Global Warming causes......Tornadoes!

More Tornadoes!!

Billy Nye, the science guy, has become Bill Nye, global warming hack.

Here is how he answered to an interview question on CNN:

BILL NYE: The tornadoes very difficult to mathematically connect to climate change, but the rains, the extra warmth in the atmosphere, the extra water vapor in the atmosphere, that’s, those are facts. That’s the real deal. Now, we, we are patriots. We are from the U.S. I am. And you would like the U.S. to be the leader in addressing this problem. We would like to be out in front in trying to deal with whatever it is that’s holding in all this heat and creating all this extra water vapor in the atmosphere. Tornadoes are almost certainly a consequence.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/05/28/bill-nye-science-guy-falsely-claims-not-many-countries-besides-us-hav#ixzz1NyE4g200

Let's decompose what he is saying here:

The tornadoes very difficult to mathematically connect to climate change:  this translates to "there is no evidence of any connections between tornadoes and global warming".  But couched on the passive voice and made to seem like a verbal throw away.  But the truth is clear: there is NO EVIDENCE of a connection. If there was a connection, no matter how tenuous,  he would be waving is about like a warmist Neville Chamberlain.  But he is admitting here that there is ZERO connection.

but the rains, the extra warmth in the atmosphere, the extra water vapor in the atmosphere, that’s, those are facts. :  Um, no. Those are not facts.  Those are the predicted outcomes of global warming that have NOT been shown to be true.  The theory holds these to be true, but the actual climate refuses to cooperate with the theory.  Every prediction made by this theory has been wrong or wildly overstated.  Look back at every chicken little report for the past 30 years.  Not ONE of these predictions has come true.  So if we are not seeing the large and measurable predictions come true, then why should we believe the small non-measurable ones? 

Now, we, we are patriots. We are from the U.S. I am. And you would like the U.S. to be the leader in addressing this problem. We would like to be out in front in trying to deal with whatever it is that’s holding in all this heat and creating all this extra water vapor in the atmosphere.   This blather is all designed to disarm the opponents of global warming.  If you don't agree, you must not love your country!  It is also designed to create distance between the first statement, and the next thing he says, for reasons you will understand shortly..

Tornadoes are almost certainly a consequence:  What?? This is a direct contradiction of what he said in the opening line.  This is a complete lie.  He already said he has no evidence for this.  At all. 

So if we re-state this more plainly, and remove all the blather in the middle, it sounds like this:

"There is no evidence that global warming is connected to tornadoes.  Tornadoes are a result of global warming."

There.  Now that makes more sense!

Fixed that for ya, Bill.

Global Warming causes......More Tornadoes!

Tornadoes!

It did not take long for the global warming crowd to link the tragic tornadoes that have devastated Joplin to the political cause they hold so dear.




http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-29/global-climate-change-freak-storms-are-the-new-normal/full/#

I will spare you reading to whole thing to sum it up thusly:

• Global Warming is causing the severe weather.
• We are all going to die.
• It is all Bush's fault.

The best quote from the article is here:

The Midwest suffered the wettest April in 116 years, forcing the Mississippi to flood thousands of square miles, even as drought-plagued Texas suffered the driest month in a century.


You see?  Global warming causes floods and droughts.  It causes rain! and not rain!

In another whopper, the article notes that there is agreement that climate change is causing everything:

Scientists disagree about whether climate change will bring more intense or frequent tornadoes, but there is wide consensus that the 2 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming of the last century is behind the rise in sea levels, more intense hurricanes, more heat waves, and more droughts and deluges.

Scary!  Except that it ain't true.   Most of the 2 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming came before 1940, ie, before there was any appreciable build up in CO2.   There is also the inconvenient fact that hurricanes are NOT increasing.  Each year for the past 5 years, NOAA has been calling for 'above normal' hurricane activity, and every year they are wrong.

There is no connection between 'global warming' and tornadoes, despite the implications from the media.

Liberal Fantasies - Stop Outsourcing American jobs and punish those who do with higher taxes

The liberal platform I included in an earlier post also includes the following nugget:

Stop Outsourcing American jobs and punish those who do with higher taxes

Let's take a look at what this means.

Stop Outsourcing:  This means using the power of government to prevent people from seeking the lowest cost solution to problems.  This is a form of protectionism.  History shows that protectionism is a disaster, creating more problems that it solves, and ultimately destroying that which it was intended to protect. And how would you enforce this, anyway? 

Kraft, an American company that operates globally, needs to hire more people for a call center to take complaints.  Their customers are all over the world, and Kraft wants to have the lowest cost solution.  So it hires someone in India.  Is that 'outsourcing'?  What if the new hire only takes calls from people in other countries?  Is it still outsourcing? 

This is non-objective law that would be subject to political interpretation.  It would give the government unprecedented power to question EVERY business decision a company makes.  This would require a massive police state and centrally planned economy to enforce.  Thus, it would destroy all jobs, including the ones that are to be protected from'outsourcing'.

American Jobs:  There is no such thing as an "American Job".  There are only jobs.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Just because someone has a job in the US, it does not belong to the US. The American People do not own this job.  It is a private contract between two individuals. 

Again, we get to the problem of enforcement.  What if a Swiss bank hires a Japanese citizen to do Latin American marketing and their offices are based in Miami.  Is this an 'American' job?  What if an American company hires a Frenchman to run the office in Bangalore.  American job?

This is nonsense that would be impossible to enforce under the law. It would again be nothing more than a way for rent-seeking politicians to hold power over the productive people.

punish those who do with higher taxes:  So somehow we are going to arrive at a non-objective definition of outsourcing, and a non-objective definition of 'American Job', then arbitrarily punish people who violate this code by making them pay more money to the government. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Given that politicians want more power and money, we can safely assume that they will want every company paying taxes at the higher rate.  Therefore there will be powerful incentives to find and punish 'guilty' parties.  The resulting witch hunt will make Salem look tame.

We can see then that every premise of this fantasy is evil, or wrong, or both.

But this misses the essential point:  jobs will be created where the most value is created.  And if there is more value being created somewhere else, the capital and the jobs will flow there like an unstoppable tide.  Politicians demanding that outsourcing be stopped might as well command the tide to roll back. 

The laws of nature and economics are immutable.  No amount of liberal - populist rhetoric will change them.  And passing laws to 'save American jobs' will only transfer wealth and power to the political classes and away from the productive sectors of the economy. 

Ruin will surely follow.

Liberal Fantasies - A Right to a Free, Quality Public Education

So the last item in the list is:

A right to a free, quality public education

Let's look at what this means.

'a right' -- in order for something to be a right, it must be inalienable. That is, it cannot be take away from you as it is inherent.   And a right does not create a burden on other people.  For example, you have the right to free speech, but you do not have the right to have an audience.  You cannot force other people to listen, as that would violate their rights.  The same principle applies to other actual rights.  You have the right to keep and bear arms, but you not have the right to have the tax payers buy you a gun.

A 'right' to education would impose a burden on others.  We would be compelled to teach you.  Or to hire teachers to educate you.  Therefore, this cannot be a right.  It imposes a burden on other people, and therefore fails the test of being a right.    In fact, education is a luxury good.  It is a good that people worry about after they have food in their belly, a roof over their head, and enough spare time to educate.  It is most certainly not a right.

'free' -- they mean free to the consumer of the education, of course.  Not free to the taxpayer.  In fact, 'free' public education is the most expensive education that you can buy.  School districts are spending $10-12K per student on education.  This is far from 'free'.

'quality' -- as the last 100 years have demonstrated, there is not much quality in education.  Because the schools are large government run bureaucracies, they lack the incentives to deliver quality goods and services.  Therefore, they get fat and inefficient.  While Federal spending on schools has skyrocketed into the billions, test scores and literacy continue to decline. 

'Public' -- because the schools are public, they are political.  All decisions about curriculum, teachers compensation, standards, etc. becomes political decisions.  And political decisions are not always based on low costs and efficiency, or even with the best interests of the students in mind. 

So we find that almost every word of this fantasy is the opposite of reality. 


None of it has any meaning in the real world, or if it does, it has the opposite meaning to what they intend.

Liberal Fantasies - Tax Fairness

From the The Norman Goldman Show we have a list of Liberal Fantasies that need some attention.

The top of the list is.... Tax Fairness.

1) Tax Fairness - A Progressive Tax on the Koch Bros. and their top 2% buddies;


Is it pedantic to point out that our tax code is already progressive?  The top 5% of income earners paid ~60% of all income taxes.  The bottom 50% paid near-ZERO in income taxes.  So obviously they mean more progressive than the current system.

Minor quibble: Why is the tax on the Koch Bros. and not on George Soros?  Or Warren Buffet? Or any of the uber-rich Hollywood types that are so famously progressive?

Anyway, what moral code are you using when you declare it to be 'fair' that one group pays huge amounts of income tax while another group pays nothing at all? 

The moral code is altruism.  And the political viewpoint that extends from that moral code is called Socialism.

Here is the fantasy part:  the very rich are able to shift tax burdens and take advantage of the complex and loophole ridden Federal tax code.  Raising the rates does not produce more revenue.  History shows that tax revenue hovers at about 20% of GDP no matter what the tax rate. 

So making the rate more 'fair' will only drive economic activity out of this country, increase tax sheltering, and promote tax evasion.

If the Liberals are so intent on 'fairness' in the tax code, why aren't George Soros and Michael Moore paying more than they owe in taxes?  Why wait for the rates to be increased?  Just pony up now. After all, it is only fair!

Liberal Fantasies

I found the following posted on Facebook, and I thought it might be interesting to share;

From the The Norman Goldman Show

We had a VERY spirited show on Monday, May 23, 2001 - about the differences between Democrats and Republicons - and the fact that we have regular nuclear wars within ourselves over MANY issues. I asked that we focus on our core values and only if we have those, amongst us, wandering away from those core values that we attack them and WRITE THEM OFF. As to the other, non-core issues, we can and SHOULD still fight and disagree, but we should NOT throw each other overboard and rip each other limb from limb.

I submit to you that NOT ALL issues are created equal and that we should focus on the things that bind us and VOLUNTARILY stick together so long as we all agree on the core values. QUESTION: WHAT are those core values???

Here is my suggested list:

1) Tax Fairness - A Progressive Tax on the Koch Bros. and their top 2% buddies;

2) No corporate welfare - end the tax subsidies and write-offs;

3) Protect Social Security;

4) Protect Medicare;

5) Stop Outsourcing American jobs and punish those who do with higher taxes;

6) Clean energy and environmental protection;

7) No illegal wiretapping/Patriot Act "big government";

8) Personal privacy - like a woman's right to choose; legalize gay marriage and end the ridiculous "war on drugs" by starting with legalized marijuana;

9) Public financing of campaigns and clean elections with voter verifiable paper trails and no "voter i.d." disenfranchisement;

10) A right to health care, and;

11) A right to a free, quality public education.


It might be interesting to examine what each of these means.

I will follow up in separate posts.

Obama and bin Laden

Obama made a gutsy call! 

Interesting that Obama and his supporters consider it a 'gutsy call' to order an operation against our #1 enemy,  a man whose capture Obama campaigned on in 2008, when 90% of public opinion and 100% of congress would support the call.

Gutsy?  Really?

I mean, he made the right decision, but it was not a gutsy one.

Warning! Fast Food Wrappers may kill you!

From the latest issue of Men's Health:

FAST FOODS BAD WRAP
Some fast-food wrappers are lined with potentially dangerous chemicals that can leach into foods - and into the eaters bloodstream, a University of Toronto study on rats reveals.  These (chemical name), once in the the body, can be broken down into (another chemical), which at high levels, may be a risk factor for liver damage in animals.  More research may show similar effects in humans.

OMG!  Scary!  My fast food wrappers are deadly!!

But wait, what does this really mean?

This is junk science designed to create more FUD around chemicals and cancers.

Let's break this down:

Some fast-food wrappers...  not ALL fast food wrappers, just some.  How many? Most? One?  Since they did not say MOST, we can assume very few have this lining.

can leach into foods -- how long does this leaching take?  Most fast food is exposed to the wrapper for minutes, not hours or days. Not DOES leach, merely 'can' leach.  Which means it probably does not leach under normal conditions.  The leaching probably takes longer than the actual food remains edible.

"these chemicals...can be broken down"  Again, not ARE broken down, just 'can be".  How often?  90% of the time?  1% of the time?

which at high levels -- this is the phrase that pays.  "high levels" usually means they stuff the rats full of the stuff and see what happens.  When you do the math, it shows you would have to eat 10,000 burgers per day to get exposed to that level of the chemical. 

may be a risk factor for liver damage  -- May be a risk factor.... not IS a risk factor. And it is just a 'risk factor', which really means they cannot find a very strong causation link at all. 

in animals -- this is not even shown to be true in humans!  Just rats.

And the story ignores the most pertinent point: Why are these chemicals in the lining in the first place? The most likely explanation is that they kill germs, thus improving the safety of the food.


So, let's rewrite the story as it should have been written:


Some Very few fast-food wrappers are lined with potentially  dangerous beneficial chemicals that can under extreme circumstances over a long period of time, leach into foods - and into the eaters bloodstream, a University of Toronto study on rats reveals.  These (chemical name), once in the the body, can be rarely are broken down into (another chemical), which at high levels, levels that would require you to eat 10,000 tacos per day, may be somehow loosely linked a risk factor for liver damage in animals.  More research money given to the University may show similar effects in humans.


This is totally bogus scare tactics masquerading as science.