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The Greenhousers Strike Back and Out
I began this series of critiques of the greenhouse fearmongers with an evocation of the papal indulgences of the Middle Ages as precursors of the "carbon credits"-ready relief for carbon sinners, burdened, because all humans exhale carbon, with original sin. In the Middle Ages they burned heretics, and after reading through the hefty pile of abusive comments and supposed refutations of my initial article on global warming I'm fairly sure that the critics would be only to happy to cash in whatever carbon credits they have and torch me without further ado....

...The greenhousers endlessly propose that the consensus of "scientists" on anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming. By scientists they actually mean computer modelers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their computer-modeling coterie include very few real climatologists or atmospheric physicists. Among qualified climatologists, meteorologists and atmospheric physicists, there are plenty who do not accept the greenhousers' propositions. Many others have been intimidated into silence by the pressures of grants, tenure and kindred academic garottes.

Peer review, heavily overworked in the rebuttals I have been reading, is actually a topic on which the greenhousers would do well to keep their mouths shut, since, as the University of Virginia's Pat Michaels has shown, the most notorious sentence in the IPCC's 1996 report ("The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate") was inserted at the last minute by a small faction on the IPCC panel after the scientific peer-review process was complete. Here's how Dr Fred Goldberg describes the probable culprit, Professor Bert Bolin, a politically driven Swede who was the first chairman of the IPCC, from 1988 to 1998. Goldberg's very interesting paper is entitled, "Has Bert Bolin fooled us all concerned climate change caused by humans?":

"In 1995 IPCC presented its second report: The Science of Climate Change". In this report a large number of researchers work through hundreds of scientific reports and delivers a comprehensive report where they conclude that there is no evidence that human beings have had an influence on the climate. This conclusion is of course very important for politicians and policymakers around the world. But what happened? The editor of the IPCC ­report then deleted or changed the text in 15 different sections of chapter 8 (The key chapter concerning whether human influence exists or not) which had been agreed upon by the panel of contributors involved in compiling the document. In practice politicians and policymakers only read the so-called Executive Summary for Policy Makers. In this document consisting of a few pages it is clearly stated that humans have influenced the climate, contrary to the conclusions of the scientific report.

"Professor Fredrik Seitz, former chairman of the American Science Academy, wrote in the Wall Street Journal already the 12th of June 1996 about a major deception on global warming: "I have never before witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report." He gave many examples of changes and redefinitions and finished by demanding that the IPCC process should be abandoned.

"Had somebody subordinate to Bert Bolin within IPCC made these changes it is reasonable to think that Bert Bolin himself would correct the errors. That he has not done is why I draw the conclusion that it must be Bert Bolin himself who is responsible for the changes and no subordinate person has dared interfere with his boss."...

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Gore Outrage on Larry King: Some Inconvenient Facts
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Vice President Al Gore, what issues caused by climate change globally are likely to affect the United States security in the next 10 years?

KING: Al?

GORE: You know, even a one-meter increase, even a three-foot increase in sea level would cause tens of millions of climate refugees.

...FACT 1. There is not one shred of evidence in the refereed scientific literature speaking of a three-foot increase in sea level in ten years. The best estimates from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change range from 0.8 to 1.7 INCHES.

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Measuring the political temperature
Today’s ‘global warming story’ – where the moral is always that we should calculate every bit of carbon we use – owes more to the anxious zeitgeist than scientific findings.

...But there is another way to approach this question, which is to look at the political circumstances in which climatic science is produced, a process that also has its own laws and patterns. It is strange, at a time when the social construction of science is an established idea (Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he describes science’s progress through ‘paradigms’, is on every undergraduate’s reading list) that nobody thinks to look at the social construction of global warming theories. Global warming science is being produced in highly febrile times; and history tells us that the more the political temperature rises, the more science’s view of nature is distorted....

...Yet global warming also plays a teleological role: it provides a decisive point towards which history is heading, and provides an overall meaning for events. A decade-and-a-half after Francis Fukuyama announced the ‘end of history’, environmentalists have apparently found an occasion to which we must rise. The impending ‘climate crisis’, and our need to respond, is the first post-political narrative that has aroused significant passion or conviction. It is the first post-political notion of an historic task, a decisive future event that will determine humanity’s fate. It is perhaps the only way in which today’s society can discuss the idea of the judgement of the future, or the condition of life for our children. Hence, the dramatic sweep of the campaign against global warming throughout the elite – especially members of the political elite who spent periods in the cold. This is Al Gore on what global warming means to him:

‘The climate crisis also offers us the chance to experience what very few generations in history have had the privilege of knowing: a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence; the opportunity to rise…. When we do rise, it will fill out spirits and bind us together. Those who are now suffocating in cynicism and despair will be able to breathe freely. Those who are now suffering from a loss of meaning in their lives will find hope.’ ...

...Here’s the rub: when an environmental problem becomes a generational mission, nobody wants very much to solve it. Lynas criticises the notion that ‘the white knight of technology will come riding to the rescue’ – this is in fact ‘the most pervasive and enduring form of denial’. There is no ‘miracle energy cure’, says Lynas. Indeed, you often hear environmentalists say that the hopes of a ‘silver bullet’ to solve global warming is merely ‘avoiding’ the question. Avoiding how? What they mean is that it is not energy production that must change; it is us. Global warming is not a problem to be solved; it is a lesson to be lived. Lynas writes: ‘The faith in a “techno-fix” evades the need for any serious behavioural change.’

Global warming is so often talked about as a result of our selfishness that we do not see quite how absurd this is. Imagine telling 1950s Londoners that there is no techno-fix to the problem of air pollution, and that they need to monitor and cut their coal use. Smokeless fuels would just allow them to continue in their destructive behaviour, without reflecting on the harm caused by their actions. Their warm sitting room is killing children, and they must take responsibility for that.

Think about that quote from Gore: ‘The climate crisis also offers us the chance to experience what very few generations in history have had the privilege of knowing: a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence….’ Global warming offers us the chance to experience what few generations have had the privilege of knowing. It is a thrill, no less. Global warming is our Cold War. And just as American strategists worried at the end of the Cold War about the loss of the Red opposition, so environmentalists have a kind of attachment to global warming.

Of course, they talk about it being ‘inconvenient’, and they wouldn’t have wished it upon the world. Lynas says that his collapse scenarios are a ‘reluctant conclusion’; in his book Heat, George Monbiot says that it pains him greatly to conclude that people will have to stop flying. But the more that society defines itself in relation to global warming, the less willing it is to let go. Global warming is now not so much a problem to solve, as an issue around which to reorganise society. This is more Noah’s flood than Clean Air Act, and the lesson is in the sins of hubris and consumerism. Global warming is sent to show people that (in Lynas’ words) they are ‘wasting their lives commuting to work in cars’. His proposed solution – to ‘cut our need for energy by living less consumptive lifestyles’ – will apparently form the basis of a new and happier society.

I have a question: if there was a ‘miracle energy cure’, would Lynas use it? I suspect that a straight ‘yes’ would not be the reply. Which is insane, really, because if global warming is a problem, it is only a techno-fix that could solve it. All the arm-twisting in the world is not going to stop India and China flying, a fact shown by recent figures showing a massive boom in air travel. Daily media guilt-mongering has not stopped British people from enjoying weekends in Budapest or Prague, and nor should it. Governments, we can hope, will still be elected in 2050, and while that is the case carbon rations would still be ‘politically unrealistic’. Unless we live under a dictatorship of some Global Commission for the Environment then energy use will continue to rise dramatically; the only question is whether this energy comes from fossil fuels or some other source. And if it needs to come from some other source, we need a techno-fix.

Techno-fixes are not some airy-fairy notion, some leap of faith. This is otherwise known as innovation, the only way that environmental problems have ever been solved or new energy systems produced. I am not aware of a major environmental problem successfully tackled by the mass of people consciously and systematically abstaining from some or other desirable activity. The lesson of history is that techno-fixes happen, and they happen fast in societies that are looking for solutions. There were only three years between the first controlled nuclear chain reaction and the dropping of a bomb on Hiroshima in 1945; only five years separated a nuclear reaction successfully lighting a lightbulb in 1951 and the first nuclear power station in 1956. ...

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Global Warming, Global Stifling
... Most of the theses in the Grand Theory are packed with morally charged concepts. If an epidemiologist says, "The chance of bird flu becoming epidemic is growing significantly," she is making a narrowly scientific statement. If she says, "Bird flu is about to explode catastrophically! We have to stop it now!", she is going beyond science to make a moral and a policy judgment. That isn't a problem if the economics and morality are obvious — if, say, the cost of inoculation is trivial compared to the costs associated with a disease that has a mortality rate of nearly 50%. But when the economics is complex (with costs and benefits hard to measure, the range of options large, and the chances and scale of an anticipated event hard to estimate), or when the moral case is unclear (say, when the moral values being balanced are incommensurable with one another), such value-laden language is dangerous.

Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, an eminent specialist who is favorable to the Narrow Theory, made this point well in a recent interview with the BBC. He said, "Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists, too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror, and disaster with the careful hedging which surrounds science's predictions? . . . To state that climate change will be 'catastrophic' hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science."

The second distinction I want to make is between general agreement, at least among the scientists in a given field, and a complete convergence of opinion. When the majority of scientists agree that a theory in their domain is true, there is general agreement. But general agreement means that a significant minority of scientists still dissents. When a theory has survived repeated tests (i.e., has predicted with great accuracy phenomena that are then confirmed empirically) and has been tremendously fruitful in guiding research, then virtually all scientists active in its domain agree, and there is complete convergence. Ask physicists whether quantum theory is true, and 99.99% will say it is. You would see the same virtual unanimity if you asked biologists whether all life on this planet evolved from one original form.

There is general agreement about the Narrow Theory — though there are varying degrees of this agreement, depending on the particular thesis being considered. The summary of the UN study just released (the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or "IPCC") reports that its panel is over 90% certain that the "observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is . . . due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." This means that a significant minority of the rele-vant scientists continues to doubt part or all of the Narrow Theory — perhaps a larger minority than is apparent, since the summary is often more "confident" than the actual study, and even more since the report's contributors were selected by politicians whose desire for scientific objectivity may not have been paramount. And although the highest percentage agrees that temperatures have risen (Thesis 1), there are prominent dissenters. Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer questions Thesis 1. So do eminent climatologist Timothy Ball, and Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center. Climatologist William Gray of Colorado State University actually predicts global cooling — which, remember, was the dominant climatological prediction of the 1970s.

Fewer scientists agree that the rise was caused by human activity (Thesis 2), or that the potential ecological damage will include such threats as increased storm activity (often cited by supporters of Thesis 3). Much of the disagreement about Thesis 2 surrounds the question of whether the global warming posited by Thesis 1 is primarily or only partially caused by human fossil-fuel use. After all, methane is a greenhouse gas, and is emitted by cattle in large quantities, so it is caused by man, but not by the burning of fossil fuel. Then again, volcanoes and other natural processes create copious amounts of CO2.

Some scientists, such as Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believe that the rise is caused by a rise in solar radiation, a cyclical pattern that they see going far back in geologic history. This explanation has the advantage of providing a reason for periods of global warming (and cooling) before human existence. Other climatologists point out that the geological record shows that some past rises in CO2 were preceded by temperature rises, and thus could not have been causes of those temperature increases. There must have been a different cause (such as increased solar radiation). Another recent theory is that temperature fluctuations may be caused by increased cloud formation resulting from increased cosmic radiation. And prominent Narrow Theory critic Richard Lindzen (a meteorologist at MIT) disputes whether rising temperatures will increase storm activity.

I am not a climate scientist. I do not know if complete convergence among climate scientists will ever occur, or if it does, whether it will be convergence on all three theses, or fewer. But I don't have to be a climate scientist to see that there is at present nothing approaching complete convergence on the Narrow Theory.

Turn to the Grand Theory, and things get very curious. While there seems to be a preponderance (though nowhere near a complete convergence) of opinion on the Narrow Theory, there isn't even anything approaching a consensus on the Grand Theory. For instance, an NREP (National Registry of Environmental Professionals) survey of licensed environmental specialists shows that only 66% consider the rate of global warming a serious problem facing the planet (with roughly the same percentage believing that the U.S. should do more to address the issue), and that only 39% consider regulation of carbon emissions as the most important tool in addressing global warming.

Nevertheless, it appears that many climatologists give evidence for the Narrow Theory — usually by showing that the carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere has a human stamp — but then essentially assume that all the other theses of the Grand Theory follow automatically.

This doesn't surprise me, because, again, most of the other theses of the Grand Theory are economic or even moral, hence not in the climatologists' domain of expertise. Such things frequently happen with multi-domain metanarratives. Because the experts in one field (say, atmospheric physics) don't know much about another field (say, agricultural economics), they can't agree or disagree with the experts in that field in any meaningful way. This is why these metanarratives are more often put forward by advocacy groups than by groups of scientists reasoning as scientists....

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Climate messages are 'off target'
Alarmist messages about global warming are counter-productive, the head of a leading climate research centre says.

Professor Mike Hulme, of the UK's Tyndall Centre, has been conducting research on people's attitudes to media portrayals of a catastrophic future.

He says strong messages designed to prompt people to change behaviour only seem to generate apathy.

His initial findings will be shown to a meeting run by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

"There has been over-claiming or exaggeration, or at the very least casual use of language by scientists, some of whom are quite prominent," Professor Hulme told BBC News.

His concern is that these exaggerations have given the green light to the media to use the language of fear, terror and disaster when covering scientific reports - even when those reports are much more constrained in their description of the course of likely future events. ...

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Jesus ‘Love-Bombs’ You
There is a false, but effective, fiction that one has to be born again to be a Christian. The Christian right refuses to acknowledge the worth of anyone’s religious experience unless—in the words of the tired and opaque cliché—one has accepted “Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.”

The meltdown, often skillfully manipulated by preachers and teams of evangelists, is one of the most pernicious tools of the movement. Through conversion one surrenders to a higher authority. And the higher authority, rather than God, is the preacher who steps in to take over your life. Being born again, and the process it entails, is more often about submission and the surrender of moral responsibility than genuine belief.

I attended a five-day seminar at Coral Ridge in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where I was taught, often by D. James Kennedy, the techniques of conversion. The callousness of these techniques—targeting the vulnerable, building false friendships with the lonely or troubled, promising to relieve people of the most fundamental dreads of human existence from the fear of mortality to the numbing pain of grief—gave to the process an awful cruelty and dishonesty. I attended the seminar as part of the research for my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” Kennedy openly called converts “recruits” and spoke about them joining a new political force sweeping across the country to reshape and reform America into a Christian state. ...

... The new ideology gives the believers a sense of purpose, feelings of superiority and a way to justify and sanctify their hatreds. For many, the rewards of cleaning up their lives, of repairing their damaged self-esteem, of joining an elite and blessed group are worth the cost of submission. They know how to define themselves. They do not have to make moral choice. It is made for them. They submerge their individual personas into the single persona of the Christian crowd. Their hope lies not in the real world, but in this new world of magic and miracles. For most, the conformity, the flight away from themselves, the dismissal of facts and logic, the destruction of personal autonomy, even with its latent totalitarianism, is a welcome and joyous relief. The flight into the arms of the religious right, into blind acceptance of a holy cause, compensates for the convert’s despair and lack of faith in himself or herself. And the more corrupted and soiled the converts feel, the more profound their despair, the more militant they become, shouting, organizing and agitating to create a pure and sanctified Christian nation, a purity they believe will offset their own feelings of shame and guilt. Many want to be deceived and directed. It makes life easier to bear.

Freedom from fear, especially the fear of death, is what is being sold. It is a lie, as everyone has to know on some level, even while they write and rewrite their testimonies to conform to the instructors’ demands. But admitting this in front of other believers is impossible. Such an admission would be interpreted as a lack of faith. And this too is part of the process, for it fosters a dread of being found out, a morbid guilt that we are not as good or as Christian as those around us. This dread does not go away with conversion or blind obedience or submission. This unachievable ideal forces the convert to repress and lose touch with the uncertainties, ambiguities and contradictions that make up human existence. ...

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What next, a Committee on Un-Scientific Activities?
A group of scientists and science communicators has written an open letter to WAG, a TV production company, insisting that it make changes to its film The Great Global Warming Swindle before releasing it on DVD.

The 38 signatories include Bob Ward, the former spokesman for the prestigious Royal Society in London, as well as former heads of Britain’s academy of sciences and the weather office. They argue that Martin Durkin’s film, which claims that global warming is not man-made and which caused a storm of controversy when it was shown on Channel 4 in Britain in March, contains a ‘long catalogue of fundamental and profound mistakes’, and these ‘major misrepresentations’ should be removed before the film hits the DVD shelves later this year. ‘Free speech does not extend to misleading the public by making factually inaccurate statements’, the letter-writers claim (1).

What next, a House Committee on Un-Scientific Activities, where this self-selected group of scientists and communicators could officially sit in judgement on anyone who says the ‘wrong thing’ about global warming? Last year, when he was working at the Royal Society, Bob Ward wrote a letter to ExxonMobil demanding in hectoring fashion that the oil giant cut off its funding to groups that have ‘misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence’; now he says films that go against the ‘truth’ of global warming should be chopped and changed before release (2). Perhaps any new House Committee on Un-Scientific Activities could begin by forcing those who appear in its hallowed halls to swear ‘I am not, and never have been, funded by oil companies’, before instructing them on what is the correct thing to say in public about climate change. All others shall be silenced.

These scientists ought to be ashamed of themselves. They are behaving in a fashion that does not befit intellectual scientific debate. When they claim that they are not being censorious, but rather are standing up for facts and ‘for the public interest’, they protest way too much. From Torquemada to McCarthy, virtually every censorious group in society has claimed merely to be protecting what is true or right or correct, and thus saving the public from allegedly dangerous ideas. Torquemada wanted to save humanity from religious heresy; McCarthy said he was protecting Americans from reds under the bed. Now some want to shield our eyes from allegedly oil-funded ‘climate change deniers’ lest they warp our minds and make us behave in a carbon-irresponsible fashion.

Even worse, the scientists’ demand that information be ‘corrected’ from on high so that it does not sow confusion and controversy amongst the public speaks to a profoundly anti-intellectual outlook. They seem not to appreciate how important controversy is. Controversy is not, as they seem to believe, a bad idea; nor is it, as others argue, something that’s simply fun or sexy, a ‘good idea’ in a democratic society. Rather, controversy is crucial to the development of human thought – especially in the realm of science. ...

...Indeed, it was striking that around the same time that the 38 scientists wrote to WAG to complain about The Great Global Warming Swindle, the British government announced plans to send a copy of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth to every secondary school in the country. Some very serious scientists have raised questions about the scientific accuracy of Gore’s movie. Don J Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, said: ‘ I don’t want to pick on Al Gore… But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.’ (4) Yet Gore’s allegedly inaccurate claims will be used to ‘stimulate debate about climate change’ amongst schoolchildren (in the words of UK education secretary Alan Johnson) while Durkin’s allegedly inaccurate claims are labelled unfit for public consumption.

This is really about the moral message of the films rather than their scientific underpinnings. Because Gore’s movie has the ‘correct’ moral outlook (global warming is manmade, and we must all take individual responsibility for changing our behaviour and lowering our horizons), it is sanctioned by the authorities and even used to reshape children’s understanding of humanity and our relationship with the planet. Because Durkin’s movie has the ‘incorrect’ moral outlook (global warming is not manmade, and demands that we limit carbon emissions are proving disastrous for the developing world), it is vilified.

Some are in effect using claims of scientific authority to copperfasten what is in fact a deeply moralistic campaign dictating what people should expect from life today. The consequences of using science in this way are as ominous as they are far-reaching. It is bad for political debate because when certain positions are said to be scientifically verified then they are also considered to be beyond interrogation. It is bad for science, too, because the use of scientific data to confer authority on explicitly political positions will surely pollute the morally neutral aim of science to discover new things, while also potentially firing up public cynicism with science. ...

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Ocean currents to blame for warming: expert
William Gray, a Colorado State University researcher, also said the Earth may begin to cool on its own in five to 10 years.

...He said little-understood ocean currents were behind a decades-long warming cycle, and disputed assertions that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as some scientists predicted. ...

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As Health Plan Falters, Maine Explores Changes
ORTLAND, Me., April 23 — When Maine became the first state in years to enact a law intended to provide universal health care, one of its goals was to cover the estimated 130,000 residents who had no insurance by 2009, starting with 31,000 of them by the end of 2005, the program’s first year.

...So far, it has not come close to that goal. Only 18,800 people have signed up for the state’s coverage and many of them already had insurance.

“I think when we first started, in terms of making estimates, we really were kind of groping in the dark,” said Gov. John E. Baldacci, who this month proposed a host of adjustments.

... And there is John Henderson, 42, of Auburn, who enrolled in DirigoChoice in 2006 for about $90 a month while working at an L. L. Bean warehouse, a job he kept to 20 hours a week so his income would qualify him for such a low rate.

But he dropped the plan this year when rates increased by 13.4 percent on average. Mr. Henderson, who has diabetes and is currently jobless, said he had stopped once-regular doctor’s appointments and some medications that “I have just no hope of affording.”

Ms. Schneider’s group is suing the state insurance commissioner for approving the rate increase.

An Anthem spokesman, Mark Ishkanian, said the increase was necessary because medical claims of DirigoChoice customers were “substantially higher” than anticipated, about double those of non-Dirigo plans. One reason for the higher expense was “pent-up demand” by enrollees who had been deferring visits to doctors while they were uninsured, Mr. Ishkanian said. Another was the richness of the coverage, which enrollees used for treating long-held conditions or mental illness, he said.

Ms. Riley said the state was surprised that more than half of DirigoChoice enrollees qualified for the highest subsidy, 80 percent, which meant the program has been more expensive for the state.

She said Maine also expected more small businesses to enroll in DirigoChoice. But many businesses found that the program requirements of enrolling 75 percent of a firm’s employees and paying 60 percent of the cost were too expensive.

“If they weren’t able to afford insurance before, they’re unlikely to be able to afford Dirigo,” said Kristine Ossenfort, senior governmental affairs specialist of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce.....

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Climate change hits Mars
Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena....

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How to Stop the Next Campus Shootings
...Five years ago Peter Odighizuwa a 43 years old Nigerian student killed three faculty members at Appalachian Law School Dean with a semi-automatic handgun, but before he could wreak further carnage two students fetched weapons from their cars, challenged the murderer with guns levelled ,and disarmed him.

When the mass murder session began in the engineering building the police cowered behind their cruisers till Cho Seung-Hui finished off the last batch of his 32 victims, then killed himself. Then the police bravely rushed in, started sticking their guns in the faces of the traumatized students, screaming at them to freeze or be shot. Similar timidity was on display in Columbine, where Harris and Klebold killed students in the library over a period of 15 minutes and then committed suicide. The police finally mustered up the nerve to enter the library over two hours later.

Years ago campus police were greeted as a welcome alternative to regular cops hassling students and creating trouble.. But now they mostly are regular cops, hassling students, dishing out speeding tickets like the one the Virigina Tech campus police issued Cho. They were good at spotting a car going a few miles over the limit, bad at protecting the campus from a smouldering psychotic.

The Virginia Tech terrible massacre should prompt a radical review of the utility of SWAT teams which now infest almost every community in America. Each time there's a hostage taking or a mass murderer on the rampage, one sees the same familiar sight: overweight SWAT men, doubled up under the weight of their costly artillery, lumbering along in their body armor and then hiding behind trees or cars or walls while the killer goes about his business. SWAT teams perform most efficiently when shooting down unarmed street people menacing them with cellphones.

The answer is to disband SWAT teams and kindred military units, and return to the idea of voluntary posses or militias: a speedy assembly of citizen volunteers with their own weapons. Such a body at Columbine or Virginia Tech might have saved many lifes. In other words: make the Second Amendment live up to its promise.

In 2005 I listened to some earnest ACLU type at a meeting in Garberville, an hour from where I live, deliver a judicious speech about Taser guns--a new toy for the cops, whereb y a person can be zapped with 50,000 volts. The ACLU guy was torn. On the one hand, he reasoned that the Taser -- being purportedly, though not actually non-lethal -- is better than a 12-gauge or high powered rifle. On the other hand, there is the possibility of "improper use". His answer: more regulation. He didn't entertain the actual course of events, namely that Tasers have now been added to the means whereby the police can kill or terrorize people and that regulation will be zero.

The left complain about SWAT teams, but doesn't see that the progressives bear a lot of responsibility for their rise. If you confer the task of social invigilation and protection to professional janissaries--cops -- and deny the right of self and social protection to ordinary citizens, you end up with crews of over-armed thugs running amok under official license, terrorizing the disarmed citizens. ...

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One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military
WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military By Michael L. Weinstein and Davin Seay shines a klieg light on one of the most elite educational institutions in the world. The United States Air Force Academy which, from its inception has attracted the best and brightest, producing outstanding leaders not only in the military but throughout American society.

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and his family have a long tradition of service in the United States armed forces. However, Weinstein is now waging a different kind of war. With support at the very highest levels, evangelical groups within the military believe that, serving your country requires the priorities of the military personnel to be, in the words of the Officer’s Christian Fellowship: “ a spiritually transformed US Military” literally “with ambassadors for Christ in uniform” and “empowered by the Holy Spirit.” Weinstein and other American patriots see the evangelicals’ intrusion into military operations and affairs as an affront to the Constitution they were sworn to uphold – and a violation of this nation’s traditionally sacrosanct separation of church and state.

Ten thousand cadets and staff at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, open up their federally-funded newspaper and see an a solicitation signed by hundreds of Academy senior officials and their spouses unabashedly proclaiming, “We believe that the only real hope for mankind is Jesus Christ!” Cadets are bombarded with official command “encouragement” to see the movie The Passion of the Christ at local movie theatres, and stridently sectarian fliers are strategically placed at every cadet’s seat for three straight days in the Academy dining hall. The Air Force Deputy Chief of Chaplains tells a New York Times Reporter, in a front page story, that it is now official U.S, Air Force policy to “Reserve the right to evangelize the un-churched.” (Who exactly are “the un-churched,”and who decides?).

These disturbing developments have been a call to arms for Mikey Weinstein, a US Air Force Academy honor graduate, son of a US Naval Academy distinguished graduate, father of a current Air Force Academy cadet and father and father-in-law of two recent Air Force Academy graduates, and the founder and outspoken president of the Military Religious Foundation of America. Weinstein sees the invasion toward a fundamentalist Christian-based religious based US Military as an abomination against the Constitution and its bedrock principle of separation of church and state. ...

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Why So Gloomy?
April 16, 2007 issue - Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week....

...In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown. Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age. When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year). There's even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth's surface....

...Indeed, one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world's average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its "forcing"—its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn't been uniform—warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

Modelers claim to have simulated the warming and cooling that occurred before 1976 by choosing among various guesses as to what effect poorly observed volcanoes and unmeasured output from the sun have had. These factors, they claim, don't explain the warming of about 0.4 degrees C between 1976 and 1998. Climate modelers assume the cause must be greenhouse-gas emissions because they have no other explanation. This is a poor substitute for evidence, and simulation hardly constitutes explanation. Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record—an effort that is now generally discredited. ...

...Moreover, actions taken thus far to reduce emissions have already had negative consequences without improving our ability to adapt to climate change. An emphasis on ethanol, for instance, has led to angry protests against corn-price increases in Mexico, and forest clearing and habitat destruction in Southeast Asia. Carbon caps are likely to lead to increased prices, as well as corruption associated with permit trading. (Enron was a leading lobbyist for Kyoto because it had hoped to capitalize on emissions trading.) The alleged solutions have more potential for catastrophe than the putative problem. The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger Revelle—Al Gore's supposed mentor—is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate....

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A taxing challenge: Even experts can't agree when preparing a sample tax return
In 1913, the CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter, which spells out the U.S. tax code in all its riveting detail, was 400 pages long. In 2007, it contained 67,204 pages.

As the tax code turns ever more unwieldy, deciphering it has become more art than science, tax experts say.

With the April 17 deadline approaching, USA TODAY decided to test this theory by asking three veteran tax pros — two enrolled agents and one certified public accountant — to prepare a tax return for a hypothetical family, the Baileys....

...All the preparers came up with varying results....

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Justice's Holy Hires
Monica Goodling had a problem. As senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Justice Department liaison to the White House, she no longer seemed to know what the truth was. She also must have been increasingly unclear about who her superiors were. This didn't used to be a problem for Goodling. Everything was once very certain: Her boss's truth was always the same as God's truth. Her boss was always either God or one of His staffers.

Last week, through counsel, Goodling again refused to testify about her role in the firings of several U.S. attorneys for what appear to be partisan reasons. Asserting her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, she somehow thought she might be on the hook for criminal obstruction. Then on Friday, she resigned, giving no reason.

A 1995 graduate of Messiah College, an evangelical Christian school, and a 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School, Goodling is an improbable character for a political scandal. Her chief claim to professional fame appears to have been loyalty to the president and to the process of reshaping the Justice Department in his image (and, thus, His image). A former career official there told The Washington Post that Goodling "forced many very talented career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points." And as she rose at Justice, a former classmate said, Goodling "developed a very positive reputation for people coming from Christian schools into Washington looking for employment in government, always ready to offer encouragement and be a sounding board."

Start digging, and Goodling also looks to be the Forrest Gump of no comments: Here she is in 1997 fielding calls from reporters to the admissions office of Regent's School of Government. Asked whether non-Christians were admitted, she explained that "we admit all students without discrimination. We are a Christian institution; it is assumed that everyone in the classes are Christians." Here, in 2004, she's answering calls at the Justice Department about whether then-Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement knew about the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison when he told the Supreme Court that the United States does not torture. Said Goodling, in lieu of taking the Fifth: "We wouldn't have any comment."...

...Jeffrey A. Brauch, the law school's dean, urges that students reflect upon "the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system." Jason Eige (Class of '99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter: "Your Résumé Is God's Instrument."...

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War protesters withhold taxes
SAN FRANCISCO — Dorothy Hansen used to pay her taxes faithfully every year — until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Since then, the 87-year-old Sebastopol, Calif., resident has stopped filing her income tax returns to show her disapproval of the war.

"I am very sure that I don't want to have any part in killing people, and I certainly don't want a part in any wars that do just that," Hansen said.

With the tax-filing deadline a little over a week away, some Bay Area residents are using it as an opportunity to protest the war by withholding their tax dollars to fund it.

Known as war tax resisters, they consider it an act of civil disobedience. Some withhold only a symbolic portion of what they owe — $10.40, for example, to represent the 1040 tax form — while others, like Hansen, refuse to pay anything. Many will redirect their tax dollars to a charity.

The risks can be costly if a resister is caught. The Internal Revenue Service recently increased the penalty for people who fail to pay their taxes to $5,000 from $500. Some resisters have had their wages garnisheed or property seized.

"There is no law that permits taxpayers to refuse to file a tax return or refuse to pay their taxes based on an estimate of what the government spends on programs or policies with which they disagree on moral, ethical, religious or other grounds," the IRS said in a prepared statement. "These frivolous positions are variations of arguments taxpayers have made in the past about religion and taxation, and that courts have repeatedly rejected."

The IRS added that by not paying what they owe, tax resisters place an undue burden on the people who file their taxes legitimately....

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Teenage Holy War
..."When you enlist in the military, there's a code of honor," Luce preaches, "same as being a follower of Christ." His Christian code requires a "wartime mentality": a "survival orientation" and a readiness to face "real enemies." The queers and communists, feminists and Muslims, to be sure, but also the entire American cultural apparatus of marketing and merchandising, the "techno-terrorists" of mass media, doing to the morality of a generation what Osama bin Laden did to the Twin Towers. "Just as the events of September 11th, 2001, permanently changed our perspective on the world," Luce writes, "so we ought to be awakened to the alarming influence of today's culture terrorists. They are wealthy, they are smart, and they are real."...

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Abolishing the Middlemen Won’t Make Health Care a Free Lunch
Proponents of single-payer national health insurance note that private health insurance has overhead costs of 10 to 25 percent of expenditures. Medicare, by contrast, has overhead costs of about 2 to 3 percent, and socialized European health care systems generally have low overhead costs as well. That is why single-payer supporters claim that we can save money by substituting government for private insurance. But this would shift overhead costs, not reduce them.

The monitoring, marketing and overhead costs of private insurance are what allow more expensive medical treatments through the door. It is precisely because competing insurance companies spend money evaluating the appropriateness of claims that they are willing to pay for so many heart bypasses, extra tests, private hospital rooms and CT scans. ...

...When it comes to these discretionary benefits, European systems are more likely to make people wait for them, more likely to make the service inconvenient or uncomfortable, or simply not make the services available in the first place. All of these features discourage those who don’t really need care, and, of course, some people simply go elsewhere and pay out of their own pockets. Either way, the overhead costs have been shifted onto patients and their families....

...Nor are Canadian and European health care systems as cheap as they look. Measuring health care expenditures as a share of national income does not count waiting costs or the lack of availability of many advanced technologies and treatments....

...But as populations age and the value of medical technology grows, the overhead costs of private insurance will prove an increasingly wise investment. For all its high immediate expenses, the American health care system is looking toward the future rather than the past. In the long run, the hidden and indirect costs of single-payer systems are harder to measure and thus are ultimately harder to control.

Middlemen and marketing costs have long been viewed with suspicion by critics of commerce. But these practices are usually signs of market sophistication, not waste. The gains from abolishing private insurance and its overhead costs are an illusion. TANSTAAFL, or “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.”

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Keep politics out of science – and vice versa
...For me, the infuriating thing about this debate is that it overlooks the main problem with the mainstream science on global warming. No, not that it is wrong, or that it is ‘swindling’ people, but rather that it has become deeply, almost irrevocably politicised. As a layperson largely following this debate via my laptop, I can see that a scientific consensus has been reached which says there has been some global warming, and most scientists believe that man’s carbon emissions are contributing to that warming. There is still a clear need for debate, it seems, over whether manmade CO2 alone is the cause of warming, how much warmer the planet is likely to get, and what the consequences will be. The problem, however, is that this scientific consensus is being used by the powers-that-be to justify all sorts of inhumane, illiberal and repressive political measures, often with the support, or at least complicity, of the scientists.

Even when the science is ‘right’, it is never right to prostitute science for political ends. History shows us that the mixing of science and values, the use and abuse of science to direct the political and social life of a society, is never a good idea. It is bad for politics, and it is bad for science. ...

...Something very different – and dangerous – is happening with the science of global warming. Public figures are using the language of climate change science to force through a new political consensus. The scientific consensus around CO2 emissions and global warming is now used to justify reining in development, narrowing people’s ambitions, and policing our behaviour in an ever-more petty fashion. Elites don the garb of ‘scientific fact’ as a cover for their own loss of nerve and ambition, and as an argument for holding back the potential for further progress and development. From the demand for small-scale ‘sustainable development’ in Africa to new taxes designed to determine what kind of cars we Westerners drive and how many holidays we may take a year, politicians, activists and commentators increasingly marshal the men in white coats to show that we have no choice but to narrow our horizons because the science demands it.

In truth, there is no straight or logical line from the scientific finding that manmade CO2 is contributing to warming and the demand that we slow down development and change the way we live. Rather, such small-minded policies are a product of today’s politics of low expectations, which is dressed up in the language of science. In the past, humanity faced up to great challenges, whether they were thrown up by nature or by man’s own actions, by seeking to forge ahead and advance society, by applying the greatest minds to come up with solutions to our problems. Today we are told that the only legitimate response to predictions of global warming is to drive less, build less, develop less and generally do less in the here and now. George Monbiot confesses that one of his aims is to ‘make people so depressed about the state of the world that they stay in bed all day, thereby reducing their consumption of fossil fuel’ (2). The science demands it, apparently.

Scandalously, over the past five to 10 years the science of climate change has been used as a political weapon, both to transform our behaviour and to silence those who dare to question today’s narrow political outlook. And some mainstream scientists, by allowing this to happen, have been far more complicit in the bastardisation of science than those small numbers of climate change sceptics with their allegedly dodgy graphs. While mainstream science writers attack Martin Durkin and the various talking heads in his film for muddying the science on global warming, they seem blind to the far graver undermining of scientific integrity represented by the relentless politicisation of climate change science. ...

...In both Oxford and New York, serious scientists seem to be reacting against the use of science to tell a fearful and exaggerated tale about the fate awaiting humanity. In the words of Professor Hardaker, they seem uncomfortable with the mixing of ‘science’ (the data drawn up in labs and research units) and ‘unscientific assumptions’ (the notion that we are all doomed).

Also last week, in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Hans von Storch, one of Germany’s leading researchers on climate change, attacked scientists for ‘doom-mongering’ over global warming. Von Storch compared the moral message that is attached to today’s climate change science with earlier religious and mythical stories about the Earth punishing humanity for its hubris. ‘The fear of climatic catastrophes is an ancient one’, he said. ...

...The use and abuse of climate change science is bad for science, too. When politicians look to science for their moral authority, believing that scientists can provide a gravitas to their political campaigning, it inevitably pollutes science. The aim of science becomes less to uncover scientific truths than to lend authority to political prejudices – and science inevitably becomes bent in the process. While some scientists, such as those in Oxford, New York and Germany cited above, seem keen to resist the pollution of science by ‘unscientific assumptions’, others have unfortunately gone along with the use of their work to back up political campaigning.

As Professor Hardaker in Oxford pointed out, even an august body such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science talks about global warming in hysterical, unscientific terms, predicting ‘intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms….’ (6) The politicisation of the science of climate change may have the long-term effect of skewing the science, as some scientists fall for the promise of global authority – stardom, no less – if their findings can be made to fit in with today’s narrow political priorities.

There has been a great deal of witch-hunting of Martin Durkin and the contributors to his film The Great Global Warming Swindle over the past two weeks. This witch hunt does not only point to a high level of intolerance in the global warming debate – it also suggests widespread ignorance about who and what is really undermining science today. It is not Durkin, a lone filmmaker with few friends in high places, who is damaging science, but rather those mainstream figures in politics and the media who are using science for cynical and narrow political campaigns. ...

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How Traffic Jams Are Made In City Hall
If you want to know why so few people use mass transit, meet Sue, a college administrator in Minneapolis. If anyone would use transit, Sue would. She's single, she lives in a condominium, and she can afford any additional out-of-pocket expense. She could use her city's Hiawatha Line, a light rail route newly completed at a cost of $715 million. But she doesn't, although she feels guilty about it. That's because her car gets her where she needs to go. Faster.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the typical driver in America's metropolitan areas takes 21 minutes to get from home to work. If you take public transit, the average commute stretches to 36 minutes. That's 71 percent longer. Workers in the New York metropolitan area have the longest commute: There it takes an average of 52 minutes to get to work, even though the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut mass transit systems are among the most extensive in the nation.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is about average. The typical commuter takes 21 minutes to get to work by car or 32 minutes by public transit. Congestion can be pretty bad: The average driver in the Twin Cities spends 43 hours-more than an entire work week-stuck in traffic every year. According to the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, that costs Twin Cities drivers almost $1 billion in wasted time and fuel. But mass transit takes even longer, and it isn't as flexible as a car when it comes to picking where and when you'd like to go. Is it any wonder Sue drives to work rather than taking the bus or train?

The U.S. Department of Transportation puts the yearly cost of congestion at $168 billion. But the planning gurus who are supposed to solve our transportation problems are in the grip of transitphilia and autophobia; their beliefs about how cities and transportation work are grounded more in nostalgia than in a realistic view of the world we live in now. The public policies they design and try to enforce make it harder for us to get to work, pick up our kids from school, or go shopping. They are deliberately fostering congestion. In the words of David Solow, head of the Metrolink commuter rail in Southern California, congestion is "actually good" because "it drives people out of their cars."...

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Skeptical Environmentalist's Response to Gore Plan
... On the issue of sea level change, Lomborg asked, “How is it possible that one of today’s strongest voices on climate change can say something so dramatically different from the est science (provided by the IPCC)?” He added, “IPCC estimates a foot, Gore tops them 20 times.”

Gore’s prediction that if Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea or if half of Greenland and half of Antarctica id the same thing, sea levels worldwide would increase between 18 and 20 feet, Lomborg said, is “simply positing a hypothetical and then in full graphic and gory detail showing us what – hypothetically – would happen to Miami, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Beijing, Shanghai, Dhaka and then New York.”

Lomborg said stronger and more frequent hurricanes have been cited as a calamity of global warming, yet the most reputable scientific sources have drawn no firm conclusions. “When Al Gore tells us that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ that global warming is making hurricanes more powerful and more destructive, it is incorrect.”

The recent increase in human suffering and economic impact as a result of tropical cyclones “has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions,” Lomborg said. “There are many more people, residing in much more vulnerable areas, with many more assets to lose,” he said. “In the U.S. today, the two coastal South Florida counties, Dade and Broward, are home to more people than the number of people who lived in 1930 in all 109 coastal counties stretching from Texas through irginia, along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.”

Gore’s assertions that malaria has increased as a result of global warming are similarly flawed, Lomborg said. “Like most stories, there is at core some truth to the claim that malaria will increase with temperature, but it is a small part compared to richness and health infrastructure,” he said. “Even if we could entirely stop global warming today…we would only change malaria risk in 2085 by 3.2 percent.” Even with a “stringent climate policy” Lomborg said studies show “there is little clear effect by the 2080s.”

“Compare this to current expectations that we can cut malaria incidence to about half to three‐fourths by 2015 for about $3 billion annually – or 2 percent of the cost of Kyoto,” Lomborg said. ...

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Rebels of the sun
IT says a lot about the complexity of climate science that we can put a man on the moon but we still can't predict the weather beyond the next few days. The warming of the planet, and man's contribution to this phenomenon, has become the top scientific issue of this generation.
Science by its very nature is an argument. But apparently not this one any more. Yet a minority of scientists are still lining up to challenge the accepted wisdom with their claim that global warming is being principally driven by the sun, not by human activity.

The mainstream view is that an accumulation of greenhouse gases, mostly due to human activity, is trapping too much of the sun's heat within our atmosphere. But the rebels against this dominant view suggest massive variations in the sun's heat radiation are far more influential in warming than accumulating greenhouse gases.

The UN-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the executive summary of the science of its fourth assessment report in February. It reported "90 per cent" certainty among consulted scientists that the 0.6C average temperature increase measured during the 20th century was largely caused by the release of greenhouse gases, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels by industrialised economies. In other words, by humans.

Although the scale of warming predictions had altered little during the preceding six years of research, politicians and mainstream climate-change scientists queued up to declare the argument about human-caused climate change was officially over.

Despite such confidence, hundreds of blogs across the world continue to run charged claims and counterclaims on the internet about the various positions adopted by climate scientists. The scale of the argument is unprecedented and reflects considerable uncertainty. By comparison, there are no blogs debating the validity of the periodic table of elements, for example. ...

...At least one of the 1500 "leading scientists" it quotes as its underpinning authority is also one of its staunchest critics, Richard Lindzen, who is Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a contributing author to this year's fourth IPCC assessment report but remains highly critical of how the panel operates, claiming it is largely a political process underpinned by science, which carefully stage-manages the release of its reports to maximise political impact.

The IPCC made headlines across the world in February with the release of the executive summary of its assessment report, which Lindzen says was severely modified by the political session that writes it and which is now modifying the full scientific report to fit for release in May. "That's a very funny procedure by most standards," he said. "You don't appeal to consensus if you have a scientific argument.

"Very few of the models are independent and they all share certain profound difficulties. They all get clouds hugely wrong and a small change in clouds has a much bigger effect than doubling CO2."

Bob Carter, who is a research professor in marine geology at James Cook University, says there are some excellent scientists involved in the IPCC process and the actual report is likely to be both sound and useful science. But he is even more scathing of the process.

"I think it is probably without precedent in any Western democratic process, the idea that you would publish an executive summary before the report and then openly say that 'we need a few more weeks to work on the report to make sure it is consistent with the executive summary'," he says.

"I don't know how anybody can take them seriously. It's become a religion. I have no doubt that a number of the IPCC supporters genuinely believe. Others know very well that the evidence isn't there, but it suits them to believe. ...

...In his Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, former US vice-president Al Gore's central claim in his description of the science was his correlation of 650,000 years of temperature changes with atmospheric carbon concentrations using polar ice-core samples. Gore described the relationship as complex, but made the most of the theatre, climbing up on a crane to accentuate the scale of the increases in greenhouse gas. But the sceptics point to a paper published in Nature and Science magazines showing the historical relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature has the gas lagging, not leading.

That is, greenhouse gas rises occurred about 800 years later than allegedly matching temperature change, as the warming seas released more gas into the atmosphere and trapped it when cooling.

This doesn't discredit the mainstream theory that present levels of greenhouse gases are still well above historical levels, but it is one of several areas where even mainstream scientists believe Gore appears loose with the science to make his film more dramatic.

The CBC documentary referred to predictions of sea-level rises of up to 24m as a result of climate change. The IPCC predicts rises at worst of about 50cm by 2100. If it's not OK to mislead the public in criticising climate-change science, why is it OK to mislead people in selling it? ...

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A man-made morality tale
...By contrast with the forecasts made by others, those essayed in the summary are quite circumspect. We can see this, briefly, in its treatment of temperatures, and at greater length in its treatment of ice and sea levels. The potential temperature rises projected in the summary are not dramatically different from those in the IPCC’s 2001 Third Assessment Report. The ‘best estimate’ made by the summary is that of a temperature rise of between 1.8º and 4.0º by 2100. It considers ‘unlikely’ changes of less than 1.1º or more than 6.4º. Already this confirms the mischievousness of Monbiot and Stern. They mention figures as high as 11.5º (13).

What about ice and the sea? Gore warns that if Greenland’s or the Antarctic’s ice melt, sea levels would rise by up to six metres. His maps show the inundation of Florida, San Francisco, Beijing, Calcutta and the Netherlands. The front page of the UK Independent goes further. Invoking the summary as ‘the final warning’, environmentalist writer Mark Lynas says that, with a temperature rise of 5.4º, ‘the entire planet will become ice-free, and sea levels will be 70 metres higher than today’ (14). How do Gore’s six and the Independent’s 70 metres compare with the summary? It considers a variety of scenarios in which no special policies are implemented to deal with greenhouse emissions. Its conclusion: by 2100, sea levels could rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres.

All this is an order of magnitude less pessimistic than Gore and the Independent. When the summary speculates about ‘virtually complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about seven metres’, that is in the context of melting being sustained not to 2100, but for millennia (15). And the Antarctic? The summary does say that a net loss of ice mass could occur if ‘dynamical ice discharge’ dominates the ice sheet – in other words, if bits of ice break off rather than melt. But it precedes that observation with the point that current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet ‘will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall’ (16).

Alarmists such as Gore make much of the recent suggestion that the world’s ice may be melting much more rapidly than previously thought. But once again the summary is more sober. It says: ‘Models used to date do not include the full effects of changes in ice sheet flow, because a basis in published literature is lacking. The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993-2003, but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future.’ (17)

As for the newer studies, the summary suggests that increased melting might raise sea levels by between 10 and 20 centimetres. Larger values, it adds, cannot be excluded; but ‘understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise’ (18). All the most worrying scenarios for rises in sea levels rely on the melting of Greenland or Antarctic ice. As noted above, the IPCC suggests that such processes will take millennia. Gore, Monbiot and Stern and others claim that we should take seriously much shorter timescales. While the IPCC uses uncertainties about melting as a reason for withholding judgment, Stern, an economist, speculates that ocean warming and the acceleration of ice flows could lead to a ‘runaway discharge’ of ice. ...

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Sun's pulses point to drenching rain
DROUGHT-BREAKING rains across eastern Australia have been predicted in new modelling by a scientist who believes massive pulses in the sun's magnetic field are helping to drive the Earth's climate systems.

If proven, the research will make the prediction of floods and droughts in Australia far more reliable and influence models projecting future climate change.

Robert Baker, from the University of New England, claims to have found a strong relationship between the rhythmic pulsing of the sun's magnetic field and weather systems, particularly in the southern hemisphere. ...

...It also suggests there may be a longer 500-year solar cycle, which may help explain climate variability over the past centuries, including periods of unexplained climate variability such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age....

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The surprising truth about America's infant-mortality rate
Last year, a widely distributed report from the group Save the Children, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, tied the United States with Malta and Slovakia for the second-worst infant-mortality rate among developed nations (at about six per 1,000 live births). "I'm always amazed to see where the United States is," a Rand researcher said of the list. "We are the wealthiest country in the world," a Save the Children spokesperson agreed, yet many "are not getting the health care they need."

Comparing infant mortality rates between countries is fraught with uncertainty—after all, it's hard to argue that every country's figures are reliable. But it's still worth asking what more we can do to stop babies from dying. Defined as death before one year of age, infant mortality frequently gets framed in the United States as a problem of insufficient health-care funding. In December, for example, a New York Times column blamed it on the lack of a single-payer health insurer. However, a closer look reveals the counterintuitive possibility that high infant mortality in the United States might be the unintended side effect of increased spending on medical care.

Infant deaths in poor nations are roughly six times more common than in developed areas and result mainly from easily treated infections like diarrhea in the first few months. By contrast, the majority of deaths in developed countries result from extreme prematurity or birth defects that kill a newborn in the first few days or weeks of life. According to a 2002 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least a third of all infant mortality in the United States arises from complications of prematurity; other studies assert the figure is closer to half. Thus—at the risk of oversimplifying—infant mortality in the United States principally is a problem of premature birth, which today complicates just over one in 10 pregnancies.

To reduce infant mortality, then, we need to prevent premature births, and if that fails, improve care of premature babies once born. (Prematurity is also linked to other problems; for example, it's the leading cause of mental retardation and cerebral palsy in children.) But modern medicine isn't good at preventing prematurity—just the opposite. Better and more affordable medical care actually has worsened the rate of prematurity, and likely the rate of infant mortality, by making fertility treatment widespread. According to a 2006 Institute of Medicine report, the numbers of women using assistive reproductive technology doubled from 1996 to 2002. At least half of their pregnancies culminated in multiple births (twins or more), which are at high risk of premature delivery....

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Any shade of politics you like, so long as it’s green
...This week’s explosion of hot air over global warming marks a new record in the denigration of political language. Behind the overcooked talk about changing the world and saving the planet, the crusade against global warming represents the latest stage in the politics of low expectations and small-mindedness. And far from climate change being a battlefield for any big political ‘war’, the issue is being used to confine debate to an even narrower, more conformist strip of ground.

We have been told many times by political leaders that ours is the era when ‘choice’ is king. Now we can see what they meant. We can choose any shade of politics we like, just so long as it is green. This fits into the pattern of what they call ‘informed choice’, whereby we are expected to make the choices that they inform us are the correct ones.

If we hope to live in a democratic society, any attempt to limit political debate or banish alternative views must be seriously put to question. And there are good reasons for questioning this new political consensus that are quite separate from any debate about the science of climate change. First because, despite the bold talk of all the party leaders, it represents the abdication of political leadership. And second because it reflects an underlying anti-humanist mood in public life. ...

...With their public standing at an all-time low, politicians are attracted to the issue of climate change because it allows them to scramble out of the mire and back on to the moral high ground. Rather than fending off endless allegations of sleaze or trying to explain why they cannot run a decent health service, Blair and Brown are set free to make portentous speeches about saving the planet. And instead of tackling the tricky issues of coming up with alternative policies on the economy or Iraq, Cameron can strike statesmanlike poses while hugging a glacier.

Blair’s remarks this week hinted at how he has suddenly seized upon the global warming issue to provide an ersatz sense of mission for his faltering government. ‘People that have been in Downing Street over the years have faced issues to do with the Cold War, the Depression and the rise of fascism’, the prime minister told a group of teenagers. ‘Climate change is a bit of a different type of challenge, but a challenge I believe is the biggest long-term threat facing our world.’ By recasting climate change as a sort of Nazi or Soviet threat facing the current generation of leaders, Blair elevates himself on to a higher plane of history.

The rise and rise of the politics of global warming also reveals another big problem with leaders today. Lacking any of the political authority of their predecessors, they are continually looking for something else to lean on as a source of public legitimacy. Here they have sought to latch on to the science of climate change. They are dragging scientists on to the stage to try to justify their own petty authoritarian policies, in an echo of the way that the tobacco industry once used men in white coats to advertise its wares....

...Let us leave aside for now the vexed and complex question of the actual science of climate change. I am no climatologist, but then you surely do not need to be to see that the simplistic, conformist politics of global warming are about something else. Even if we were to accept that some of the far-reaching expert predictions about climate change were true, there would be no necessary straight line from those scientists’ estimates to the sort of policies now being proposed by Brown or David Miliband or Cameron. Instead, they are using the language of science to express their own politics of low expectations and policing our behaviour. ...

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From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype
Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”...

...Some of Mr. Gore’s centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe’s warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore’s message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist in Denmark long skeptical of catastrophic global warming, said in a syndicated article that the panel, unlike Mr. Gore, had refrained from scaremongering. “Climate change is a real and serious problem” that calls for careful analysis and sound policy, Dr. Lomborg said. “The cacophony of screaming,” he added, “does not help.”

So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period....

...“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria.

“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”...

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Expedition Highlighting Global Warming Called Off Due to Extreme Cold
A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment....

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‘Apocalypse my arse’
Martin Durkin has a hangover. And a cold. He spent last night, Thursday 8 March, watching the Channel 4 screening of his film The Great Global Warming Swindle in a pub with friends and colleagues. ‘It’s better than watching it at home. That can be an isolating experience. You become convinced you’re the only person in the country watching it.’ Now, this morning, he has some things to get off his chest – about the green movement’s demonisation of him for daring to question environmentalist orthodoxy; the ‘soft censorship’ of his earlier programmes; and the endless revelations that he had an apparently dodgy Marxist background.

‘Shock, horror’, he says. ‘Exposing that a journalist has a Marxist background is like exposing that he wears trousers.’

Durkin’s latest film has won him the accolade – or perhaps slur – of being the ‘anti-Al Gore’. Where the American president-who-never-was transformed his rather dull PowerPoint presentation on the threat of global warming into a marginally less dull big box office flick – An Inconvenient Truth – Durkin has directed a 90-minute made-for-TV movie that basically says: ‘Everything you know about global warming is wrong!’ ...

...Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, one of the world’s leading experts on malaria, was a revelation. He explained how he had to threaten legal action against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to have his name removed from the list of ‘2,000 of the world’s leading scientists’ who apparently backed its summary published last month. The problem? Professor Reiter didn’t back it, instead arguing that it was a ‘sham’. The IPCC ‘make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed, but it’s not true’, he said.

And leaving to one side the science of global warming, there was also some stirring stuff on the impact of the environmentalist ethos on political debate and human ambition – especially in relation to the developing world. Many of the talking heads argued that our obsession with restraining development in order to ‘save the planet’ will consign the world’s poorest to a life of grime and squalor. And, ironically, pollution. As one contributor pointed out, the smoke from cowshit and other items that some in the developing world burn in order to warm their homes – because they don’t have electricity and because the only solution put forward for their predicament is that they should use expensive and ineffectual ‘sustainable’ solar and wind power – is recognised by the World Health Organisation as one of the worst pollutants in the world. Tens of thousands of children in the developing world die every year from respiratory problems brought on by such in-house smog. It is peasantry, rather than modernity, that kills them; shit, not cars. ...

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Top Secret: We're Wiretapping You

It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked "top secret." And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls.

You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.

By all accounts, that's what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew in August 2004. And it happened at a time when no one outside a small group of high-ranking officials and workaday spooks knew the National Security Agency was listening in on Americans' phone calls without warrants. Belew didn't know what to make of the episode. But now, thanks to that government gaffe, he and a colleague have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA's surveillance program.

The pair are seeking $1 million each in a closely watched lawsuit against the government, which experts say represents the greatest chance, among over 50 different lawsuits, of convincing a key judge to declare the program illegal....

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Allegre's second thoughts
The Deniers -- The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science

Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming....

...His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."...

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Shamen on the NHS, it’s away with the fairies


Tom and Donna (not their real names) are professional shamen. They teach classes in shamanism at a “foundation”, where you can learn “soul retrieval healing”, help the dead “continue their journey into the Hereafter”, and investigate “the Fairy Kingdom”.

These soul retrievers and Fairy Kingdom investigators also work for the NHS — where, according to Tom’s foundation profile, they “use complementary therapies to help those with mental health difficulties”.

Shaman therapies are not the only unorthodox treatments for which the NHS will gladly pay. Taxpayers are also subsidising Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) “therapy”, in which, according to one NHS trust, “subtle energies” are reordered via “tapping with the fingertips to stimulate certain meridian energy points while the client is ‘tuned in’ to the problem”.

The inventor of EFT notes on his website that he “is not a licensed health professional”, which doesn’t stop him promoting it as an effective treatment for diabetes — unsurprising, since it works for “just about every emotional, health and performance issue you can name”.

If EFT doesn’t do the job, an NHS foot massage might help. Reflexologists believe that each part of the foot maps to a different organ, and that massaging a particular point can treat that organ. Medical doctors think it’s absurd.

This is not to say that the NHS doesn’t have a sceptical side — even it is dubious about homeopathy, pointing out that “no evidence has been found” to support the key homeopathic principle that water retains a “memory” of molecules that have been filtered out of it, and that pure distilled water is an effective treatment for a host of conditions.

Since the NHS believes that the entire basis of homeopathy is “contrary to scientific knowledge”, the obvious question becomes: why is it funding five homeopathic hospitals? Most depressing of all for the rational taxpayer is the NHS Directory for Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which aims to promote “dowsers”, “flower therapists” and “crystal healers”.

We’ve just learnt that some hospitals are removing every third light bulb to save money, and that nurses are being paid half the minimum wage — or being asked to work for nothing — at others.

That’s how bad the financial crisis has become. Meanwhile, the National Health Service is employing shaman fairy enthusiasts as psychological counsellors,...

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Mac Hammond: "I would almost welcome an IRS audit"
Pastor Mac Hammond acknowledged Sunday that he is well-compensated by Living Word Christian Center, and affirmed many of the charges against him, but justified his financial dealings with the church, saying "If I don't understand the principles that govern increase, I can't preach them."

Rhetorically, he asked, "Is this a self-serving message? Not at all."

In a detailed and often defiant hour-long sermon, Hammond claimed that his dealings with the church have been directed by scripture and by God, and that God's "Holy Ghost siphon" was directing money from sinners to his church, and to him.

Hammond took pains to note that he "[chose] not to believe the media is abusing its authority," adding that "They're going to have a hard time figuring out what kind of church we are." However, he was harshly critical of the idea that "spirituality and materialism don't go together."

"It takes wealth, folks, to establish God's covenant on Earth," he said. "It takes money to buy airtime. It takes money to be influential. If you have no money, you can't even love, because love is about giving and not being a burden."...

...Hammond characterized $1.9 million in personal loans as "simply vehicles of compensation used by the board," and said he had paid all loans back by 2005.

He also defended his purchase and subsequent lease-back of airplanes to the church, saying the demands on his time from other churches meant that "The only way we could [visit other churches nationwide] was to have our own airplane."

Hammond acknowledged that he was leasing the plane back to the church for more than he was paying monthly for the plane, but said the lease had been established at "fair market value," and allowed him to take advantage of tax breaks for depreciation on the airplane. He also said that the money he made on the deal was simply part of his compensation.

Hammond also chided the media for claims that the church had purchased him two condos in Florida. "I don't own two condos in Florida. That is an inaccuracy. Better than that, I own two houses, Amen!"

Hammond said he had made the purchases as "investments," and claimed that the property value had doubled. He made similar claims about a hangar purchased by the church.

Hammond defended himself against charges that he was being greedy, noting that he was "the largest contributor in the history of this church." He claimed that since 2001, he and his wife have donated $2 million to the church.

But Hammond was unapologetic for earning a significant salary from the church.

"I am very, very well compensated. God has provided for me in a way that is super-abundant," he said.

Hammond closed with a carefully calibrated shot at the media.

"I believe the media wants to tell the truth. But the media has such a power over public opinion that it can be a real temptation to manipulate the truth just enough to serve an agenda."

Hammond closed his sermon to a standing ovation, and the passing of the collection basket....

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'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary
Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary.

'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.

The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world's poor.

Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2....

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Conquering Cancer with Private Medicine
Few things in life are as terrifying as a diagnosis of cancer. But for millions in the United States, the news just got a little bit better. Death rates for those suffering from cancer are actually beginning to drop. In particular, death rates have declined for the four most common forms of cancer: lung, colorectal, prostate and female breast cancers. Overall, fewer U.S. citizens died of cancer than at anytime in the past 70 years.

While there are many reasons for this welcome trend, one reason is the much-maligned U.S. free-market health care system.

The one common characteristic of all national health care systems, including Canada's, is that they ration care. Sometimes, they ration it explicitly, denying certain types of treatment altogether. More often, they ration indirectly, imposing global budgets that limit the availability of high-tech medical equipment, or which require long waits for patients seeking treatment.

In the United States, by contrast, there are no such limits, meaning that the most advanced treatment options are far more available. This translates directly into saved lives.

Take prostate cancer, for example. Even though U.S. men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than their counterparts in other countries, they are less likely to die from the disease. Less than one out of five American men with prostate cancer will die from it, but 57% of British men and nearly half of French and German men will. Even in Canada, a quarter of men diagnosed with prostate cancer, die from the disease.

That is, in part, because in most countries with national health insurance, the preferred treatment for prostate cancer is ... to do nothing. Prostate cancer is a slow disease. Most patients are older and will live for several years after diagnosis. Therefore, it is not cost-effective in a world of socialized medicine to treat the disease aggressively. The approach saves money, but comes at a human cost.

Similar results can be found for other forms of cancer. For instance, just 30% of U.S. citizens diagnosed with colon cancer die from it, compared to 74% in Britain, 62% in New Zealand, 58% in France, 57% in Germany, 53% in Australia, and 36% in Canada. ...

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Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says
...Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.

Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.

"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said. ...

..."The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040," Abdussamatov said. "It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on Earth in 15 to 20 years."