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Saturday, April 30, 2005

NASA global-warmist James Hansen is a LIAR

NASA's James Hansen is in the news as the spokesman for new research that suggests that the oceans are warming. The research provides absolutely no new information to distinguish whether the warming is due to human production of greenhouse gases or the very high level of solar-magnetic activity over the last sixty years. In theory, both should induce warming, but no one has been able to yet sort out the relative magnitudes of these effects. But what does Hansen say? According to the San Francisco Chronicle:
"This energy imbalance is the 'smoking gun' that we have been looking for, " Hansen said in a prepared summary of the study, which was published in the journal Science. "The magnitude of the imbalance agrees with what we calculated using known climate forcing agents, which are dominated by increasing human-made greenhouse gases. There can no longer be substantial doubt that human-made gases are the cause of most observed warming."
Liar liar pants on fire. Hansen is telling a flat-out god dam lie. NASA's climate models have never included solar-magnetic warming effects AT ALL. Whatever warming is due to high levels of solar flux gets misattributed to greenhouse gas warming in the NASA models and projected forward into unwarranted predictions that greenhouse gas warming is going to destroy the planet. The fact that Hansen and his NASA co-conspirator Gavin Schmidt can tweak their model to make it look like greenhouse gas warming accounts for the temperature record is not empirical evidence. We KNOW that solar warming effects exist. (My earlier posts on the subject here (without links) and here and here (with links).) Thus leaving solar-warming effects out makes the NASA model WRONG. The proper backtest is to look for sensitivities to both greenhouse warming and solar activity that create the best fit. NASA refuses to do that. They absolutely will not take into account the primary mechanism by which natural variation is theorized to occur. (This earlier post of mine Fisks Gavin Schmidt's proclaimed justification for this omission, along with a ludicrous attempt by Schmidt's Realclimate colleague Rasmus Benested to dismiss solar-magnetic warming effects.)

Why intentionally overstate greenhouse warming effects? So that Hansen et al. can justify drastic action to curtail greenhouse emissions:
He calculated the energy retention could be eliminated only by halting all human-caused emissions of methane or by somehow removing half of all the carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere.
Hansen is NOT A SCIENTIST. He is a religionist. He refuses to account scientific data that is not conducive to the conclusions he wants to arrive at--that human activity must be curtailed--and he has a lot of company. This is the fourth major study this year produced by the "global warming consensus" (the U.N. sponsored IPCC and its legions of consensoid climatologists). All of the other three did exactly what Hansen does. They all use the IPCC/NASA GCMs (General Circulation Models), NONE of which ever take into account solar-warming effects.

Until the consensoids start including solar-magnetic effects in their models, their every pronouncement should be met with a chorus of catcalls: "LIAR LIAR LIAR," because they ARE liars, every one of them. They are intentionally leaving known physical effects out of their models because including them would undermine the conclusion that human activity should be curtailed. Liars all.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Jesus called for civil disobedience against disarmament laws!

tjic posts this snippet from Luke 22:36 of Jesus speaking to the apostles:
He said to them, “…if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”
Looking up the full citation, one sees that Jesus was talking about one of the prophesies that he had to fulfill in order to usher in the new dispensation of God's law (replacing "the law of sin and death" with "Christian liberty"). He had to be "numbered with the transgressors" and so he needed to commit a crime. What crime could he commit without doing wrong? Easy: violate the Roman prohibitions against subject peoples being armed for self-defense!
(35)Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

(36)He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. (37)It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’[b]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

(38)The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That is enough,” he replied.
Looking up on the list of prophesies fulfilled, there it is, Isaiah 53:12:
Therefore will I divide him [a portion] with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the
transgressors.
Awesome. Jesus knew immediately which law it was moral to violate. One more example of his moral genius. One more bit of evidence that he was who he said he was.

This should motivate all Christians to get behind the abolition of civilian disarmament laws. Of course conservative Christians are solidly behind gun rights, but Luke 22:36 provides a powerful challenge to left-wing anti-liberty types who try to interpret Christianity in socialist, anti-liberty, terms. Just ask yourselves, leftists: "What would Jesus commit civil disobedience over?" Prophesy posed that question to him, and he gave us his answer.


UPDATE: Web-searching "Luke 22:36" and "civil disobedience" does not turn up any any commentary that links the two. Instead, there are a number of lame attempts to reconcile Jesus's call for the apostles to bear arms with his assessment that two swords are enough. There is speculation that Jesus was speaking metaphorically when he said to buy arms, and that his "that is enough" was an expression of annoyance when the Apostles took him literally. There is also speculation that since the arms were for defense, two might be enough. But isn't the passage perfectly explicit? Jesus plainly states that the purpose of having the swords is in order to be "numbered with the transgressors," and for purposes of civil disobedience, two is enough!

It does seem that Jesus was also expressing a broader approval of arms for self-defense, because the carrying of swords is listed in sequence with the carrying of purses and bags; other practical items which the apostles did not need while Jesus was on Earth, but would need once he had ascended. But neither the purse nor the bag was illegal. The reference to what needed to be done in order to be "numbered with the transgressors" can only be a reference to the sword.

It is also worth appreciating the economy of language. The practical point and the explanation of what was needed to fulfill prophecy could not have both been communicated in fewer words.

If anyone knows of a source that interprets Luke 22:36 in terms of civil disobedience, engaged for the fulfillment of prophesy, please leave a comment. AHA. The Restored Church of God has a commentary that understands that the reason for the swords was in order to be "numbered with the transgressors." So does Bethel Church of God. James Arlandson writing at American Thinker also gets it. (The correct search seems to be "Luke 22:36" and "Isaiah 53:12".)

What these analyses seem to miss is the implication that Jesus was answering the question, posed by prophesy, of what law a moral man could disobey without doing wrong. Probably this point is being made somewhere, but it certainly isn't common knowledge, and it should be. Jesus's chosen act of civil disobedience was to bear arms. But civil disobedience is justified only when a law is a violation of right. Thus one could even interpret that Jesus recognized a RIGHT to keep and bear arms. That is highly relevant, at a time when left wing Christian churches are prime movers behind the left's war against the right to keep and bear arms.


UPDATE: I have been trying to document that carrying swords was illegal for Jews under Roman occupation. My original assertion was based on general history about the Romans jealously maintaining a monopoly on arms. e.g. From Halbrook’s That Every Man be Armed: “…aggression against both ‘barbarians’ and Roman citizens by Roman tyrants and empire builders was coupled with the policy of disarming and then eliminating their opponents.” (p. 14.) I seem to recall as well that the sword was an exclusive privilege of Roman citizenship, though I can’t find a citation for that.

Web searching for specific references to Roman policy towards the Jews, some claims can be found, but they are without documentation.

Duncan Long writes:
During this period of Jewish history [Long refers to Luke 22:36], a Roman ‘ban’ on weapons was in place and the average Jew was disarmed with weapons legally allowed in the hands of special Jewish ‘police’ groups charged with enforcing the law (both Roman and Jewish religious law) as well as in the hands of the occupying army.
Jody Hudson writes:
At the time that Jesus the Christ told his disciple to sell his purse and get a sword -- that was a crime against the State... a felony in today's terms.
Robert Avrech writes:
During the Roman occupation of Judea, Jews were forbidden to own swords, spears or any implements of war.
If you know of any authoritative source for or against these kinds of claims, please comment.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Earth Day 2030: "A new eye blinked open upon the world"

Vandenberg AFB—As people across the country watched the northern sky this afternoon, NASA officials gave the final go ahead and the gigantic Demi-Ra sun-reflecting satellite focused its millions of ten-meter by ten-meter reflecting panels on the Earth below. Even the most casual observer has become familiar with the sight of this immense construction project expanding in the night sky, but it seemed that no amount of familiarity could reduce the startling effect of its daylight debut.

“A new eye blinked open upon the world,” mused NASA engineer Katy Wong, watching from the observation deck at Vandenberg’s Demi-Ra Command Center. Her words unconsciously echoed the reaction of thousands across the country. Responding to what seems to have been an optical illusion created by the focusing sequence, people from every state described Demi-Ra as an “eye,” blinking two or three times before its light poured forth and observers had to look away from the brightness of this second sun in the sky.

Interviewed at his home in Virginia, Dr. Patrick Michaels, the driving force behind the Demi-Ra project, was enthusiastic, opining that “the timing of the project looks very good.” He noted that solar activity has dropped off dramatically in the last 20 years and that the Earth has cooled significantly as a result. “That puts us a little behind the curve,” he said, “but we built up enough greenhouse gases over the last century to slow the cooling down. With the climate modeling breakthroughs of the last ten years, we can be quite certain that Demi-Ra I, and the upcoming Demi-Ra II, will provide enough additional sunlight to keep another Little Ice Age from occurring.”

The most controversial aspect of the project is the variable focusing ability of the reflectors. A fixed reflector in sun-synchronous orbit would have been sufficient to achieve the project’s first requirement, which is to shine extra sun-light only onto the daylight side of the planet, leaving nocturnal creatures undisturbed. (A sun-synchronous orbit uses the asymmetry of the Earth’s mass to keep its circle facing the sun as the Earth orbits the sun.) The problem with a fixed reflector is that it would distribute the extra sunlight equally to the tropics, the temperate zones and the polar regions as the reflector traveled north to south. In contrast, Demi-Ra’s variable focus can be used to keep the extra sunlight off of the tropics and off of the ice caps. Some are alarmed, however, at the military potential of this feature.

In theory, Demi-Ra’s one thousand square miles of reflective surface can be focused on an area as small as one square mile. Fearful of this destructive potential, thousands of peace activists planned a massive “die in” for San Francisco today. Dressed as burnt ants, the activists were planning to curl up in intersections across the city when Demi-Ra came on-line, but it didn’t quite work out that way. When Demi-Ra “blinked to life” in startlingly life-like fashion, the ant-suited protesters were more than a little unnerved. In what seemed to be a genuine panic, protestors at tens of locations across San Francisco started running for cover, many screaming hysterically.

“It looked right at me! It looked right at me!” one protester cried over and over as she huddled the foyer of the Fairmont hotel. Police were nonplussed, but expressed relief that at least the “die in” was short lived. Similar panic attacks struck protestors in other North American and European cities. No other segment of society seems to have been affected. A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control said that the “panic phenomenon” would be monitored. “On the plus side,” he joked, “I don’t think we’ll be seeing any more street-rallies from the Al Qaeda remnant.”

At the new United Nation complex in Harare, Zimbabwe, “contrarian” climatologist Stephen Schneider sounded a warning note. “As I have been saying since the 1970’s, the cause of global cooling is human economic activity. If we want to counteract global cooling, economic activity must be drastically curtailed. Demi-Ra just enables industrial society to proceed apace with its destructive impact.” A reporter reminded Dr. Schneider that from 1980 to 2010, when global temperatures were rising, Dr. Schneider, then at Stanford University, had claimed that human activity was causing global warming, and therefore needed to be curtailed. “As you can see,” Dr. Schneider answered, “I have been perfectly consistent.”

Also at the United Nation news conference was Dr. Paul Ehrlich, who declared that Demi-Ra would cause mass starvation by 2040. “It will lengthen the growing season in temperate regions,” Ehrlich predicted. “The resulting increase in food production will create population growth. Soon there won’t be enough food for the increased population and everyone will die.” A reporter reminded Dr. Ehrlich that he had predicted mass starvation by the mid 1970’s, the mid 80’s, the mid 90’s, by 2010, by 2020 and by 2030. “That is not consistent enough for you?” Dr. Ehrlich parried, receiving a sharp nod of approval from Dr. Schneider.

The one nation that actually is starving is Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s Dictator for Life, Kojo Annan, owns the entire country and insists that “I won’t allow people to steal from me by growing food on my property and eating it.” Zimbabwe’s population is down to 2 million, from 12 million in the year 2000. The country’s problems are compounded by the fact that Venezuela, when it pulled out of the United Nations last month (prompting the name change to United Nation), also ended its oil subsidies to Zimbabwe. Without Venezuelan oil, Zimbabwe’s downward population trend is expected to continue. “That is a good thing,” suggested Dr. Ehrlich, explaining that “the more people who starve today, the less competition there will be for food tomorrow.”

Russia, on the other hand, seems to be looking forward to being well fed—and warm—in the present. Each nation gets to decide where its allotment of extra sunlight will be directed. The Russian plan is to warm Russian cities during the long Russian winter, then in spring and fall, to create extended growing seasons in selected farming areas. Dry regions like Mongolia and the Western United States are planning to concentrate much of their Demi-Ra allotment onto fields of solar-electric generating panels. Countries can also trade their allotments on the open market.

The Demi-Ra company, a private corporation regulated by the United States government, will receive 10% of the market value of each country’s allotment in perpetuity. “If they don’t give us our cut, they don’t get the sunlight,” said Demi-Ra CEO Michael Petras, in attendance at the Vandenberg countdown. “Hey, we ought to be getting more,” he added unapologetically. “The government thought we needed to give up 90% to grease the international wheels. That’s a LOT!” Company President Aman Verjee, also in attendance agreed that: “The government drove a hard bargain, but it was still a no-brainer.”  “Even at 10%, the margins are HUGE,” Petras roared, knocking Verjee backwards. “Once we looked at Dr. Michaels’ plans and started running the numbers, it was just a matter of getting congressional approval. Everyone with a dollar wanted in.”

That approval came with the changing of the guard in the climatology profession. When solar activity fell off after 2010, and global temperatures started falling with it, the old “global-warming consensus” was routed by solar-warming theory. Solar-warmists had until then been dismissed as a minor subset of a small cadre of egregiously wrong “contrarians.” By 2020, the global-warmists had become the new “contrarians” and Demi-Ra advocates like Dr. Michaels (an early “contrarian,” but not originally a solar-warmist) were able to get their enabling legislation.

“It is a great achievement,” said Michaels. “If Demi-Ra’s orbit holds, and its structure proves robust, we just might have bought ourselves a permanent inter-glacial. If the design turns out to be less robust than we hope, improved models are already on the drawing board. We’ll learn by doing for a couple of years, then decide how to proceed with Demi Ra II.” Demi Ra I has an expected service life of a century. As a major investor in the Demi-Ra project, the United States government expects to earn a substantial net return.

To learn more about solar-warming theory, see Alec’s twenty-five year old article “Global warming’s omitted variable,” available on line in archives of The Stanford Review, 2/15/2005.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Good for Doonsbury

Trudeau has digusted me for so long, but here he actually pens something noble and self-aware. Good for him, though it might make his usual garbage that much more inexcusable. Apparently he is not completely oblivious to moral sense. He just chooses to act like it. Still, batting 1 for a thousand is better than nothing, and this one is a homer, especially considering his audience.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Death from above

The terrorists should be afraid. Very afraid.

Via Ace of Spades.

Is Simterror repeating the DOD’s “terrorism futures market” lunacy?

Those wacky Aussies are conducting a two week blog-organized simulated terrorist attack. Simulated “cell leaders” submit attack claims while simulated country leaders and citizen participants say what they would do in response. Referees continually estimate and report the outcomes of the conflict and the simulation continues in that real-time fashion for two weeks.

So far it all looks innocuous, but I hope that the simulated terrorists do not get overzealous and start making public their most insightful thinking about how terrorists could most effectively attack. The one Bush administration official who did this will remain nameless on this blog, but he ought never to hold a position of public responsibility again.

In July of 2003 the Pentagon briefly considered setting up a futures market where speculators could make gains betting on what they thought would be the most likely terrorist attack method (the payoff coming if the attack method was actually used). The theory was that market prices, reflecting the collected intelligence of the participants, would yield accurate information about the most effective attack strategies, telling the DOD where to focus its defensive efforts. I presume they realized that it would also tell the terrorists where to focus their attack efforts--on the least defendable targets--and that this would be a bad bargain. Depending on how it is handled, this Simterror exercise could be a similar mistake.

Looking over the first couple of days of posts (Simterror started on Monday) the only attacks listed so far are generic “bombings.” Good. Keep it that way. Any mention of innovative and effective attack strategies should be strictly barred!

P.S. The terrorism futures-market scheme also had the drawback that terrorists could use it to get paid for carrying out attacks, but that should have been a relatively minor concern, since the terrorists would have had to collect the money, and anyone who made a lot of money would be an obvious suspect.

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