Fraud, Waste and Abuse Found in Danish CO2 Trading

That is a nice headline that people can take into the Copenhagen Climate Talks.

Denmark is the centre of a comprehensive tax scam involving CO2 quotas, in which the cheats exploit a so-called ‘VAT carrousel’, reports Ekstra Bladet newspaper.

Police and authorities in several European countries are investigating scams worth billions of kroner, which all originate in the Danish quota register. The CO2 quotas are traded in other EU countries.

I think you can change the word Denmark for the US if cap and tax should happen to be passed by some miracle.

Aussies Dump Cap and Tax

Now we need to follow the lead of our Aussie friends and dump Cap and Tax forever.

Emboldened following the Climategate scandal, the Liberal opposition in Australia's parliament threw out its pro-Kyoto leader yesterday and then today, under the leadership of global warming skeptic Tony Abbott, voted down the government's plan to pass cap and trade legislation. The proposed legislation, intended to be a feather in the cap of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd prior to his departure for climate change meetings in Copenhagen, failed by a vote of 41 to 33 in the Senate, Australia's upper house.

Let's hope Copenhagen turns out to be a dismal failure as well. The data is just so crappy there is no way that trillions will be wasted on these schemes.

Super Earths May Harbor Life

It sure would be weird life forms though.

Whether made of rock or ice, Sasselov says Super Earths will be only 1 or 2 times the actual size of Earth because they become densely compressed as they gain mass. This higher density will result in greater gravity. Sasselov says the most massive Super Earth would have about 3 times the gravity of Earth. Tests of human resistance to vertical G-force, where the blood is pulled down to the legs, have found the typical person can tolerate up to 5 Gs before losing consciousness. So while you might feel much heavier walking on a Super Earth, the extra gravity wouldn't be beyond what human explorers could endure. Of course, any life that evolved on a Super Earth would be adapted to the greater gravity, just as a human feels comfortable on the 1 G surface of Earth.

That means that these creatures would probably be super strong to handle that atmosphere for very long. I wonder if their extensive musculature would have an effect on their brain power? It would seem that they would need most of their added nutrients to keep them standing upright on a +5G planet so not as much will be going to brain development. It is also nice to see that scientists have the same belief as I do about the so-called Fermi Paradox.

Sasselov's own suggestion for the Fermi paradox relates to the age and evolution of planets in the universe. When the universe was young, only hydrogen and helium were available. Generations of stellar evolution were needed to produce the heavier elements, such as silica and iron, which build rocky planets. Even though the universe is approximately 14 billion years old, our solar system only formed about 4.6 billion years ago. (Astronomers did find a 12.7-billion-year-old Jupiter-mass object in our galaxy, but Sasselov thinks this so-called ancient planet could instead be the remnant of a red or brown dwarf star that was stripped of some of its mass.)

You would figure that most alien races close by us would be about as old as we are so they wouldn't develop truly advanced technology like things that can tap the power of their suns or develop faster than light travel. However, I can see them just sending a spaceship with slightly more advanced life support on them in the 20 years that it would take to get to get back and forth from their planet.

Even if you look at our planet we had a false start in the dinosaurs that were wiped out before mammals developed. That could easily happen on other planets too. They could have an alien race as evolved or more evolved then us suddenly get wiped out by solar radiation, a comet, an asteroid hitting their planet, or even a world war. Then they will be back to the stone age again and the race would have to rediscover everything.

Now New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research is Cooking the Books?

You have to be kidding me. Does anyone in the Climate Change community have clean numbers?

Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

I think there should be a total halt to any policy decisions on climate change until all of these matters can be dealt with. Right now none of these people have any credibility and all of their research is suspect.

Dubai Restructes its Debt and it Roils Markets

Hmm, it seems that Dubai may be having trouble with their debt load.

"Obviously, the debt restructuring has caught investors very much by surprise," said UBS analyst Saud Masud, who believes the UAE and Dubai governments wouldn't risk so much damage to their financial reputation unless it was essential to a larger plan of achieving long-term stability.

This makes sense so instead of just writing a big check underwritten with their oil wealth they are going to let the market decide what happens. Seems like a good plan and they should have a sound balance sheet once the bad debt gets flushed out of the system.

Tiger Woods Seriously Injured in Car Wreck

It seems he crashed his car pulling out of his driveway. I wonder if he was wearing his seatbelt?

The Florida Highway Patrol said Woods, 33, hit the hydrant and a tree after pulling out of his driveway in his 2009 Cadillac sports utility vehicle.

The patrol reported his injuries as serious, and that he was taken to Health Central Hospital. His condition was not immediately known. A supervisor in the emergency room said Friday afternoon that Woods was not a patient there.

PETA Wants University of Georgia Mascot to be a Robot

Who doesn't PETA get to work on this robot dog at once. That way the University of Georgia doesn't have to waste money and time trying to cater to a group that pretty much kills all the pets put into their care.

On its 2002 federal income-tax return, PETA claimed a $9,370 write-off for a giant walk-in freezer, the kind most people use as a meat locker or for ice-cream storage. But animal-rights activists don't eat meat or dairy foods. And during a 2007 criminal trial, a PETA manager (testifying under oath) confirmed the obvious -- that the group uses the appliance to store the bodies of its victims.

I understand what PETA is trying to do now. I think a robot dog is a good idea because if the next UGA falls into PETAs clutches then he is DOA.

The Real Problem with Climate Science? The Model is Broken

It seems that all of the emails with their various ethical violations should pale at the thought of the bedrock of their research the climate model may be a big mess from a programming standpoint.

The emails seem to describe a model which frequently breaks, and being constantly "tweaked" with manual interventions of dubious quality in order to make them fit the historical data. These stories suggest that the model, and the past manual interventions, are so poorly documented that CRU cannot now replicate its own past findings.

That is a big problem. The IPCC report, which is the most widely relied upon in policy circles, uses this model to estimate the costs of global warming. If those costs are unreliable, then any cost-benefit analysis is totally worthless.

About all you can do is scrap the entire model and built it again from scratch. In other words this model in which all this policy and trillion dollar changes needs to go back to base code. Then we need new scientists and programmers to put the thing together. If it predicts global warming then spend the trillions and fix the problems. Any other decisions based on this stuff is worthless until the bedrock code is cleaned up.

Less than 10% of Obama Cabinet Members Have Any Private Sector Experience

It seems that I have more experience in the private sector then just about the entire Obama cabinet. Which is kind of sad in a way.

A friend sends along the following chart from a J.P. Morgan research report. It examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900 that one might expect a president to turn to in seeking advice about helping the economy. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security—432 cabinet members in all.

No wonder they are having so much trouble creating jobs for people. Most of them have never had to run a business that had to make a profit or compete in the marketplace. I mean the closest thing Obama had to the business world was working at Baskin and Robins as a teenager.

I still think Hillary should have won the Democratic race. At least she ran a Law Firm at some time in the past and was on the board of directors of Wal-Mart. Oh well maybe she would have the guts to run against Obama in 2012.

How a Monoculture Destroyed Climate Science

Now this is an interesting article on how a monoculture in Climate Science is so dangerous.

For years, with the media’s active participation, criticism of the mainstream scientific position on global warming has been painted as somehow outside the bounds of reasonable discourse. Skeptics are called “deniers,” with the intent to equate them with those who deny the Holocaust. At every turn, global warming activists with the help of the media, have tried to make it uncomfortable, even impossible, to criticize the science of catastrophic man-made global warming. In the extreme, this has degenerated into outright threats.

I have the agree whenever a monoculture forms it quickly becomes destructive to the people who are not members of it. This happened with the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, Stalin and his Cult of Personality, Mao and cronies and on-and-on. A small elite group at the top protected their own and treated their enemies as "counterrevolutionaries" or "wreckers" and even tried to kill vast swaths of them.

This Climate monoculture was exactly the same. They closed ranks, excommunicated heretics, and even tried to destroy the careers of their enemies. They all thought alike and tried to treat their enemies as "deniers" by lumping them in with odious Holocaust deniers. The even sprinkled a little information denial in by trying to get their contacts to reject the papers of the "deniers." It was strangly similar to the extreme information control practiced by the Catholic Church and the Soviets. The more I think about it the more this leak may have been one of the great turning points in history.

Is Angelina Jolie Anti-Obama?

Well at least some unnamed source close to the star thinks so.

Barack Obama does not have Angelina Jolie's seal of approval.

"She hates him," a source close to the U.N. goodwill ambassador, 34, tells the new issue of Us Weekly (on newsstands now).

Maybe she was for Hillary? Also I wonder if this will get her passed over for some jobs in Hollywood now?

Women Plan to Ignore Mammogram Commissar

As well they should. I think it is egregious that this seems to only effect women. Of course you don't see this same Health Politboro (aka U.S. Preventive Services Task Force) issuing edicts about "guidelines" on when men can be checked for prostate cancer.

Women across the USA have reacted angrily to the recommendations and expressed concern that delaying the tests could endanger their lives. In the new survey of 1,136 women, 76% of women say they disagree or strongly disagree with the recommendations.

And 84% of women ages 35 to 49 say they plan to get mammograms before age 50 despite the independent panel's advice. That's in keeping with the guidance of the American Cancer Society, which recommends annual mammograms beginning at age 40.

I'm pretty sure that he CANCER society has a better handle on when women should be checked for CANCER. In fact I think all women should simply ignore the U.S. Preventive Commissar in Charge of Patriotic Womens Health in Defense of the Motherland (USPCCPWHDM) or whatever this group is called when it comes to their lives.

What is really sad is this Health Commissar issued this Dictat right after Breast Cancer Awareness month just finished. Hell, even the NFL got in on the act. Then this USPCCPWHDM pisses all over that. Talk about tone deaf.

Black Men Decimated by the Recession

I really hope Obama gets as mad about the plight of these African Americans as he did about some cops harassing his rich, tenured Harvard professor friend.

Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland.

Obama Finally Makes an Afghanistan Decision

After much dithering, hemming and hawing, and like 10 meetings with his "war cabinet" he came to the decision that he could have made 3 months ago.

"I can tell you, as I've said before, that it is in our strategic interest, in our national security interest to make sure that al-Qaida and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively" in the area, he said. "We are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and destroy their networks. And Afghanistan's stability is important to that process."

Military officials expect an infusion of approximately 32,000 to 35,000 troops to begin in February or March, the largest expansion since the beginning of the war and one that could bring the cost above $75 billion annually.

Maybe Obama got tired of holding out his hand in friendship and having it slapped away. Dems can be strong war Presidents just ask Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Truman. I would be willing to cheer Obama if he does finally show some spine when it comes to the Taliban and Al-Quida. A loss in Afghanistan would be devastating to US prestige going forward.

It Seems that Climate Science Mostly Involves Punishing Heretics

I guess fudging figures is part of it but the zeal in which they try punish skeptics would make Torquemada proud. Do you deny the existence of global climate change? Yes? Dunk Him Again!

Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn't matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)

Ben Santer says (presumably jokingly!) he's "tempted, very tempted, to beat the crap" out of sceptic Pat Michaels. (1255100876)

Santer complaining about FoI requests from McIntyre. Says he expects support of Lawrence Livermore Lab management. Jones says that once support staff at CRU realised the kind of people the scientists were dealing with they became very supportive. Says the VC [vice chancellor] knows what is going on (in one case).(1228330629)

Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)

The Unbearable Whiteness of MSNBC

This has to be the first case of the pot calling the kettle white.

In Michigan, O’Donnell smugly noted that Palin’s fans were “largely white — almost no minorities in this crowd.” Matthews parroted the line, assailing the “white crowd.” Walsh likened the gathering to a “paranoid tea party.” Matthews hammered away at the “monochromatic” scene.

Ahem. Check out the masthead of MSNBC TV, “The Place for Politics.” Wear sunglasses and SPF 30 lotion. You’ll need protection from the blinding white glare:

I guess "diversity" in the Palin crowd matches the "diversity" of the MSNBC on-air personalities.

Leading Climate Change Research Group Hacked

Wow it seems that a leading climate change group called niversity of East Anglia Climate Research Unit got hacked and some of their emails were posted on the web. This part is especially disturbing:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK

That "hide the decline" part sure sounds like they are massaging the data in order to get the conclusions that they want. The problem is that this climate science is the reason why so many countries are trying to cripple their economies with "Cap and Tax" programs. If the scientists themselves are alleged to be messing with the data then how can we trust them going forward?

What is even worse is how this data massaging seems like something out of a Greek religion. Supposedly Greek temples had all sorts of tricks that they used to show the divinity of their gods. For instance Heron of Alexandria was supposed to have invented a steam engine to open the doors of a temple to make it seem like it was done by divine magic.

So these climate scientists seem like a modern day Heron using their science and massaged data in order to convince people that they must do something about global warming yesterday. They then use impressive scare stories that global warming will destroy the earth like Heron used his steam engine to make people believe what they want them to believe. These scientists even have to alter the narrative in order to keep their gods running.

In some ways this anonymous hacker may have saved billions or perhaps trillions in world wide wealth and allowed even more people to emerge out of poverty. I bet Al Gore can see his climate change billions slowly start to evaporate.

More Bad News for Microsoft: ChromeOS Could be the Default Netbook Option

This article goes over some predictions on what Google's new ChromeOS will do to Windows 7.

My prediction is this: netbooks, as we know them, will come with ChromeOS as a boot option. Ultrathin laptops (think the Dell Adamo or the HP Envy 13) will come with Windows 7. Netbook configuration, then, will consist of entering your IMAP and SMTP info, a few social media credentials, and maybe uploading a picture of your dog as a background image. The rest – installing apps, buying games (other than Android/ChromeOS games), and running Microsoft Office – will be gone, thrust into the cloud.

I can easily see this happening since most of the games you play on a Netbook are Internet games anyway. You don't need Outlook since you will be using Gmail anyway. Even productivity software can be run through a browser like Microsoft Office Online. I will be dual booting this thing and testing it on my netbook as soon as a stable copy comes out.

The Weak Diplomatic Language of the Year Award goes to Obama

An FDR or JFK he is certainly not judging by perhaps the wimpiest threat I have ever heard.

"Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal ... and so as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences," Obama said at a joint news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul.

He said Iran would not be given an unlimited amount of time, likening the Iranian nuclear issue to years of stop-and-start negotiations with North Korea about its nuclear ambitions.

We have begun discussions of the importance of consequences? The discussions aren't about consequences but the importance of having these unnamed consequences. That sounds like something Carter would say. I'm also glad he decided to give a timetable of sometime before the sun turns into a black hole as well. Way to show those Mullahs who's boss Obama.