know is the official sport of toothless Southern white supremecist racists. I think would make fucking great campaign street theater to drive over to one of the local fucking dickwad reich wing repugnican NASCAR garages and piss all over their goddamn earth-destroying Klan-mobiles. On the way there, it probably wouldn't fucking kill you to drop in at the Durham courthouse to support District Attorney Nifong in his brave battle to bring the white rapist Duke lacrosse team to justice.

To help organize the local campaign swing, I've lined up a couple of camera crews and programmed directions into the GPS of your Benz (the silver one).

On To The White House!
Amanda

PS - I cross-posted my thoughts at the official campaign site, I will let you know about voter feedback.

Brilliant. H/T Big Lizards

Russert and Libby could both be wrong - and both right

Clarice's American Thinker article on Russert's very very hot seat problem can be found here. There you will get the juicy details of Russert's memory problem and a surprise issue that had Fitz slumping in his chair, studying the jury for their reaction (as reported by Kristinn at FR H/T Carol in JOM comments.)

As for the matter of whether Russert said xxxxx to Libby? I'm STILL not sure what is meant by the xxxxx. The indictment indicates 'Wilson's wife' rather than 'Valery Plame' and 'sending on trip' is in there. Russert is convinced he didn't know her name or her position until he read Novak's article. Fitz, I think, got him to say that she wasn't discussed at all. In fact, Russert is reported to have testified 'Impossible' in regards to his telling Libby anything. Wells will make Russert eat that word tomorrow, I'm sure. Part of it is in crumbs already.

Wells already hinted at where he will go when he asked Russert if he reasoned backwards to reach the conclusion that he told Libby nufink. And that is the process that was used in a televised confab with Tim Russert, Andrea Mitchell, and David Gregory on CNBC where they discussed what they would have done if they had had the information before the Novak article. I'm wondering if a transcript of that confab (which I can't find right now) will show up in the trial.

I think it's very possible that Russert knew that Wilson's wife was CIA. He didn't know her name. Didn't know her position. Didn't know she was involved in sending hubby to Niger. In fact I think the 'sending' part was the big surprise to them on reading Novak's article...not the fact she was CIA.

Andrea says everyone sniffing around about this knew Wilson's wife was CIA (she later retracted) and Ari Fleischer testified that he leaked that information to David Gregory--which doesn't seem to have been explored. Mitchell and Gregory work for Russert. If they knew, he knew.

So we have Libby claiming Russert told him that Wilson's wife was CIA and sent him on the mission.

We have Russert who probably knew Wilson's wife was CIA and that's all he knew at that time.

So how could they be both wrong and both right?

Russert says something like:

On the ambassador thing? My reporters are saying Wilson's wife is CIA and CIA sent Wilson to Niger, not Cheney. Heard anything about that?

Because Libby knows a bit more, Libby HEARS:

On the ambassador thing? My reporters are saying Wilson's wife is CIA and sent Wilson to Niger, not Cheney. Heard anything about that?

Russert's wrong about saying nothing and Libby's wrong about what Russert said. Russert's right that he didn't know the wife sent hubby and didn't tell Libby that and Libby's right that Russert said reporter's are talking about Wilson's wife.

I think Libby was surprised to hear about the reporters and it took him back and he did his own conflating about the sending. Heaven knows there's been enough conflation going around, let's let Libby get some benefit from it too.

It didn't have to go exactly like that, but you get the idea. And since the next day Rove supposedly told Libby that Novak told him about Wilson's wife bon voyaging hubby, it was reinforced in Libby's mind that reporters knew it and were passing it around.

Whaddya think?

Liquid Polyhedra

When a vertical water jet strikes a circular horizontal impactor, the water is deflected into a horizontal sheet. At sufficiently high speeds, the flow results in a circular water sheet, whose radius is set by a balance between inertial and curvature forces. At lower speeds, the sheet sags significantly under the influence of gravity, and may close, giving rise to a water bell....
The circular fluid sheets are marked by an axisymmetry-breaking instability that results in polygonal structures

Faux JOM Libby Open Thread

In case the innertubes are break again.

Tim Russert Thread

We are waiting for Tim Russert to take center stage at the Libby trial.

I did a long preview last week, but here is an additional two cents: Russert can lose this case for Fitzgerald but he can't win it. Why? Part of the excitement about Russert's appearance is that Russert's previous testimony *MAY* have been deliberately ambiguous. From the NBC press release:

Mr. Russert told the Special Prosecutor that, at the time of that conversation, he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a CIA operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby. Mr. Russert said that he first learned Ms. Plame's name and her role at the CIA when he read a column written by Robert Novak later that month.

Obviously, Mr. Russert could have *HYPOTHETICALLY* said to Libby "All the reporters know that Wilson's wife is at the CIA and sent him on this trip" without being aware of her name or that she was an "operative".

If Russert rocks the court with the news that, although he did not discuss Valerie Plame with Libby he may have said something about Joe Wilson's wife, well, Special Counsel Fitzgerald may be laughed out of the courtroom and jurors will be left wondering about the credibility of other journalists, specifically Matt Cooper and Judy Miller.

HOWEVER! Whether Russert told Libby about Ms. Plame on July 10/11 or not, that can't explain how Libby discussed her with Ari Fleischer on July 7 and with Judy Miller on July 8. So even if Russert does not torpedo Fitzgerald, his testimony won't change the basic conundrum facing the jury - with or without Russert it is already clear that either some parts of Libby's story defy conventional space-time or that Libby and/or other witnesses are confused.

Consequently, the jury must decide whether this is a case of honest confusion all around, or that Libby deliberately invented this story to throw investigators off the trail (of what, the defense will ask? Fitzgerald is straining to come up with a motive since it is far from obvious that "the truth" would have put Libby in any legal jeopardy).

So however credible Russert may be, he can't resolve the question of whether Fleischer is confused, Miller is making stuff up, or Libby has conflated a chat with Russert on July 10 with some other talk with some other person who mentioned Wilson's wife on, for example, July 6. That is a puzzle the jury will have to sort through, subject to reasonable doubt.

DEUS EX MACHINA: Suppose Libby can produce a surprise witness who says, essentially, he called Libby at home on Sunday July 6 (missing the White House phone logs), asked him about Joe Wilson's appearance on Russert's show - Russert, Russert, RUSSERT! - and mentioned to Libby that Andrea Mitchell was embarrassing herself with a kid glove interview of Joe Wilson since all the reporters knew his wife was with the CIA.

Does that help Libby walk? Some of the charges include that Libby did not specifically cite his tips to Miller and Cooper as reporter gossip, so those charges would still be in play.

And can the Libby team surprise us that way? I ask because two names on the list of *POSSIBLE* witnesses have no obvious connection to the case, and I am wondering whether Fitzgerald would have had a chance to depose them or review their depositions, or whatever.

Look, this is far-fetched, but I'd rather kick it around now than be surprised later.

MORE: Our guy Jeff has thoughts at The American Prospect. I feel obliged to rise to this bait:

However, there is no question that if Russert were to get up on the stand and admit that he did indeed tell Libby, it would be damaging for the prosecution. That has long been a fantasy of some right-wing observers of the case. Nothing would please them better than to discover that the MSM did it, and lied about it.

Nothing would please me better? C'mon, world peace, a world free from disease, even the Yankees back in the Series where they belong would all put a bigger smile on my face. However, a Russert meltdown would absolutley make my day and prolng my insufferability by several more.

Is the Korean War over?

I really doubt it.

Captains Quarters has a post up on what some might call interesting developments.

American nuclear expert David Albright, a former UN inspector on the North Korean impasse, has told the AP that he believes North Korea is ready to shut down its nuclear program for an end to the Korean War and "massive" energy shipments. Pyongyang will also insist on an end to the sanctions that shut down the Macau money-laundering operation connected to its counterfeiting ring:

Chief North Korean disarmament negotiator Kim Kye Gwan told Albright and Joel Wit, a former State Department official, that nothing would happen until the U.S. agreed to the construction of light-water reactors that Washington promised North Korea under a 1994 deal to freeze Pyongyang's nuclear program.

That deal, which also included an annual supply of half a million tons of heavy fuel oil until the reactors were built, was scrapped in 2002 when North Korea admitted it had restarted its atomic program.

Albright said the North emphasized that it now wanted either electricity shipments or more heavy fuel oil than was promised in the 1994 deal.

Albright said North Korean officials "acted as if it was going to be settled. They were pretty optimistic."

read it all.

Faux JOM Libby Open Thread

TypePad seems to have crashed again.

Tom's Top Post

Libby's defense team has posted their theory of his defense, some version of which ought to be included in the final jury instruction (Jeralyn Merritt explains this).

The .pdf is only two pages but the very short version is, Libby forgot but the errors were innocent and the information was trivial.

No surprise, but... I question this:

Mr. Libby further contends that when the investigation began he was confident that... he had not disclosed classified information about Mr. Wilson or his wife to any other reporters.

Really? I am confident Libby could argue that there is no evidence that he was aware that Ms. Wilson's status was classified at the time he disclosed it. However, is he really going to convince the court that as of October 2003 he was "confident" that Ms. Plame's status was not classified? Addington (OVP Counsel), Schmall (CIA briefer) and some newspaper articles Libby marked up all suggest that he was aware of such a possibility.

Statistics Needed

JB has asked that we post this interesting article on the Global warming debate.

In the global warming debate, there are essentially two broad camps. One believes that the science is settled, that global warming is serious and man-made, and that urgent action must be taken to mitigate or prevent a future calamity. The other believes that the science is far from settled, that precious little is known about global warming or its likely effects, and that prudence dictates more research and caution before intervening massively in the economy.

The "science is settled" camp, much the larger of the two, includes many eminent scientists with impressive credentials. But just who are the global warming skeptics who question the studies from the great majority of climate scientists and what are their motives?


Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X

Many in the "science is settled" camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy -- that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over.

In this, the first of a series, I examine The Deniers, starting with Edward Wegman. Dr. Wegman is a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Few statisticians in the world have CVs to rival his (excerpts appear nearby).

Wegman became involved in the global-warming debate after the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives asked him to assess one of the hottest debates in the global-warming controversy: the statistical validity of work by Michael Mann. You may not have heard of Mann or read Mann's study but you have often heard its famous conclusion: that the temperature increases that we have been experiencing are "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium. You may have also heard of Mann's hockey-stick shaped graph, which showed relatively stable temperatures over most of the last millennium (the hockey stick's long handle), followed by a sharp increase (the hockey stick's blade) this century.

Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change, the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming. But Mann's work also had its critics, particularly two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who published peer-reviewed critiques of their own.

Wegman accepted the energy and commerce committee's assignment, and agreed to assess the Mann controversy pro bono. He conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, who also agreed to work pro bono. Wegman also consulted outside statisticians, including the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.

"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.

Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.

read it all.

Name that Thing

Libby Lives

But I think the MSM reputation has been severely tarnished....I actually found a blond who might be a lefty who agrees with me. ::grin:: Her name is Victoria. Victoria 4.

(just a quickie--no work on lighting or surfaces. Click on image for better view.)

Upon Further Reflection....

(via Brothers Judd)

"I have to say [cuz I'm runnin'] -- I've changed my mind about partial birth abortion. Until very recently, I'd never actually seen the procedure. I watched a video of one, and it’s horrific. A doctor friend of mine explained in a dispassionate, clinical way how it works -- how the baby's brain is sucked out of its head. It changed my whole view of it. I don't know anyone who wouldn't be changed by that. If people don't like that, sorry."

Rudy: I Would Appoint (Judges Like) Scalia, Alito and Roberts
[You sure as hell will if you want to be reelected.]

"On the Federal judiciary I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am. I'm a lawyer. I've argued cases in the Supreme Court. I've argued cases in the Court of Appeals in different parts of the country. I have a very, very strong view that for this country to work, for our freedoms to be protected, judges have to interpret not invent the Constitution. Otherwise you end up, when judges invent the constitution, with your liberties being hurt.

Now, about the little problem that you've had with the Second Amendment - let's try and get that fixed tout sweety, OK Rudy? You have an excellent proven record as an executive, we know that you can lead under pressure, but it would be a big help if you did a little duck hunting with Antonin. Try for a brace of Bicoastal Blues while you're at it.