FYI: A Global Something Review from NYT

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Keeping my new system of just copying, below is a review of books on global warming, you know, the catastrophe and settled science that stopped 7 years ago.

The review is clear in its listing of the books and sections, and includes an insight into why things are highly confused. [Conversation among the deaf.]

The book by Nordhaus, which is mentioned, is typical, it merely assumed global warming and goes from there. That is fine, but you cannot read all the stuff produced and use it to prove the assumption. (But it does let a dismal economist write about global warming and publish a book.)

You can read it for yourself, of course, but let me add:

CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION

Once people understand that, life will be much simpler. It sounds simple, but it is universally not applied. As in the review: measures of warming increase for a time while CO2 was also rising. That is interesting, but it is proof of nothing. If you think it is proof, consider during the "global warming" period the Red Sox were playing better. Clearly, the Red Sox are the problem. Or, I guess, they play better when it is warmer or there is more CO2 in the air. Either way, they, well, never mind. The correlation provides a hypothesis suitable for testing. That is all.

Of note, in the review, there is a mention of plants taking in CO2 as a topic which should have been discussed. The oceans take in the CO2 and keep the earth in balance, something almost always overlooked, as did the reviewer. We need to stop being dilettantes throwing in our observations, like the Prince said to Mozart: "...too many notes."

(How can the review be dated two weeks from now?)

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Volume 55, Number 10 · June 12, 2008

The Question of Global Warming

By Freeman Dyson

A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies

by William Nordhaus

Yale University Press, 234 pp., $28.00

Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto

edited by Ernesto Zedillo

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization/Brookings Institution Press, 237 pp., $26.95 (paper)

I begin this review with a prologue, describing the measurements that transformed global warming from a vague theoretical speculation into a precise observational science.

There is a famous graph showing the fraction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it varies month by month and year by year (see the graph). It gives us our firmest and most accurate evidence of effects of human activities on our global environment. The graph is generally known as the Keeling graph because it summarizes the lifework of Charles David Keeling, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Keeling measured the carbon dioxide abundance in the atmosphere for forty-seven years, from 1958 until his death in 2005. He designed and built the instruments that made accurate measurements possible. He began making his measurements near the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Loa on the big island of Hawaii.

Concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere

He chose this place for his observatory because the ambient air is far from any continent and is uncontaminated by local human activities or vegetation. The measurements have continued after Keeling's death, and show an unbroken record of rising carbon dioxide abundance extending over fifty years. The graph has two obvious and conspicuous features. First, a steady increase of carbon dioxide with time, beginning at 315 parts per million in 1958 and reaching 385 parts per million in 2008. Second, a regular wiggle showing a yearly cycle of growth and decline of carbon dioxide levels. The maximum happens each year in the Northern Hemisphere spring, the minimum in the Northern Hemisphere fall. The difference between maximum and minimum each year is about six parts per million.

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Keeling was a meticulous observer. The accuracy of his measurements has never been challenged, and many other observers have confirmed his results. In the 1970s he extended his observations from Mauna Loa, at latitude 20 north, to eight other stations at various latitudes, from the South Pole at latitude 90 south to Point Barrow on the Arctic coast of Alaska at latitude 71 north. At every latitude there is the same steady growth of carbon dioxide levels, but the size of the annual wiggle varies strongly with latitude. The wiggle is largest at Point Barrow where the difference between maximum and minimum is about fifteen parts per million. At Kerguelen, a Pacific island at latitude 29 south, the wiggle vanishes. At the South Pole the difference between maximum and minimum is about two parts per million, with the maximum in Southern Hemisphere spring.

The only plausible explanation of the annual wiggle and its variation with latitude is that it is due to the seasonal growth and decay of annual vegetation, especially deciduous forests, in temperate latitudes north and south. The asymmetry of the wiggle between north and south is caused by the fact that the Northern Hemisphere has most of the land area and most of the deciduous forests. The wiggle is giving us a direct measurement of the quantity of carbon that is absorbed from the atmosphere each summer north and south by growing vegetation, and returned each winter to the atmosphere by dying and decaying vegetation.

The quantity is large, as we see directly from the Point Barrow measurements. The wiggle at Point Barrow shows that the net growth of vegetation in the Northern Hemisphere summer absorbs about 4 percent of the total carbon dioxide in the high-latitude atmosphere each year. The total absorption must be larger than the net growth, because the vegetation continues to respire during the summer, and the net growth is equal to total absorption minus respiration. The tropical forests at low latitudes are also absorbing and respiring a large quantity of carbon dioxide, which does not vary much with the season and does not contribute much to the annual wiggle.

When we put together the evidence from the wiggles and the distribution of vegetation over the earth, it turns out that about 8 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by vegetation and returned to the atmosphere every year. This means that the average lifetime of a molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, before it is captured by vegetation and afterward released, is about twelve years. This fact, that the exchange of carbon between atmosphere and vegetation is rapid, is of fundamental importance to the long-range future of global warming, as will become clear in what follows. Neither of the books under review mentions it.

1.

William Nordhaus is a professional economist, and his book A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies describes the global-warming problem as an econ-omist sees it. He is not concerned with the science of global warming or with the detailed estimation of the damage that it may do. He assumes that the science and the damage are specified, and he compares the effectiveness of various policies for the allocation of economic resources in response. His conclusions are largely independent of scientific details. He calculates aggregated expenditures and costs and gains. Everything is calculated by running a single computer model which he calls DICE, an acronym for Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy.

Each run of DICE takes as input a particular policy for allocating expenditures year by year. The allocated resources are spent on subsidizing costly technologies—for example, deep underground sequestration of carbon dioxide produced in power stations—that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, or placing a tax on activities that produce carbon emissions. The climate model part of DICE calculates the effect of the reduced emissions in reducing damage. The output of DICE then tells us the resulting gains and losses of the world economy year by year. Each run begins at the year 2005 and ends either at 2105 or 2205, giving a picture of the effects of a particular policy over the next one or two hundred years.

The practical unit of economic resources is a trillion inflation-adjusted dollars. An inflation-adjusted dollar means a sum of money, at any future time, with the same purchasing power as a real dollar in 2005. In the following discussion, the word "dollar" will always mean an inflation-adjusted dollar, with a purchasing power that does not vary with time. The difference in outcome between one policy and another is typically several trillion dollars, comparable with the cost of the war in Iraq. This is a game played for high stakes.

Nordhaus's book is not for the casual reader. It is full of graphs and tables of numbers, with an occasional equation to show how the numbers are related. The graphs and tables show how the world economy reacts to the various policy options. To understand these graphs and tables, readers should be familiar with financial statements and compound interest, but they do not need to be experts in economic theory. Anyone who knows enough mathematics to balance a checkbook or complete an income tax return should be able to understand the numbers.

For the benefit of those who are mathematically illiterate or uninterested in numerical details, Nordhaus has put a nonmathematical chapter at the beginning with the title "Summary for the Concerned Citizen." This first chapter contains an admirably clear summary of his results and their practical consequences, digested so as to be read by busy politicians and ordinary people who may vote the politicians into office. He believes that the most important concern of any policy that aims to address climate change should be how to set the most efficient "carbon price," which he defines as "the market price or penalty that would be paid by those who use fossil fuels and thereby generate CO₂ emissions." He writes:

Whether someone is serious about tackling the global-warming problem can be readily gauged by listening to what he or she says about the carbon price. Suppose you hear a public figure who speaks eloquently of the perils of global warming and proposes that the nation should move urgently to slow climate change. Suppose that person proposes regulating the fuel efficiency of cars, or requiring high-efficiency lightbulbs, or subsidizing ethanol, or providing research support for solar power—but nowhere does the proposal raise the price of carbon. You should conclude that the proposal is not really serious and does not recognize the central economic message about how to slow climate change. To a first approximation, raising the price of carbon is a necessary and sufficient step for tackling global warming. The rest is at best rhetoric and may actually be harmful in inducing economic inefficiencies.

If this chapter were widely read, the public understanding of global warming and possible responses to it would be greatly improved.

Nordhaus examines five kinds of global-warming policy, with many runs of DICE for each kind. The first kind is business-as-usual, with no restriction of carbon dioxide emissions—in which case, he estimates damages to the environment amounting to some $23 trillion in current dollars by the year 2100. The second kind is the "optimal policy," judged by Nordhaus to be the most cost-effective, with a worldwide tax on carbon emissions adjusted each year to give the maximum aggregate economic gain as calculated by DICE. The third kind is the Kyoto Protocol, in operation since 2005 with 175 participating countries, imposing fixed limits to the emissions of economically developed countries only. Nordhaus tests various versions of the Kyoto Protocol, with or without the participation of the United States.

The fourth kind of policy is labeled "ambitious" proposals, with two versions which Nordhaus calls "Stern" and "Gore." "Stern" is the policy advocated by Sir Nicholas Stern in the Stern Review, an economic analysis of global-warming policy sponsored by the British government.^[*] "Stern" imposes draconian limits on emissions, similar to the Kyoto limits but much stronger. "Gore" is a policy advocated by Al Gore, with emissions reduced drastically but gradually, the reductions reaching 90 percent of current levels before the year 2050. The fifth and last kind is called "low-cost backstop," a policy based on a hypothetical low-cost technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or for producing energy without carbon dioxide emission, assuming that such a technology will become available at some specified future date. According to Nordhaus, this technology might include "low-cost solar power, geothermal energy, some nonintrusive climatic engineering, or genetically engineered carbon-eating trees."

Since each policy put through DICE is allowed to run for one or two hundred years, its economic effectiveness must be measured by an aggregated sum of gains and losses over the whole duration of the run. The most crucial question facing the policymaker is then how to compare present-day gains and losses with gains and losses a hundred years in the future. That is why Nordhaus chose "A Question of Balance" for his title. If we can save M dollars of damage caused by climate change in the year 2110 by spending one dollar on reducing emissions in the year 2010, how large must M be to make the spending worthwhile? Or, as economists might put it, how much can future losses from climate change be diminished or "discounted" by money invested in reducing emissions now?

The conventional answer given by economists to this question is to say that M must be larger than the expected return in 2110 if the 2010 dollar were invested in the world economy for a hundred years at an average rate of compound interest. For example, the value of one dollar invested at an average interest rate of 4 percent for a period of one hundred years would be fifty-four dollars; this would be the future value of one dollar in one hundred years' time. Therefore, for every dollar spent now on a particular strategy to fight global warming, the investment must reduce the damage caused by warming by an amount that exceeds fifty-four dollars in one hundred years' time to accrue a positive economic benefit to society. If a strategy of a tax on carbon emissions results in a return of only forty-four dollars per dollar invested, the benefits of adopting the strategy will be outweighed by the costs of paying for it. But if the strategy produces a return of sixty-four dollars per dollar invested, the advantages are clear. The question then is how well different strategies of dealing with global warming succeed in producing long-term benefits that outweigh their present costs. The aggregation of gains and losses over time should be calculated with the remote future heavily discounted.

The choice of discount rate for the future is the most important decision for anyone making long-range plans. The discount rate is the assumed annual percentage loss in present value of a future dollar as it moves further into the future. The DICE program allows the discount rate to be chosen arbitrarily, but Nordhaus displays the results only for a discount rate of 4 percent. Here he is following the conventional wisdom of economists. Four percent is a conservative number, based on an average of past experience in good and bad times. Nordhaus is basing his judgment on the assumption that the next hundred years will bring to the world economy a mixture of stagnation and prosperity, with overall average growth continuing at the same rate that we have experienced during the twentieth century. Future costs are discounted because the future world will be richer and better able to afford them. Future benefits are discounted because they will be a diminishing fraction of future wealth.

When the future costs and benefits are discounted at a rate of 4 percent per year, the aggregated costs and benefits of a climate policy over the entire future are finite. The costs and benefits beyond a hundred years make little difference to the calculated aggregate. Nordhaus therefore takes the aggregate benefit-minus-cost over the entire future as a measure of the net value of the policy. He uses this single number, calculated with the DICE model of the world economy, as a figure of merit to compare one policy with another. To represent the value of a policy by a single number is a gross oversimplification of the real world, but it helps to concentrate our attention on the most important differences between policies.

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Here are the net values of the various policies as calculated by the DICE model. The values are calculated as differences from the business-as-usual model, without any emission controls. A plus value means that the policy is better than business-as-usual, with the reduction of damage due to climate change exceeding the cost of controls. A minus value means that the policy is worse than business-as-usual, with costs exceeding the reduction of damage. The unit of value is $1 trillion, and the values are specified to the nearest trillion. The net value of the optimal program, a global carbon tax increasing gradually with time, is plus three—that is, a benefit of some $3 trillion. The Kyoto Protocol has a value of plus one with US participation, zero without US participation. The "Stern" policy has a value of minus fifteen, the "Gore" policy minus twenty-one, and "low-cost backstop" plus seventeen.

What do these numbers mean? $1 trillion is a difficult unit to visualize. It is easier to think of it as $3,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US population. It is comparable to the annual gross domestic product of India or Brazil. A gain or loss of $1 trillion would be a noticeable but not overwhelming perturbation of the world economy. A gain or loss of $10 trillion would be a major perturbation with unpredictable consequences.

The main conclusion of the Nordhaus analysis is that the ambitious proposals, "Stern" and "Gore," are disastrously expensive, the "low-cost backstop" is enormously advantageous if it can be achieved, and the other policies including business-as-usual and Kyoto are only moderately worse than the optimal policy. The practical consequence for global-warming policy is that we should pursue the following objectives in order of priority. (1) Avoid the ambitious proposals. (2) Develop the science and technology for a low-cost backstop. (3) Negotiate an international treaty coming as close as possible to the optimal policy, in case the low-cost backstop fails. (4) Avoid an international treaty making the Kyoto Protocol policy permanent. These objectives are valid for economic reasons, independent of the scientific details of global warming.

There is a fundamental difference of philosophy between Nordhaus and Sir Nicholas Stern. Chapter 9 of Nordhaus's book explains the difference, and explains why Stern advocates a policy that Nordhaus considers disastrous. Stern rejects the idea of discounting future costs and benefits when they are compared with present costs and benefits. Nordhaus, following the normal practice of economists and business executives, considers discounting to be necessary for reaching any reasonable balance between present and future. In Stern's view, discounting is unethical because it discriminates between present and future generations. That is, Stern believes that discounting imposes excessive burdens on future generations. In Nordhaus's view, discounting is fair because a dollar saved by the present generation becomes fifty-four dollars to be spent by our descendants a hundred years later.

The practical consequence of the Stern policy would be to slow down the economic growth of China now in order to reduce damage from climate change a hundred years later. Several generations of Chinese citizens would be impoverished to make their descendants only slightly richer. According to Nordhaus, the slowing-down of growth would in the end be far more costly to China than the climatic damage. About the much-discussed possibility of catastrophic effects before the end of the century from rising sea levels, he says only that "climate change is unlikely to be catastrophic in the near term, but it has the potential for serious damages in the long run." The Chinese government firmly rejects the Stern philosophy, while the British government enthusiastically embraces it. The Stern Review, according to Nordhaus, "takes the lofty vantage point of the world social planner, perhaps stoking the dying embers of the British Empire."

2.

The main deficiency of Nordhaus's book is that he does not discuss the details of the "low-cost backstop" that might provide a climate policy vastly more profitable than his optimum policy. He avoids this subject because he is an economist and not a scientist. He does not wish to question the pronouncements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of hundreds of scientists officially appointed by the United Nations to give scientific advice to governments. The Intergovernmental Panel considers the science of climate change to be settled, and does not believe in low-cost backstops. Concerning the possible candidates for a low-cost backstop technology he mentions in the sentence I previously quoted—for example, "low-cost solar power"—Nordhaus has little to say. He writes that "no such technology presently exists, and we can only speculate on it." The "low-cost backstop" policy is displayed in his tables as an abstract possibility without any details. It is nowhere emphasized as a practical solution to the problem of climate change.

At this point I return to the Keeling graph, which demonstrates the strong coupling between atmosphere and plants. The wiggles in the graph show us that every carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere is incorporated in a plant within a time of the order of twelve years. Therefore, if we can control what the plants do with the carbon, the fate of the carbon in the atmosphere is in our hands. That is what Nordhaus meant when he mentioned "genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" as a low-cost backstop to global warming. The science and technology of genetic engineering are not yet ripe for large-scale use. We do not understand the language of the genome well enough to read and write it fluently. But the science is advancing rapidly, and the technology of reading and writing genomes is advancing even more rapidly. I consider it likely that we shall have "genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" within twenty years, and almost certainly within fifty years.

Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals. Biotechnology is enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any molecule of carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling's wiggles prove that a big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes within the grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the world's forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about fifty years.

It is likely that biotechnology will dominate our lives and our economic activities during the second half of the twenty-first century, just as computer technology dominated our lives and our economy during the second half of the twentieth. Biotechnology could be a great equalizer, spreading wealth over the world wherever there is land and air and water and sunlight. This has nothing to do with the misguided efforts that are now being made to reduce carbon emissions by growing corn and converting it into ethanol fuel. The ethanol program fails to reduce emissions and incidentally hurts poor people all over the world by raising the price of food. After we have mastered biotechnology, the rules of the climate game will be radically changed. In a world economy based on biotechnology, some low-cost and environmentally benign backstop to carbon emissions is likely to become a reality.

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Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto is the record of a conference held at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization in 2005. It is edited by Ernesto Zedillo, the head of the Yale Center, who served as president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000 and was chairman of the conference. The book consists of an introduction by Zedillo and fourteen chapters contributed by speakers at the conference. Among the speakers was William Nordhaus, contributing "Economic Analyses of the Kyoto Protocol: Is There Life After Kyoto?," a sharper criticism of the Kyoto Protocol than we find in his own book.

The Zedillo book covers a much wider range of topics and opinions than the Nordhaus book, and is addressed to a wider circle of readers. It includes "Is the Global Warming Alarm Founded on Fact?," by Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT, answering that question with a resounding no. Lindzen does not deny the existence of global warming, but considers the predictions of its harmful effects to be grossly exaggerated. He writes,

Actual observations suggest that the sensitivity of the real climate is much less than that found in computer models whose sensitivity depends on processes that are clearly misrepresented.

Answering Lindzen in the next chapter, "Anthropogenic Climate Change: Revisiting the Facts," is Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University in Germany. Rahmstorf sums up his opinion of Lind-zen's arguments in one sentence: "All this seems completely out of touch with the world of climate science as I know it and, to be frank, simply ludicrous." These two chapters give the reader a sad picture of climate science. Rahmstorf represents the majority of scientists who believe fervently that global warming is a grave danger. Lindzen represents the small minority who are skeptical. Their conversation is a dialogue of the deaf. The majority responds to the minority with open contempt.

In the history of science it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right. It may—or may not—be that the present is such a time. The great virtue of Nordhaus's economic analysis is that it remains valid whether the majority view is right or wrong. Nordhaus's optimum policy takes both possibilities into account. Zedillo in his introduction summarizes the arguments of each contributor in turn. He maintains the neutrality appropriate to a conference chairman, and gives equal space to Lindzen and to Rahmstorf. He betrays his own opinion only in a single sentence with a short parenthesis: "Climate change may not be the world's most pressing problem (as I am convinced it is not), but it could still prove to be the most complex challenge the world has ever faced."

The last five chapters of the Zedillo book are by writers from five of the countries most concerned with the politics of global warming: Russia, Britain, Canada, India, and China. Each of the five authors has been responsible for giving technical advice to a government, and each of them gives us a statement of that government's policy. Howard Dalton, spokesman for the British government, is the most dogmatic. His final paragraph begins:

It is the firm view of the United Kingdom that climate change constitutes a major threat to the environment and human society, that urgent action is needed now across the world to avert that threat, and that the developed world needs to show leadership in tackling climate change.

The United Kingdom has made up its mind and takes the view that any individuals who disagree with government policy should be ignored. This dogmatic tone is also adopted by the Royal Society, the British equivalent of the US National Academy of Sciences. The Royal Society recently published a pamphlet addressed to the general public with the title "Climate Change Controversies: A Simple Guide." The pamphlet says:

This is not intended to provide exhaustive answers to every contentious argument that has been put forward by those who seek to distort and undermine the science of climate change and deny the seriousness of the potential consequences of global warming.

In other words, if you disagree with the majority opinion about global warming, you are an enemy of science. The authors of the pamphlet appear to have forgotten the ancient motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in Verba, which means, "Nobody's word is final."

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All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the be-lief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

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Notes

^[*] See Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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Alinsky Students: Hillary and Barry (Barack)

Here is some food for thought, no matter how your preferences fall. The Alinsky school is new to me as a serious philosophy, which is the way he would want it, but it is worth investigating and fearing. Like I have said privately, something about the clearly bright Obama reminded me of the Manchurian Candidate.

When I heard him say he would "redistribute the wealth" I put him in the Marx box, along with Maxine Waters, who slipped the other day to say she wanted to "socialize" the oil industry. She quickly restated herself without much success by saying "we" would run the oil business [that didn't move off shore, I guess.]

Now we learn, Obama was a teacher of a methods of hidden revolution and paid (and brilliant) Alinsky "agitator," a job Hillary turned down to go to law school. Only recently did I hear of paid agitators. This is all a bit disturbing because it has gone on for a generation and is well established. Hilary's, now secret, senior thesis was on Alinsky. The media skips over the paid agitation days.

Let me quote "Kos," another self proclaimed rich, poor kid, on his interviewing for the CIA:

Every single one of them was liberal… people who want to make the world a better place… people who are internationalist… That was an eye-opening experience for me.

Hence, the undercutting of the Iraq effort by the CIA and State Department who are out to get President Bush, et al, as noted int a previous blog entry. They don't follow the chain of command, being smarter than the rest of us and all. "Internationalist" is to "Marxist" as "progressive" is to "socialist."

The term "liberal" no longer means liberal, it means, to me, a busy or stupid anarchist who is pissed off. Its original meaning was a person willing to push beyond the status quo to assure individual rights, which is what many "liberal" think it still means as they follow the "liberal" Alinsky fans, who are actually in favor or the state stamping out individual rights. {For the common benefit, of course. Are these people forgetting something called history?}

Here is Poe's article. He is a successful author and has a current book out with David Horowitz, which means half of you already deny it, so won't bother reading it.

Hillary, Obama and the Cult of Alinsky

by Richard Lawrence Poe Monday, November 26, 2007 12:00 am Eastern Time

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MOST AMERICANS never heard of Saul Alinsky. Yet his shadow darkens our coming election. Democrat frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both worship at the altar of Alinskyism.

In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.

Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti – Al Capone’s second-in-command – gave Alinsky clout on the street.

In our book The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, my co-author David Horowitz and I trace the rise of Alinsky’s political influence since the 1930s.

He excelled at wooing wealthy funders. Start-up money for his Industrial Areas Foundation – a training school for radical organizers – came from department-store mogul Marshall Field III, Sears Roebuck heiress Adele Rosenwald Levy, and Gardiner Howland Shaw, an assistant secretary of state for Franklin Roosevelt.

Alinsky once boasted, “I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.”

One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky.

Agnes Meyer personally wrote a six-part series in 1945, praising Alinsky’s work in Chicago slums. Her series, called “The Orderly Revolution”, made Alinsky famous. President Truman ordered 100 reprints of it.

During the Sixties, Alinsky wielded tremendous power behind the scenes.

When President Johnson launched his War on Poverty in 1964, Alinsky allies infiltrated the program, steering federal money into Alinsky projects.

In 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy allied himself with union leader Cesar Chavez, an Alinsky disciple. Chavez had worked ten years for Alinsky, beginning in 1952. Kennedy soon drifted into Alinsky’s circle.

After race riots shook Rochester, New York, Alinsky descended on the city and began pressuring Eastman-Kodak to hire more blacks. Kennedy supported Alinsky’s shakedown. The two men had an “understanding”, Alinsky later wrote.

Alinsky’s crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham. She met Alinsky through a radical church group. Hillary wrote an analysis of Alinsky’s methods for her senior thesis at Wellesley College. They remained friends until Alinsky’s death in 1972.

Alinsky tried to hire Hillary as a community organizer, but she chose instead to attend Yale Law School. Nonetheless, Alinsky’s network continued guiding Hillary’s career.

Fresh out of law school at age 26, Hillary received a prestigious appointment to the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate investigative team in 1974. She got the job on the recommendation of Peter and Marian Wright Edelman.

The Edelmans have been trusted mentors of Hillary since 1969. New Republic editor Martin Peretz called Marian “Hillary’s closest sister and ideological soulmate”. Marian Wright Edelman also happens to be an Alinskyite, having served on the Board of Trustees of Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation.

Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.

Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite. Trained by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote, both creations of the Alinsky network.

Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer.

That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama share an Alinskyite background tells us two things. First, they are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system. Second, they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public.

That is the Alinsky method. And that is today’s Democratic Party.

Oil Conspiracy?

Greg Denault sent along a chapter re oil prices from a recent book. Below in an excerpt which I can add here rather than actually work. If you are interessted, the chapter is HERE.

Of course there is always a conspiracy where big money is at play. Last night, I heard that Soros was saying the price of oil will rise greatly and how awful this is, at which point I was sure that he was in on it. His gig is to depress currencies, a key to the price rise. Of course, if he gives a nickel to some charity or party he can sway, he is a hero.

While it is sad the Congress, et. al., can't even understand how they were used to create the foreign exchange run-up and how the people's interest is misdirected to bread and elections, a conspiracy remains an artificial construct.

If, as reported, there is a surplus of oil even those jumping onto the price train will have to sell eventually. Once that starts the pull-back would be rapid followed by the moans of the slow footed. Anyone who took an anti-gravity price curve as reality will be hurt badly. If you buy into this and like a quick profit, watch the futures exchange and discern when the big guys are distributing (selling to suckers) their shares. Then, buy puts.

Here is a newspaper summary: HERE

A quote from the article:

ICE, ICE, Baby

One piece of legislation is why the price of everything is going through the roof

Special to the Star-Telegram

...Professor Michael Greenberger of the University of Maryland, a former board member of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, testified in front of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on December 14 of last year. Under discussion that day was the manipulation of the energy markets and prices, but Professor Greenberger added these comments: "Three, four months from now, you’re going to have a hearing on the subprime meltdown, and you’re going to find that the very same legislation [deregulating energy] deregulated something called collateralized debt obligations, CDOs." That legislation, friends, directly ties the mortgage meltdown to the high price of energy today.

It was called H.R. 5660, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. At first this bill went nowhere in the House, not even up for debate. Then, a few months later, late one night a 242-page bill written by Wall Street lawyers, with the exact same name as the former House bill, was quietly added to an 11,000-page appropriations bill, and the Enron loophole was created. The power behind that bill was one Texas Senator, one Texas Congressman and their wives.

Here is the excerpt

PERHAPS 60% OF TODAY'S OIL
PRICE IS PURE SPECULATION
by F. William Engdahl
May 2, 2008

...

Hedge Funds and Banks driving oil prices

In the most recent sustained run-up in energy prices, large financial institutions, hedge funds, pension funds, and other investors have been pouring billions of dollars into the energy commodities markets to try to take advantage of price changes or hedge against them. Most of this additional investment has not come from producers or consumers of these commodities, but from speculators seeking to take advantage of these price changes. The CFTC defines a speculator as a person who “does not produce or use the commodity, but risks his or her own capital trading futures in that commodity in hopes of making a profit on price changes.”

The large purchases of crude oil futures contracts by speculators have, in effect, created an additional demand for oil, driving up the price of oil for future delivery in the same manner that additional demand for contracts for the delivery of a physical barrel today drives up the price for oil on the spot market. As far as the market is concerned, the demand for a barrel of oil that results from the purchase of a futures contract by a speculator is just as real as the demand for a barrel that results from the purchase of a futures contract by a refiner or other user of petroleum.

Perhaps 60% of oil prices today pure speculation

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley today are the two leading energy trading firms in the United States. Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase are major players and fund numerous hedge funds as well who speculate.

In June 2006, oil traded in futures markets at some $60 a barrel and the Senate investigation estimated that some $25 of that was due to pure financial speculation. One analyst estimated in August 2005 that US oil inventory levels suggested WTI crude prices should be around $25 a barrel, and not $60.

That would mean today that at least $50 to $60 or more of today’s $115 a barrel price is due to pure hedge fund and financial institution speculation. However, given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil supply and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil futures prices traded on Nymex and ICE exchanges in New York and London it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today oil price is pure speculation. No one knows officially except the tiny handful of energy trading banks in New York and London and they certainly aren’t talking.

By purchasing large numbers of futures contracts, and thereby pushing up futures prices to even higher levels than current prices, speculators have provided a financial incentive for oil companies to buy even more oil and place it in storage. A refiner will purchase extra oil today, even if it costs $115 per barrel, if the futures price is even higher.

As a result, over the past two years crude oil inventories have been steadily growing, resulting in US crude oil inventories that are now higher than at any time in the previous eight years. The large influx of speculative investment into oil futures has led to a situation where we have both high supplies of crude oil and high crude oil prices.

Compelling evidence also suggests that the oft-cited geopolitical, economic, and natural factors do not explain the recent rise in energy prices can be seen in the actual data on crude oil supply and demand. Although demand has significantly increased over the past few years, so have supplies.

Over the past couple of years global crude oil production has increased along with the increases in demand; in fact, during this period global supplies have exceeded demand, according to the US Department of Energy. The US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently forecast that in the next few years global surplus production capacity will continue to grow to between 3 and 5 million barrels per day by 2010, thereby “substantially thickening the surplus capacity cushion.” (See Here re EIN's data re oil imports - Gene.)

Dollar and oil link

A common speculation strategy amid a declining USA economy and a falling US dollar is for speculators and ordinary investment funds desperate for more profitable investments amid the US securitization disaster, to take futures positions selling the dollar “short” and oil “long.”

For huge US or EU pension funds or banks desperate to get profits following the collapse in earnings since August 2007 and the US real estate crisis, oil is one of the best ways to get huge speculative gains. The backdrop that supports the current oil price bubble is continued unrest in the Middle East, in Sudan, in Venezuela and Pakistan and firm oil demand in China and most of the world outside the US. Speculators trade on rumor, not fact.

In turn, once major oil companies and refiners in North America and EU countries begin to hoard oil, supplies appear even tighter lending background support to present prices.

Because the over-the-counter (OTC) and London ICE Futures energy markets are unregulated, there are no precise or reliable figures as to the total dollar value of recent spending on investments in energy commodities, but the estimates are consistently in the range of tens of billions of dollars.

The increased speculative interest in commodities is also seen in the increasing popularity of commodity index funds, which are funds whose price is tied to the price of a basket of various commodity futures. Goldman Sachs estimates that pension funds and mutual funds have invested a total of approximately $85 billion in commodity index funds, and that investments in its own index, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI), has tripled over the past few years. Notable is the fact that the US Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, is former Chairman of Goldman Sachs.

F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press) and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, www.globalresearch.ca. The present series is adapted from his new book, now in writing, The Rise and Fall of the American Century: Money and Empire in Our Era. He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

T. Boone Pickens in 2005

Had anyone used T. Boone's insights in 2005 would have made one rich, only more rich than he thought. Here is a top view of the oil trade, etc., from a sober and realistic player. A good article. Like Jim Kunstler says, it does not matter if we at peak production or it is near in the future, the mere belief that easy crude is coming to an end will result in whip-saw prices.

I dug Picken's out because his Mesa Petroleum just announced the world's largest wind farm, to commence production 2010. GE is the big beneficiary. This move would not have been predictable of Picken's in 2005.

Mesa has made its move, one based on money and real world decisions, not electioneering, which will continue long after the solutions are being bolted to the ground.

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	Legendary oil magnate calls it, peak oil is here Boone Pickens Warns of Petroleum Production Peak May 04, 2005 PALM SPRINGS, CA. - May 3, 2005. By EV World Legendary Oklahoma energy magnate, T. Boone Pickens will be 77 years old this month, and maybe because of that, he feels free to speak what's on his mind; and he did to an audience of alternative fuel advocates in Palm Springs today. Addressing the 11th National Clean Cities conference, hosted by the former mayor of Palm Springs and introduced by former U.S. Energy Secretary John Herrington (1984-1989), Boone, as his friends refer to him, was candid in his views of wind energy, nuclear power, natural gas, and in particular petroleum. While he acknowledges wind power is cheap today, he, as well as former-Secretary Herrington, questioned the contribution it can make to the nation's future energy needs. He finds nuclear power attractive and believes natural gas should be used to power our transportation fleets rather than to generate electricity. In general, he was very upbeat about the prospects for alternative transportation fuels. But on the future of petroleum, he was less sanguine. "Let me tell you some facts the way I see it," he began. "Global oil (production) is 84 million barrels (a day). I don't believe you can get it any more than 84 million barrels. I don't care what (Saudi Crown Prince) Abdullah, (Russian Premier Vladimir) Putin or anybody else says about oil reserves or production. I think they are on decline in the biggest oil fields in the world today and I know what's it like once you turn the corner and start declining, it's a tread mill that you just can't keep up with. "So, when you start adding the reserves in these countries, you're not even replacing what you're taking out. "Let me take you to another situation quickly. 84 million barrels a day times 365 days is 30 billion barrels of oil a year that we're depleting. All of the world's (oil) industry doesn't even come close to replacing 30 billion barrels of oil. We don't spend enough money to even give ourselves a chance to replace 30 billion barrels. It may be because the prospects are not there. I rather imagine that's what the answer is to that. "So, if you accept that 84 million barrels a day is all the world can (produce), and then look at refining capacity, I think it's just a coincidence that refining capacity... world capacity... is 84 million barrels a day. So, we're in balance: 84, 84. "Now you see the projections for the fourth quarter of '05, I mean like tomorrow; it is 86 to 87 million barrels of oil a day required. China (and) India (are) growing fast. Our economy is going down a little bit, but it doesn't seem to be shutting off demand for gasoline, oil, natural gas, whatever. But around the world... just assume that the (U.S.) economy is slowing, but China is still ramped up; it is still 86, 87 million for the fourth quarter. "Now we've got some pretty good inventory, those will be... I think.. they'll be gone in the third quarter. I can't wait to see how this is all going to play out. "Don't let the day-to-day NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) fool you, because it can turn and go the other direction. I may be wrong. Some of the experts say we'll be down to $35 oil by the end of the year. I think it'll be $60 oil by the end of the year. You're going to see $3 gasoline twelve months from today, or some time during that period. I know you've already experienced it in California. I am not that much out of it... But in the Midwest you've probably got $2.20 today. That's the way I see it unfolding". Pickens went to explain that if he were Energy "Czar", he'd immediately begin to phase out the use of natural gas in electric power generation and encourage the construction of more coal-fired and nuclear power plants. He'd use the natural gas to power transportation instead. Speaking of the various alternative fuels, he stated, "I don't think any of them can miss. I think some will be further out than others. Hydrogen, I think, is going to take a long time". Speaking before an audience with vested interests in ethanol, biodiesel, propane and compressed natural gas as transportation fuels, he added that he believes all the alternatives will work. "We're going to have to use shale oil the western slope of the Rockies. That's going to happen. The technology is just about here", he noted, adding that he blames both Republican and Democratic administrations for not engaging in long term planning to meet the nation's future energy needs. "It's all getting very, very tight. We're just about there. The sixty percent we import now (of petroleum), is about all we can get from the countries that export". He cited the example of Venezuela where its "screwball" leader, Hugo Chavez has pledged to not sell any additional oil to the United States. "The majors, they talk about plenty of oil and that they can produce more, but if you look at ExxonMobile, ChevronTexaco, BP (British Petroleum), all the production (is) going down every year. They don't replace and they don't add to production, but they say there's plenty of oil around. "Now why would they say that? One of the chief economists with one of the major oil companies... I was at a conference where he was... we were talking and I asked, why do they say that? And he said, can you imagine what would happen if one of these major oil company's CEO's got up and made a speech and he said, 'We're running out of oil'? I said there'd be panic and he said, 'That's right. They're not going to make the statement. They're going to say there's plenty of oil around'". "I know that sounds rather simple, but that's the best answer I've had... why they keep saying that there's plenty of oil around. I can't tell you positive, but I am just so sure that we have peaked and from here on the demand side that we are going to have a hard time making the trip on fuel. I know demand will come down with price. That will happen". He answered several audience questions and predicted that if the summer is hot in the Southeast that natural gas prices will go to $10. "Natural gas is in decline", he stated, concluding that eventually the market will sort out the winners and losers". After his remarks, EV World asked Mr. Pickens if he agrees with Houston-based investment banker Matthew Simmons that Saudi Arabia's oil fields may be on the verge of decline and he replied that he did agree him. If Pickens and Simmons are correct, then Crown Prince Abdullah's promises to raise production over the next ten years to 15 million barrels a day may be just wishful thinking, in which case, Saudi Arabia's role as swing producer and oil price stabilizer may be a thing of the past. Oil prices will begin to experience unprecedented volatility, which is likely to place serious stresses on a world largely unprepared for the end of cheap fossil fuels. The road from here on will be a bumpy one.	PHOTO CAPTION: T. Boone Pickens started Mesa Petroleum with $2500 in 1956, growing it into one of the world's leading independent oil and gas producers. He is the founder and chairman emeritus of Clean Energy Fuels, the nation's largest supplier of natural gas to the transportation sector.

The Great Dissembler

OK, want to know why I detest Chuck Schumer?:

NY Times, 1999, on releasing strategic reserves...

Mr. Schumer said the United States should begin selling a few hundred thousand gallons a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which now contains 571 million gallons. ''A relatively modest amount of oil released from our oil reserves will keep prices flat and actually reduce them,'' he said.

April 30, 2008

Senator Schumer, responding to Bush’s ANWR proposal: ““And what does the President do? He takes out the old saw of ANWR. ANWR wouldn’t produce a drop of oil in 10 years, and its estimated that if they drilled in ANWR in twenty years it would reduce the price one penny.

You should know ANWR will produce 1 million barrels a day.

May 14, 2008

“If Saudi Arabia were to increase its production by 1 million barrels per day that translates to a reduction of 20 percent to 25 percent in the world price of crude oil, and crude oil prices could fall by more than $25 dollar per barrel from its current level of $126 per barrel,” Schumer insisted during a speech on the Senate floor.

“In turn, that would lower the price of gasoline between 13 percent and 17 percent, or by more than 62 cents off the expected summer regular-grade price – offering much needed relief to struggling families,” he added.

It doesn't matter what the truth is, only what it should be.

Of note, you won't have read in the news, President Bush recently contacted Saudi Arabia and asked for an increase in output. The country said it will increase 300,000 bbls a day.

Schumer made the recent comments in the current show trial of the oil industry. Exxon said it takes $22 million to run the largest company in the world (equal to, what, three Representatives). Just to put things into perspective, if the entire company waived its costs and salaries, gas would drop something like .001 cents.

Who owns Exxon? We do - 42% is held by mutual funds as part of IRA's, etc. What an outrage, we are shoring up our retirements. Big Oil is the teacher's fund.

We need to stop thinking like simpletons.

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When Schumer was in Congress in the 1990s, he was on the committee looking into President Clinton's actions and comments. (The impeachment) He howled on TV, it was for the Senate to look into all the detail, not part of the House's role; that the information was part of mud-slinging (the context). A few months later, he became NY's Senator.

After being sworn in and put on the Senate judicial committee hearing the case against Clinton, he protested the Senate should not be hearing (on TV) all sorts of damning evidence because it was the House's job, i.e. that all the bad information was mad-slinging.

That is when I lost interest in him. I guess Brooklyn likes this sort of dissembling. For some, honor means getting what you want.
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Today's Tidbit: Our strategic reserve is 702 million barrels, plus 90 days of oil from private companies, purchased at an average of $28 per barrel. (I would sell it, now, surreptitiously. When it gets out we are selling the price will collapse in confusion and we would have made billions - but that is not how bureaucrats think.)

Global Warmooling

The recent talk in the media is that "global warming" has taken a holiday for seven years and will not wake for ten or fifteen years. The spin, which I find tempting to accept, is that the global warming hysteria was ill-founded. (Can it be hysteria if it is right? I think so.)

The truth is that the warming has stopped since 1999, but we need a good decline to return to a place that will let us breathe easier. Using a long-term scale, we see that the high air temperatures have been here long ago, just as the ice age started, which many predict is the case now. Of course, this is just one measure, but we need to start somewhere.

The mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven "astronomical" climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years, so says a NOAA page. For larger viewing version of the graph, please click here . Graph courtesy of Kerwin et al., 1999, complete scientific reference located here.

The last 100 years saw, when viewed on that scale shows a run up to 1999 (Mann's al gore ythm was mathematically wrong and the hockey stick graph was not as bad as reported). When viewed on the above scale, it is just a blip in the blue mess run up since the mid-Holocene.

The shorter scale is the cause of the hysteria. Here are shorter scales that help.



The last graph is interesting, but I couldn't find a key. I suppose we have topped the 11th Century; I wish I knew what the colors mean in the Osborne and Briffa graph. Also, are we comparing apples to apples with these numbers?

Unfortunately, the earth runs on a different time frame than its inhabitants. We won't know if the trend line is down for sometime. For that matter, are we starting an ice age, which paleoclimatolgists argue? Finally, the affect of orbits and physics is clearly the major influence, though the one page nicely reported this does not explain the last hundred years. It would be nice to know how they got to that point, "without doubt," other than a nod to the grant powers.

In any event I am putting away my goggles, for now. I will look at snow shoes next year and look to buy an old Fiero (great mileage.)

Obama and Hezb'allah

As it appears Sen. Obama will be the Democratic canditate, I will publish here his own positions and let you take them in. For now, here is his take on Lebanon, which seems to be falling to Syria's henchmen as we speak. Let's all hold hands and sing. Also, send money to the UN to continue its fine work. I don't want to be overly critical, but do we need another Jimmy Carter or Neville Chamberlain?

Hezb'allah's power grab in Beirut has once more plunged that city into violence and chaos. This effort to undermine Lebanon's elected government needs to stop, and all those who have influence with Hezb'allah must press them to stand down immediately. It's time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment. We must support the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions that reinforce Lebanon's sovereignty, especially resolution 1701 banning the provision of arms to Hezb'allah, which is violated by Iran and Syria. As we push for this national consensus, we should continue to support the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Siniora, strengthen the Lebanese army, and insist on the disarming of Hezb'allah before it drags Lebanon into another unnecessary war. As we do this, it is vital that the United States continues to work with the international community and the private sector to rebuild Lebanon and get its economy back on its feet.

To warm or not to warm

Dale Willman writes to share the piece below. I threw in the Gore image from the "Heartland" site, it seems to be an active link. This stuff will make sense below. So, go below.

Fury over 'unethical' warming website

5:00AM Thursday May 08, 2008
By Angela Gregory

New Zealand climate scientists are upset their names have been used by an American organisation wanting to challenge the increasingly accepted view that climate change is human induced.

Among the five scientists is Niwa principal scientist Dr Jim Salinger, who said he was annoyed the Heartland Institute was trying to use his research to prove a theory he did not personally support.

The institute describes itself as a non-profit research and education organisation not affiliated with any political party, business or foundation.

Dr Salinger said he was never contacted about his work which was being mis-used to undermine support for the idea that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, largely fossil fuel burning, was warming the globe.

"I object to the implication that my research supports their position ... they didn't check with me."

He said that he and the other New Zealand scientists all felt their work had been misinterpreted....

The rest is here

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Me. I can't be held responsible for remembering what I have written. Apparently, I quoted this group. Recall. I am not making arguments, per se, here. Just airing contrary views in a snide way and that is taken as a position by many. I appreciate the anarchist, now.

Anyway, New Zealand is full of socalists out to get me. The story is from Reuters, the devil's workshop. The article Dale sent shows how the article is useless because they wrote "organisation." Morons.
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The disgruntled true believer, Dr. Salinger, doesn't say Heartand is wrong, just he resents his work being used to prove a point he "personally" disagrees with. This argument is revealing no matter what is true. Is this how we do science? We try to promote personal feelings?
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Everyone has a bias. That is what is behind what I do, as best I can. That used to be the basis of science. My concern is over the establishment of opinions as axioms. See below.....

Click here for the the Heartland site
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Here is something of interest from the minority side - - - -

Some say that gobal warming has not arrived, in reality, outside of stories about how roses bloom early, so the fall-back position is there is a minor timeout.

A 10-year timeout for global warming, study says

The German research effort is one of the first to attempt 10-year climate forecasts.

Source: Copyright 2008, Christian Science Monitor
Date: May 1, 2008
Byline: Peter N. Spotts
Original URL

Global warming is taking a break that could last for another 10 years or so. That's the latest word from a team of climate researchers in Germany. Global average temperatures should remain above normal, the team suggests. But additional warming – already on hold over the first seven years of this decade – is likely to remain that way for another decade.....

The rest is HERE

Yeah, I put in the bold. Think about it, this crisis is on vacation for 17 years, according to the article. Doesn't that suggest something? And where were those hurricanes that were to kill all the Republicans in the South? Maybe, this year.

The article reports on an issue of Nature magazine; it is not a fabrication by those gun-loving, mean Christian Scientists. The link is to a single space, no paragraph article that was too hard to actually read seriously, I will eventually and report back as the topic looks very annoying to Dale.