Ruminations - 15dec2009

George Rebane

• Truthout.com reports on military resistance group March Forward!
• 'Whole Foods Republicans' is not a strategy 
• Heritage updates on climate change and Copenhagen 
• Climategate catches Al Gore lying about polar ice melt
• CRU temperature datasets and programs were “botched”
• Why don’t socialists and leftwingers like those labels?

The hard left blog Truthout.com reports (here) on the formation and activities of March Forward!.  MF is a disgruntled veterans group that asks all active duty military to join and protest the mid-east conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  MF considers them illegal military adventures and urges military personnel to refuse their mid-east assignments.  Such groups have arisen during most of America’s conflicts.  But wholesale mutiny seems to me to be a desperate stratagem to apply at this point in our war against militant Islam.

Another positive collateral effect of Climategate is that climate scientists are beginning to speak up when their work is publicly misrepresented by political types.  As reported by the online London Times, yesterday in Copenhagen Al Gore got his tender part in the wringer when he resumed his lying about climate change data, this time overstating the receding of the arctic ice cap (more here).  Dr Wieslav Maslowski, the scientist whose work was the basis for Big Al’s monologue, quickly came forward and stated that he had no idea how such conclusions could be drawn from the data he gave Gore.  Things continue to unravel on man-made global warming.

The Toronto Sun end runs our MSM with the detailed report of how the CRU’s temperature dataset archives’ management and the subsequent software for estimating historical temperatures were “botched”.  And this from one of their own software engineers charged with trying to come up with the politically correct temperature record.  It is an ongoing joke how the know-nothing MSM and the White House continue to spin all this as inconsequential.  I guess they have given up on the tack that ‘botched’ is just normal jargon which scientists use to report progress and success to one another.

For a complete update on what’s really happening at the big climate change conference in Copenhagen, please visit the Heritage Foundation’s site here.  The big Kahunas of the developed world will converge there in a day or two for the purpose of signing something that looks like a consensus.  Right now it appears they will not be able to cobble anything together that is too damaging to the world and its economies.  The poor countries are miffed (aka pissed) that they won’t be getting the expected big bucks from the rich countries to reduce their CO2 emissions or stuff in Swiss bank accounts.  Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what is the basis for the so-called “negotiations” with the poor countries – what will/can they do if they don’t get the money they want.  And how does it matter?

Whole Foods Republicans? In the 14dec09 WSJ, Michael Petrilli of Stanford’s Hoover Institution exhorts that Republicans need “to enlist voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics”.  RR readers know that most of the time I think that the sharp minds from Hoover, Heritage, and Cato do give the appearance of walking on water.  But Dr. Petrilli definitely got his socks wet when writing this piece.  To regain and hold the national pulpit, the GOP needs to come up with a real strategy for putting under-educated and un-educable people to work in fulfilling, quality of life sustaining jobs (example here).  Merely repainting the elephant to look more like a donkey sounds like a difficult and unsustainable bamboozle to me.

Finally, why don’t socialists and leftwingers like those labels?  From the comment threads on this and other blogs across the country, socialists and leftwingers consider being so identified equivalent to being called a bad name, instead of just labeling their ideological bent.  My fellow ideologues and I don’t mind being labeled conservatives, libertarians, free marketers, rightwingers, and such – we bear those appellations proudly.  Is it that in their heart of hearts our left-leaners know collectivism has a sorry history in its application, and that they would rather slip in their current new and improved version of it before we notice its pedigree?

Comments

[Russ]

Arctic ice was only one of Al Gores problems with the facts. He made bold claims that climate change is aiding the spread of insect-borne diseases. The science does not support him, says Paul Reiter a real scientist.

In his serious voice, Mr Gore presented a nifty animation, a band of little mosquitoes fluttering their way up the slopes of a snow-capped mountain, and he repeated the old line: Nairobi used to be ‘above the mosquito line, the limit at which mosquitoes can survive, but now…’ Those little mosquitoes kept climbing.

The truth? Nairobi means ‘the place of cool waters’ in the Masai language. The town grew up around a camp, set up in 1899 during the construction of a railway, the famous ‘Lunatic Express’. There certainly was water there — and mosquitoes. From the start, the place was plagued with malaria, so much so that a few years later doctors tried to have the whole town moved to a healthier place. By 1927, the disease had become such a plague in the ‘White Highlands’ that £40,000 (equivalent to about £350,000 today) was earmarked for malaria control. The authorities understood the root of the problem: forest clearance had created the perfect breeding places for mosquitoes. The disease was present as high as 2,500m above sea level; the mosquitoes were observed at 3,000m. And Nairobi? 1,680m.