•• Washington Times Editorial (11/24/09) Hiding evidence of global cooling.
Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny. Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the "trick of adding in the real temps to each series ... to hide the decline [in temperature]."
// There is a lot of damning evidence about these researchers concealing information that counters their bias. In another exchange, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann: "If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone" and, "We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind." Mr. Jones further urged Mr. Mann to join him in deleting e-mail exchanges about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) controversial assessment report (ARA): "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re [the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]?"
In another e-mail, Mr. Jones told Mr. Mann, professor Malcolm K. Hughes of the University of Arizona and professor Raymond S. Bradley of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst: "I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!"
A computer hacker in England has done the world a service by making available a huge quantity of evidence for the way in which "human-induced global warming" claims have been advanced over the years.
By releasing into the Internet about a thousand internal e-mails from the servers of the Climate Research Unit in the University of East Anglia -- in some respects the international clearing house for climate change "science" -- he has (or they have) put observers in a position to see that claims of conspiracy and fraud were not unreasonable
// Nigel Lawson (a.k.a. Baron Lawson of Blaby), the former British chancellor of the exchequer, who is among prominent persons demanding a full and open public inquiry, summarized the content of the e-mails in this way:
"Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals. ...
// It is amusing to see mainstream media sources such as the New York Times, which thinks nothing of publishing purloined government documents that will endanger the lives of U.S. soldiers in the field, and compromise vital intelligence operations, suddenly become all jowly and uptight about publishing the e-mails in question because they were "illegally obtained.
• Jonah Goldberg, NRO Corner (11/24/09) The CRU Scandal.
// This should be considered not merely a scientific scandal but an enormous journalistic scandal. The elite press treats skepticism about global warming as a mental defect. It uses a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy to delegitimize people who dissent from the (manufactured) "consensus." Dissent is scientifically unserious, therefore dissenting scientist A is unserious. There's no way to break in. The moment someone disagrees with the "consensus" they disqualify themselves from criticizing the consensus. That's not how science is supposed to work. Skeptics who've received a tote bag from some oil company are branded as shills, but scientists who live off of climate-change-obsessed foundations or congressional fiefdoms are objective, call-it-like-they-see-it truth seekers. Question these folks and you get a Bill Murrayesque, "Back off, man. We're scientists."
• Mark Steyn, NRO Corner (11/24/09) Re: The CRU Scandal.
Jonah, your reader is right. It's not just the e-mails, which are open to "interpretation," but the computer code, which isn't:
Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions of growing season temperatures. Uses "corrected" MXD – but shouldn't usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.
And, as a result, even if you wanted to extrapolate in a rigorously scientific fashion, the databases are full of garbage. An e-mail from Ian (Harry) Harris who works in "climate scenario development and data manipulation" at the CRU:
OH F**K THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity...
[My bolds. Also my aster**ks.]
Iain Murray puts it very well:
The science involved is being used to justify the diversion of literally trillions of dollars of the world's wealth in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. The CRU is the Pentagon of global warming science, and these documents are its Pentagon Papers.
Well, except for the part about being on the front page of the New York Times. Fortunately, the Wall Street Journal seems to be onto what's at issue:
All of these nonresponses manage to underscore what may be the most revealing truth: That these scientists feel the public doesn't have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions, even as their governments prepare staggeringly expensive legislation in response to them.
[UPDATE: A reader adds:
A quibble. You say "It's not just the e-mails." But, if similar e-mails had been released for a business, wouldn't the authors be getting subpoenas to appear before SEC and congress and state attorneys-general?
Sigh. I know, different rules for us and for them. But, how can anyone read the e-mails and not assume they are evidence of a conspiracy? I was just cutting Jonah a bit of slack. But you're right. Racketeering indictments would be looming.]
• NRO Symposium (11/25/09) Climate of Fraud: What do hacked e-mails tell us about global-warming research?
343-354 – Jillian Bandes
• CNS News (11/25/09) Sen. Feinstein: Reading Osama bin Laden Miranda Rights A 'Murky Area'.
– Would U.S. troops have to read Osama bin Laden his Miranda rights if they capture him? It's a "murky area," Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) told CNSNews.com. She said Americans should trust the judgment of Attorney General Eric Holder who, unlike his predecessors, is "not blemished in any way."
• CNS News (11/25/09) Sen. Dodd: Civilian Courts Better Than Military Tribunals for Prosecuting Terrorists.
Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) says civilian courts would do a "far better" job of prosecuting terrorists than military courts, adding that the civilian venues would be more likely to bring top al Qaeda terrorists to justice. But Dodd did not directly answer whether 9/11 leader Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be read his Miranda rights.
• CNS News (11/25/09) Senator Conrad: If You Don't Believe in Civilian Trials for Terrorists, 'Go Somewhere Else'.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told CNSNews.com that U.S. civilian courts are well-suited to prosecute al Qaeda terrorists and that "if people don't believe in our system, they ought to go somewhere else." Conrad also dismissed as not serious a question about the rights of terrorists captured on foreign battlefields and the rules of evidence.
• CNS News (11/25/09) Cap and Trade Legislation Would Slow Economy, Says Congressional Budget Office.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report on Monday saying that climate change legislation being considered by Congress could reduce the purchasing power of the middle class and shrink or slow the economy in several ways.
• CNS News (11/25/09) House Health Care Bill May Put Rural Hospitals Out of Business.
Rural hospitals across America may face further financial woes if the House health care bill becomes law. The bill stipulates below-market payment rates and a new government-run insurance company that would compete with the cash-strapped hospitals. The House-passed version of health care reform does not fix the disparity in Medicare reimbursements between rural and urban hospitals.
• Mark Steyn (11/20/09) Turning KSM into O.J.
• Jillian Bandes (11/21/09) Deep Into Saturday Night's Health Care Vote.
• Jillian Bandes (11/25/09) Obamacare May Target Gun Owners.
358-408 – Jeff Vines, senior pastor of Christ's Church of the Valley in San Dimas (ccvnow.com), and author of Dinner with Skeptics: Defending God In A World That Makes No Sense.
• Melanie Kirkpatrick (11/24/09) Happy Franksgiving: How FDR tried, and failed, to change a national holiday.
• Victor Davis Hanson (11/25/09) The New War against Reason: Medieval heretic-hunters had nothing on Obama when it comes to closed-mindedness.
413-423 – Jeff Vines
• FRC Prayer Targets (11/25/09) A Thanksgiving Lesson from the Pilgrims.
In their struggle to survive in the New World, our Pilgrim Fathers learned that socialism does not work! A two-year long experiment in 1621-1622 taught them that when government redistributes income, scarcity, dependence and even death result.
For their first two years at Plymouth, the Pilgrims embraced a well-intended scheme: the fruit of each man's labor went into a common storehouse; each then took from the storehouse as his family had need. Author Richard Marbury writes, the first "Thanksgiving was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men." Laziness and thievery resulted when capable men refused to labor but demanded to be fed.
Governor William Bradford called for change, requiring each family to raise its own food. At the harvest of 1623, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote, "for which they blessed God... Any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." In 1624, food production was so abundant that the colony began exporting corn. In his History of the Plymouth Settlement America's first elected governor documented the hard lessons about socialism and the benefits of free enterprise learned by those who inspired Thanksgiving Day (see The Great Thanksgiving Hoax, watch video Thanksgiving, Overcoming Socialism, History of the Plymouth Settlement).
428-437 – Jerry Bowyer, economist, nationally-syndicated columnist, and CNBC contributor (bowyerbriefing.com).
• WSJ (11/25/09) Lending Declines as Bank Jitters Persist.
The FDIC's quarterly banking profile, which analyzed data from 8,099 federally insured banks, reported that 552 financial institutions, with combined assets of $345.9 billion, were on the government's problem list at the end of September, up from 416 with $299.8 billion of assets at the end of June. That means roughly 7% of all U.S. banks are on the list and face a higher probability of failure.
FDIC officials don't disclose the names of banks on the list, in part because it could lead to bank runs.
Many banks on the problem list are expected to return to health, but the FDIC is seeing a jump in the number of failures. Fifty banks failed in the third quarter, the most in a single quarter since the fourth quarter of 1992. Three new banks were chartered in the third quarter, the lowest quarterly number since World War II.
The FDIC said its deposit-insurance fund, which backstops trillions of dollars in deposit accounts, fell to a negative $8.2 billion at the end of September, an $18.6 billion drop from the end of June. The FDIC said one reason for the decrease was that the agency shifted $21.7 billion from the fund into reserves for bank failures over the next 12 months.
Even though the FDIC's fund balance was negative, it still had reserves of cash. The FDIC said it had $23.3 billion in cash at the end of September to help resolve future bank failures.
438 – [2:00] Let's check in now with the pros over at Applied Financial Planning, "The Money Guys" Robert Micone and Bill O'Connor at 866-SEEK-COUNSEL. –– Get the independent, unbiased advice you're seeking on your investments & retirement planning from the pros in the investment world here in Southern California for decades, "The Money Guys" – Robert Micone & Bill O'Connor – at Applied Financial Planning, by calling 866-SEEK-COUNSEL or visiting them on the web at SeekCounsel.com.
443-452 – Jerry Bowyer
458-508 – Hormoz Shariot "the Billy Graham of Iran," he is the founder of Iran Alive Ministries (iranaliveministries.org) he founded the Iranian Christian Church in 1987 which has grown to five churches and over 400 members – all converts from Islam, and he's the host of ICTV, a Christian call-in show in Farsi, beamed into Iran via satellite. In 1979, he was in the streets of Iran chanting "Death to America" as a good radical Muslim, then he came to USC to get a Ph.D. in computer engineering. He was spiritually empty, with a divorce imminent, and he reads the Koran one more time, not getting any direction. Then he read the Gospel of Matthew and was confronted with the person of Jesus. As a result, he came to faith in Christ at Church of the Open Door here in LA. He's happily married, and lives in the Bay Area, with his three children.
554 – [2:00] Don Rohde (818) 262-2092. For the past 37 years, Don has been a sales manager at Galpin, the #1 volume Ford dealer in the world for the past 19 consecutive years. Galpin has been family-owned and operated for the past 59 years, and 90% of their business is repeat or referral. Galpin offers Ford, Lincoln-Mercury, Honda, Mazda, Saturn, Volvo, Jaguar, and Aston Martin. Located in the heart of the San Fernando Valley at Roscoe and the 405.
512-523 – Hormoz Shariot
528-538 – Jillian Bandes (Reprise)
544-554 – Jillian Bandes (Reprise)
558-608 – Jeff Vines (Reprise)
612-623 – Jeff Vines (Reprise)
628-638 – Hormoz Shariot (Reprise)
644-652 – Hormoz Shariot (Reprise)
• Fox News (11/25/09) Adam Lambert Refuses to Apologize for Risqué AMA Performance.
• Naplesnews.com (11/25/09) Video: 10 North Naples Middle students suspended for taking part in "kick a Jew day"
(2:19) Kick a Jew Day (NBC 2 News Collier County, FL @ 11/23/09) Adam Freeman reporting.
(:05) Kick Day 1 short
(:06) Kick Day 2 short
(:22) Kick Day 3 short
(:09) Kick Day 4 short
• MSNBC (11/25/09) Mom of boy set afire: 'His courage is incredible'
(2:00) Boy Afire (TODAY on NBC 11/25/09) Kerry Sanders reporting from Miami, FL
(:25) Boy Afire short. Quote from boy who watched, and the act his brother and brother's friend allegedly performed.
• AP (11/18/09) Girl, 15, indicted in killing of 9-year-old Calls: What in our society is contributing to a 15-year old who "wanted to know what it felt like" to kill?
(:32) 15 year old killer (MSNBC news @ 11/18/09)
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